AvaTrade vs eToro — which broker is better?

Pros

• Nine regulated entities, from Ireland and Cyprus to Japan, South Africa and Kenya, with the EU book run from Ireland under Central Bank of Ireland reference C53877 and Investor Compensation Company cover of 90% of losses up to EUR 20,000.
• Fixed spreads from 0.9 pips on EUR/USD mean the cost per trade does not blow out during news — a real advantage over variable-spread rivals when liquidity thins.
• AvaOptions gives retail clients vanilla FX calls and puts with a payoff-diagram strategy builder; almost no other broker of this size exposes real optionality to non-professional clients.
• Three copy-trading routes — in-house AvaSocial plus DupliTrade and ZuluTrade — rather than a single walled garden of signal providers.
• USD 100 minimum deposit, no deposit or withdrawal charges from AvaTrade, and account opening in roughly ten minutes with verification typically inside a business day.
• AvaTradeGO includes AvaProtect, a paid feature that reimburses a losing position inside a chosen window — a legitimately useful training wheel for position sizing.
• 24/5 support in more than a dozen languages across phone, email and live chat, with consistently fast chat pickup in independent contact testing.

Cons

• Dormancy is punitive: USD 50 charged quarterly after just three consecutive months without a trade, plus a USD 100 annual administration fee after twelve months. Most competitors wait six to twenty-four months.
• No real shares or ETFs. Equity exposure is CFD-only at roughly 0.13% of notional, which means no ownership, no voting and financing costs on anything held overnight.
• AvaTrade quotes as a market maker and is the counterparty to your trade — a structural conflict that agency, raw-spread models do not carry.
• No UK FCA authorisation, so UK clients are onboarded by an EU or offshore entity and fall outside FSCS protection.
• Fixed spreads are expensive in calm conditions: 0.9 pips on EUR/USD is modestly above the roughly 0.8 pips all-in cost of a good raw-spread-plus-commission account.
• The demo account expires after 21 days, which is too short to forward-test a swing strategy properly.

Pros

• CopyTrader is one of the most mature copy-trading products in Europe: no separate fee on top of normal trading costs, a USD 200 minimum per copied trader, and up to 100 traders copied at once.
• Nasdaq-listed since May 2025 under ETOR, which forces quarterly audited disclosure that most retail brokers never publish.
• Licensed by the FCA (583263), CySEC (109/10), ASIC (491139), MAS (CMS101824) and the SEC (8-70212) - a genuinely multi-jurisdictional stack rather than a single offshore licence.
• 300+ ETFs with zero eToro commission and fractional investing from USD 10, so small monthly contributions are not swallowed by minimum ticket sizes.
• The inactivity fee was removed in 2026; dormant accounts now cost nothing to hold.
• 150+ cryptoassets held as real coins on the investing account rather than only as CFDs, with coins transferable out to the eToro Money wallet for a 2% fee.
• The demo account carries all 11,000+ instruments and every platform feature, which makes it a usable rehearsal rather than a stripped-down toy.

Cons

• Currency conversion costs 0.75% each way between a European local-currency account and USD, before Club discounts whose size eToro's own pages state differently - for a broker whose core product is USD-denominated, that is the one number you most need.
• Stock orders cost USD 1-2 in most countries. On a EUR 200 monthly savings order that is a 0.5-1.0% drag before any conversion cost, which is expensive against Trading 212 or XTB at zero.
• Crypto costs 1.00% per position for Bronze, Silver and Gold members - charged on the way in and again on the way out. Only Platinum and above see meaningful discounts.
• No exchange-traded options or futures outside the US entity, no individual bonds and no mutual funds. The range is wide across asset classes but shallow within them.
• Withdrawals from a USD account cost USD 5 with a USD 30 minimum; only local-currency accounts (EUR, GBP, DKK) escape the charge.
• Support is chat and ticket only, with no general retail phone line, and priority routing is tied to Club tier - so the smallest accounts get the slowest service.