RAW/ECN Account Spread Testing

Spreads are the primary brokerage cost when trading forex. Choosing an ECN account (also known as a RAW account) with a fixed commission can keep these costs down, and Ross Collins tested these accounts at 15 brokers to find which has the tightest spreads.

Because spreads shift with liquidity and volatility, a test result reflects conditions during the test itself rather than a fixed ranking. Each broker’s own pricing page shows its current live spreads.

Which Forex Broker Has The Tightest Spreads?

In Ross Collins’s RAW spread tests, Fusion Markets had the tightest average spread across the six major currency pairs, at 0.22 pips. StoneX Trading followed at 0.25 pips, with IC Markets and TMGM level at 0.32 pips.

The forex brokers we compared:

• are regulated and have a strong reputation in at least one region
• have “RAW/ECN” accounts that charge fixed commissions and spreads as low as zero
• represent a mix of No-dealing Desk (NDD) brokers and market makers
• support MT4, as we wanted to use freely available indicators and scripts for testing

Ross Collins ran the same tests on standard accounts, with the results on the Standard Account Spreads page, or you can view our lowest Commission Fees page.

Why Is It So Important To Trade With Tight Spreads?

The spread is the amount your trade must move before you make a profit. For example, if you go long (buy) 1 lot (100,000) using Fusion Markets, your trade will need to rise by at least 0.09 pips before making any profit. The tighter the spread, the more profit you can make.

If your trading strategy relies on profits of just a few pips (e.g., scalping), or if you use are a high-volume trader, low spreads are critical to your success.

You can see how we compared Fusion Markets to other ASIC-regulated brokers on our Lowest Spread Forex Brokers list. We also created a list of just FCA-regulated brokers on the lowest spread forex brokers in the UK.

What Factors Influence Spreads?

Factors that can influence the spreads offered by different brokers include

1. The currency pair being traded
2. The volume of trades in the currency pair being traded
3. The volatility of the currency pair being traded
4. The time of day the trade is made

Our Testing Methodology For RAW/ECN Account Spreads

Ross Collins’s spread tests used RAW/ECN accounts (as opposed to standard or zero-commission accounts). He recorded spreads on the six major currency pairs, AUDUSD, EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDCAD, USDCHF, and USDJPY, with hourly (H1) data.

Ross Collins’s RAW-account spread results for the 15 brokers sit in our monthly Forex Spreads workbook, in sheets titled with his name. For each broker, the sheets hold his average spread on each of six major currency pairs (AUDUSD, EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDCAD, USDCHF and USDJPY) plus the broker’s average across the six pairs, and those figures are the basis for the tightest spreads we rank here.

Tightest RAW Spread For UK and European Brokers

Among the FCA-regulated brokers in Ross Collins’s RAW spread tests, StoneX Trading had the lowest six-pair average, at 0.25 pips, followed by Pepperstone at 0.36 pips. I recommend that European residents choose a broker regulated for their region, so UK residents should choose one regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Do ECN Accounts Have Lower Fees Than Standard Accounts?

At every broker Ross Collins tested on both account types, the RAW/ECN account had tighter spreads than the standard account. For example, Fusion Markets’ Zero Account spread was 82% tighter than its Standard Account’s 1.19 pips.

Some of the abbreviations on this page are expanded to the regulator's full name: a broker regulated by ASIC is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Published Raw Account Spreads

Each month the CompareForexBrokers team visits the websites and grabs the average published data by currency pair (which may exist in the product disclosure statement) and centralises it in the table below.

Data window: broker-published spreads collected in February 2026. These are figures the brokers publish, not spreads we measured.

On this February 2026 published data, the two raw-account brokers with the lowest spreads in pips are the following:

1. IC Markets (lowest published spreads)
2. Fusion Markets (third lowest published spreads)