Best Spread Betting Platforms For Beginners

OANDA is our number one pick for beginner UK traders, as it offers its excellent proprietary trading platform, OANDA Trade. This platform provides strong risk management features, and ultra-low minimum stakes starting at £0.01.
The guaranteed stop-loss orders and free trading signals are two of our favourite features, as are the low trading costs. We actually gave OANDA a score of 9/10 in our trading cost tests, leading to a 91/100 overall rating.

Across our recent review of the best spread betting broker options, it was OANDA’s Trade platform that stood out to us. OANDA Trade offers strong features for managing risk, and low stake markets starting from just £0.01p per point – the lowest stake size on our list.

Stake Sizes

A low stake size is an excellent option for you as you transition from demo accounts to spread betting with real money. There’s always a risk with trading spread bets, but your potential losses will be low with this kind of stake level. As you gain confidence, you can scale up your trades.

Risk Management

Risk management was a big factor as we created this list, and we really liked the guaranteed stop-loss orders (GSLO) on OANDA Trade. This feature effectively protects your stop-loss order from slippage, which is going to be a real asset for you during times of higher market volatility.

Take non-farm payroll dates as an example. At these times, the market is going to be extra volatile, and we’ve seen many beginner traders get into trouble with this. A GSLO will offer a strong defence at these times.

Spread Tests

OANDA performed well in our spread testing too – five of the nine currency pairs we tested outperformed the industry average spread. Both the EUR/USD and the USD/JPY pairs gave averages of 1 pip, which was the lowest of all the 16 brokers we tested.

Low spreads make it cheaper for beginners to trade, as your capital won’t be eaten away by high fees.

Suitable Range of Markets

One last point about OANDA’s beginner-friendly trading experience – the range of financial markets. There aren’t many markets here, but our co-founder Noam Korbl believes this works in OANDA’s favour.

“Rather than getting distracted by the latest ‘shiny object’, beginners simply choose from 68 forex pairs, 29 commodities (including gold), and 16 indices such as the NASDAQ”, he said.

“I actually think this is pretty good. It will help you to streamline your strategy when you start trading financial markets, and you should still find you have plenty of markets to choose from.”

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

While Pepperstone made it to second place on our list, we actually ranked the broker first in our low spreads testing, where it scored 10/10. The average of 0.80 pips on the EUR/USD pair was the best out of any of the brokers we tested.

The share spread betting costs were also extremely low, at just 4 points on UK shares.

In fact, Pepperstone received full marks in a number of our categories – from the most trading platform options available (four), to the fastest market order execution speeds (below 100ms).

After testing 16 spread betting brokers, Pepperstone emerged the clear winner with its lowest spreads across the 9 forex pairs tested. The broker recorded the lowest average EUR/USD spread in our tests with 0.80 pips, almost 30% cheaper than the industry average of 1.12 pips.

Spread Bet Spreads	EUR/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDAUD/USDUSD/CADEUR/JPYAUD/JPYUSD/JPYUSD/SGD	EUR/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDAUD/USDUSD/CADEUR/JPYAUD/JPYUSD/JPYUSD/SGD	EUR/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDAUD/USDUSD/CADEUR/JPYAUD/JPYUSD/JPYUSD/SGD	EUR/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDAUD/USDUSD/CADEUR/JPYAUD/JPYUSD/JPYUSD/SGD	EUR/USDEUR/GBPGBP/USDAUD/USDUSD/CADEUR/JPYAUD/JPYUSD/JPYUSD/SGD
	0.80	1.10	1.40	1.00	1.40
	0.90	1.20	1.40	1.10	1.80
	1.00	1.10	1.50	1.20	1.50
	0.85	1.40	1.40	0.82	1.77
	1.10	1.30	1.60	1.20	1.60
	1.20	1.30	1.30	1.20	1.70
	1.00	1.50	1.50	1.00	1.80
	1.00	1.30	1.60	1.30	1.50
	1.30	1.50	1.50	1.50	1.50
	0.90	1.40	1.40	1.30	2.20
	0.90	1.20	1.60	1.50	1.80
	1.10	1.50	1.40	1.40	1.70
	1.20	1.50	1.50	1.40	1.80
	1.90	1.20	2.00	1.00	1.70
	1.40	1.70	1.60	1.40	1.80
	1.40	1.40	1.70	1.90	1.70

Avg. spreads are taken from each broker's website and updated monthly. Last update on 01/01/2025

For the other currency pairs tested, we found Pepperstone had 6/8 of the pairs outperform the industry with EUR/GBP (1.10 pips) and GBP/USD (1.40 pips). As a beginner, you’ll be able to bet on major pairs like EUR/USD or USD/JPY with the lowest spreads, allowing you to lower your trading costs.

