Exness vs ThinkMarkets — 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

• 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