Markets.com

Markets.com charges no commission on CFDs. All trading cost is in the spread, the overnight swap and currency conversion — and on each of those three it sits mid-table or worse.

Spreads. EUR/USD is advertised from 0.6 pips but averages closer to 1.2 pips in practice, with the standard account quoted around 1.0 pip. On a standard lot that is roughly USD 12 round-trip versus about USD 7 at the cheapest commission-free competitors. For a scalper doing several round-trips a day, that gap compounds into real money within a month.

Currency conversion: 0.6% flat. Applied whenever a position settles in a currency other than your account base. Trade US shares from a EUR account and you pay it on entry and exit. This is the fee most users miss when comparing headline spreads.

Overnight swaps are charged daily on leveraged positions and, as is standard, tripled on Wednesdays to account for weekend rollover.

The non-trading fees are where this broker really loses ground. There is an inactivity fee of USD 10 per month, triggered after roughly three months without trading activity. That is among the most aggressive dormancy policies in the regulated CFD space — many competitors wait twelve months, and Capital.com charges nothing at all. If you fund an account, trade a setup, then wait out a quiet quarter, you are paying for the privilege.

On the credit side: withdrawals are free, and there is no custody or platform charge. The minimum deposit is USD/EUR/GBP 100, which is a meaningfully higher barrier than the USD 10–20 asked by several direct rivals.

Markets.com runs a five-entity structure, and the difference between them is substantial — this is the single most important thing to understand before opening an account.

Tier-1 and tier-2 entities:

• TradeTech Alpha Limited — authorised by the FCA under reference 607305. Eligible UK claimants fall under the FSCS up to GBP 85,000.
• Safecap Investments Limited — the main European entity, CySEC licence 092/08, company number HE 186196, based in Nicosia. EEA retail clients are covered by the Investor Compensation Fund up to EUR 20,000.
• Markets (South Africa) Pty Limited — FSCA licence 46860.

Offshore entities:

• TradeTech Markets (BVI) Limited — BVI FSC licence SIBA/L/14/1067
• Markets International Ltd — FSA St. Vincent and the Grenadines, registration 27030 BC 2023

The offshore entities offer higher leverage and no investor compensation scheme whatsoever. If you are onboarded to the SVG or BVI entity, the FCA and CySEC protections described above do not apply to you. Check which entity your client agreement names.

On corporate ownership: Markets.com was historically part of Playtech Plc, but Playtech completed the USD 250 million sale of the Finalto division to Gopher Investments in July 2022. The business is therefore no longer backed by an LSE-listed parent — an important correction, because a great deal of secondary coverage still repeats the Playtech link. There is no current public listing, and no publicly disclosed regulatory action against the main entities.

Client funds are held in segregated accounts and negative balance protection applies to retail clients under the FCA and CySEC entities. The group has been trading since 2008, giving it a longer operating record than most Cyprus-regulated competitors.

There are three routes in, and the proprietary one is the reason to be here.

Marketsx is the in-house web platform, and it is more interesting than the typical broker terminal. Alongside standard charting and order entry it layers on a research stack that includes market sentiment indicators, analyst consensus ratings, hedge-fund and insider positioning views, and an earnings calendar tied to the instruments you follow. Most CFD brokers give you a chart and a news feed; this gives you a reason to form a view. Whether you agree with any given signal is beside the point — the tooling is a genuine differentiator in this price bracket.

The mobile app covers the essential workflow — quotes, charting, order management, account funding — competently, but the deeper analytics remain a web-platform feature. It is a solid app rather than a standout one, and it does not reach the parity that the best CFD apps now achieve.

For systematic traders, MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are both fully supported. That matters: MT4 remains the default environment for expert advisors and purchased indicator packs, and MT5 adds depth of market, more timeframes and a broader indicator set. Charts can also be connected through TradingView for analysis.

What is absent is a professional desktop application and any form of DMA or level-2 order book on the proprietary platform. Order types are the standard retail set — market, limit, stop, trailing stop — with no advanced conditional or bracket structures.

The published asset list runs to roughly 530 CFDs, and the weighting is unusual for the segment:

• 248 share CFDs — a working list of large and mid caps rather than a deep single-stock book
• 116 cryptocurrency CFDs, by some distance the broadest part of the offering
• 67 ETF CFDs
• 54 forex pairs — majors, minors and a short exotics list
• 24 index CFDs across global benchmarks
• 19 commodity CFDs covering energy, metals and softs
• 4 bond and treasury CFDs
• Blends — thematic baskets grouping related instruments into a single tradeable product

Two things stand out. First, the crypto book: 116 pairs is well beyond what most regulated CFD brokers carry, and it is the one place where the instrument count is a reason to choose Markets.com rather than a caveat. Second, the bond CFDs: only a minority of retail CFD brokers offer government debt exposure at all, and having treasuries available makes rate-driven macro strategies expressible without opening a second account. The Blends product rounds it out — a thematic basket lets you take a sector or theme view without picking a single name.

