Best CFD Trading Platforms In UK

Plus500 is great for new CFD traders

When it comes to CFD trading, Plus500 is our top CFD provider for beginners. This is because Plus500 offers a great proprietary trading platform with useful risk management tools such as guaranteed stop loss. The provider also access to a good range of financial markets (+2000 CFD contracts) and instruments from different sectors.

Beginner traders will also appreciate the free demo account, which gives new UK clients the opportunity to practice trading without risking their own money:

• Easy-to-use proprietary trading platform available on mobile (iOS and Android)
  
• Educational materials (Plus500 Trader’s Guide)
• Risk Management Tools for trade protection
• Webinars and Forex trading guides

Plus500 Trading Accounts

UK-based traders can open CFD accounts with an FCA regulated broker by depositing only GBP 100. Plus500 offers most of its CFDs with the following advantages:

• 0% trading fees (deposits, data feed, opening and closing trades, rollovers, etc.)
• 0 commission trading (Plus500 only charges the bid/ask spread)
• No deposit or withdrawal fees which is a great advantage for opening a small trading account

Plus500 Trading Platforms

Plus500 only offers one trading platform, which is their proprietary platform. That said, this platform has an abundance of selling points that are particularly suitable for beginners.

For a start, it is easy to use and performs well on both mobile and as a WebTrader. There are also great charting features, with 110 indicators and 20 drawing tools.

Elsewhere, there are great order customisation tools such as stop limits, stop losses and guaranteed stop losses to control your risk as well as negative balance protection, which acts as a safeguard against market volatility in case a position hits negative territory.

Plus500 Trading Products

Plus500’s product list is solid, with 71 Forex pairs and over 1100 stocks as highlights for UK traders.

In addition to a smaller number of indices, commodities and ETFs, Plus500 also offers 308 options as an alternative investment vehicle, which distinguishes its product range from other brokers.

As with other UK brokers on this list, cryptocurrency trading is prohibited (unless you qualify as a professional trader) due to FCA regulations.

Plus500 Broker Verdict

In summary, Plus500 is a great option for UK and London traders who are new to trading. The CFD provider offers an easy-to-use trading platform, demo accounts, 24/7 support, educational resources, and lower entry costs in comparison to the other forex brokers in the UK industry.

View Plus500 Review >>Visit Plus500 >>

*Your capital is at risk ‘72% of retail CFD accounts lose money’

eToro has the top social trading CFD platform

eToro is one of the best social trading CFD brokers in the UK with a huge social trading community consisting o over 20 million investors from over 100 countries. The broker is particularly well-known for an award-winning CopyTrader platform that allows anyone to trade at the same level as the top traders in the world.

Some of the main advantages include:

• Copy top traders without management fees
• eToro’s social community, where traders can share thoughts and ideas with other traders from all over the world
• The CopyTrader feature can be tested in demo mode so you can get used to this technology
• eToro’s proprietary platform is intuitive and user-friendly

eToro Trading Accounts

Like Plus500, eToro only offers one main account to UK clients: a Standard account. This account has no commissions and a minimum variable spread of 1 pip for EUR/USD, which is the main trading cost to be concerned with.

All you require to open this account is $50 and there are no funding costs. This keeps costs low and easier to manage which is particularly suited for beginner CFD traders.

A swap-free, Islamic account is also available, which complies with Sharia Law. To get started, you will need $1000 to open an Islamic account. Unlike other brokers, eToro do not replace the swap by widening the spread or charging a administration fee.

eToro Trading Platforms

eToro stands out for its range of in-house platforms, from the flagship, eToro trading platform, to its social trading, CopyTrader platform.

With their proprietary platform, eToro merges regular, self-directed trading and copy trading seamlessly. Charting is also a highlight, especially if you utilise ProCharts, which gives you access to 66 indicators and 13 drawing tools. All of this while delivering an intuitive and easy-to-use trading platform experience. The eToro platform is available either as a WebTrader or as a mobile trading app.

As additional social trading tools, eToro offers their CopyTrader and Smart Portfolios for individual CFD traders (CopyTrader) and those who prefer a fund manager style approach (CopyPortfolios) to copy successful, expert trader strategies from around the world.

eToro Trading Products

Through the use of CFDs, UK traders have market access to different instruments, although they don’t own the underlying asset they can participate in the movement of the instrument. Of course, there is a risk warning because the position can result in a win or a loss.

eToro clients with CFD accounts can have access to the following markets:

• ETFs – over 263 instruments
• Stocks – you can find stocks based on the sector or exchange
• World Indices from three continents (Europe, Asia, and the US)
• Commodities – 30+ instruments including oil, gold, natural gas, platinum, silver, etc.
• Currency forex trading – 49 pairs are available with tight spreads, including the GBP crosses for the United Kingdom traders

eToro Broker Verdict

eToro is widely known as the best social trading broker industry-wide and rightly so. This is by no means the only benefit with the broker, though. eToro has an intuitive and easy-to-use proprietary platform, great for beginners, with a good range of stock CFDs and ETFs to trade. The broker also provides great tools for social trading in CopyTrader (for individuals) and Smart Portfolios (for groups of social traders).

