BRKV - In this day and age, there are hundreds of international brokers out there which makes forex trading even more complicated than it already is. Throughout my years of forex trading, I’ve had my fair share of arguments as well as discussions with my mates about which one is the best and I think we could all agree that there’s no official “best broker”. However, I’ve personally narrowed hundreds of brokers down to only 5 the best ECN brokers which are listed as follow that I’ve rated using many different criteria:
1. Exness.com : 8/10
2. FxPro.com : 7.5/10
3. XM.com : 7.5/10
4. ICmarkets.com : 7/10
5. FXTM.com : 6.5/10
To determine the reliability of a broker, the obvious thing you should be looking for is its license(s). A broker that has one or two licenses from one of the more trusted regulators such as ASIC (Australia), CySec (Cyprus), FSA (Japan), CFTC (United States), NFA (also United States), and FCA (United Kingdom), … should always be trusted. Licenses are often limited to regional uses and are the bases for brokers to do business. The main purpose of the regulators that grant these licenses is to protect the financial benefits and rights of its traders with the costs of extra trading fees.
Top 5 Brokers and their licenses
1. Exness.com : CySEC, FCA (UK)
2. FxPro.com : CySEC, FCA (UK), DFSA (Dubai), FSB (South Africa).
3. XM.com : CySEC, FCA, ASIC
4. ICmarkets.com : ASIC (Australia)
5. FXTM.com : IFSC
1. Trading costs
Spreads and Commissions
After licenses, trading cost is the next thing I’d look for when choosing a broker. Trading costs affect your every trade and your long-term plan for that broker so it’s also very important that you choose one with as low trading costs as possible. As I have mentioned above, brokers that are regulated by government regulators regularly have higher trading costs comparing to the other brokers exchange for the service of the regulators. Fortunately, there are still regulated brokers that offer relatively low spread and commission such as the top 5 brokers above. Especially for ECN accounts, these brokers charge little to none spread and 5 to 7% commission for each lot traded, which is a great deal for big and long-time traders.
Rebates and bonuses
These perks are seldom available for normal and ECN account as the government regulators strictly prohibit their regulated brokers to offer bonuses. Out of the 5 top brokers that I’ve mentioned earlier, only FXTM and XM offer bonuses for their mini accounts. If you by any chance are new to the forex trading market, then this here is a good way of practicing trading as well as getting familiar with the forex trading market. The bonuses that these brokers offer can go up to as much as $30 for creating the account alone and 100% deposition bonus when depositing for the first time.
Get XM 30$ bonus here
Get FXTM 50$ bonus here
2. Trading conditions
Quotations
A well-known fact is that a broker’s quote, especially the ECN brokers, is often unstable as it’s the nature of the forex trading market. We can only choose one that is the least unstable and the five brokers I’ve mentioned above is my personal prime candidate in the forex trading market. Those brokers get their quotes from ten liquidity providers and choose the best one among them to provide to their clients, thus ensuring the stability of their quotes.
Here’s the top 3 ECN quote brokers
1. Exness.com : Check it now
2. FxPro : Check it now
3. ICMarket : Check it now
Payment system
A broker’s payment system, including the transfer/withdrawal processing time as well as payment platforms, is the core of a broker. Take transfer/withdrawal processing time for instance, the leading broker out there in this field is Exness who have done a great job by having almost instant transfer/withdrawal time, while some other brokers’ transfer/withdrawal processing time can take up as much as hours to do a single transaction. Unless you’re new to the market and not doing that much trading then this shouldn’t be something that you should keep in mind, however for regular traders, this is quite an important criterion when it comes to choosing a broker as the faster your transaction goes, the more efficient you can trade.
To find out more about Exness Payment System, you can refer totheir website.
As for trading platforms, I too find this to be quite important in this growing digital age, where everyone’s constantly moving and transactions sometimes are done with smart phones. MT4 and MT5 are currently two of the most popular trading platforms, however they’re still severely lacking in some aspects such as their compatibilities with smartphones and older operating systems. And that’s why some brokers have went ahead and started developing their own trading platforms. In my opinion, ExPro and XM are currently ahead of everyone else in the developing/improving their trading platform field.
Check out XM trading platformhere
Customer service
Obviously, customer service holds an undeniable important role in doing business, as business is largely about people as well as profit. For traders who are new to the whole forex trading market scene, it can be really difficult at various times. New traders would always appreciate any available professional advices to help them make their first trade or to make more profits safely.
Most big brokers out there offer relatively excellent customer services including 24/7 customer service and multiple language support. As this article is about international brokers, multiple language support for me is fairly important since not everyone is fluent in English. The top 5 best forex brokers that I’ve mentioned above all have multiple branches in developing countries such as China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Dubai, … And for countries that don’t have regional offices located, they also offer online and phone support in English or local language.
- Exness supports 13 languages and 24/7
- XM supports 30 languages and 24/7
- FxPro supports 19 languages
