Skilling

Skilling runs two live tiers. Both are priced competitively on the trade itself — the cost that decides the case sits outside the spread table.

Standard is commission-free on every asset class. EUR/USD starts at 0.8 pips, roughly USD 8 per standard-lot round turn at that floor, though independent measurement puts the account's average nearer 1.2 pips. GBP/USD sits near 1.7 pips, WTI around USD 0.10 and gold around USD 0.35. Minimum deposit is EUR 100.

Premium quotes EUR/USD from 0.1 pips and bills commission by volume rather than by lot: USD 35 per USD 1 million traded, or USD 40 per million on the MT4 Premium variant. Skilling's schedule does not state whether that rate applies per side or per round turn, so a standard-lot round turn carries between USD 3.50 and USD 7.00 in commission plus about a dollar of spread — at or below the commission-free account rather than above it. Ask which reading applies before you upgrade, because the reported EUR 5,000 minimum deposit is a real hurdle and the answer decides whether the tier pays for itself.

Note that commission applies only to forex and commodities; indices and equity CFDs stay commission-free on both tiers, so an equity-CFD trader gains nothing but tighter spreads from the upgrade.

The cost that hurts more than either is currency conversion at 0.70%. Fund in euros, trade USD-denominated instruments, and every conversion in and out takes 70 basis points. On EUR 10,000 that is EUR 70, against a few euros at the cheapest multi-currency brokers. Add 2.9% on Skrill and Neteller deposits and a EUR 50 minimum withdrawal, and the friction around the account can easily exceed the friction inside it.

On inactivity fees the sources disagree — current reporting shows none, an older listing cites EUR 10 after twelve months. We have recorded no figure rather than pick one.

Skilling is a Scandinavian-founded group headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus, operating through two disclosed entities:

• Skilling Ltd — CySEC licence 357/18, formerly Finovel Cyprus Ltd. This is the EEA-facing company. Retail clients here get ESMA leverage caps (30:1 major FX, 20:1 major indices, 10:1 non-gold commodities, 5:1 single-stock CFDs, 2:1 crypto) and Investor Compensation Fund cover paying 90% of an eligible net loss up to EUR 20,000.
• Skilling (Seychelles) Ltd — Seychelles FSA licence SD042. This entity carries non-EEA business with leverage to 500:1 on a dynamic ladder, and no compensation scheme of any kind.

That split is the whole safety story. A German or Austrian client dealing with the Cypriot entity has a European regulator, a compensation fund and hard leverage limits. A client routed to Seychelles has none of those things and an escalation path that ends in Mahé.

Two further points of caution. First, at least one reputable secondary source lists a UK FCA reference for Skilling; we could not confirm it against a primary register, skilling.com was not reachable for us during compilation, and we have therefore omitted any FCA entry rather than credit the broker with a tier-1 licence we cannot evidence. Second, sources also disagree on the founding year — 2016 is most commonly cited for the group, while the Cypriot licence dates from 2018 and the consumer brand launched around 2019. We have recorded 2016 and flagged the discrepancy.

Structurally: client money is segregated, negative balance protection applies, and the group is privately held with no published audited accounts. There is no banking licence and no public listing, so the transparency floor is set by CySEC's reporting requirements and nothing above them.

Platform choice is where Skilling punches above its size, and the three options serve genuinely different people.

Skilling Trader is the proprietary web and mobile platform, and it is the reason the broker exists in its current form. It is deliberately stripped back — watchlist first, simple order ticket, clean mobile layout — and gives access to the full 800+ instrument range. For someone whose previous encounter with trading software was MetaTrader 4, this is a considerable relief. It is not a professional tool and does not pretend to be: no depth of market, no scripting, limited order-type depth.

cTrader is the serious option and, for anyone past the beginner stage, the reason to choose Skilling over a comparable broker. Full depth of market, level II pricing, cTrader Automate for C#-based algorithmic strategies, and cTrader Copy for social trading built into the platform rather than bolted on as a separate app. It also carries the full 800+ symbol range on desktop and web.

MetaTrader 4 is the weak link. Skilling's MT4 build is restricted to roughly 200 instruments, a quarter of what the other two platforms offer, and Skilling does not support third-party MT4 add-ons — so the plugin ecosystem that is MT4's main remaining advantage is largely unavailable. MetaTrader 5 is not offered at all, which will rule Skilling out for a segment of algorithmic traders on its own.

Guaranteed stop-losses are not available on any platform. One-click trading and OCO orders are. MAM and PAMM structures are supported for money managers, which is unusual at this size and points at where Skilling gets a meaningful share of its volume.

Instrument count depends entirely on which platform you use: 800+ on cTrader and Skilling Trader, roughly 200 on MetaTrader 4. Anyone comparing Skilling against rivals on headline numbers should check that footnote first.

The range covers forex, index CFDs, ETF CFDs, share CFDs, six commodities, cryptocurrencies and a set of synthetic instruments. Two things stand out and two things are missing.

