Skilling vs BlackBull Markets — which broker is better?

Pros

• Three platforms on one account: the beginner-friendly Skilling Trader, full cTrader with depth of market and cTrader Automate, and MetaTrader 4
• EUR 100 minimum on the Standard account with commission-free pricing across forex, indices, equities, ETFs, commodities and crypto
• Premium pairs EUR/USD spreads from 0.1 pips with commission of USD 35 per USD 1 million traded, which prices at or below the commission-free tier once volume builds
• CySEC licence 357/18 brings ESMA retail leverage caps and Investor Compensation Fund cover of 90% up to EUR 20,000 for EEA clients
• 800+ instruments on cTrader and Skilling Trader, including a crypto list broader than most FX-first brokers carry
• Account registration takes under a minute and the demo account has no time limit, so testing costs nothing
• Negative balance protection applies, and MAM/PAMM structures are supported for portfolio managers
• cTrader Copy provides copy trading without a separate app or a managed-fund wrapper

Cons

• Premium commission is quoted per USD 1 million of traded volume without saying whether it applies per side or per round turn, so a standard-lot round turn costs anywhere from USD 4.50 to USD 8.00 all-in — and the tier is gated by a reported EUR 5,000 minimum
• 0.70% currency conversion is expensive: converting EUR 10,000 costs about EUR 70, where the cheapest brokers charge a fraction of that, and a 2.9% charge applies to Skrill and Neteller funding
• Support runs Monday to Friday 04:00–22:00 only, with no weekend cover, while crypto CFDs trade through the weekend
• Essentially no in-house research — no analyst desk, no screener worth using, no structured market coverage; you supply your own analysis
• MetaTrader 4 is a restricted build with roughly 200 instruments and no third-party add-on support, and MetaTrader 5 is not offered at all
• CFD-only with no real ownership, and no Abgeltungsteuer or KESt withholding for German and Austrian clients

Pros

• No minimum deposit at all — every account tier including Prime opens from USD 0
• Prime pricing of USD 3.00 per lot per side with EUR/USD averaging 0.16 pips — about USD 7.60 all-in on a standard-lot round turn
• Platform range beats brokers many times its size: MT4, MT5, cTrader, native TradingView, in-house CopyTrader, ZuluTrade and Myfxbook
• LMAX ECN liquidity into Equinix-hosted servers with sub-100ms average execution — genuine institutional plumbing rather than marketing language
• 24/7 support across phone, email, live chat and dedicated English and Spanish WhatsApp lines, consistently praised in recent public feedback
• No inactivity fee, no custody fee, no account fee, and nine base currencies including NZD, SGD and ZAR
• Milford Asset Management, a NZ$34bn manager, holds a minority stake — an outside investor with reputational skin in the game
• BlackBull Invest adds real ownership of 26,000+ shares, options, ETFs and bonds alongside the leveraged accounts

Cons

• No investor compensation scheme under either entity — New Zealand has none and the Seychelles has none, so segregation is the only protection if the firm fails
• USD 5 charged on every withdrawal, in the account base currency, which almost no direct competitor does; small or frequent withdrawals get expensive fast
• The commission-free ECN Standard tier is not the cheap option it looks like — EUR/USD averaged 1.16 pips over the twelve months to October 2025, about USD 11.60 per standard-lot round turn against USD 7.60 on Prime
• Not available to EU, UK or Indian residents by BlackBull's own disclosure, which rules it out for German and Austrian readers entirely
• BlackBull does not publish which countries are onboarded to which legal entity, so you may not know which regulator covers you until you read the agreement
• Research is thin — a hub of daily snapshots and a podcast, with no screener depth or serious analytical tooling
• Privately held with no banking licence and no exchange listing — audited accounts surface once a year on the New Zealand register and not in between; the credit ratings quoted on its compliance page are those of custodian banks, not of BlackBull