Axi

Axi runs three live tiers, and the unusual part is that the cheap one has the same minimum as the expensive one.

Pro at a USD 100 minimum is the headline. Most brokers gate raw-spread pricing behind a USD 500 to USD 5,000 deposit; Axi does not. USD 4.50 round turn plus a raw spread that is genuinely near zero on EUR/USD in normal conditions puts the all-in cost around 0.45 to 0.7 pips, which is competitive with the cheapest names in the segment. Elite shaves another dollar off but demands USD 25,000 and narrows your base currency choice to USD, EUR, GBP or AUD.

Standard at 0.7 pips commission-free is roughly USD 7 per round-turn lot. That is respectable, but note that independent testing consistently finds average realised spreads on commission-free accounts running well above the advertised "from" figure — budget closer to 0.9 to 1.0 pips in practice.

Crypto is priced separately: BTC/USD from USD 12, ETH/USD from USD 1.25, identical across all three tiers.

The cost you cannot price in advance is the inactivity fee. Axi reserves the right to charge monthly after 12 months with no trading activity and no open positions, with the amount set by account currency and published only in the Product Schedule. We have deliberately left the number blank rather than guess it. Swap is charged daily at the 17:00 New York close, with triple swap on Wednesdays or Thursdays depending on the instrument.

Axi's licence list looks strong until you check which company actually holds your money.

The regulated entities:

• AxiCorp Financial Services Pty Ltd — ASIC, AFSL 318232, ACN 127 606 348. The Australian original, operating since 2007.
• Axi Financial Services (UK) Limited — FCA firm reference 466201, registered in England and Wales no. 6050593, 1 Finsbury Market, London EC2A 2BN. UK clients here fall under FSCS cover up to GBP 85,000.
• AxiCorp Financial Services Pty Ltd (DIFC Branch) — DFSA reference F003742, a branch of the Australian company rather than a separate UAE entity, licensed since April 2018 as a Category 4 firm with a retail endorsement. That category does not allow it to hold client money or client assets.

The one that matters for most readers:

• AxiTrader LLC, incorporated in St Vincent and the Grenadines, company number 4303 LLC 2025, 100% owned by the Australian parent. This is the entity behind axi.com's international site. St Vincent's FSA does not prudentially supervise forex business; Axi's stated escalation route is membership of The Financial Commission, an industry dispute body with a compensation fund of its own — not a statutory scheme, not a regulator.

We reviewed Axi's international and UK legal documentation and found no EEA-licensed entity. Post-Brexit the UK licence cannot passport into the EU, so German, Austrian and other EU residents opening an account are, on the published evidence, contracting with the St Vincent company. That is the single most important fact in this review for a DACH audience.

Structurally the picture is better: client money is segregated, negative balance protection is applied, and Axi has traded through nearly two decades including the 2015 Swiss franc shock. But the group is privately held with no audited public accounts, and its own UK disclosures put the share of retail accounts losing money at 66.36% on the legal-documentation page and 72.47% on the UK homepage — a spread that itself says something about how carefully these figures are maintained.

One item belongs in this section rather than a footnote. On 2 January 2020 ASIC suspended AFSL 318232 — the Australian licence named above — for four months, for holding client money outside an Australian authorised deposit-taking institution, for failing to lodge product disclosure statements and financial reports, and for breaching the derivative and client-money reporting rules along with a licence condition. AxiCorp appealed, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal granted a stay so the business kept operating, and the Tribunal refused the confidentiality orders the firm asked for. ASIC imposed further licence conditions in 2021. It is six years old and the licence is in good standing today, but it goes to client-money handling, which is the one control this section opened by crediting.

Axi is one of the few brokers of its generation to have escaped MetaTrader dependence, and the proprietary platform is the reason to look here.

The Axi Trading Platform covers 650+ markets in a single web and mobile app: forex, indices, commodities, share CFDs, ETF CFDs, upcoming IPOs and three separate crypto products. TradingView charting is embedded rather than bolted on, position management is two taps to a stop-loss or take-profit, and watchlists and open positions sync in real time between phone and browser. There is no desktop install; everything runs in the browser or the app.

That last point is the platform's real design decision: "zero-switch execution", meaning you analyse and trade in the same surface instead of charting in one tool and executing in another. For discretionary traders this removes a genuine friction. For algorithmic traders it removes nothing, because there is no scripting layer — which is why MetaTrader still matters here.

MetaTrader 4 remains available with the Autochartist plugin included, giving automated pattern and volatility analysis on top of MQL4 expert advisors and the usual VPS options. MetaTrader 5 rolled out regionally from late 2024, adding more timeframes, depth of market and a far better strategy tester.

Axi Copy Trading is a separate iOS and Android app that connects to your MT4 or MT5 account. You browse signal providers by 30-day return and win rate, copy at your own position sizing, and set your own risk limits independently of the provider — Axi is explicit that this is not a managed fund and the risk decisions stay with you. Providers set their own fees, which Axi does not publish centrally.

The gap: no API for direct programmatic access outside MetaTrader, and no desktop client for the proprietary platform.

