One thing that forex traders concern the most is whether their broker is a good forex broker or not. The most common question I see on various forex forums is “Is [broker’s name] good or not?” People are all scared of being scammed by a low-quality forex broker so that they want a good and reliable one. Therefore, today we will do a forex broker comparison between the top biggest and most prestigious forex brokers in the market, which are:
- Exness.com
- XM platforms
- FxPro.com
- Hotforex.com
- Icmarkets.com
We will compare them in terms of the most important factors in forex trading: Credibility, Trading fees, Trading platforms, and Customer service.
Which broker is the most reliable?
Table of Contents
When comparing the safety and security score of forex brokers, we must first look at the forex regulations of those brokers. Forex regulations have always been the symbol of a broker’s reliability. Regulation is granted to brokers by a financial organization that monitors the forex trading activities in a country. As a result, there are some regulations that are more respected than others.
Here are the regulations of our forex brokers for comparison:
| Brokers | Regulations | Trust score |
| Exness.com | FCA, CySEC | 100 |
| XM.com | FCA, CySEC, ASIC | 100 |
| FXPRO.com | FCA, CySEC,ASIC | 100 |
| Hotforex.com | FSCA, CySEC, FSC | 100 |
| Icmarkets.com | FCA, CySEC, FSCA, IFSC | 100 |
Since all of them have a top-tier regulation like FCA or CySEC, their reliability scores are all 100.
Forex broker comparison – Forex fee comparison
Since the trading fee of a broker combines many factors, we will compare them all one by one.
Forex spread comparison
Spread is the difference between the Bid price and the Ask price. It is the primary trading fee of every transaction. For each broker, their spread varies by account types. Regular accounts’ spread is usually higher than ECN account’s spread. Traders care about spread only when they are trading regular accounts.
Therefore, here is the comparison of the spread of regular accounts of our brokers:
| Brokers | Spread | Cost score |
| Exness.com | 0 – 0.3 pip | 90 |
| XM.com | 0.5 pips | 80 |
| FxPro.com | 0.9 pips | 70 |
| Hotforex.com | 1.2 pips | 50 |
| Icmarkets.com | 1.0 pips | 60 |
Forex commission comparison
Instead of regular accounts, professional traders would prefer ECN accounts because they open less positions. For ECN accounts, the spread is nearly zero. The main fee is the commission. Therefore, traders look for brokers with low commission.
You can check out our forex brokers comparison in terms of commission here:
| Brokers | Commission | Cost score |
| Exness.com | $7 | 70 |
| XM.com | $6 | 80 |
| FxPro.com | $7 | 70 |
| Hotforex.com | $7 | 70 |
| Icmarkets.com | $7 | 70 |
Forex leverage comparison
Leverage has always been a wonderful tool for traders to multiply their profit from forex trading. If you let your brokers hold a part of your fund as margin, you can borrow money from them in a ratio you want, which is called leverage. The higher the account’s leverage is, the more you can make from trading.
The followings is the comparison between our brokers’ highest leverage rate:
| Brokers | Leverage | Cost score |
| Exness.com | 1:Unlimited | 100 |
| XM com | 1:888 | 70 |
| FxPro.com | 1:500 | 60 |
| Hotforex.com | 1:1000 | 80 |
| Icmarkets.com | 1:500 | 60 |
Brokers minimum deposit comparison
Normally, if a broker doesn’t have welcome bonus programs, you have to deposit at least some money so as to start trading. Most traders don’t like high minimum deposit rate because before investing in anything, we have to test first. If the broker is not good, they will lose a lot of money due to the minimum deposit requirement.
Here are our comparison for the minimum deposit required by those brokers:
| Brokers | Minimum deposit | Cost score |
| Exness.com | 1 dollar | 100 |
| XM com | 5 dollars | 80 |
| FxPro.com | 10 dollars | 60 |
| Hotforex.com | 5 dollars | 80 |
| Icmarkets.com | 10 dollars | 60 |
Forex broker comparison – Trading platforms comparison
Everything you do when trading happens on the broker’s platform. Therefore, the quality of the platform will affect your trading results greatly. The most common trading platform in the market is the MetaTrader platforms, developed by MetaQuotes Software. Hundreds of brokers have bought the license to use this platform and hundreds of thousands of traders are used to it. It is the standard trading platform of this industry. On the other hand, some brokers decide to self-design their trading platform in order to give exclusive looks and features to their clients. In our opinion, standard and self-design platforms are just as good.
Check out the platforms of our forex brokers:
| Brokers | Trading platforms | Platform score |
| Exness.com | MetaTrader platform (MT4/MT5), Web trade | 100 |
| XM.com | MetaTrader platform (MT4/MT5) | 90 |
| FxPro.com | MetaTrader (MT4/MT5) and cTrader platform | 100 |
| Hotforex.com | MetaTrader platform (MT4/MT5) | 90 |
| Icmatkets.com | MetaTrader platform (MT4/MT5) | 90 |
Forex broker comparison – Customer service comparison
For customer service, we rate brokers by three categories: availability, local office, and languages. The best customer service is the one that is available 24/7 through multiple means of contact like phone call, email, or live chat on their pages. Local office means that they open offices in your country in order to help customers more directly and efficiently. Finally, the language in which they support you is also very important. Not everyone is fluent in English, so it’s better for brokers to be able to assist clients in various languages.
After contacting and testing those brokers, we have come to the comparison between their services:
| Brokers | Customer service | Service score |
| Exness.com | 24/7 for 17 languages | 80 |
| XM.com | 24/5 for 22 languages | 70 |
| FxPro.com | 24/5 for 31 languages | 80 |
| Hotforex.com | 24/5 for 20 languages | 60 |
| Icmarkets.com | 24/5 for 17 languages | 40 |
Forex brokers comparison result
After comparing about top famous brokers in the world, we have calculated the score for each broker and came to the conclusion of this forex brokers comparison:
- Exness.com: 650/700
- XM.com: 570/700
- Fxpro.com: 540/700
- Hotforex.com: 530/700
- Icmarkets.com: 480/700
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