Best Spread Betting Platform For Beginners

OANDA is our top pick for best spread betting platform for beginners with the OANDA Trade giving you excellent features to help lower risk. With features such as lower minimum stake sizes from £0.01, guaranteed stop-loss orders, and access to free trading signals the platform provides plenty of aid for new traders. Supporting the platform is OANDA’s low trading costs which scored 9/10 in our tests, one of the main scores contributing to our 91/100 overall rating of the broker.

During our recent review, we felt OANDA is the best fit for beginners with the OANDA Trade platform for its built-in features to lower risk. With the OANDA Trade platform, you can bet on the markets from £0.01p per point, which is the lowest stake size out of the brokers tested.

Having low stake sizes allows you to start spread betting with real money, and only suffer minor financial losses if you make mistakes or get a trade wrong. This can help you gain confidence using real markets and risk, allowing you to scale your trades as you succeed.

OANDA also offers guaranteed stop-loss orders (GLSO) exclusively on the OANDA Trade platform, which will exit your bet at the price you set regardless of market volatility. So if you trade around highly volatile news like non-farm payrolls, the GLSO will exit at the stop-loss price while a traditional stop-loss will slip and cause greater losses.

As a new trader, you may not be aware of these announcements and make mistakes to bet around volatility, that is why we like it when platforms offer GLSOs.

In our tests, the broker recorded low spreads with 5/9 of the currency pairs tested achieving better than industry average spreads. EUR/USD achieved an average of 1 pip, but the best-performing major in the test was USD/JPY also recording 1 pip, the lowest of the 16 brokers tested.

Low spreads make it cheaper for beginners to trade, leaving more of your capital for betting and fewer fees eating into it.

We also felt that OANDA’s range of financial markets was a benefit for beginners. The broker doesn’t have a wide range of markets but this is a positive effect as you won’t have “shiny object” syndrome looking for new markets to trade.

Instead, the broker offers a solid range of 68 forex pairs including the majors as well as 29 commodities like gold, and 16 indices like NASDAQ. These markets are the most liquid, providing better trading opportunities and at lower costs which is much better than having a large range of markets.

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

We ranked Pepperstone in first place for low spreads across the 9 currency pairs tested with average spreads of 0.80 pips on EUR/USD. Plus, the broker has the lowest share spread betting costs from 4 points on UK shares which contributed to the broker scoring 10/10 in the test. Pepperstone also outperformed across our other tests including most trading platforms (MT4/TradingView/MT5/cTrader) and the fastest execution speeds (sub-100ms), offering a reliable and low-cost broker for beginners

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 20/09/2024

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.

We also tested the trading costs for share spread betting where Pepperstone also excelled scoring the lowest fees across all of its stock markets from LSE to NYSE. UK shares have a 4-point spread, while international stocks like US, German, and Hong Kong have a 0.10% spread making Pepperstone the cheapest for betting on stocks like Apple.

Along with the cheapest trading costs, we also liked that Pepperrstone has no minimum initial deposit giving you total control over how much you want to start with. Unlike other brokers that require you to meet their minimums and could force you to over-deposit more than you wanted. This is why we like to recommend brokers with no minimum deposits if you’re new to spread betting.

In our execution speed tests, Pepperstone was the clear winner recording a limit order speed of 77ms and 100ms for market order.

Fast execution speeds can help beginners avoid negative price slippage which can occur if your broker doesn’t fill your stop-loss order around volatile news announcements.

Pepperstone provides the best range of trading platforms out of the brokers we tried, giving you 4 choices including MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader, and TradingView. Having a choice of platforms is a big tick for in our tests as it gives you the freedom to choose a platform that suits you the best.

We chose Spreadex’s mobile app as the best for beginners for its access to risk management tools like guaranteed stop-loss orders and Pro Trend lines automating price-action analysis. Spreadex also performed well in our tests in key areas like low trading costs, 10,000+ markets and trading platforms contributing to the broker’s overall 96/100 score.

We tried mobile apps from the 16 brokers tested and found Spreadex to have decent features that we think will appeal to beginners. Spreadex’s mobile app provides a range of risk management tools to protect your open bets against losses with a standard, trailing, and guaranteed stop-loss order (GLSO).

You can place your stop-loss orders on all markets like gold, and if you choose the GLSO it will always stop out your bet at the price level selected. This GLSO will protect you from gapping when the markets get volatile around news announcements like non-farm payrolls. Not all brokers offer guaranteed stop-loss orders so we think this addition makes Spreadex’s app stand out option for risk management on the move.

