IG vs Cornèrtrader — which broker is better?

Pros

• Around 17,000 tradable markets in a single account — shares, indices, FX, commodities, bonds, ETFs, turbo warrants and crypto CFDs, subject to regional restrictions
• Six top-tier licences — FCA (FRN 195355), BaFin, FINMA, ASIC (AFSL 515106), MAS and JFSA — plus a mid-tier DFSA licence in Dubai; the FINMA licence among those six is a full Swiss banking licence at IG Bank S.A., which puts Swiss cash under esisuisse protection
• Zero commission on UK and international shares, and the GBP 24 quarterly custody fee was scrapped outright in January 2026 rather than merely waived for active traders
• Platform stack that scales with the trader: web and mobile for most, ProRealTime for charting and backtesting, L2 Dealer for full order-book DMA, plus MT4, TradingView and documented REST/streaming APIs
• US-listed options from USD 1.00 per contract to open with nothing to close, and futures at USD 1.00 per contract per side (USD 0.75 on micros) — rare for a European retail broker
• No inactivity fee at all, where most rivals start charging after three to twelve dormant months, and no minimum deposit on any account
• Weekend dealing on the FTSE 100 and Wall Street, plus published client-sentiment data showing how IG's own book is positioned

Cons

• The 0.8% currency conversion mark-up on foreign-currency CFD and spread bet trades is where much of the real cost hides — on a USD position round-trip it comfortably exceeds the spread
• EUR/USD at roughly 0.9 pips is mid-table; raw-spread brokers quote 0.1–0.3 pips plus a small commission and work out cheaper for anyone trading FX frequently
• The 0.49% share dealing conversion rate is a discretionary discount rather than a contractual one — IG has committed to it only until 4 September 2026 and can raise it afterwards
• No fractional shares on IG's own platform, which creates real cash drag when drip-feeding small sums into high-priced US stocks
• Pricing genuinely differs by entity and account type — UK GBP share dealing, multi-currency share dealing, IG Europe and IG Bank all run separate schedules, and the published tables are hard to reconcile
• Crypto CFDs are unavailable to UK retail clients under the FCA ban, so the headline market count overstates what a UK resident can actually trade

Pros

• Cornèr Bank Ltd is a FINMA-supervised Swiss bank founded in 1952 and ranked second in Switzerland for capital strength in The Banker's Top 1000 World Banks 2026
• A genuine multi-asset platform: shares, ETFs, ETPs, ETNs, ETCs, bonds, mutual funds, FX spot, FX options, futures and micro futures, listed stock options and CFDs on indices, single stocks, commodities, bonds and forex
• More than 40,000 tradable instruments and over 10,000 pieces of research covering technical, fundamental and momentum analysis, included rather than sold as a subscription
• Trading and banking in one relationship: multi-currency account, free Visa debit card, no separate cash transfer needed to move between investing and spending
• Free demo platform available without opening an account — rare among Swiss bank-owned brokers and the best way to test the terminal first
• Commissions fall sharply with portfolio size: SIX drops from 0.12% to 0.07% and US shares from 0.15% to 0.08% across the four tiers
• Securities lending is offered as an optional way to generate income from an existing equity portfolio

Cons

• The most expensive tier applies by default — Cornèrtrader states explicitly that if no other agreement is in place, the highest price category in the table applies
• The entry CONSISTENCY tier is limited to a single account currency, so a CHF-based client buying US or German shares is forced into a currency conversion on every trade
• Every conversion for a foreign-currency trade carries a 0.5% mark-up over the FX spot mid-price — more than the 0.15% commission on a US share order at the entry tier
• Incoming securities transfers require a minimum accepted amount of CHF 30,000 at every tier except ENERGY, which blocks smaller portfolios from consolidating here
• No spot cryptocurrency — only Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs and ETPs
• Cornèr Bank is privately held and not listed, so there is no share price or continuous market scrutiny of the counterparty, only periodic published accounts