Pepperstone vs IC Markets — which broker is better?

Pros

• Razor all-in EUR/USD cost of about 0.8 pips - a 0.0 to 0.1 pip raw spread plus USD 3.50 per lot per side
• No inactivity fee, no account-keeping fee and no account closure fee, confirmed on Pepperstone's own costs page
• Five execution venues on one account: MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView and the in-house Pepperstone Platform
• Three top-tier licences - FCA 684312, ASIC AFSL 414530 and BaFin 151148 - so most clients contract with a tier-1 supervised entity
• EUR, CHF and GBP accounts at every European entity (UK, Cyprus, Germany), which removes a layer of conversion cost for European clients
• Account approval typically inside 4-8 hours, with a USD 10 minimum first deposit and no minimum by bank transfer
• Active Trader rebates take the all-in EUR/USD cost down to roughly 0.26 pips at high volume
• UK clients get the same book as spread bets, with EUR/USD from 0.6 points

Cons

• Everything is a CFD. You never own the share or ETF, so there are no voting rights, no transferable holdings and no dividend tax reclaim
• Overnight financing on index and share CFDs is charged at 2.5 percent over the benchmark rate, which quietly punishes anyone holding for more than a few weeks
• No options, futures, bonds or mutual funds - the product shelf is narrow next to a full-service broker
• Education is a webinar and article archive rather than a curriculum; ForexBrokers.com marks it down for having no interactive courses or quizzes
• FIX API access is reported to need around USD 250 million in monthly volume, so systematic traders are confined to MT4, MT5 or cTrader automation
• Pepperstone publishes no headline currency conversion rate, which makes the true cost of a US share CFD from a EUR account hard to model before you trade

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