Choosing the Best Forex Brokerage

Here are some of the most important factors to keep in mind when choosing the best online forex brokerage for currency trading.

• Regulation: Not all regulatory jurisdictions and licenses are created equal for international forex and CFD Brokers. Investors should know which country their broker is based in and which country’s laws apply to their account. To avoid fraud, it is critical to use a broker that is well-known and well-regulated. To quickly identify brokers you can trust, reference the Trust Score we provide on each broker’s review page.
• Company Policies and History: As part of every investors due diligence process, steps to help ensure account security should include verifying a firm’s regulatory licenses and its legal obligations in safeguarding client monies. It's also important to review the customer agreements, read up on the company's history, and make sure their primary offices are located in a well-respected country, if not your own.
• Range of Markets Offered: It’s always important to determine which markets or individual trading products (currency pair or stock symbol) you want to trade, then check to make sure they are offered. Also check to make sure the products you want to trade are available in your region. See section, “Best offering of Currency Pairs, CFDs” below.
• FX Trading Tools & Platforms:  Which platforms and trading tools are available for the products you are considering? Are compatible with your web browser, computer operating system, or mobile smartphone, or any other devices you are planning to use for trading? See section, “Best Forex Trading Platform” below.
• FX Analysis and Global Market Research: Available research tools for scanning, analyzing, and overall conducting technical and fundamental analysis will vary from broker to broker. See section, “FX Research” below.
• Forex spreads, commissions, and overall trading costs: For forex trading, spreads and any round-turn commissions will make up the all-in cost to complete (open/close) each trade. The same generally applies to CFDs, in terms of bid/ask spreads plus any per trade commission. See section, “Lowest Trading Costs” below.
• Order Execution: Available execution methods can depend on whether the broker is a principal dealer acting as a market-maker, and/or if they are an agency-only broker relying on third-party dealers (liquidity providers). Other execution methods, policies, conditions, or available order types can vary (including premium or free trade protection tools such as guaranteed stop-loss orders, fill-or-kill or fill with within a maximum deviation range) can vary from broker to broker.
• Order Type and Execution: Some execution methods or order-types may incur negative or positive slippage. This means orders will fill but the fill price could be better or worse than requested. Since each broker is different, some firms may re-quote an order with a new price for you to accept (or reject) in the case the price has changed.
• Customer Service: Customer service is important. The scope and quality of support can be a major differentiator across online FX brokerages, ranging from the speed and overall quality of assistance to the availability across global trading hours and international markets. See section, “Customer Service” below.
• Education: Currency trading can be complex. Even seasoned investors are constantly learning to expand their breadth of currency markets. The disparity between currency brokers that provide thorough, high quality education, and those who do not is vast.  See section, “Education” below.