In this Trading 212 review, we deep dive into the features the Forex broker has to offer. We cover their spreads, trading platforms, financial instruments and regulation. Read on to see if we think the broker is any good.
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Given we had never heard of Trading 212, we were surprised to see they have over 2 million funded accounts. Overall we thought Trading 212 has a good offering with decent no-commission spreads for Forex trading with CFDs and you can also invest in shares.
We did however think customer service communication could be better and would have liked it if they could provide more information about their trading platform.
Trading 212 is an interesting broker. Based in London and founded in 2006, the brokers claim to have over 14,000,000 downloads and that their app is ranked as the UK’s top trading app. Admittedly, we had never heard of them before, but upon further investigation, we were able to confirm that they do indeed have over 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store, so maybe they are bigger than we realise.
They offer two main accounts – Trading 212 Invest for trading stocks and ETFs and Trading 212 CFD for Forex trading and other financial products. If you’re based in the United Kingdom then you also have a third option called the Trading 212 ISA account, but more on that later.
The spreads are fairly good and come with no commissions. Trading 212 publishes average spreads as low as 1.2 pips, which is fair but still falling short of leading forex brokers with tight spreads for similar style trading accounts like IC Markets and CMC Markets
The broker uses a market maker model which means the broker is your counterparty and use Interactive Brokers (IB) infrastructure for clearing transaction. This partially explains why the broker does not have e commission-based trading account common with no dealing desk or ECN style brokers.
Overall, Trading 212 is a legitimate broker, they are regulated by the FCA and CySEC so accept clients in the UK and Europe. So this broker is only for you if you live in these jurisdictions.
Trading 212 only offers no commission (aka spread-only trading) when it comes to Forex CFD products. The broker publishes their average spreads for Forex pairs on their website. Spreads for the EUR/USD currency pair average 1.2 pips and GBP/USD average 1.3 pips respectively. While this certainly isn’t bad, it doesn’t place Trading212 among the most competitive.
Previously we did our own testing and analysis of no commission trading accounts, comparing the spreads of 20 brokers, and our findings show that you can find better spreads. Analysis of the spreads for the EUR/USD pair with IC Markets, Admirals, CMC Markets and FXCM all average spreads under 1 pips (with IC Markets averaging 0.73 pips) which is superior to the 1.2 pips with Trading 212.
It is a similar story with GBP with CMC Markets, Admirals, IC Markets, TMGM and Fusion Markets all having lower average spreads compared to the 1.3 pips that Trading 212 list on their website.
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Standard Account Spreads
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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1.10 | 1.20 | 1.40 | 1.40 | 1.20 |
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1.10 | 1.20 | 1.40 | 1.40 | 1.40 |
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1.13 | 1.01 | 1.71 | 1.66 | 1.12 |
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1.12 | 1.64 | 1.30 | 1.30 | 1.38 |
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0.90 | 1.10 | 1.50 | 1.50 | 1.00 |
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1.30 | 1.70 | 2.10 | 1.40 | 1.50 |
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1.10 | 1.20 | 1.40 | 1.50 | 1.20 |
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1.32 | 1.95 | 1.37 | 1.70 | 1.40 |
Avg. spreads are taken from each broker's website and updated monthly. Last update on 04/01/2024
While we are not suggesting Trading 212 is bad, in our tests notable brokers such as OANDA, Axi, City Index fared worse. You can however find brokers offering tighter spreads.
As we’ve mentioned, Trading 212 offers two main account types; Trading 212 Invest, and Trading 212 CFD. A Trading 212 ISA account is also available which can offer a range of tax benefits, but this is only available if you live in the United Kingdom.
A few observations we notice about the signing up with Trading 212. The first is that you can choose between EUR, USD and GBP as your base currency. Should you wish to change your account currency in future, then you will need to close your existing account and open a new one as this Forex broker does not allow you to hold multiple accounts.
The second is that they do not have inactivity fees. If you only intend to trade on an occasional basis, Trading 212 can be a better choice than some brokers who have monthly fees.
Thirdly, if you are of Islamic faith (and you follow Sharia law), it is worth being aware that, Trading 212 do not have a swap-free or Islamic trading account.
Is for trading Contracts For Difference (CFD) derivatives. This account allows you to speculate on price movements of underlying financial instruments such as Forex, indices, ETFs and commodities. You do not own the asset, which means there is less paperwork and the ability to enter and exit market positions quickly.
CFD trading is also a good option if you prefer not to use too much of your own funds, This is because CFD are leveraged instruments, which means for every dollar you invest in your own account, the broker will lend extra funds to trade. So if you trade with 1:10 leverage, the broker will lend you $10 for every $1 you deposit in your bank account. Leverage (also called margin trading) is a feature not available with the Invest account,
Spreads start from 1.0 pips and have no commission fees. Other trading fees include the usual holding fees when trading CFDs and have to pay currency conversion fees.
