In my opinion, finding the completely best ECN forex brokers is not easy as brokers have their own advantages and disadvantages. While US and UK brokers are more reliable than the rest of the world, Cyprus brokers offer more attractive trading conditions. Hence, we can only determine the best ECN forex brokers if we know your countries and your trading strategies.
Here is the list of top 5 best international ECN forex brokers for your reference.
| No | Broker names | Rating |
| 1 | Exness | 8/10 |
| 2 | FxPro | 7.5/10 |
| 3 | XM | 7.5/10 |
| 4 | ICmarkets | 7/10 |
| 5 | FXTM | 6.5/10 |
There are of course many criteria making ECN forex brokers the best, but followings are the most important ones.
- RELIABILITY
This is the leading standard that the top ECN brokers should have because most of his traders are the big ones who are willing to deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars to trusty brokers, and also, they can pay more to avoid bad brokers.
To determine the best brokers, we can look at their regulations. Now I will show you more about regulations so that you can understand more clearly.
- Definition: Regulations are profit or non-profit organizations managing regulated brokers. Every single one of them has its own regulations that all regulated brokers follow such as maximum leverage, quotes quality, broker’s minimum operation fund, bonus, etc. And as it is hard to get a regulation, the more reliable the regulation is, the more reliable the broker is.
- Death disadvantages: With regulations, brokers are not allowed to offer high leverage, which makes their trading volume and income lower. Also, they have to pay regulation fees, insurances for clients’ fund and segregated accounts. As a result, they have no choice but charging more spread and commission. So it can be said that the more regulations they have, the less competitive they will be.
The problem here is that most reliable regulations are from US and UK, but they don’t protect traders in the rest of the world. That will put Asian and African traders at a disadvantage if they pay more for those regulated brokers but no one protects them when something bad happens.
- My orientation about regulation: To me, the more regulations a broker has doesn’t mean the better he will be. Regulations of course can demonstrate his ability, but the more regulations, the more cost. So just one trusty regulation is enough.
| No | Broker names | Regulations |
| 1 | Exness.com | CySEC, FCA (UK) |
| 2 | FxPro.com | CySEC, FCA (UK), DFSA (Dubai), FSB (South Africa) |
| 3 | XM.com | CySEC, FCA, ASIC |
| 4 | ICmarkets.com | ASIC (Australia) |
| 5 | FXTM.com | IFSC |
Above is the list of top ECN forex brokers and their regulations. And you know, they are really reliable because they are in top biggest forex brokers in the world:
- Exness: trading volume is $400 billion monthly.
- XM: $300 billion.
- FxPro: $100 billion.
They have been operated for more than 10 years with no scam report. There are of course some complaints in social network that you may see, but that is just the misunderstanding of beginners on the trading systems.
- LOWER TRADING COST
These brokers offer the lowest trading cost. Their spread and commission are lower.
Example:
- Spread:
Forex.com and FXCM: from 1.7-2 pips
Exness: from 0.0xx pip, sometimes zero
- Commission:
Exness: $5 per lot
ICMarket: $6-7 per lot
XM: $6 per lot
They have better payment methods for Asia, Africa and Australia. Differently from US and UK brokers who can only offer good services in their countries, these ECN brokers offer various payment systems not only in their countries but also in others. For instance, Exness provides over 30 different payment methods and free-charged local payment systems. Moreover, with an auto system, your withdrawal time in Exness will be within seconds.
- BETTER REBATES/ BONUSES
Instead of concentrating too much on rebates/ bonuses, most experts pay more attention on brokers’ credibility, spread, and swap and payment systems as they invest too much money to care about that. However, rebates are also worth to cost at some points. For example, if you get $5 per lot, it means you are saving 0.5 pip spread.
Among top 5 ECN brokers I mentioned, only FXTM and XM provide beginners with very attractive rebates. You can get $30 welcome bonus when creating your first-time account. Also, you can get 100% bonus when depositing.
- BETTER TRADING CONDITION
- Better quotes:
As I investigated, 95% of 100 traders thought that ECN account had no competitor in trading. However, 80% of them are trading with Market Maker and STP accounts.
So why do they act like that?
Simply, it is because trading with ECN account is risky for starters as its quotes are much more volatile than STP and MM accounts. Also, it has higher slippages, unstable quotes, and no-quote errors and gaps.
In ECN market, hundreds of thousands of traders are taking advantages and cheating each other, so they of course will choose to trade with brokers providing more stable quotes and less slippage.
- Factors making their quotes better:
Do big forex brokers with liquidity providers offer better quotes? The answer is no because they provide quotes by themselves, so their quotes will be unstable. Also, there are a lot of no-quote errors, slippages and gaps.
On the other hand, these ECN brokers get quotes from 10 liquidity providers at the same time, so if any liquidity provider gets quote problems, they can get quotes from others.
Let me show you top 3 best ECN broker quotes:
- com
- FxPro
- ICMarkets
- BETTER TRADING PLATFORMS
When talking about trading platforms, I think no broker can overtake FxPro and XM because of their compatibility with some operation systems like Windows Vista and XP. Also, they can install in phones.
- BETTER LOCAL SUPPORT
These brokers not only can support in English but also can support over 20 languages in average. They support by live chat, phone, and even local offices 24/7 for top most popular languages such as English, Chinese and Thai.
They work mainly in Asian and African countries like China, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, Malaysia, Vietnam, Iran, Russia, and Arabic, etc. With the countries that they have offices in such as China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Dubai, they will support by local offices, and in other places they will support by live chat and phone.
Here, I give you some examples about some brokers’ support:
- Exness supports 24/7 with 13 languages. (Click here for Exness reviews)
- XM supports 24/7 with 30 languages.
- FxPro supports 19 languages.
In conclusion, it is hard to select the absolutely best ECN forex brokers. However, with the criteria I share with you in this article, I hope you can choose the most suitable one for you, and also, I wish you can step into the trading world with confidence.