So you’ve decided to invest in Forex, but where do you start? There are hundreds of brokers all offering a “unique” platform that really isn’t that impressive. Brokers will offer all kinds of offers to try and attract you in. How do you know who to go with and who to avoid? It’s important to research before signing up with a broker. Luckily, we have researched multiple brokers over the past few years and we believe these to be the top 4 forex brokers online today! These 4 brokers offer you the highest potential to make a profit, best conditions, most responsive interface, best sign up offers and most security for your funds.
Table of Contents
The Top 4 – Reviewed & Updated for 2018
1. eToro.
By far my first choice. Especially useful if you’re only beginning to trade Forex, eToro has everything to get you started if your a beginner and never traded before. The most distinctive feature of this broker is their social trading platform. Similar to twitter or Facebook, it allows you to add many traders to your follow list, then review their past performance and compare them. You can easily select the top-earners on this massive network of traders and automatically copy their trades. eToro’s copy trading technology is one of the world’s best and most profitable technology every to appear in the Forex market.
Using this “copy method”, it’s important to know that all trades are made with the same lot size of the trader, proportional to the amount in their account. For example, if a trader opens a trade using 5% of his capital, it will be open on your account using 5% of your capital. The exact monetary figures will be different of course but this method greatly reduces risk. You won’t find this feature on many other social trading networks. You don’t have to pay the “followed” trader or eToro any commission on your profits; it’s all yours to keep!
Another valuable feature for newbies is their online formation courses.
These offer you valuable tools to develop your own strategy and by the time you make your first trade based on your own analysis, the social trading platform will already have likely generated a good profit for you. Besides formation and social trading, eToro offers a charting platform which uses a large variety of technical indicators, useful for analysis, research and reporting. All trading has to be done on their own platform, Webtrader, which is accessible by your computer’s web browser and their mobile app for Android and iPhone. You can see our full in-depth Etoro review here.
How good is their platform?
Webtrader is accessible on your web browser or mobile device. It allows you to easily control your trades, moving trade parameters at any time. Their traders network, Openbook, allows you to search profitable traders using several filters, so you can find the one that best fits your style and financial goals. After you copy a trader, you can see all his activity on your Webtrader platform, including every detail of their trading and closed trades. You can also be copied by others, who can find you on Openbook. eToro will reward you for every copier of your account. Oh, and they don’t charge a commission to copiers. Click here to Sign Up to Etoro.“All trading involves risk. Only risk capital you’re prepared to lose. Past performance does not guarantee future results.”
2. FX OPEN.
Everything a master trader needs. Slightly more advanced than the Etoro platform but still an extremely easy to navigate online brokerage. There are also a lot more features that the more advanced Forex trader would prefer.
When your main interest is to develop or execute your own trading strategy, you want your broker to offer you excellence in execution of trades, together with all the tools you need to excel in your own analysis. FXOpen does allow you to do this, but lacks the guides on how to get started. This is why I recommend it for slightly more advanced traders.
Plus, they also have their own trade copy technology, which is connected to several automatic copy systems: Zulutrade, Signal Trader, Mirror Trader and the MQL5 community. By using their formation resources you can easily develop your own advanced and profitable strategy, while their platforms will provide you maximum connectivity to effectively trade from your home, office or on the go.
They offer the Metatrader 4 platform for computers which should come as no surprise now. The interface itself is easy to use, with deposit/withdraw/trade/sell/short options all easy to navigate and understand.
How good is their platform?
They offer a variety of platforms, either self guided or social trading. All platforms have a high degree of responsiveness and are also very easy to use. This is essential when selecting a broker. When the interface is not 100% responsive you can lose valuable time and money trying to fiddle with code/scripts that simply shouldn’t bother you! This is why FXOpen comes in 2nd on our top forex brokers list. I’d recommend signing up and taking a look around. If you’re more of an intermediate trader you might prefer it over the more beginner friendly Etoro. Click here to sign up to FXOpen.
Check out our full FXOpen review here.
3. Oanda.
A very well established Forex broker, Oanda has been on the market for over 16 years. This brokerage offers a variety of analytical tools, such as free use of the Autochartist Metatrader 4 plugin. This is a software that automates a part of technical analysis to find good reversal points and predict price movements. Also, they provide access to their own suite of tools like news analysis, volatility graphs, pair correlation table, and more.
Oanda have so many tools, that at the beginning you may feel a little lost in their sea of analysis. However, once you’re familiar, they’ll be part of a very effective trading arsenal that many traders don’t have access to. A good broker in general, Oanda does not offer its own social trading technology. Although, their Metatrader software allows you to receive automatic trading signals from the MQL5 community. This allows you to have access to a large network of traders to copy. There is usually charge a monthly fee that goes from $20 to more than $300 (by the way, all brokers that use Metatrader platform offer this connection to MQL5).
This online broker also offers their own trading platform, which has a particularly high quality in the handling of pending orders and trailing stops and is also accessible on your mobile device.
How good is their platform?
Oanda offers two platforms, Metatrader and fx Trade, both of which are available in computer or mobile versions. Their Metatrader platform offers a good, reliable execution. However, it’s their fx Trade platform which catches the professional trader’s eye because the speed and performance in execution of trades has no match; it’s really the most reliable platform among all professional brokers. One small drawback: it’s only accessible via web browser and not mobile devices (yet). Oanda is a platform to watch out for in the future, but until we extensively test them further they only come in 4th in our top forex brokers list.
4. AAAFX.
This Greek, ECN (electronic communications network) broker also offers good features and trading conditions. You can use their Metatrader 4 platform, which offers high reliability and execution speed. Also offering social trading technology by direct connection to Zulutrade’s platform, AAAFX allows you to easily make a profit by copying other traders. However, it’s a good idea to configure your account to follow your own strict capital management rules to prevent a margin call. Because of the effectiveness and profitability of their social trading platform, AAAFX collects a little larger fees than the other brokers of this list, starting with a 2%+ commission on your deposit.
However, all of this is greatly compensated by their social trading platform. You can find many profitable traders to copy from and make a profit from day one. This broker focuses on already-formed traders or social trading investors, therefore does not offer any formation or analysis tool.
How good is their platform?
AAAFX’s main feature is its excellent, direct connection to Zulutrade. Their Metatrader performance is overall, good, but nothing special. However, since Zulutrade social trading is a different platform, good performance in connectivity is a must to make large profits. In the long term, their direct connection to Zulutrade will mean a few extra pips every week, amounting to hundreds in the long term.
There are loads of good brokers out there. But before you start trading you need to research. We’ve done the start of it for you here but try them for yourself. Sign up to the top 5 brokers and deposit a small amount, use the interface, check the fees and decide. Then deposit your larger amount in there and get started properly.
The platforms near the start of the list are the ones I would recommend the most for beginners. Sign up above, see what you think and remember testing is everything!
Tom is the owner of Elite Forex Trading. A website that provides beginner tips, trainings, reviews and strategies to help newbies get started making money in the forex markets.