IC Markets vs moomoo — which broker is better?

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

Pros

• Free Nasdaq TotalView Level 2 depth on the US platform — Webull charges USD 3.99 per month for comparable data
• USD 0 commission and USD 0 contract fee on US stocks, ETFs and equity options for US residents
• A desktop terminal with institutional-holdings tracking, heat maps, an options strategy builder and 100+ indicators, plus the newer moomoo NX shell
• Parent Futu Holdings is Nasdaq-listed (FUTU) and clearing runs through an in-house FINRA/SIPC member, Futu Clearing Inc., rather than a third party
• Five regulated entities across the US, Singapore, Australia, Canada and Malaysia, including CIPF cover of CAD 1,000,000 for Canadian clients
• No inactivity fee, no maintenance fee, no minimum deposit, and free ACH in and out
• Multi-market equity access — US, Hong Kong and China A-shares appear on the same platform, which most zero-commission apps cannot do

Cons

• Available to residents of only seven countries — the United States, Canada, Singapore, Australia, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand — with no EU, UK or DACH entity
• Parent company Futu was publicly named by China's CSRC in 2022 over unlicensed cross-border brokerage; mainland onboarding stopped and the apps were removed from mainland stores in 2023
• Trustpilot sentiment is mixed at roughly 2.4–3.4 out of 5 depending on locale, with slow support responses the most common complaint
• No futures, no bonds and no traditional mutual fund supermarket for US retail clients — futures exist only via the Singapore and Australia entities
• Non-US residents pay a materially worse schedule on the same US market: USD 0.005 per share with a USD 1.00 order minimum
• Only ACH moves money for free: an outgoing wire costs USD 20 domestic or USD 25 international, and an outgoing account transfer costs USD 75