IG vs moomoo — 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

• 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