Best UK Spread Betting Platforms

Firstly, Pepperstone has the fastest execution speed of any spread betting platform in the UK, we know because we have tested the execution speeds of brokers. Trading platforms you can use with Pepperstone include MT4, MT5, cTrader, and TradingView.

We like TradingView as it has over 100 charts and technical indicators, making it a good choice if you like technical analysis. The broker’s spreads are competitive; for example, they have 1.12 pips for EUR/USD and they have won several awards for customer service over the years.

75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

Pepperstone offers its spread betting account with variable spreads and no commissions, similar to their standard CFD account; however, we noticed the spreads were tighter than those of the CFD account.

While trading the EUR/USD, we found the spread to average one pip, which is lower than their CFD spread of 1.12 pips. This spread is decent as you save on the variable spreads and the taxes on your profits.

While reviewing the broker, we asked our analyst, Ross Collins, to see how fast the broker’s execution speeds are. Execution speed is important when it comes to trading, as the faster the speed, the less you’ll experience slippage, which can cost you a few pips when entering (or exiting a position), like a stealth cost.

Ross found that Pepperstone had one of the best execution speeds out of the 15 brokers he tested, averaging a limit order speed of 77 ms and a market order speed of 100 ms. This speed placed the broker the fastest of any of the UK spread betting companies by some margin.

Good range of trading platforms

Pepperstone launched spread betting in UK with MetaTrader 4 and then was the first UK broker to offer TradingView with spread bet functionality. The broker also offers MT5 and cTrader. We personally find their TradingView offering the best which is outstanding for technical analysis with its 110+ indicators and advanced tools, like the market screener we tested. This is also the recommended software package recommended for forex trading.

This tool lets us search for specific markets that currently meet our criteria so we can quickly analyse them. You can set the criteria for your search to find candlestick patterns like hammers and dojis or specific technical indicators such as price crossing the Moving Average.

We think a tool like this can be helpful, especially if you spread bet during the day, as it can help you find markets that automatically meet your criteria.

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75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

We highly recommend Spreadex for its diverse account offerings. Beyond the traditional financial instruments like Forex, Gold, Silver, and Energies, it uniquely offers sports spread betting.

If you are keen on accessing over 10,000 financial instruments on a world-class platform or placing a bet on your favourite EPL football team, Spreadex stands out as a top choice. Its unique fusion of finance and sports makes it an appealing option for traders and enthusiasts.

64% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

Spreadex is the only broker on our list that lets you spread bet on financial and sports markets. With our live account, we found the broker offered 10,000 financial markets to spread bet with, covering major markets such as forex, indices, shares, and commodities.

For sports spread betting, the broker offers markets on 20+ sports, including tennis, football, and horse racing. This type of betting is a popular alternative to fixed-odds betting as the more accurate your bet is, the more potential upside you can potentially have, while with fixed odds, it is capped.

When we opened our Spreadex account, we appreciated that there was no minimum deposit, allowing you to fund your account with as much as you are happy to risk. We like it when brokers do this, as it means you don’t get forced to deposit more funds than you want to, especially if you are just starting and trying a live account for the first time.

As for trading spreads, Spreadex averaged 0.83 pips on EUR/USD, which is cheap compared to the rest of the industry. Low spreads save you money on your trading costs and boosts your profit margin.

With City Index, you can only use spread betting through the City Index Trading Platform. One of the perks of this platform is that it offers a guaranteed stop-loss order. This stop loss allows you to manage risk effectively while betting on 4,500+ markets.

If you want access to top risk management tools, then City Index is our pick with the guaranteed stop loss order and the performance analysis tool.

71% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

City Index Web Trader is the broker’s flagship platform that uses TradingView’s charting to analyse the markets, letting you use its wide range of indicators and drawing tools.

One of the reasons the Web Trader stood out for us was that we could add guaranteed stop-loss orders on our spread bets – something not all brokers offer. Using a GLSO is excellent if you want to protect your losses from slippage, especially in volatile markets.