The counterweight is the equity list. 248 share CFDs is thin next to the several thousand some CFD competitors quote, and it sits awkwardly beside the platform's analyst-consensus and insider-positioning tools: that research layer is at its best on individual stocks, and there are not many of them here. Check that the names you actually trade are on the list before you fund an account.

The hard limitation is the same one that applies across this whole category: everything is a CFD. You never own the underlying share or ETF. There are no dividends as an owner, no voting rights, no ability to transfer holdings out, and no fractional shares. There are also no exchange-traded options and no futures — so hedging structures and defined-risk strategies are off the table.

Crypto CFD availability varies by entity and is restricted for UK retail clients under FCA rules.

Registration is fully online and takes ten to twenty minutes, with verification typically completed within one business day through automated document checks. Your country of residence determines which entity onboards you — and as covered above, that determines whether you get FSCS cover, EUR 20,000 ICF cover, or no compensation scheme at all. It is worth confirming this explicitly before funding.

The minimum deposit is USD/EUR/GBP 100. That is a real barrier next to competitors asking USD 10 to 20, and it means you cannot test the platform with live money at a trivial size. The demo account is unlimited and does not require funding, so use it first.

Funding methods cover bank transfer and SEPA, credit and debit cards, Skrill, Neteller and PayPal in supported regions. Base currencies include USD, EUR, GBP and ZAR. Choose deliberately: the 0.6% conversion fee applies to everything settled outside your base currency, and on a wide-spread product that markup is not trivial.

Card and e-wallet deposits are effectively instant; bank transfers take one to three business days. Withdrawals are free of charge and typically clear in one to five business days depending on method, returning to the original funding source.

The funding story is respectable. What undermines it is what happens when you stop: the USD 10 monthly inactivity charge after roughly three months means an account left idle is an account being drained. If you are a seasonal or opportunistic trader, plan to withdraw fully between campaigns rather than leaving a float sitting there.

Research is the strongest part of the Markets.com proposition and the main reason to prefer it over a cheaper competitor.

The Marketsx analytics suite goes well beyond the usual news feed. You get market sentiment gauges showing how the broker's own client base is positioned, analyst consensus ratings and price targets aggregated per instrument, insider-transaction and hedge-fund positioning data on major equities, and an earnings calendar wired into your watchlist. For a discretionary trader building a directional view on a single stock or index, that is a meaningful input set — and it is genuinely uncommon at this end of the market, where 'research' usually means a syndicated headline feed.

There is also regular in-house market commentary and daily analysis across FX, indices and commodities, plus a standard economic calendar.

Education is thinner. There is a learning centre with articles and video explainers covering CFD mechanics, leverage, risk management and platform walkthroughs, and webinars run periodically. It is adequate for orienting a newcomer, but it is not a structured curriculum — there is no sequenced course path, no progress tracking, and nothing comparable to the dedicated learning apps some competitors ship. A complete beginner will learn the mechanics here but will not be led through them.

The practical read: come for the research if you already know how to trade; do not come here expecting to be taught.

Support operates 24/5, running from Monday 00:00 to Friday 23:55 (GMT+2) — the standard window for the CFD industry, and adequate unless you hold crypto positions across a weekend, in which case you are on your own until Monday.

Three channels are available: live chat, email and telephone. Language coverage spans English, German, Italian, French, Spanish and Arabic among others, which suits the broker's southern-European and Middle Eastern client base and works for DACH traders who would rather not handle an account dispute in English.

Quality is the recurring complaint. Reviewers consistently describe agents as knowledgeable once you reach them, but live chat wait times frequently exceed ten minutes, which is slow by current standards and painful if you have an open position and an urgent platform question. Email responses generally arrive within a business day. Phone support is the fastest route for anything genuinely time-critical.

Public sentiment sits mid-pack: roughly 3.7 out of 5 on Trustpilot across about 1,250 reviews. That is neither a red flag nor an endorsement — it is the profile of a broker that works correctly most of the time and frustrates a visible minority. The complaint clusters are predictable for the sector: withdrawal verification delays, chat responsiveness, and dissatisfaction over margin closeouts.

One practical note: the inactivity fee generates a recurring stream of complaints from users who did not read the terms. It is disclosed, but it is not prominent, and it surprises people. Know that it is coming.