*Your capital is at risk ‘68% of retail CFD accounts lose money’

City Index has great spread betting platforms

City Index has the best UK spread betting platform, and is an award-winning broker to boot, winning the 2021 best CFD broker from Online Personal Wealth Awards.

The reason City Index is considered one of the best brokers for spread betting is because they offer tight spreads starting from 1 point in the main indices (such as the FTSE 100) and competitive conditions for forex pairs (minimum spread of 0.5 points for EURUSD). Trading with spread betting is tax-efficient for UK residents because they do not pay capital gains tax (CGT) or stamp duty.

Furthermore, City Index gives UK traders the opportunity to trade with:

• CFD trading on +8000 financial instruments
• Guaranteed Stop Loss
• Powerful, award-winning CFD platform (Best Platform for the Active Trader 2021 – ADVFN International Finance Awards)
• Competitive commissions for share CFDs

City Index Account Type

You can open one of two account types with City Index: a Standard or MT4 account. The main difference between these accounts is the platform offered.

With the standard account, you will get to use the City Index Trading platform along with its exclusive features such as guaranteed stop-losses and smart signals, while the MT4 account obviously gives you access to MetaTrader 4.

While City Index products are mostly variable, some are fixed at certain times of the day. You can find out which spreads are fixed using their Market360 feature.

Spreads for either account are competitive, starting as low as 0.5 pips when trading Forex and 1 pip for major indices. One major cost benefit of City Index is that Forex products are commission-free, while for share CFDs, commissions are only around 0.08%, which is competitive.

City Index Trading Platforms

City Index offers either the popular MetaTrader 4 or its own, award-winning proprietary trading platform, available via the web or on your mobile device.

MT4 lives up to its reputation as the most popular forex trading platform out there, while City Index delivers a great trading experience, providing UK clients access to City Index’s full CFD product offering in addition to excellent trading tools and a variety of advanced features.

In terms of additional trading tools, the City Index Trading Platform offers Smart Signals, Performance Analytics with PlayMaker, advanced charting with TradingView and Market Buzz with Trading Central.

Traders using the City Index Platform will also be able to protect their trades with a guaranteed stop-loss. This type of order is not available with MetaTrader 4.

City Index Trading Products

City Index gives UK spread betters access to 8000+ CFD instruments from different markets and allows spread betting on:

• Indices (21 major indices)
• Shares (+4500 global shares)
• Forex (65 currency pairs)
• Commodities (+25 commodities)
• Metals (5 major metals, including Gold, Silver, Copper, Platinum, and Palladium)
• Bonds (12 bond markets)
• Interest rates (3 interest rate markets)

With access to several markets and the right conditions of leverage, UK traders have the right tools for executing their trading strategies flawlessly. Moreover, with no cost of commissions, given the fact that the only cost is the spread when the order is executed, they can participate in the movements of the market under competitive conditions.

City Index Broker Verdict

In conclusion, City Index is a multi-award winning CFD broker with an excellent proprietary platform. City Index is particularly suited for spread betting, for which you don’t pay taxes over capital gains. Additionally, the tight spreads, competitive commissions and access to several markets create good conditions for spread betting.

CMC Markets platform has good trading share and CFDs trading

CMC Markets offers their industry-leading Next Generation trading platform which offers the best trading conditions for share and CFD trading. One of the main reasons this is the case is due to some of the lowest commissions in the industry. The other is the sheer number of share CFDs that CMC Markets gives UK traders access to.

The major benefits of CMC Markets are:

• Tight spreads and low commissions
• Access to thousands of instruments (over 10,000)
• Risk management tools (guaranteed stop-loss order or GSLO)
• Tax-efficient (for UK traders through the use of spread betting)

CMC Markets Account Types

CMC Markets offers two main trading accounts based on whether you’re a spread better or CFD trader:

Spread Betting account offers zero-commission trading and spreads starting at 0.3 points. This account is unique to UK traders and CMC Markets as a broker.

CFD account: with this account, you will only pay a commission when trading shares, which starts from 0.10% or 2 cents per share for US and Canadian listed shares

To open either account requires no minimum deposit, although we’d recommend at least GBP 200. Please note that there are funding costs when using credit card (1%) or debit card (0.6%). Bank transfer incurs no costs.

