Plus500 vs Capital.com — which broker is better?

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

Pros

• No commission on any CFD and no inactivity fee whatsoever — unusual in the CySEC/FCA CFD segment
• EUR/USD averages roughly 0.7 pips all-in, with spreads advertised from 0.6 pips
• Free deposits and free withdrawals, with a USD 20 minimum via card, Apple Pay or PayPal
• Roughly 5,585 tradeable symbols including 125 FX pairs and about 450 crypto CFDs
• Top-tier regulation through the FCA (793714) and ASIC (513393) alongside CySEC (319/17)
• Mobile app is genuinely at feature parity with the web platform, not a cut-down version
• Choice of proprietary platform, MT4, MT5 and native TradingView integration
• Investmate education and the built-in trading-bias detector are substantive, not marketing filler

Cons

• 0.7% currency conversion markup on every trade settled outside your base currency — the single largest hidden cost here
• Overnight funding adds roughly 4.05% per year over the benchmark rate, which makes multi-week leveraged holds expensive
• No exchange-traded options, futures, bonds or mutual funds — the product set is essentially CFDs only
• Real share dealing (Capital.com Invest) covers only about 1,000 stocks and is limited to selected European countries
• Not publicly listed and founded only in 2016, so there is less financial transparency than at an exchange-listed broker
• Crypto CFDs are unavailable to UK retail clients, and the broker does not accept clients in the US, Canada, Japan, Belgium or Hong Kong