We also liked that they offered a selection of trading tools, such as Performance Analytics, which will review your performance in real-time and provide feedback on how you can improve and your strengths and weaknesses. You can also access their SMART Signals, which uses price action patterns to find new daily trading opportunities.

The broker also offers more popular platforms, such as MetaTrader 4 and TradingView to spread bet with. However, in our testing, you couldn’t apply the GLSO to your orders on the MetaTrader 4 or TradingView platforms.

Even though Web Trader uses TradingView’s charting, it lacks features that allow you to develop indicators and trading strategies that you’d find with MetaTrader 4 and TradingView’s main platform.

The spreads on City Index are among the most competitive we’ve tested, averaging 0.7 pips on EUR/USD to help lower your trading costs. From our testing, we think these spreads were lower than the industry average but not as low as Pepperstone mentioned earlier.

We highly recommend the IG Group, the pioneers of financial spread betting since 1974. With a selection of 17,000+ products from stocks to options, it’s evident why we favour IG Group if you’re keen on exploring a vast range of markets. If there’s a spread bet market you’re eyeing, chances are, IG Group has got you covered.

70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

IG Group has the most markets available compared to the other brokers we’ve tested, offering an impressive 17,000 markets. We found the broker to offer 80+ forex, 130 indices, 12,000+ shares (ISA), 14 commodities, 14 fixed income and 6,000+ ETF products covering every major market, making the broker an excellent choice if you trade different assets.

A product that stood out for us was its options markets, which were also offered on its spread betting account, giving you access to major assets but utilising the options derivative. Options are financial derivatives that give the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a specified price, known as the strike price, before or on a specified date, known as the expiration date.

We found that these markets let you take advantage of the market price going up (or down) and how volatile the asset is. The more aggressive the price moves, the more you can potentially make, improving the potential returns and making options an excellent alternative to traditional trading markets.

If you want access to the full range of markets, we found you had to use the IG Trading Platform. The broker’s platform is web-based, so you don’t have to download anything to run, making it accessible across multiple devices.

Although the charting isn’t the most advanced, it has 40+ indicators and drawing tools, more than MetaTrader 4, and the platform integrates well with IG Group’s other tools. These tools include Signal Centre and Market Sentiment, which can help you find new trading ideas or validate current ones.

We recommend FXCM for its competitive spreads starting from 0.7 pips and its commendable range of markets, notably in shares. What sets FXCM apart is its unique provision of spread betting on the MetaTrader 4 platform.

With access to thousands of custom indicators and the benefit of automated trading, we consider this online trading broker to be an excellent choice for those keen on trading with MetaTrader 4.

62% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

FXCM provides several platforms for spread betting, but we think the broker pairs well with MetaTrader 4. While using the platform, we found it offers a range of tools for different trading styles, from scalping to automating your trading strategies, such as one-click trading and expert advisors.

We like that FXCM also offers 11 Expert Advisors, which expand MT4’s tools and are useful for trade management on the platform, which it lacks. You can find these apps on FXCM’s app website, allowing you to choose helpful trading scrips like Close All Orders EA or new indicators like Pivot Points.

Alternatively, if you have a successful strategy you want to automate but lack the programming knowledge for MT4’s EAs, we found that FXCM offers Capitalise.ai. This no-code tool will use AI to automate your trading strategies for free and plug into your MetaTrader 4 (or TradingStation account).

When we tested the platform, we liked its easy-to-follow interactive tutorial that helped us generate basic automation within minutes of signing up. To get a strategy up and running, we had to type out the conditions we’d like the strategy to meet, and the AI would work out the rest for us.

Afterwards, we could backtest the strategy to review its past performance and even set it up for forward testing (on a demo account) to see how it performs in live market conditions without risking a penny.

As for trading costs, our analyst Ross Collins tested the broker’s account to compare its average spreads and found their spreads to be one of the lowest in our tests. Ross found that FXCM offered an average spread of 0.93 pips on EUR/USD, which came second overall for lowest spreads behind CMC Markets.

FXPro has an excellent trading platform with over 50 indicators, four pending order types, 15 time frames and sentiment tools for the Forex majors. Combined with these features, the FxPro Edge makes a solid pick for the best spread bet trading platform.