CMC Markets Trading Platform

Like City Index, CMC Markets offers a third-party trading platform and their own superior proprietary platform, Next Generation.

CMC’s Next Generation platform is one of the best in the industry, offering a fast and reliable platform experience that is packed with impressive tools and features. This includes rich charting, with 80 technical indicators, 40 drawing tools and 60 attachable candlestick patterns

The broker also offers MT4, which is a solid platform, particularly for FX trading, and has its own plugins including AutoChartist (as a charting algorithmic tool) and FX Blue, which is a free web-based service for analysing and publishing your trading results.

CMC Markets Trading Products

CMC Markets offers UK-based traders market access to the biggest range of instruments on this list, particularly shares, with over 9,500 global shares available to trade (including popular companies such as Apple, BP, Lloyds Banking Group, Tesco, Rio Tinto). CMC Markets offers its list of shares from across 4 continents:

• American shares (US – 4,330 shares and Canada – 572 shares)
• European shares (UK – 894 shares and EU states – 1,593 shares)
• Australian shares (392 shares)
• Asian shares (1820 shares)

There is also a huge range of Forex pairs (338 due to using inverse quotes), 82 indices 124 commodities, 55 treasuries and a whopping 1000+ ETFs. This gives you plenty of trading choices no matter what your trading preference is.

CMC Markets Broker Verdict

In conclusion, CMC Markets’ Next Generation platform is well suited for trading with shares, with over 9500 products to choose from and excellent features. The broker also provides competitive trading accounts, competitive commissions, and a wide range of markets to choose from. CMC Markets doesn’t enforce a minimum deposit policy but UK traders need funds in their trading accounts to buy and sell CFDs.

View CMC Markets Review >>Visit CMC Markets>>

XTB has a great choice of ETFs

XTB is an international forex broker that offers UK-based traders the widest choice of ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). It does this through the broker’s excellent, xStation 5 trading platform, which has a number of benefits including its user-friendly interface, innovative features and extensive educational materials.

One of the factors that any UK trader must take into account is access to different instruments because it will offer new trading opportunities. On this note, XTB offers a wide variety of markets, especially when it comes to ETFs, with 138 Exchange Traded Funds available.

Overall, XBT has a number of benefits:

• Trusted multi-asset broker
• Excellent xStation trading platform
• Zero-dollar commissions for share CFDs (UK-only)
• Comprehensive educational content

XTB Trading Accounts

XTB offers 1 type of trading account for UK retail traders: the standard account. Features include:

• A minimum spread of 0.35 pips (for Forex instruments)
• Zero commissions for Forex and no funding costs
• Commissions of 0.08% for stocks and ETF CFDs
• No minimum deposit required

XTB Trading Platforms

There is only one platform available for UK traders, but it is a good one: XTB’s proprietary, X Station 5, available as a WebTrader or on mobile.

X Station 5 combines a minimalist, clean design with advanced trading tools, in an easy-to-use platform that will suit any level of trader.

Highlights include 30 drawing tools, 39 technical indicators, economic news releases at the bottom axis of charts and colour-coded heat maps to show top-moving assets.

XTB Trading Products

XTB offers a vast array of 1851 share CFDs, in the UK, as well as 57 Forex pairs and the largest number of ETFs (138) available to trade on this list.

The only market you will not have access to as a UK retail trader is Crypto CFDs, given FCA regulations, unless you are a Pro Trader in the UK.

XTB Broker Verdict

In conclusion, XTB’s xStation 5 is an excellent platform and a good choice for trading ETFs because it has a variety of instruments, competitive spreads, low commissions and is a well-known and trusted brand around the world.

XTB Review >>Visit XTB >>

AvaTrade has the best overall range of platforms

AvaTrade has the best and most diverse range of CFD trading platforms on this list. These include both popular MetaTrader platforms and AvaTrade’s three proprietary platforms: AvaTrade Go, AvaOptions and AvaSocial.

The broker is unique in that the broker offers fixed spreads, which gives it a point of difference from other brokers that mostly offer variable spreads. This gives it an advantage in the high-risk (and potentially high-cost) world of CFD trading.

Having fixed spreads means spreads remain locked in no matter the circumstances. Typically, a fixed spread is 2-3 pips on average, while variable spreads can be anywhere from 1 and 4 pips, even higher in extreme market volatility.

Indeed, AvaTrade has a lot going for it including:

• Low-cost, fixed spread broker
• Extensive trading platforms for CFD trading
• Solid proprietary platforms, AvaTradeGo and AvaOptions
• Great social trading with their AvaSocial platform

AvaTrade Trading Accounts

Intended for retail traders, AvaTrade’s Retail account is like a standard account with zero commissions. While minimum average spreads are slightly wider at just under a pip, having fixed spreads means the prices will not vary in volatile market conditions. As such, this account is well suited for beginners or risk-averse traders.