The Invest account is for traders who wish to purchase stocks and ETFs through the spot market. Unlike with the CFD account, using the invest account means you will own the underlying asset and can even purchase using fractional shares.
Prices are based on the prices listed on the stock exchange however there are a few other fees such as deposit and fx conversion fees to be aware of. A 0.15% is also applied when you execute your trades.
It’s important to note that if you’re trading in the United Kingdom, you will incur a 0.5% stamp duty fee when buying UK shares. When selling US shares, a FINRA fee of $0.000145 per share is charged in addition to an SEC fee of 0.00229%. There are also other jurisdiction-specific fees like a 0.3% French Financial Transactions Tax, so it’s important to be aware of these.
As mentioned, the ISA account is limited to traders and investors in the United Kingdom. It offers you the ability to shield your investments and trades from income tax, tax on dividends and capital gains. While a government deposit limit of up to £20,000 exists, the Trading 212 account offers you a good way to trade and invest into shares and ETFs without being taxed.
We like that Trading 212 offers various funding methods which earned it some additional points. Unfortunately though, given there are just three currencies to fund your account with – GBP, EUR or USD, it’s certainly not the most versatile.
Minimum deposits and withdrawals start from $1 / €1 on the Invest account and $10 / €10 on the CFD account.
We like that there are no custody fees for assets held on either of their account types. Likewise, there are no withdrawal or deposit fees if using a bank transfer. Deposits can be done via debit and credit card, Google Pay, Apple Pay and similar providers are also offered and are free up to your first $2,000 / €2,000, but incur a 0.7% on every deposit once you surpass this threshold.
Trading 212 provides its own trading platform for mobile trading and web trading. You will use the same platform for Trading 212 Invest and Trading 212 CFD trading accounts.
Strangely, Trading 212 makes it hard to find information about their trading platform on their website. The brokers make some mention about how to use their trading platform in their help section but for the most part, it was not easy to find out information.
The Trading 212 mobile trading app is hugely popular. As we mentioned at the outset, it has over 10 million downloads and it’s not hard to see why traders like it due to its simple interface. We think it’s especially well-suited if you are a beginner trader but we fear that as an experienced trader, you might find the functionality limited.
If you prefer to trade via the web browser, then you will get access to more features than with the mobile app. Choosing the web version means you can trade on any operating system – Windows, Mac and even Linux.
We thought the web version was quite intuitive and had decent customisation. There are enough charts and analysis tools to make trading decisions. Features with the web platform include:
While automation is not available through the platform itself, you can connect ProQuant to execute automated trading strategies.
If you are wondering if they have popular mainstream trading platforms such as MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, or cTrader, you are out of luck. It is a similar story for social trading and copy trading.
The Trading 212 comes with some useful features for their invest account. One interesting feature is Pies & AutoInvest, which allows you to automatically reinvest dividends and browse and copy other traders’ investment and trading portfolios.
Their platform also offers some useful categories like ‘speculative’, ‘high volatility’ and ‘dividend’, which we found to be helpful.
After spending a bit of time using the interface, we can confirm it is smooth and very easy to navigate, but it does feel and look a little basic at times.
Given so little information is provided about the trading platform, we think it is a good thing Trading 212 have a demo account to test the platform. This demo account has no expiry date and comes with 100k of virtual funds that can be topped up any time.
Trading 212 offers commission-free trading on 7,000 stocks, 7,000 ETFs, and 177 forex pairs including all the majors, in addition to other asset classes when trading CFDs. If you are using Trading 212 Invest account you can only trade Stock and ETF trading products.
We found the fact they have 177 Forex products interesting, very few brokers offer more than 100 although CMC Markets have over 300. We took a look at the Forex pairs available to determine how they have so many and it appears they are offering Forex pairs as futures or options.
Unfortunately, Trading 212 doesn’t offer cryptocurrencies, bonds or options which we found both disappointing and limiting, though we realised the lack of crypto is not the broker’s fault since the FCA does not allow crypto trading for retail traders. Consequently, while Trading 212 earned points for their robust range of stocks and ETFs, they ended up losing them for not offering crypto, bonds or options. The broker also does not have spread betting, which we know is very popular in the UK and prop trading (which isn’t so surprising).
Trading 212 offers leverage with 30:1 on major currency pairs and 20:1 on minor currency pairs for standard accounts. This is the maximum leverage brokers in the UK can offer due to regulatory limitations.
For their Pro Account, leverage increases up to 1:500, but you will need to meet various conditions (2 out of the 3 below) and be registered under Trading 212 UK Ltd including:
We tested the sign up process to open an account and it was fairly streamlined. All you need to do is follow three simple steps which entail account set up, identity verification, and once approved, adding funds.