Our testing went beyond just forex spreads. We also examined share spread betting trading costs, and found that Pepperstone excelled here too. The broker offered the lowest fees you’re going to find anywhere, with 4 point spreads on UK shares, and a 0.10% spread on international shares.

If you’re looking to get into trading spread bets on stocks like Apple, Pepperstone offers the most favourable costs.

No Minimum Deposit

It’s not just trading costs you’ll need to consider as a beginner. We also liked Pepperstone’s lack of a minimum deposit, so you won’t feel pressured into putting in a large amount of money straight away.

If you’re just starting out, we certainly recommend working with brokers with this approach to deposits.

Execution Speed

In terms of execution speed, Pepperstone did very well in our tests, achieving a 10/10 rating. The 77ms and 100ms execution speeds on limit orders and market orders respectively are unsurpassed in this list.

Fast execution speeds are valuable for everyone, including more seasoned traders. But you’ll find this particularly useful as a newcomer. Speedy execution will help you avoid negative price slippage, making it easier to manage and predict trading costs.

Platform Range

Lastly, we found that Pepperstone performs extremely well in terms of the available platforms. You’ve got four choices here – MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader, and TradingView.

These are four of our favourite spread betting platforms. Having a choice of platforms is a big advantage in our view, as it gives you the freedom to choose the software that suits you the best.

It was SpreadEx’s mobile app that earned it a place so high on our list. This intuitive app provides plenty of risk management tools, such as guaranteed stop-loss orders. We also found Pro Trend lines for automating price-action analysis.

In our trading cost testing, SpreadEx also performed well. And the range of more than 10,000 markets, and plenty of trading platforms, all contributed to an overall brokerage score of 96/100

We tried out the mobile apps from all of the 16 brokers tested, and it was the SpreadEx that emerged as one of the best for you as a beginner trader.

Risk Management Features

Being beginner-friendly and easy-to-use doesn’t mean the app skimps on the features. In fact, we were very pleased to see SpreadEx offering a broad range of risk management tools – including standard, trailing, and guaranteed stop-loss orders (GSLO).

If you choose the GSLO option, your stop-loss will always be executed at the price you set, even in highly volatile markets. Not all the brokers we tested offered GSLOs, and we think this makes SpreadEx a great option for protecting your trades against gapping and slippage.

Advanced Charting Tools

As we tested the SpreadEx mobile app, we identified plenty of advanced charting features, including more than 35 indicators. These covered things like moving averages and MACD, helping you build a strong trading strategy.

One of the indicators we found ourselves using again and again during testing was Pro Trend Line. This offers automated plotting for support and resistance levels, making it much easier to analyse a market like the EUR/USD.

Range of Markets

You’ll need a bit more than just a good app – you’ll also need a strong range of markets. SpreadEx provides this, with an excellent selection.

There are more than 70 forex pairs to trade with, as well as 17 indices, 12 commodities, 9,000+ shares, 200 ETFs, 20 bonds and options. For beginners, we advise focusing on high-liquidity markets like the EUR/USD, FTSE 100 index, and gold commodity.

Competitive Spreads

SpreadEx’s spreads tended to be competitive in most cases. As expected, the highly liquid trading instruments offered the best spreads during testing.
For example, we found an average spread of 0.90 pips on the highly liquid EUR/USD pair. Meanwhile, the USD/SGD pair, which is less liquid, came up with an average spread of 2.60 pips.

Take a look at these spreads in more detail in the table below. Even the wider spreads still managed to outperform the industry average.

We recommend Capital.com if you want to spread bet with TradingView. This is one of our favourite platforms, offering more than 110 indicators and a range of advanced trading tools and social trading features. Capital.com gives you 2,500 markets, competitive spreads that start at 1 pip – a solid trading experience for new spread bettors.

As you take your first steps into spread betting, you’re really looking for the ideal broker-platform combination. Capital.com provides a good combination, by offering support for one of our favourite spread betting platforms – TradingView.

Trading Platform Options

Capital.com gives you three trading platforms to choose from. You’ve got their proprietary platform, MT4, and TradingView, all of which offer spread betting.

In our testing, TradingView emerged as the best option if you’re a beginner trader. The social trading tools and other features are designed to make finding opportunities easy.

Social Trading Features

All of the platforms we tested are strong, but TradingView’s social trading features give it an edge. You’ll be able to use these tools to connect with and learn from more experienced traders.

These features offer quick explanations and video content as you browse other users’ charts, helping you learn as you trade.

TradingView Demo

For us, good demo accounts are absolute must-haves for beginner traders. On TradingView, you can use the Paper Trading demo free of charge, accessing all of Capital.com’s market data in real-time.

The Paper Trading account is unlimited on both the live and demo versions. In other words, you can test different strategies without stressing over when the account is going to expire – a major plus-point in our view.