To open an account you need $100 and to fund it, you can use a range of methods including debit/credit card, Paypal and Skrill.

AvaTrade Trading Platforms

As mentioned, AvaTrade has an extensive range of proprietary, third-party and social trading platforms, well suited for CFD trading.

This includes the full MetaTrader suite of MT4 and MT5, two of the most popular third-party trading platforms out there, as the broker’s own AvaTradeGo, AvaOptions and AvaSocial platforms.

MT4 and MT5 are both designed for CFD trading, although for the full range of products, we recommend using MT5.

AvaTrade Go With AvaTrade Go, you also have access to Trading Central.

There are also two third-party social trading platforms, DupliTrade, which you can integrate with MT4 and ZuluTrade, one of the most popular copy trading platforms on the market.

AvaTrade Trading Products

AvaTrade offers a little of everything, with Forex, stocks, indices, commodities, bonds, ETFs and options all available to trade.

This includes a good mix of 55 Forex products and 632 stock CFDs. Additionally, you can trade 44 options with the AvaOptions platform, 42 of which are Forex instruments.

See below for the full product range, including a disclaimer on cryptocurrency trading, which is prohibited in the UK.

AvaTrade Broker Verdict

As well as being a low-cost, fixed spread broker, AvaTrade offers UK traders many benefits including an extensive range of proprietary and third-party trading platforms, including social trading options, and a solid mix of CFD products to choose from.

View AvaTrade Review >>Visit AvaTrade >>

Interactive Brokers is good for day traders

With over 40 years of business history, Interactive Brokers Group is an experienced and trusted global brokerage providing clients with direct access, trade execution and clearing services for a range of markets. Our review has found that IB offers the best trading conditions and software that will suit UK day traders.

With IB, traders are able to access diverse asset classes such as Stocks, Options, Futures, Foreign Exchange, Bonds, Mutual Funds, ETFs and Spot Commodities through one integrated trading account. Clients can also access some of those asset classes via CFDs.

The advantages of signing up with IB are:

• Access to 135 global markets
• A superior array of advanced trading tools
• Lower commissions for active traders
• Competitive spreads

Interactive Brokers Trading Accounts

IB offers one account for retail traders, their IBKR Lite Account. As you can see from the image below, the account features are fairly complex so it is definitely suited for more experienced traders.

To break it down simply, commissions will vary based on your monthly trading volume. Essentially, the more you trade, the cheaper your commissions will be. (E.g. if you trade more than USD 5 million a month, you will pay 0.08% of a basis point x the trade value) As such, this account is designed for more sophisticated traders who are active day traders.

Spreads are ultra-competitive too, starting at 0.1 pips for major Forex pairs.

To fund your account, you can only transfer via bank wire in the UK.

Interactive Brokers Trading Platforms

Day traders have a choice of desktop and web-based trading platforms as well as mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.

IB Trader Workstation is the broker’s flagship desktop trading platform, which ensures direct access to comprehensive trading, order management, charting and watchlist tools.

Clients can use more than 100 order types and algos aimed to reduce risk, accelerate execution, allow privacy, ensure price improvement, time the market or just simplify the trading process via advanced trading features.

Client Portal is IB’s simple and intuitive web-based platform, which visualises key account metrics at a glance and grants access to detailed price quotes, advanced charting tools and IB’s live news stream.

Additionally, the IBKR Mobile app allows direct access to account management tools and more than 135 markets while on the go. It features two-factor authentication for greater account security and provides the same market-moving data as the broker’s desktop platform.

Interactive Brokers Trading Products

Interactive Brokers offers one of the most diverse product ranges in the industry. As a UK client, you have access to 135 international markets in 33 countries.

This includes over 100 currency pairs, stocks and ETDs on over 80 stock exchanges and a whopping 1 million bonds (including municipal securities). Of particular note, are the over 40,000 mutual funds available to trade, which is unique to IB.

No other broker offers the sheer number and range of instruments for UK traders that we’ve come across.

Again, this highlights that IB is targeting more sophisticated traders who want not only variety but plenty of CFD trading options to choose from.

Interactive Brokers Verdict

In conclusion, we consider IB to be the best choice for day traders in the UK based on low costs, exceptional trading software capabilities and execution, and offering one of the most diverse range of markets out there. The broker is also recognised worldwide, reflected by multiple awards including Best Online Broker in 2020 by Barron’s.

View Interactive Brokers Review >>Visit Interactive Brokers Markets >>