Once you’ve added in all the key details including your name, age, place of residence, and where you pay your taxes, you’ll be good to proceed to the next stage where you’ll need to supply either a passport, identity card or drivers license, along with a bank statement or utility bill.
Trading 212 has been around since 2006 and is regulated by the relevant financial regulators for the UK and Europe. This is good as it appears to be their target market and is part of the reason we consider them to be a moderately safe broker. Not so good is that they are not regulated outside these regions so if you are outside these countries, the broker operates without regulatory protection for you or may not accept you.
As a UK trader, you can be confident Trading 212 is fully compliant with requirements set by the financial regulator of the UK – the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). If you are in the UK, this is a big positive as it means Trading 212 can legally offer its trading services to you. It also means the broker must include negative balance protection as a part of their service.
Similarly, if you are in one of the member countries of the European Economic Community (EEC) then the broker can offer their trading services to you thanks to regulation from Cyprus Securities Exchange Commission (CySEC) and Financial Supervision Commission – Bulgaria. Since both these bodies fall under the jurisdiction of the European Securities And Markets Authority (ESMA), we know Trading 212 can legally offer to trade in this region.
It’s important to note, that Trading 212 isn’t regulated outside of these jurisdictions. If you’re based in Australia, Canada, the United States and certain other countries, then unfortunately you may not be able to sign up with Trading 212. We tried to register and sign in from Australia but weren’t able to do so. We checked with Trading 212 support and at this time they appear to be accepting from the UAE, and other countries in the middle east along with Thailand and a number of countries in Latin America.
While this might be a disappointment for some, we thought it added integrity given many brokers utilise an ‘offshore broker’, typically based in the Bahamas, Seychelles or Mauritius, enabling them to accept clients across most of the globe.
When looking through their website, we did find they have a waitlist you can sign up for if you are outside the UK or EEC, suggesting they have intentions of expanding in the future.
Regulation
| Trading 212 Safety | Regulator |
|---|---|
| Tier-1 | |
| Tier-2 | |
| Tier-3 |
Trading 212 is composed of three entities in total including Trading 212 UK Ltd which is the regulated UK entity, Trading 212 Markets Ltd which is the Cypriot-regulated entity, and Trading 212 Ltd which is the Bulgarian entity.
If trading from the UK, up to £85,000 of your funds will be safeguarded by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSSC) in the event Trading 212 becomes insolvent. Likewise, if you’re trading from across Europe and are regulated under CySEC, then up to €20,000 of your funds will be safeguarded by the Investors Compensation Fund (ICF) of Cyprus. A Bulgarian Investors Compensation Fund also exists where your funds will be protected up to €20,000.
You can check at the top of your service terms contract (in the right corner) when signing up with an account to determine which entity you will be registered under.
Other key points to mention are that negative balance protection is provided, funds are held in segregated accounts, and when we checked out Trustpilot for third-party validation, we saw that Trading 212 has a 4.6 out of 5 rating with over 21,400 reviews. They’re also highly active on social media with a large following.
We gave Trading 212 a score of 7/10 for broker trust and safety. Overall, we think Trading 212 seems pretty solid from a regulatory and safety perspective, and we like that they don’t appear to accept clients (for the most part) outside the regulations they are regulated in.
Trading 212 offers 24/7 support with a 29 second average response time. They have a live chat feature with both automated responses and a real person which is a big plus, and their help centre and FAQ section is full of useful material.
We did briefly speak to a customer support agent, and while they were quick to respond, but at time they didn’t appear to be all that knowledgeable about the features available.
Case in point, we wanted to understand their platform better so we asked for information via email to their customer service team. We were a bit baffled when customer service replied asking us what a trading platform is.
We however did like that there’s also a vibrant community forum which receives a lot of engagement on a range of topics. The Trading 212 team can be seen responding to questions and interacting with the community, which we thought was another big plus for the broker.
Trading 212 has a decent Learn library with a sizable selection of videos, blogs and explainer articles. There are also a lot of tutorials and educational content on its YouTube channel which has over 900,000 subscribers.
Overall, we think the educational content provided is good, but we think Trading 212 would benefit from offering other formats including client webinars, live analysis, and educational courses.
For a broker with over 2 million funded accounts (or so they claim), we find it surprising how under the reader they seem to be. If you intend to trade CFDs, the broker operates as a market maker with commission-free trading, a decent (but not expansive) range of CFD products plus the ability to trade shares and ETFs with their Invest account.
Account opening is quick and so is getting started with their demo account, which just might be a good thing because it’s surprising how little is mentioned about the trading platform on their website.
Lastly, customer service is timely but their knowledge could be improved, we can’t understand how a customer support team for a Forex broker cannot know what a trading platform is. Overall we gave the broker 50 out of 100.