Range of Markets and Indicators

Capital.com offers you a solid range of more than 2,500 financial markets, including over 120 forex pairs. We believe this gives you more than enough instruments to experiment with as you find your ideal trading style.

You’ll be able to test and use plenty of indicators too. There are more than 110 in total, such as the popular Ichimoku Clouds. All of these are available on the risk-free demo account.

TradingView gives you access to Capital.com’s 2,500+ financial markets including 120+ forex pairs, so you can test and find the best markets that suit your trading style. It also gives you the freedom to test over 110+ indicators like Ichimoku Clouds to develop your strategy risk-free before you upgrade to a live account.

We gave IG Markets a perfect score of 10/10 for its instrument range. Our tests found an astonishing 17,000 assets, ranging from forex pairs, through to options and futures for cost-efficient long-term spread betting.

No one else on our list matched this, and IG Markets scored fairly high elsewhere too. With support from platforms like MT4 and ProRealTime, IG ended up with an overall rating of 86/100.

IG Markets is one of the oldest brokers currently operating, with a long history of supporting traders of all backgrounds. As you might expect, the long-standing broker offers a huge range of markets to choose from.

Range of Markets

In our tests, IG Markets emerged as the clear winner in the range of markets category. IG’s 17,000 available instruments beat fellow strong performer Capital.com by almost 15,000.

Most of these instruments are in the stock category, with 12,000 assets across US, UK, EU and Asian markets. But there are plenty of other assets too, such as 80 forex pairs, more than 40 commodities, and 130 indices.

Trading Signals

IG Trading is IG’s proprietary platform. It seems to us that this is the best option for beginners, as you’ll have access to all 17,000+ markets, while also benefiting from free trading signals on forex pairs.

In the platform’s Signal Centre, you’ll find automated technical analysis alerts from PiaFirst and Autochartist. This will help you plan and develop your own trading approaches.

We should mention here that MetaTrader 4 and ProRealTime are both strong options too. MT4 provides its famous Expert Advisors for automated trading, while ProRealTime offers its ProReal Trends. Trends helps you to automate the plotting of support and resistance levels, so you can trade on breakouts.

Competitive Spreads

One last area in which IG Markets impressed us is its spreads. These tended to remain low during our testing, and the average of 0.85 pips for EUR/USD was actually our second lowest for the pair, after Pepperstone.

Other low spreads we found include the AUD/USD at 0.82 pips. While some spreads we analysed were significantly higher, they still tend to beat the industry average in most cases.

This will be very useful to you as a trader. While you might not necessarily get the very best spreads in the industry, they will at least be better than average. You might find this acceptable, as you’ll be accessing the most diverse range of spread betting markets from any of the brokers we tested.

You’ve also got several different platforms to spread bet on. Take a look at the diagram below for the full list of platforms supported by IG.

We found CMC Markets to be an excellent broker for forex spread betting, with more than 330 currency markets. In fact, this was more pairs than any of the other brokers we tested. CMC also did well in our trading platform tests, thanks to its own NGEN platform, with 60+ indicators and pattern recognition tools.

CMC Markets actually offers a huge range of spread betting markets – more than 12,000 in total, covering things like shares and bonds. But it was the forex pairs that we were most impressed by during testing.

You’ve got more than 330 forex trading instruments to choose from here, including all majors, minors, and plenty of exotic pairs. This is going to be very good for you as you try different pairs and strategies in the demo account.

Proprietary Platform

You can use the CMC Markets NGEN platform to trade with this broker. We like this platform a lot, largely because of the market filter and search features.
For beginners, we feel this is a must. On NGEN, you can filter markets according to your own preferences, such as focusing on major markets only, or on specific currency crosses. This makes it much easier to manage your trades and build your own tailored lists.

Risk Management

Risk management tools are something you need to get used to using as a beginner trading. NGEN’s guaranteed stop loss order (GSLO) is an excellent feature, as you’ll be able to limit your losses and protect yourself from gapping.

The GSLO closes your trade at the designated price, even if volatility and gapping has pushed the market beyond this level. This could save you significant money in certain market conditions.

Indicators and Analysis

We liked the NGEN platform for analysing the markets, as it offers more than 60 technical indicators, as well as drawing tools like Fibonacci retracement tools. So you should be able to practice spread betting and market analysis effectively.
A tool we think new traders will find useful is the pattern recognition feature. With this feature, you can automate chart patterns and candlestick analysis in your charts. Learning how chart and candlestick patterns are formed, and how to trade on them, is a key aspect of your spread betting development.

Weekly Article

The last point we want to raise regarding CMC Markets is its weekly article. This is an in-depth examination of the week ahead in the UK and US markets, as well as reflections on gold and forex movements.

We found plenty of insight in this article, which condenses a lot of information and data down into a digestible format.