Looking for a forex broker to join in the UK?
In this post, we’ve looked at the top five best forex brokers regulated in the UK at the moment.
For each broker, we’ve assessed them based on their reliability and trustworthiness, spreads and fees, software platforms, customer service, and more, to see which is best.
If you’re in a rush, make sure to open the description to quickly find the brokers we’ve reviewed, and click the links to their websites to start an account and test them out.
Oanda
There’s a lot of things we like about Oanda as a forex broker.
The first is their customer service. They have one of the most helpful, most responsive customer support teams of any major broker on the market right now.
Oanda is a large, well-established broker, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK. They’re large enough to act as a market maker for their forex clients. As a result, they perform well during periods of high market volatility, offering good liquidity, even when prices are moving quickly.
Their execution speeds are also very fast, which is great for scalpers, and they also have no minimum deposit requirements for new customers, which is a nice touch.
They support MetaTrader 4, and TradingView, but unfortunately don’t support MT5 or cTrader at the moment. On the plus side though, Oanda has a particularly good proprietary trading platform, and their iOS and Android apps are also very intuitive to use, making them a good choice for day traders who need to place orders on the go.
Pepperstone
Pepperstone are a really great choice for many different types of British forex traders.
They generally have some of the tightest spreads and lowest fees of any broker on the market, depending on the pair you’re trading. Speaking of currency pairs, they have 83 to choose from – quite a lot more than some other brokers – and no account funding fees.
Since they’re quite a large broker, offering many different types of instruments, they also have a large range of share trading and CFD markets available as well, which can be helpful if you want to consolidate your trading and investments into a single platform.
Another really good thing about Pepperstone is the number of funding methods they have available. They accept debit and credit cards, bank transfers, as well as less common funding methods like PayPal, which is nice.
Not to mention, they support a huge number of different trading platforms, including MetaTrader 5, which most other brokers don’t allow you to trade on at the moment.
IG Markets
IG Markets are another large, extremely well-regulated forex broker you can join as a UK resident.
As well as having approval from the FCA in the UK, IG is also licensed by FINMA in Switzerland, ASIC in Australia, MAS in Singapore, the CFTC in America, and DFSA in Dubai, among other regulators.
Like with Oanda and Pepperstone, there’s no minimum deposit to get started, and IG has a huge number of currency pairs you can choose to trade. They also have good customer service, and offer a larger range of CFDs to trade than Oanda, if you’re into trading contracts for difference.
IG is also one of the few other brokers to act as a market maker, due to their size, and as a result, they offer similar spreads to Oanda – typically, they’re very low.
We rank Oanda a bit higher than IG just because we think their customer service is a bit better. But apart from that, both brokers are very similar, and we think they’re both worth looking at. Make sure to click the links in the description to learn more about IG, Pepperstone, and Oanda’s forex brokerage services.
Forex.com
While forex.com isn’t the largest on this list, they are very reputable – being FCA regulated – and have been in operation since 2001.
They offer competitive spreads, and a really good range of trading platforms, including TradingView, and MetaTrader 5. The other main strength of forex.com is the number of currency pairs they offer – currently, they have 91 different pairs you can choose to trade.
In the UK, they’re limited to 30 to 1 leverage, which is relatively low, but is quite typical among other FCA-regulated brokers. This is a pretty similar number to the other companies we’ve looked at so far.
On the whole, if you’re looking for a MT5 broker, or one with a really good number of pairs to trade, forex.com is definitely worth considering.
eToro
Last on this list, we’ve looked at eToro.
eToro isn’t regulated in as many countries as the likes of IG or Pepperstone, although they are FCA licensed in the UK. Also, unlike the other brokers we’ve looked at so far, they do have a minimum deposit, although it’s just 10 US dollars for British forex traders.
The benefit of eToro is the number of instruments they offer to trade. They have a large number of currency pairs available, and also a huge number of CFDs and share trading options, which is nice. There are no commissions when forex trading on eToro, and their spreads are very competitive on most major pairs.
You may have heard about withdrawal fees with eToro, but these don’t apply to pound or Euro accounts, so these shouldn’t affect you as a British forex trader. The biggest downside to eToro is you generally have to use their trading software. They don’t support most common charting and order execution software like MetaTrader or TradingView at the moment.
Conclusion
So, which UK forex broker should you choose? In the UK, the large, well-regulated brokers like Oanda, IG, and Pepperstone tend to perform the best. They have the most pairs to trade, and normally offer a good range of trading platforms to choose from, although this can vary by broker.
Oanda is a really good allrounder, while Pepperstone is worth considering if you want to use PayPal to fund your account. IG is also a good option if you’re looking for a really trustworthy broker, with good customer service.
Remember, make sure to click the links in the description to these brokers to learn more about them, and open a forex account. And if you have any questions about choosing a forex broker in the UK, leave us a comment below, and we’ll get right back to you.
Hi, I’m Mark! I’ve been trading forex for nearly 10 years now, and I started this site to help others navigate the sometimes confusing world of brokers, spreads, and trading platforms. I’ve spent countless hours testing different brokers, comparing fees, and figuring out which companies in this industry actually deliver on their promises.
When I’m not trading, I enjoy hiking, trying out new coffee spots, and tinkering with automated trading strategies (some successful, some… not so much). My goal is to make forex trading less overwhelming and help you find the right broker or platform to fit your trading style.