OANDA vs Plus500 — which broker is better?

Pros

• Regulated by six tier-1 authorities - CFTC/NFA, FCA (542574), CIRO, ASIC (AFSL 412981), MAS and the JFSA - a licence footprint almost nobody in retail FX matches
• Trading since 1996, with client money segregated and FSCS cover up to GBP 85,000 for UK clients and CIPF cover up to CAD 1,000,000 in Canada
• No minimum deposit at all - you can open and fund a live account with any amount you choose
• The mobile app is the strongest in this comparison set: full order management, alerts and charting rather than a cut-down position viewer
• Research rated 5 out of 5 by ForexBrokers.com - MarketPulse commentary, Autochartist integration, news feeds and podcasts, all in-house rather than bought in
• Share CFD commission of 0.06 percent of notional per side with no minimum, which is cheap on small tickets where per-order minimums usually bite
• Open REST and streaming API through Algo Labs, with no punitive volume threshold attached
• Available to US, Canadian and Japanese residents, who cannot open accounts at most global CFD brokers

Cons

• The default spread-only account is expensive: EUR/USD has been measured at 1.4 to 1.7 pips against roughly 0.8 pips all-in at raw-spread competitors
• Core pricing closes most of that gap but is reported to require a USD 10,000 balance, so the cheap tariff is not available to the clients who need it most
• A 1.0 percent currency conversion mark-up applies whenever the instrument currency differs from your account currency - the largest hidden cost in this review
• Inactivity fee of up to USD 20 a month - GBP 20 at the UK entity - after twelve months without an open or active position, though up to three months are refundable once you trade again
• No options, no futures and no mutual funds; outside the EU no share ownership either (the EU entity, OANDA TMS Brokers S.A., offers real shares and ETFs, held by a custodian in an omnibus account in OANDA TMS's name) - and the product list varies so much by entity that US clients get forex and spot crypto only
• Support is 24/5 rather than 24/7, with narrower language coverage than the Australian competitors

Pros

• The mobile app is fast, clear and well designed, and consistently among the top-rated trading apps in both stores, backed by a Trustpilot average around 4.2 from nearly 20,000 reviews
• Zero commission on every CFD instrument: no per-trade charge, no deposit fee and no withdrawal fee from Plus500's side
• Licensed by FCA (FRN 509909), ASIC (AFSL 417727), MAS (CMS100648-1), CIRO in Canada and CFTC/NFA in the US, with Plus500 Ltd listed on the London Stock Exchange and publishing audited accounts
• Account opening genuinely takes 10–30 minutes with electronic ID verification, and the USD 100 minimum makes it accessible
• Widest funding menu of the three brokers here — cards, SEPA and bank transfer, PayPal, Skrill, Apple Pay and Google Pay
• Swap-free status on request under the Plus500Gulf and Plus500SEY agreements, with a daily administration fee shown per instrument after a seven-day grace period
• Free guaranteed stop orders on many instruments, charged only through a wider spread rather than a separate premium

Cons

• The inactivity fee of up to USD 10 per month triggers after just three months of not logging in — not three months without trading. Three months of dormancy is normal, healthy behaviour, and charging for it is indefensible
• No MetaTrader 4 or 5, no cTrader, no TradingView integration and no API, so algorithmic traders, EA users and anyone with an existing charting workflow are locked out entirely
• Plus500 publishes no spread table. Costs are visible only inside the platform, which makes independent cost comparison against IG or CMC effectively impossible before you fund an account
• Research is close to non-existent — an economic calendar, basic sentiment data and price alerts, with no analyst coverage, no screeners and no third-party news feed of substance
• Around 2,800 CFD instruments against 12,029 at CMC and 17,000 at IG, with no bonds, no funds, no spread betting and no exchange-traded options for CFD clients
• Disclosed regulatory history: a 2012 FCA fine of GBP 205,128 for inaccurate transaction reporting, a 2015 FCA-ordered freeze of UK accounts pending AML review, and a EUR 550,000 settlement with Belgium's FSMA in 2017