CMC Markets vs Cornèrtrader — which broker is better?

Pros

• Next Generation is one of the strongest charting suites bundled with a retail CFD account —115+ indicators, 70 chart patterns, 12 chart types and pattern-recognition scanners, at no extra cost
• 0% commission on UK and European share CFDs (Greece the sole exception at 0.45%), against IG's spread-plus-conversion model
• EUR/USD averages around 0.7 pips on the standard account, and FX Active delivers from 0.0 pips for USD/GBP 2.50 per side per 100,000 notional
• No minimum deposit at all — CMC only suggests around GBP 100 to cover margin, which makes it genuinely testable with small money
• Three FCA licences (173730, 170627, 948126) plus ASIC AFSL 238054, BaFin and MAS, with FSCS cover of GBP 85,000 and client money segregated at NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds under annual PwC audit
• Cash-settled OTC options, available as a spread bet or through the CFD account, carry no commission and no holding or financing charge — the whole cost is in the spread
• 12,029 instruments on Next Generation, all of which are also tradable from TradingView charts
• Ten account base currencies including NOK, SEK, PLN and SGD, which removes conversion drag for Nordic and Asian clients

Cons

• None of CMC's derivatives is exchange-traded: the options it quotes are OTC and cash-settled, and there are no cleared futures at all, so CMC is the counterparty on every derivative contract and no clearing house stands behind it
• The 0.7% FX conversion charge on realised profit, loss and costs is high; IG applies 0.8% on the equivalent CFD trades
• Inactivity fee of GBP 10 per month starts after just 12 months without trading activity
• ASIC required CMC to remediate Australian retail clients in 2023 over CFDs offered above the product intervention leverage limits, and an Australian class action over 2011–2021 marketing remains outstanding
• MT4 carries only about 220 instruments against 12,029 on Next Generation, so algo traders who need MT4 lose most of the product range
• CMC does not publish a fixed index spread table, which makes cost comparison against brokers that do quote fixed minimums harder than it should be

Pros

• Cornèr Bank Ltd is a FINMA-supervised Swiss bank founded in 1952 and ranked second in Switzerland for capital strength in The Banker's Top 1000 World Banks 2026
• A genuine multi-asset platform: shares, ETFs, ETPs, ETNs, ETCs, bonds, mutual funds, FX spot, FX options, futures and micro futures, listed stock options and CFDs on indices, single stocks, commodities, bonds and forex
• More than 40,000 tradable instruments and over 10,000 pieces of research covering technical, fundamental and momentum analysis, included rather than sold as a subscription
• Trading and banking in one relationship: multi-currency account, free Visa debit card, no separate cash transfer needed to move between investing and spending
• Free demo platform available without opening an account — rare among Swiss bank-owned brokers and the best way to test the terminal first
• Commissions fall sharply with portfolio size: SIX drops from 0.12% to 0.07% and US shares from 0.15% to 0.08% across the four tiers
• Securities lending is offered as an optional way to generate income from an existing equity portfolio

Cons

• The most expensive tier applies by default — Cornèrtrader states explicitly that if no other agreement is in place, the highest price category in the table applies
• The entry CONSISTENCY tier is limited to a single account currency, so a CHF-based client buying US or German shares is forced into a currency conversion on every trade
• Every conversion for a foreign-currency trade carries a 0.5% mark-up over the FX spot mid-price — more than the 0.15% commission on a US share order at the entry tier
• Incoming securities transfers require a minimum accepted amount of CHF 30,000 at every tier except ENERGY, which blocks smaller portfolios from consolidating here
• No spot cryptocurrency — only Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs and ETPs
• Cornèr Bank is privately held and not listed, so there is no share price or continuous market scrutiny of the counterparty, only periodic published accounts