Standing out: the crypto list is deeper than most FX-first brokers carry, and it extends into sports-team fan tokens — a genuinely unusual product set, and one that comes with liquidity and volatility characteristics that deserve more caution than the mainstream coins. The presence of ETF CFDs alongside index CFDs also gives more granular thematic exposure than a pure index list would.

Missing: the equity range is heavily weighted towards large caps, with thin mid- and small-cap coverage, so stock-pickers hunting outside the mega-cap index will find the list restrictive. And the commodity count of six is small — enough for gold, oil and a handful of others, not enough for a commodities-focused strategy.

The structural point applies to everything: these are all contracts for difference. No share ownership, no voting rights, no ETF units, no coin you can withdraw to a wallet. Dividends on share CFDs appear as cash adjustments; long positions pay financing every night. There are no bonds, no mutual funds, no listed options and no exchange-traded futures anywhere in the range.

Skilling is a trading venue with a broad instrument list, not an investment account with a narrow one. Judge it accordingly.

Getting in is the easiest part of the experience. Registration takes under a minute, and Skilling will let you into a demo — with no time limit, which is rarer than it should be — before you supply anything. Live trading requires ID and proof of address, typically cleared within a business day. The minimum on Standard is EUR 100; Premium is reported at EUR 5,000.

Funding runs through bank transfer, credit and debit cards, wire, Skrill and Neteller. Cards and e-wallets are instant; wire transfers can take up to seven business days. Withdrawals are processed within 24 hours to seven business days depending on the processor, with a EUR 50 minimum.

Skilling itself charges no deposit or withdrawal fee, but the third-party costs are not trivial and are worth stating plainly:

• Skrill and Neteller: 2.9% on the transaction
• Currency conversion: 0.70% into and out of the base currency
• Correspondent-bank charges on international wires, which Skilling disclaims

That 0.70% is the number to plan around. It is charged on conversion, not on trading, so it is easy to overlook when comparing spread tables — and if you fund in euros and trade dollar-denominated instruments it applies repeatedly over the life of the account. The mitigation is to hold the account in the currency you actually trade in, which means confirming Skilling's full base-currency list before you open: EUR and USD are clearly supported, but we could not verify the complete list from a primary source and have recorded only those two.

There is no published deposit bonus, no cashback and no negative-balance carve-out beyond the standard protection.

Support is adequate rather than good, and the hours are the problem. Skilling staffs live chat, email and phone from Monday to Friday, 04:00 to 22:00 — no weekend cover. That would be unremarkable for an equities broker, but Skilling sells crypto CFDs that trade through the weekend. If a position moves against you on a Saturday, there is nobody to call. Competitors offering 24/5 or 24/7 coverage have a real advantage here.

Language coverage is broad on paper — English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin, Malay and Thai — though a Scandinavian-founded broker not obviously staffing German or the Nordic languages is a curious gap for its own home markets. DACH clients should assume English.

Research is the weakest dimension in this record, and the score reflects it. There is no in-house analyst desk producing daily or weekly market calls, no meaningful screener, no third-party research marketplace and no structured coverage of the instruments Skilling lists. Traders come with their own thesis or they use TradingView and cTrader's charting to build one. For a broker positioning itself partly at beginners, handing them 800 instruments and no framework for choosing between them is a real omission.

Education follows the same shape: platform how-tos and instrument primers, enough to place a first trade, not enough to develop a method. The unlimited demo partially compensates — it is the single most useful learning tool Skilling offers, and it costs nothing.

For a trader who already has a process and wants clean execution, none of this matters. For a beginner attracted by the simple platform, the absence of research and structured education is exactly the wrong gap to have.

Skilling is a Cypriot investment firm, not a German or Austrian paying agent, and the practical consequence is simple: nothing is withheld and nothing is reported for you.

Germany. No Abgeltungsteuer is deducted. There is no automatic 25% flat tax plus Solidaritätszuschlag and Kirchensteuer, and no Jahressteuerbescheinigung arrives in February. You declare in Anlage KAP yourself, and — critically — CFD results fall under the German rules for Termingeschäfte, where losses may be offset only against gains of the same category and only up to a statutory annual ceiling. Because Skilling is CFD-only, this restrictive treatment applies to your entire account rather than to one corner of it. That is a materially worse tax position than holding real shares or ETFs at a German broker that settles Abgeltungsteuer automatically, and it is the single strongest argument against using Skilling as a primary account from Germany.

Austria. No KESt is withheld. A Skilling account is an Auslandsdepot: you compute and declare capital gains yourself, without the automatic settlement an Austrian bank or a KESt-abführender broker provides.

Switzerland. No withholding to arrange, but the classification risk applies. Swiss residents whose trading is frequent, leveraged and short-horizon can be assessed as gewerbsmässige Wertschriftenhändler, which converts otherwise tax-free private capital gains into taxable income and triggers AHV contributions. A CFD-only account with leverage available to 30:1 in the EEA and 500:1 offshore ticks every criterion the cantonal authorities look at.

The blunt summary for DACH readers: Skilling can be a reasonable second account for active CFD trading, but the tax handling is entirely yours, and the German Termingeschäfte rules make a CFD-only broker a poor place to build a core portfolio.