Dukascopy Bank vs IC Markets — which broker is better?

Pros

• Licensed by FINMA as both a bank and a securities firm — full Swiss banking supervision, capital requirements and audit obligations, not a CFD-broker permission
• esisuisse depositor protection up to CHF 100,000 per client on cash balances, which is five times the EUR 20,000 investor compensation most EU brokers offer
• SWFX Swiss FX Marketplace is a genuine ECN with visible depth, where EUR/USD spreads start from 0.1 pips and commission is charged separately and transparently
• JForex 4 is one of the deepest retail platforms available: roughly 270 indicators, a Java strategy API, tick-level historical data for backtesting and depth-of-market
• FIX API access for accounts above roughly USD 100,000, with the JForex Java API available at any account size — institutional connectivity offered at retail account sizes
• Volume commission ladder is fully published and improves on any of three criteria — net deposit, equity or 30-day traded volume — so it rewards capital as well as churn
• The banking side is real: multi-currency accounts, IBAN, cards and e-banking sit alongside the trading account under one Swiss licence
• USD 100 entry on the JForex ECN account, so the Swiss banking counterparty is not gated behind a six-figure balance

Cons

• Bank transfer withdrawals are priced per currency and rail — EUR 2.3 over SEPA up to EUR 20, USD 19 up to USD 35, and nominally much more in minor currencies such as HUF 5,500 or JPY 2,500 — and card withdrawals add EUR 1.5 plus 2.5%; cash movement is the single worst part of the tariff
• Cash conversions — exchanges, deposits, withdrawals, transfers — are charged at 0.05%–1.00% over spot depending on size, with smaller conversions at the punitive end; profits, losses and commissions outside the account's base currency are converted for a flat 0.5% fee at the Swiss bank (0.1% at the Latvian entity), so a multi-currency trader pays that charge repeatedly
• JForex 4 has a genuinely steep learning curve, and Dukascopy publishes little structured beginner education to soften it
• No exchange-listed options, no cleared futures and no real share ownership — everything outside spot FX is a CFD with Dukascopy as counterparty
• MT4 and MT5 accounts require USD 1,000 rather than the USD 100 that opens a JForex ECN account, and carry a much narrower instrument list
• Physical gold holdings are charged 1.5% per year and quarantined crypto assets CHF 2,000 every six months — unusual charges that are easy to miss in the tariff PDF

Pros

• All-in EUR/USD cost of roughly 0.6 to 0.8 pips on Raw Spread - a 0.0 to 0.1 pip raw spread plus USD 3.50 per lot per side
• Raw Pro at USD 1.50 per lot from a USD 5,000 balance and Raw Pro+ at USD 1.00 per lot from USD 100,000 - a real volume ladder rather than a marketing tier
• No withdrawal fee of IC Markets' own across roughly nineteen funding methods, and at Raw Trading Ltd (ic.com) no inactivity fee and no minimum deposit on the Standard, Raw Spread and cTrader Raw accounts; EU clients deposit at least EUR 200 and can be charged an inactivity fee after six months without a trade
• Four execution front-ends on one account: MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView, with New York and London server hosting and FIX API for qualifying volume
• Genuinely 24/7 multilingual support - live chat responses are consistently measured in minutes, not hours
• 2,250 plus instruments including 2,100 stock CFDs, 94 crypto CFDs, 25 indices, 9 bond CFDs and 5 futures CFDs
• Accounts in EUR, USD or GBP at the EU entity, so deposits and withdrawals in those currencies need no conversion; Raw Trading Ltd (ic.com) offers ten base currencies including CHF

Cons

• Most non-EU, non-Australian clients contract with Raw Trading Ltd under Seychelles licence SD018 - an offshore regulator with no investor compensation scheme behind it
• Leverage advertised up to 1:5000 through that entity is a genuine hazard, not a feature; at that ratio a 2 pip move against a full-size position wipes the account
• International bank wires can still arrive short: IC Markets deducts nothing, but intermediary and beneficiary banks take their own cut, which no fee table here can predict
• No proprietary trading platform or flagship mobile app - the experience is whatever MetaTrader and cTrader give you, and ForexBrokers.com marks IC Markets down for exactly this
• Research is thin: daily commentary and a podcast rather than a staffed analyst desk, and education has no structured progression
• No ETFs, no options, no funds and no share ownership - stock exposure is CFD-only, so no voting rights and no transferable holdings