Axi advertises 650+ markets on its own platform, built out of roughly 60+ forex pairs, 33 indices, 15 commodities, 35+ cryptocurrencies and a share-CFD list that runs to around 122 names on MetaTrader and materially more on the proprietary platform, plus ETF CFDs and access to upcoming IPOs.

The crypto structure is what separates Axi from the FX-broker pack, because it offers three genuinely different products:

• Crypto CFDs — leverage up to 200:1, no ownership, swap charged nightly
• Crypto perpetual futures — around 150 coins, leverage up to 125:1, funding rate instead of swap
• Spot crypto — actual ownership of the coin

That third one is rare. Almost every FX-first broker stops at CFDs; being able to hold spot alongside leveraged exposure in the same account is a real structural advantage for anyone who wants both a trading book and a small holding.

Everything else, though, is a derivative. The equities are share CFDs — no ownership, no voting rights, dividends as cash adjustments, financing on overnight longs. The ETFs are CFDs too, which means no accumulating-versus-distributing choice, no TER logic and no long-term compounding case. There are no bonds, no mutual funds and no listed options, and the crypto perpetual futures are OTC contracts rather than exchange-traded futures.

Practically: Axi is a strong trading account with an unusually broad instrument list and one genuine investment product (spot crypto). It is not a portfolio account, and the ETF line item should not be read as one.

Axi Select is the most interesting thing Axi has built, and it is structurally different from the prop-firm challenge model that dominates this space.

There is no entry fee, no sign-up cost and no monthly subscription. You trade your own account on MT4 or MT5, and Axi scores your trading with an Edge Score built from skill, risk management, consistency and experience. As the score rises, Axi allocates firm capital to you across six stages:

Payouts run automatically on the first of each month. Existing Axi clients qualify automatically.

Two honest caveats. The Seed stage pays 0% — you trade allocated capital for nothing while the scoring system observes you, which is the price of not paying a challenge fee. And the higher stages require substantial balances of your own money (USD 20,000 at Pro M), so this is a leverage-your-own-capital programme rather than a route from zero to funded.

Compared with paying USD 500 for a challenge you can fail on a bad Tuesday, the economics are better and the incentives are more honest: Axi only allocates capital to traders it has already watched succeed with real money.

Account opening is fully online — form, ID, proof of address — with most accounts approved the same or next business day. The minimum is USD 100 for both Standard and Pro; Elite requires USD 25,000. A demo is available without funding.

The standout is eleven base currencies: AUD, CAD, CHF, EUR, GBP, HKD, JPY, NZD, PLN, SGD and USD. For a Swiss, Polish, Singaporean or Japanese client that removes an entire conversion layer from every deposit and withdrawal, and it is a wider list than most competitors offer. Elite narrows it to USD, EUR, GBP and AUD, which is a small step backwards at the top tier.

Funding is organised regionally rather than as one global list — Axi routes you to local rails by region across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America. Cards and e-wallets are instant; bank transfers take one to three business days. Axi charges no deposit or withdrawal fees of its own, and is explicit that card cash-advance charges and correspondent-bank receiving fees are the provider's, not theirs. Withdrawal processing is fast by segment standards, typically same-day at the broker's end.

Two things to watch. Axi does not publish a headline currency conversion markup, and with eleven base currencies the conversion question is unavoidable if you fund in one currency and trade instruments denominated in another — ask what rate is applied. And the inactivity fee after twelve dormant months means an account you fund and forget is not free: if you are testing Axi and then step away, withdraw the balance rather than leaving it parked.

For DACH readers this is usually the deciding factor, and the answer here is straightforward: Axi withholds nothing.

Germany. Axi is not a German paying agent. No Abgeltungsteuer is deducted at source, no 25% flat tax plus Solidaritätszuschlag and Kirchensteuer is handled for you, and no Jahressteuerbescheinigung arrives. You report results yourself in Anlage KAP and the relevant foreign-income annexes, and you must apply the German rules for Termingeschäfte — CFD and futures-style losses fall into a restricted category that can only be offset against gains of the same type and only up to a statutory annual limit. This regime has been repeatedly litigated and amended; if leveraged trading is a meaningful part of your income, take advice rather than guessing.

Note also that spot crypto is treated differently again in Germany: coins held directly can fall under private sale rules (§23 EStG) with their own holding-period logic, which is a separate calculation from your CFD book even though both sit in one Axi account. That mixture makes the record-keeping harder, not easier.

Austria. No KESt is withheld. As an Auslandsdepot, Axi leaves the entire declaration to you, and Austrian residents lose the automatic-settlement convenience that a domestic bank provides.

Switzerland. No withholding applies, but frequent leveraged trading risks reclassification as gewerbsmässiger Wertschriftenhandel, which turns otherwise tax-free private capital gains into taxable income and adds AHV contributions. High turnover, high leverage and short holding periods are exactly the criteria used — and a Pro account with 1000:1 available leverage scores badly on all three.

None of this disqualifies Axi. It does mean the DACH cost of ownership includes your own tax work, and possibly a Steuerberater who understands CFD reporting.