Eightcap vs ThinkMarkets — which broker is better?

Pros

• Raw account is cheap for the segment: 0.0-pip spreads plus roughly USD 3.50 per side per standard lot, or about USD 7 round turn on EUR/USD
• Best-in-class TradingView integration — trade the live account from TradingView charts across 1,000+ symbols, not just a read-only feed
• Four platforms on one account: MT4, MT5, TradingView and TradeLocker, so you are not locked into MetaTrader
• No inactivity fee and no internal deposit or withdrawal fees, including on PayPal, Skrill, Neteller and crypto rails
• Low USD 100 minimum on both account types, with seven base currencies including EUR and GBP
• Broad funding menu with regional rails (INTERAC, PIX, UnionPay, Thai QR) and instant card, wallet and crypto deposits
• The regulated entities check out on primary sources: Eightcap Pty Ltd has held ASIC AFSL 391441 since 2009, Eightcap Group Ltd appears on the FCA register under FRN 921296, and Eightcap EU Ltd holds CySEC licence 246/14 granted in July 2014
• Negative balance protection on the ASIC-, FCA- and CySEC-booked entities, and an 80% margin call / 50% stop-out ladder that is stated up front

Cons

• The group's legal-documents page still lists only Bahamas (SIA-F220), Seychelles (SD100), Mauritius (GB25204603) and a St Vincent company, so the one page built to tell you who you contract with names none of the regulated entities — and the FCA has published a clone warning for 'Eightcap VIP' / eightcap.vip, which is not the authorised firm
• CFDs only: no real shares, no ETFs, no bonds, no funds, no listed options or futures, and no spot crypto you can withdraw
• Share-CFD commissions are not published on the public account-comparison page, so equity traders cannot price a trade before opening an account
• No proprietary mobile app — you are handed MetaTrader, TradingView or TradeLocker, none of which carry Eightcap's own onboarding, funding and reporting flow
• Up to 500:1 leverage on the offshore entities, which is a retail-harm risk dressed as a selling point
• No withholding of German Abgeltungsteuer or Austrian KESt — CFD gains must be declared yourself, and German losses from Termingeschäfte face restrictive offsetting rules

Pros

• ThinkZero all-in EUR/USD cost of about 0.8 pips - raw spreads from 0.0 pips plus USD 3.50 per lot per side on forex and metals
• Three top-tier licences - FCA 629628, ASIC AFSL 424700 and JFSA registration 0250 - alongside CySEC 215/13 and FSCA FSP 49835
• Roughly 3,260 instruments on ThinkMarkets' own contract table, including 2,796 share CFDs and 324 ETF CFDs, which is unusually broad for a CFD-only broker
• ThinkTrader mobile is a full trading client with proper charting, drawing tools and server-side alerts, and is consistently rated among the best mobile apps in the category
• No minimum deposit on the Standard account and no broker fee on deposits or withdrawals on the published methods
• Seven base currencies including CHF, AUD, SGD and NZD, which removes a conversion layer for clients outside the euro and dollar
• Copy trading through both the in-house ThinkCopy layer and the ZuluTrade network, plus MT4, MT5 and TradingView on the same account

Cons

• 75 percent of ThinkMarkets UK retail accounts lose money trading CFDs, and disclosures across the group's entities have ranged from roughly 68 percent to 89 percent
• Withdrawals are the recurring complaint in public reviews: repeated document requests on already-verified accounts, multi-week delays, and disputed payments marked as successful. A USD 100 minimum withdrawal adds friction on top
• Dormancy is charged on the UK entity: GBP 10 per month from day 181 without a trade, for as long as the balance is positive. The CySEC, ASIC and offshore entities publish no comparable figure we could verify
• No published currency conversion rate, so the true cost of trading a US share CFD from a EUR or GBP account cannot be modelled before you trade
• The FG Acquisition Corp SPAC merger that would have listed the group in Toronto never completed, so there are no public accounts and no listed-company disclosure
• No listed options, no exchange-traded futures, no bonds, no funds and no share ownership - the entire book is contracts for difference