List of Best and Reliable Forex Brokers [Updated 2020]
This article is dedicated to the best and reliable Forex brokers. We have carefully selected the best brokers to trade on the Forex market, you can see above our complete list, updated to 2020. We have included in the list only reliable and safe, authorized and regulated brokers.
The brokers we have put on the list are truly optimal. Not only are they safe but they are also convenient because they do not charge execution fees and have extremely advantageous spreads. They are truly the best CFD and forex brokers available on the market.
The following below are the full reviews of some of the best European Forex brokers:
Table of Contents.
eToro.
eToro is one of the best brokers for those who are just starting off at the Forex market for the first time. It is a safe, reliable broker that does not charge any fees (zero costs). eToro is famous because it is the only forex broker that provides a tool to copy the best investors, called CopyTrader.
With CopyTrader, it is easy to identify the traders who have made the highest profits in the past. It is also possible to assess the degree of risk of each trader. Once you have found the best forex traders, you can start copying all their trades automatically.
Many beginners use eToro for its twofold advantage. On the one hand, they can start getting positive results right away (because they automatically copy the best forex traders) and on the other hand they can learn by watching what the best ones do.
Plus500.
Plus500 is one of the most valued brokers by Forex professionals . Plus500 features an extremely intuitive interface. The tools provided by this forex broker are truly exceptional.
With Plus500 you can trade on many markets:
Forex Actions ETF Commodity Cryptocurrency.
Plus500 is not only one of the best European Forex brokers. It is a complete solution to trade on all major financial markets completely free of charge and without paying commissions. It ‘s possible to trade in demo mode: just sign up and you will have a demo platform without limits and without constraints. If you decide to trade with real money, the minimum capital is just 100 euros.
Iq Option.
Iq Option is a forex broker that breaks down all entry barriers to Forex trading . On the one hand, it is very easy to use, even an absolute beginner is able to trade immediately without problems. On the other hand, the minimum capital required to open a real account is just 10 euros.
Practically, everyone can do Forex trading thanks to Iq Option since you don’t need to have too much specialist knowledge and then you only need very little money to get started.
Making the initial deposit is not mandatory: it is also possible to trade in demo mode, without any kind of limitation. Iq Option is always free and does not charge any kind of trading commission.
Forex Broker Reviews.
We have published full reviews of some of the best Forex brokers to allow everyone to rationally choose the best broker.
How do I choose the broker? First of all you have to take into account that there are some absolutely important factors, objective and that you can not give up for any reason in the world.
The main factor is security: to avoid trading scams, it is mandatory to trade only with authorized and regulated forex brokers.
A regulated broker, in fact, is subject to continuous control by the supervisory authorities and therefore necessarily respects the stringent European regulations that protect traders’ money.
The unregulated brokers, however, very often carry out scams or deceptions to the detriment of traders: they must be avoided.
We have reviewed only authorized and regulated brokers, able to offer a very high standard of security to traders.
However, security is not the only feature absolutely necessary to choose a broker. It is very important that a broker is convenient, i.e. does not charge any trading fees and spreads are advantageous. It is no coincidence that we have not included in our list of the best forex brokers to review any broker who charges execution commissions.
Ease of use is also an important aspect to take into account when choosing a Forex broker. This feature has a certain degree of subjectivity. It is possible, for example, that a trader may find it easier to use eToro and another Iq Option . Probably both are right, everyone has their own preferences in terms of forex as well.
Finally, there are some features that are only suitable for certain categories of traders and are completely useless for others. For example, a trader starting from scratch can greatly improve his trading experience by studying the guide offered by Trade.com. For a professional, however, the guide is useless.
The same can be said about the minimum deposit of Iq Option. Many traders start trading forex with IqOption because they can only put in 10 euros (and everyone has 10 euros to invest). A professional, on the other hand, usually puts thousands of euros into it when he opens an account.
In short, before choosing the right forex broker for you read our reviews and try to understand what are the features that can really be useful to you.
Warning: the choice is not exclusive. Since the broker subscription is completely free, you can open an account on each broker and try them all in demo mode and then choose the best one. It’s a procedure that can take some time (not too much) but does not require any investment in money and above all it guarantees an optimal choice of Forex broker.
Reliable Forex Brokers.
We will never tire of repeating that the only Forex brokers worth using are the reliable ones. To work with an unreliable broker is a real financial suicide, as evidenced by the many scams that, unfortunately, have affected those who have relied on unreliable forex brokers.
The brokers in our list updated to 2020 are absolutely reliable but how is it possible, in general, to distinguish reliable brokers from those who are not?
Making the difference is very simple. Reliable Forex brokers are those authorized and regulated at European level. Those not authorized (or authorized outside Europe) cannot be considered reliable.
