CMC Markets vs Saxo — 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

• Full Danish banking licence (Finanstilsynet licence 1149) and SIFI designation — a stronger structural safeguard than a broker-only permission
• US stocks and ETFs at 0.08% with a USD 1 minimum on the entry-level Classic tier, and 0.05%/0.03% at higher tiers
• Roughly 71,000 instruments including 23,000 stocks, 7,400 ETFs, 5,200 bonds, 3,100 listed options and 250 futures across 50-plus exchanges
• SaxoTraderGO and the mobile app are the best-designed retail trading interfaces in Europe, and the app is not a cut-down version of the web platform
• Mutual funds carry no transaction commission, no custody fee and no platform fee
• One of very few retail platforms with a genuinely usable bond offering — 5,200 government and corporate issues with live prices
• No inactivity fee, no minimum deposit on Classic, and free withdrawals
• Majority-owned by J. Safra Sarasin since 2026, adding a large private-banking group behind the balance sheet

Cons

• Currency conversion costs 0.25% over mid-market for EU and Swiss clients, and up to 0.60% at the UK entity's Classic tier — the single largest hidden cost for cross-currency investors
• A holding fee of up to 0.15% a year on shares, ETFs and bonds still applies at several booking entities; coverage varies by country and is easy to overlook
• No spot cryptocurrency trading — exposure is limited to exchange-traded products
• No fractional shares on ordinary orders, so building small positions in high-priced US stocks is awkward
• Bank transfer is the only funding route since card deposits were withdrawn in April 2025
• Trustpilot sentiment sits around 3.8 with responsiveness of support the recurring complaint, despite good published coverage