75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

While exploring FxPro’s services, we found the broker offers multiple trading apps you can download, including MetaTrader 4, MT5, cTrader, and FxPro Edge. However, only FxPro’s Edge platform gave us access to spread betting markets.

With this in mind, we tested the FxPro Trading App, which covered the basics of what we’d expect from a trading app. It has TradingView mobile charts integrated with the platform, allowing you to perform decent technical analysis on a mobile device, especially when extending the chart to full screen. You can also access TradingView’s full suite of 80+ trading indicators, including moving averages and MACDs, but its economic calendar stuck out for us.

The economic calendar lets you set reminders that will send push notifications to your device, so you can use this to remind you when high-impact news events are to either take advantage of or avoid the markets around the time. The push notifications are especially helpful if you day trade so you can know when the market volatility will increase, helping you avoid more expensive trading times.

With the trading app, we found you can access FxPro’s excellent market selection that offers 69 currency pairs, 30 indices, eight commodities, and 2031 shares to spread bet with.

We rated OANDA as having the best beginner spread betting broker in the UK. We like that the broker’s platform (OANDA Trade) is user-friendly with excellent charting tools and allows you to trade smaller deal sizes, making it ideal for beginners.

76.6% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

We were impressed with OANDA’s proprietary trading platform, OANDA Trade, and its beginner-friendly features, such as low trade sizes, default trading, and guaranteed stop-loss orders. These features can help you transition from demo to live trading without being forced to trade larger sizes and protect your capital from slippage with GLSO, saving you potential losses.

When using the OANDA Trade platform, we think the default trading settings are a big quality-of-life improvement for a beginner. We liked that you could set up your default trade sizes, stop loss (including GLSO), and take profit orders in pips that will auto-populate in your order tickets for each trade.

In addition, the platform offers a solid trading experience by leveraging TradingView’s charting software, which lets you customise your charts with 80+ technical indicators and 30+ drawing tools.

The broker’s trading costs were also impressive. It offered 0.60 pips on EUR/USD, the lowest in our testing, beating other low-cost brokers such as IG Group and City Index. In fact, the average spread across the five major pairs was 0.70 pips, the lowest we found, compared to the next closest broker, City Index, which offered 1.24 pips.

Low spreads make OANDA a top choice if you are a beginner, as you’ll save money on your trading costs, allowing you to keep more of your profits.

We found CMC offers the most choices when betting on forex markets. The broker offers over 300 Forex pairs to bet on with spreads on par with the average brokers.

It also has a solid selection of markets with 90+ indices, 110+ hard and soft commodities and over 50 treasuries. If you’re trading primarily currencies, this is one broker we recommend considering.

69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

From our testing, we found CMC Markets offers the largest choice of currency pairs, making it an ideal choice if you focus on the forex markets. The broker had 330+ pairs available to spread bet on, covering the majors, minors, and exotics, letting you take advantage of spread bet tax exemption to capitalise on the forex markets.

The broker also offers a variety of 13,000 markets, more than most brokers on the list except IG Group. These markets include 9,000+ stocks, 82 indices, and 15 commodities, allowing you to trade multiple markets with one account easily.

When we opened our account, we accessed the CMC Markets NGEN platform by default, the broker’s proprietary trading platform. The platform is comprehensive with its features, including advanced charting with 80+ indicators, including chart recognition indicators that make finding candlesticks and chart patterns easier.

As you can see from the image above, you can click on the pattern you want to scan for, like applying an indicator, and the tool will find triangle patterns. This is useful for catching upcoming trades across multiple markets.

With CMC Markets offering many financial instruments, the in-built pattern recognition tool scans all the markets for potential trading setups and gives you a clear breakdown of the trade idea.

Our analyst, Ross Collins, tested the broker’s spread betting account (variable spread and no commissions) to find the average spreads across the forex markets. After comparing it with 40+ other brokers, Ross found that CMC Markets averaged 1.11 pips across its major pairs which was one of the lowest in the UK.