European legislation is really very strict and aims to defend the trader and his capital. A Forex broker authorized in any European country is also authorized in all other countries. The supervisory authorities of European countries cooperate continuously and exchange information on unauthorised brokers trying to enter Europe.
Non-ESMA Forex Broker.
Does it make sense to trade with a Forex broker who does not comply with ESMA rules? ESMA is the European body whose main task is to guarantee the absolute security of financial investments. In practice, it is the champion of traders and all those who operate in the markets.
When the Forex became famous, many beginners started trading, sometimes naively. Precisely the most naive were easy prey to swindlers of all kinds. It is time that Forex has become almost synonymous with scam.
We must make a necessary clarification. The fraudsters operated (and unfortunately still operate) through unauthorized brokers, so in practice they do not care about the rules, of any kind.
Usually scams are based on two elements: bonuses and leverage. The bonuses are given (by the scam brokers) with capestral conditions, which prevent for example to withdraw the profits before trading for a large multiple of the bonus. Leverage is an excuse for unclear practices that aim to burn the trader’s capital.
Let us repeat once again: these things only happen with unauthorized brokers, whereas authorized brokers strictly comply with the European legislation which aims to protect the trader’s capital.
To limit these practices, ESMA has banned cash bonuses and placed a strong restriction on leverage. This decision was intended to protect clients but ultimately damaged them unnecessarily, without protecting them from fraud.
In fact, unauthorized Forex brokers continue to scam through bonuses and leverage. Authorized brokers, who have always been safe, had to stop offering bonuses and decreased leverage. Traders, therefore, have seen their earning possibilities diminished.
ESMA’s decision was therefore not much appreciated and this led many traders to look for Non-ESMA brokers, i.e. brokers with registered offices outside of Europe or without regulation.
Does this make sense? Absolutely not. Non-ESMA brokers can offer high bonuses and perhaps even good leverage, but they offer no guarantee of security. And this is priceless. By the way, some ESMA brokers still offer big advantages to their traders, even if they are not direct cash bonuses: think of the legendary Trade.com ebook or the ability to copy the best traders offered by eToro.
Australian Forex Brokers.
Lately there are many traders looking to sign up on Australian Forex brokers. Why all this interest in brokers with a registered office in a country so far away? The fact is that European brokers are required to comply with regulations that protect traders’ money but there have been some recent regulatory changes that have left many traders dissatisfied.
What are we talking about? The European regulator ESMA has recently issued a new regulation limiting the leverage applicable to trading operations. Leverage is important to maximize forex profits even if it is not suitable for beginners.
Experienced traders, however, find leverage very useful to maximize profits. That’s why they’ve been looking for Australian Forex brokers who do not comply with the leverage limitation imposed by ESMA and similarly appear to offer a higher degree of reliability than other jurisdictions (though still lower than that offered by a licensed broker in Europe).
We point out that the best solution to the problem of limited leverage is to be recognized as a professional trader: the lobby of professional traders, in fact, has managed to avoid the limitations and therefore a professional trader can operate with the leverage he prefers.
There are precise requirements to be recognized as a professional and the best Forex brokers offer all the support necessary to obtain this qualification. For example, in the case of the eToro broker, you just need to ask the support and they will take care of the whole bureaucratic process, as long as you have the requirements of course.
What are these requirements to be recognized as a professional trader and thus operate with much higher leverage? Basically, at least two of these three conditions must be met:
Having worked in the financial sector for at least one year Having available financial assets above a certain threshold (excluding real estate) Having executed a number of trading transactions in the last quarter.
As you can see, it is completely useless to try to sign up with Australian Forex brokers if you are eligible for the privileged status of a professional trader. And who does not meet these requirements? Well, these people would probably do better to operate without leverage because it is a tool suitable especially for the more experienced. Once they have accumulated the necessary experience, they can always apply to be recognized as professionals.
The speech we made for Australian brokers applies, of course, to all non-ESMA Forex brokers, i.e. those based outside Europe.
It is true that ESMA’s rules are extremely strict, but those with sufficient capital (or experience) can always apply to be recognized by a European broker as a professional trader. And those who do not meet the requirements would probably do better to work with a safe and reliable European broker for some time, in order to meet the requirements to be recognized as a professional trader (and we also say that it is not so difficult if you work with the right broker).
Low Forex Broker Spreads.
We have carefully selected the brokers in our ranking so that the spreads applied on the trades are really reduced. In this way, trading is even more convenient for clients.
Of course, the brokers we have selected are completely free of charge, which means that no commissions or other hidden fees are charged to clients.
Trading with an affordable Forex broker is a smart way to further increase your trading profits.
What are Forex Brokers.
