Capital.com vs Interactive Brokers — which broker is better?

Pros

• No commission on any CFD and no inactivity fee whatsoever — unusual in the CySEC/FCA CFD segment
• EUR/USD averages roughly 0.7 pips all-in, with spreads advertised from 0.6 pips
• Free deposits and free withdrawals, with a USD 20 minimum via card, Apple Pay or PayPal
• Roughly 5,585 tradeable symbols including 125 FX pairs and about 450 crypto CFDs
• Top-tier regulation through the FCA (793714) and ASIC (513393) alongside CySEC (319/17)
• Mobile app is genuinely at feature parity with the web platform, not a cut-down version
• Choice of proprietary platform, MT4, MT5 and native TradingView integration
• Investmate education and the built-in trading-bias detector are substantive, not marketing filler

Cons

• 0.7% currency conversion markup on every trade settled outside your base currency — the single largest hidden cost here
• Overnight funding adds roughly 4.05% per year over the benchmark rate, which makes multi-week leveraged holds expensive
• No exchange-traded options, futures, bonds or mutual funds — the product set is essentially CFDs only
• Real share dealing (Capital.com Invest) covers only about 1,000 stocks and is limited to selected European countries
• Not publicly listed and founded only in 2016, so there is less financial transparency than at an exchange-listed broker
• Crypto CFDs are unavailable to UK retail clients, and the broker does not accept clients in the US, Canada, Japan, Belgium or Hong Kong

Pros

• US stocks from USD 0.0035 per share on the Tiered plan, minimum USD 0.35 per order and capped at 1% of trade value
• Currency conversion at 0.20 basis points (minimum USD 2) — an order of magnitude cheaper than most European brokers' 0.25%–1.5%
• Roughly 160 market destinations in 36 countries from a single multi-currency account, with 28 settlement currencies
• No inactivity fee since 2021, plus no custody fee and no platform fee
• Trader Workstation offers over 100 order types plus a mature Python/Java/REST API used widely by retail algo traders
• Nasdaq-listed parent (IBKR) with published quarterly financials and around USD 21 billion of equity capital
• Top-tier licences in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, with per-entity investor compensation disclosed
• Paper trading account mirrors the live platform, including the full API

Cons

• Customer support is the most common complaint: many requests go through the ticket system, and public reviews (e.g. on Trustpilot) often cite slow replies and template answers
• Trader Workstation has a genuinely steep learning curve; the first session is intimidating even for experienced traders
• The fee schedule is complicated: Fixed versus Tiered, pass-through exchange fees, and per-exchange minimums make cost prediction harder than it should be
• Real-time market data is a paid subscription per exchange, so the headline commissions understate the true monthly cost for active traders
• Account opening is longer and more document-heavy than at app-first brokers, and the website navigation is poor
• Spot crypto is only available to US clients via a separate arrangement; EEA clients get futures and exchange-traded products instead