Exness vs BlackBull Markets — which broker is better?

Pros

• Raw Spread account prices majors at 0.0 pips for up to USD 3.50 per lot per side, and the Zero account starts from USD 0.20 per side on 30 headline instruments
• Automated withdrawals process 24/7 and are typically instant back to the original method, with no Exness-side fee in either direction
• No inactivity fee at all — a dormant balance is not eroded, unlike at most competitors
• Standard account opens from around USD 10 with no commission and typical EUR/USD spreads of 0.8–1.0 pips
• Exness Terminal is a real in-house web platform on a TradingView chart engine, not a MetaTrader skin, and the mobile app includes drag-to-modify stops and a built-in risk calculator
• Publishes audited group financial statements — unusual transparency for an offshore-licensed broker
• 24/7 support across roughly fifteen languages with fast first-response times

Cons

• The retail entity is Exness (SC) Ltd under the Seychelles FSA (SD025) — a tier-3 licence with no investor compensation scheme behind it
• The FCA (730729) and CySEC (178/12) licences cover institutional and professional business only; EEA and UK retail clients are not onboarded, which rules Exness out for most German, Austrian and Swiss-resident readers
• Narrow product range: roughly 240 symbols on the web terminal with no ETFs, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded options or futures
• Copy trading is being phased out and is no longer taking new users, removing a feature many clients originally signed up for
• The proprietary terminal still lacks OCO orders, trailing stops and depth of market — you have to fall back to MetaTrader 5 for those
• Leverage marketed as unlimited is a real risk amplifier for inexperienced traders, and the Seychelles entity carries none of the ESMA-style guardrails

Pros

• No minimum deposit at all — every account tier including Prime opens from USD 0
• Prime pricing of USD 3.00 per lot per side with EUR/USD averaging 0.16 pips — about USD 7.60 all-in on a standard-lot round turn
• Platform range beats brokers many times its size: MT4, MT5, cTrader, native TradingView, in-house CopyTrader, ZuluTrade and Myfxbook
• LMAX ECN liquidity into Equinix-hosted servers with sub-100ms average execution — genuine institutional plumbing rather than marketing language
• 24/7 support across phone, email, live chat and dedicated English and Spanish WhatsApp lines, consistently praised in recent public feedback
• No inactivity fee, no custody fee, no account fee, and nine base currencies including NZD, SGD and ZAR
• Milford Asset Management, a NZ$34bn manager, holds a minority stake — an outside investor with reputational skin in the game
• BlackBull Invest adds real ownership of 26,000+ shares, options, ETFs and bonds alongside the leveraged accounts

Cons

• No investor compensation scheme under either entity — New Zealand has none and the Seychelles has none, so segregation is the only protection if the firm fails
• USD 5 charged on every withdrawal, in the account base currency, which almost no direct competitor does; small or frequent withdrawals get expensive fast
• The commission-free ECN Standard tier is not the cheap option it looks like — EUR/USD averaged 1.16 pips over the twelve months to October 2025, about USD 11.60 per standard-lot round turn against USD 7.60 on Prime
• Not available to EU, UK or Indian residents by BlackBull's own disclosure, which rules it out for German and Austrian readers entirely
• BlackBull does not publish which countries are onboarded to which legal entity, so you may not know which regulator covers you until you read the agreement
• Research is thin — a hub of daily snapshots and a podcast, with no screener depth or serious analytical tooling
• Privately held with no banking licence and no exchange listing — audited accounts surface once a year on the New Zealand register and not in between; the credit ratings quoted on its compliance page are those of custodian banks, not of BlackBull