So far we have listed the best Forex brokers and have also provided their reviews. Many beginners, however, start trading Forex without even knowing what Forex brokers are. Maybe they have heard from some friends or relatives that you can earn a lot of money with Forex and they vaguely know that it takes an account on a forex broker to earn this money (even if they don’t know what it is).
To get the best results it is always advisable to operate in a conscious way, so we explain in detail what Forex brokers are.
The word broker, in English, means intermediary: a Forex broker is therefore a broker who deals with executing orders on the Forex market. We can say that a Forex broker is a Froker who collects orders for transactions to be executed on the Forex market, executes them using the money in the trader’s account and then credits the profits to the same account.
The best Forex brokers are the Broker market makers, i.e. those who make the market directly. The advantages of this type of Forex broker are obvious: you save in commissions, trades are faster and there is always a counterparty that guarantees that the stop loss is triggered. The same cannot be said of other types of Forex brokers, such as ECN brokers.
ECN Forex Brokers.
Sometimes you may come across advertising (for a fee) from some ECN Forex brokers. What are they about? The opposite of broker market makers. In practice, they are real brokers who do not execute the transaction directly but turn to a broker market maker to execute it.
Sometimes, unfortunately, the chain is even longer: there are ECN brokers who execute the transaction by turning to another ECN broker…at the end of the chain there must be a broker market maker.
An ECN broker has to charge commissions to make a profit. In addition, the Forex trade is necessarily slowed down, as there is a chain of orders that travel over the internet.
Experienced traders always avoid ECN forex brokers and only use broker market makers. It can happen that a beginner falls into the advertising trap and joins an ECN broker and ends up paying commissions and having worse service.
Forex brokers with a Demo.
All the brokers we have reviewed and included in our table offer a completely free and unlimited demo. Why is the demo so important? A free demo is especially important for those who are just starting out and may not have much experience with Forex trading.
Thanks to the demo, you can trade on Forex (or any other financial market) using virtual money. In this way you can experiment with forex trading and you can make mistakes without incurring any losses.
For a beginner, it is a great strategy to trade in demo mode for some time, so you can gain experience before switching to trading with real money.
All the Forex brokers that we have selected and ranked offer a great demo for free and are therefore also suitable for those who want to create the necessary experience to operate then a safe shot when they will operate with real money.
Best CFD brokers.
All the brokers we have presented in this comprehensive guide are CFD brokers and we can say that they are the best CFD brokers available on the market today. Why have we selected the very best Forex brokers that provide the CFD tool?
CFD stands for Contract for Difference and it is one of the easiest to use, most flexible and most convenient derivative financial instruments for the trader.
The operation of a CFD is truly intuitive: the instrument always assumes the value of an underlying asset. In the case of forex, the asset is a currency pair.
How do I trade with CFDs? Simple, you can buy or sell the currency pair with the CFD. The profit you make is proportional to the difference between the opening price of the position and the closing price. This profit can be further multiplied by applying leverage.
Thanks to CFDs you can trade on many markets: in this guide we talk about the best forex brokers but actually with the same brokers you can trade stocks, commodities, cryptocurrency, even government bonds in some cases (always with CFDs).
Obviously we have selected only the best CFD brokers: all have zero fees, provide very advantageous spreads for the client and are easy to use.
Best Forex Broker Forums.
The search for the best Forex brokers is one of the most important elements for those who want to earn money with Forex. It is always advisable to start by reading the reviews of the best brokers published on reliable sites.
Many novice traders (or people approaching the Forex market for the first time) are used to searching forums for information and reviews about forex brokers.
Does this make sense? Unfortunately no, it is a dangerous decision that often has painful consequences. The problem with forums is that there is no control: everyone can subscribe with a fake email and then write anything.
For example, very often you can find on the forums positive reviews of bad Forex brokers: brokers who charge fees or unauthorized brokers who always cheat their clients, etc. …
How come? The explanation is obvious: it’s probably the staff of these brokers who write fake reviews (or have them written for money). Likewise, there are negative reviews of safe (authorized and regulated) Forex brokers that do not charge fees. They are probably written by the same people who write the positive reviews of fraudulent brokers and serve to make competitors look bad.
Many of those who think that forex is a scam have had a bad experience with a broker found on a forum. Unfortunately, this also applies to the big famous financial forums, no forum is reliable for choosing a Forex broker.
Best Forex Brokers for Scalping.
Scalping is a speculative practice that consists of carrying out transactions on the market with a short time interval. The scalpers are able to obtain a small profit from each operation but they are able to execute a lot of them, in order to obtain high profits.
Forex scalping is a technique particularly popular with many traders. Unfortunately, not all forex Brokers allow scalping.
For technical reasons, in fact, the Plus500 broker does not allow Forex scalping. Those interested in scalping can still use other high quality Forex brokers. One of the absolute favorites is probably Trade.com , considered by many traders to be the best broker to scalp.
