FxPro vs IC Markets — which broker is better?

Pros

• FCA authorisation under firm reference 509956 with FSCS cover to GBP 85,000, plus a CySEC licence (078/07) for EU clients with EUR 20,000 ICF cover.
• Five trading platforms — cTrader, MT4, MT5, TradingView and FxPro Edge — which is more genuine choice than almost any comparable CFD broker offers.
• cTrader support is first-class: Level II depth of market, C# cBots and an execution model that shows you the commission instead of burying it in the spread.
• Raw+ and cTrader accounts charge USD 3.50 per lot per side (USD 7.00 round turn) on FX and metals — transparent, and competitive with the raw-spread mainstream.
• More than 2,100 instruments including roughly 2,000 share CFDs, 70 FX pairs, 28 crypto CFDs and CFDs on energy and agricultural futures.
• Eight base currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, JPY, PLN, AUD, ZAR) and twelve funding routes including PayPal, Skrill, Neteller and crypto, with no fees charged by FxPro.
• Support is 24/5 in a dozen languages and reachable by WhatsApp and Telegram as well as the usual phone, email and chat.

Cons

• The Standard account is not cheap: EUR/USD averages around 1.4 pips with independent measurements running as high as 1.6, well above a raw-spread account's all-in cost.
• Inactivity charges start early — a one-off USD 15 after six months, then USD 5 every month the account stays dormant and funded.
• Everything is a CFD. There are no real shares, no ETFs you can hold, no bonds and no exchange-listed futures — only derivatives with overnight financing attached.
• Education is the weakest dimension: adequate video and article material, but well behind brokers that treat beginner training as a product.
• FxPro Edge, the proprietary platform, has no mobile version, so the mobile experience falls back to a comparatively basic app.
• The offshore Bahamas entity offers much higher leverage than the FCA and CySEC books, which means the protections you get depend heavily on which entity onboards you.

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