Why is Trade.com perfect for applying this kind of strategy? Besides the fact that it is one of the best forex brokers ever, it provides a really fast and efficient platform, perfect for scalping.
Advice on Forex Brokers.
Our comprehensive analysis of the best Forex brokers clearly shows that there is no better broker than any other. It all depends on the level of the trader, the type of operations he wants to do (scalping or not), his personal preferences.
This means that you cannot choose a forex broker with a light heart. Unfortunately, many beginners choose the broker simply following the advice of a friend or family member who is already trading. But this kind of advice is almost never good.
The first problem is that many traders boast earnings and results that they don’t actually have. In this case, therefore, you risk to follow the advice of some failed trader (or at least with poor results) who claims instead to be a great trader. Even forums, unfortunately, are not ideal for receiving advice on forex broker from strangers.
The forums are not subject to any kind of editorial control: this means that anyone can write, just a fake email. Very often the recommended brokers on the forums have positive reviews written by the brokers themselves. Note that some of the best forex brokers, absurdly enough, receive negative reviews right on the forums. A dishonest way to damage them by some competitor is obvious.
Cheating on Forex Brokers.
Unfortunately, not all Forex brokers are as reliable and secure as the ones we have presented in this guide. On the contrary, there are many brokers who scam their clients.
How do you recognize these brokers? Very often they do extremely aggressive marketing, promising easy and safe returns. The most clueless beginners fall into their trap hoping to get rich with forex without doing anything, but in the end, instead of making money with online trading, they lose all the capital invested. Easy money does not exist.
In any case, there is an infallible method to be safe from any scam: choose only authorized and regulated brokers. In this article, of course, we have referred only and only to brokers who guarantee the highest level of security and reliability.
Stock Brokers.
In this article we have made constant reference to Forex as a market to trade. It is appropriate to remember, however, that all the best forex brokers also allow you to trade on all major financial markets. We can therefore say that a Forex broker is also a stock broker.
More generally, with the brokers we have presented, in addition to forex, you can trade on:
Shares Raw materials Crypt ocurrencies ETFs Government bonds.
In these cases it is important to remember that you can use the broker to earn money both when the value of the financial asset increases and when it decreases. It is important, moreover, to take advantage of the leverage effect always.
Brokers currently offer leverage compatible with ESMA rules, those who want to operate with a higher leverage must ask their broker to be recognized as a professional investor (a much safer choice to use Australian brokers or, even worse, without regulation).
Forex Brokers with Bonuses.
Until a few years ago, it was very common to trade forex with brokers offering bonuses. Currently, no regulated broker can offer bonuses and therefore European traders have lost the opportunity to receive cash bonuses for their trades. The bad news is that bonuses have been banned by ESMA but there is also good news: after all, the best brokers have found a way to continue to reward their clients in a generous way.
But let’s go in order: why has ESMA forced brokers to stop offering free bonuses to clients? The fact is that many unauthorized (and therefore illegal, remember this detail) brokers were offering bonuses by tying them to capestral conditions. For example, those who traded with these bonuses were unable to withdraw their profits and even their capital before they generated a really high, virtually unreachable trading volume.
To stop this practice, ESMA banned cash bonuses completely. Illegal and unauthorized brokers, however, have completely ignored this ban and continue to scam their clients with bonuses (they don’t even care about ESMA rules, among other things according to European law they could not even operate in Europe).
Authorized and regulated (safe) brokers have never operated dishonestly with bonuses: on the contrary, traders gained important advantages with bonuses. They, however, have immediately adapted, precisely because they are legal, and have stopped giving out bonuses. In this case, ESMA has made a hole in the water: it issued a regulation to help traders but in the end it damaged them.
In any case, the best forex brokers continue to offer exceptional opportunities to traders: think for example of Trade.com which gives a good guide (download it here) that explains how to invest or a good service of reliable trading signals.
The ability to copy, automatically and without cost, what the best traders do can also be considered a great bonus and is what eToro offers to all its members.
In short, it is true that forex brokers can no longer offer cash bonuses, but there is still the possibility to get real benefits by choosing the best brokers.
Conclusion.
This article presents detailed reviews on the best Forex brokers. We have carefully selected the brokers that offer the best guarantees and performance to both beginners and experts.
The choice of broker is a crucial moment. Often the difference between beginners who earn money and those who lose money is in the broker they use.
For this reason we recommend that you read the reviews of Forex brokers that we have published very carefully before making a choice.
Actually, it is not strictly a choice to make a choice right away: many traders who start trading forex for the first time open an account on more than one broker and experiment in demo mode. With some experience they can find the broker that is easiest for them to use or that provides the best trading experience ever.