We found Spreadex’s mobile app has advanced charting with 35+ indicators like moving averages and MACD, giving you the tools to build your trading strategy. A key indicator we liked was the Pro Trend Line which automates plotting support and resistance levels making analysing markets like EUR/USD easier.

Spreadex supports the app with an excellent trading experience with 10,000+ markets with access to 70+ forex pairs, 17 indices, 12 commodities, 9,000+ shares, 200 ETFs, 20 bonds and options. Although it has a solid range, if you are just starting you’ll be able to bet on highly liquid markets including EUR/USD, FTSE 100, and gold.

These tend to have the lowest spreads as they are actively traded, while less popular shares like USD/ZAR have wider spreads due to being less liquid. As an example, in our tests, Spreadex’s EUR/USD (highly liquid) average spread was 0.90 pips compared to the USD/SGD (less liquid) spread of 2.60 pips.

We recommend Capital.com if you want to spread bet with TradingView to utilise its 110+ indicators and advanced trading tools like its market scanner and social trading features. Through TradingView you get full access to the broker’s 2,500 markets with competitive spreads from 1 pip providing a solid trading experience for new spread bettors.

Capital.com provides three trading platforms, their proprietary platform, MT4, and TradingView for spread betting. From our testing, we think TradingView is a great option if you’re new to trading as it provides features like social trading and tools to make finding opportunities easier.

Unlike other platforms, TradingView has a strong social trading feature allowing you to connect and learn from experienced traders focusing on the same markets as you do. We liked that you can browse other users’ charts with explanations or videos on their analysis so you can learn from traders in real time.

If you want to demo the TradingView platform, you can access the Paper Trading account for free and use Capital.com’s market data to trade in real-time. The best functionality of the Paper Trading account is it unlimited in both funds and never expires allowing you to test different strategies while learning to trade without time pressure.

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.

IG Markets scored 10/10 for its range of 17,000 markets, everything from forex to unique products like options and futures markets for low-cost longer-term spread betting. This selection of markets is by far the largest out of the 16 brokers tested and is supplemented with decent trading platforms like MT4 and ProReal Time for automating bets. The broker scored highly across the board for its trading services in our tests, which is why we gave them a rating of 86/100.

From our testing, IG Markets was the clear winner for our range of markets category with 17,000 markets, beating top brokers like Capital.com by almost 15,000 markets. The bulk of these markets are stocks with 12,000 companies across the US, UK, EU, and Asia. However, the broker also has a large range of 80 forex pairs, 40+ commodities and 130 indices giving you plenty of options to speculate on.

We think the IG Trading platform is the best option for beginners as you can access all 17,000 markets while receiving free trading signals for forex trading. The Signal Centre provides automated technical analysis alerts from PIAFirst and Autochartist, giving signals based on chart patterns and price action with entry and exit levels for you to copy.

Alternatively, if you want to learn how to trade using your strategies, MetaTrader 4 and ProRealTime are great platforms. Both offer custom technical indicators, but ProRealTime offers ProReal Trends which automates support and resistance levels for you to trade breakouts on your favourite markets like EUR/USD.

IG Markets also impressed us with its low spreads during our testing. While using the broker we recorded an average spread of 0.85 pips on EUR/USD, the second lowest after Pepperstone. Other currency pairs tested also did well with 4/9 currency pairs averaging lower than their competitors, especially AUD/USD at 0.82 pips, the lowest we recorded.

We selected CMC Markets as the best broker for forex spread betting due to offering over 330+ currency markets, the most available on any spread betting platform. The broker did well in our trading platform tests with the CMC NGEN being a solid all-around platform with 60+ indicators and pattern recognition tools to help beginners find opportunities.

CMC Markets offers 12,000 spread betting markets covering popular asset classes from shares to bonds, but what stood out in our tests was the range of 330+ forex markets. With this range of forex pairs, CMC Markets covers all majors, minors, and exotic pairs letting you test which forex pairs react best to your strategies.

We found with CMC Markets’ proprietary platform you can filter these markets based on your preferences such as trading majors only, or USD crosses. Doing this makes it easier to find markets you want to trade instead of having a complete list of currency pairs that are redundant to your strategy.

Our testing also found the NGEN platform has guaranteed stop losses (GLSO) which is the best way to limit your losses on volatile markets as a new trader. Unlike a traditional stop loss, a GLSO will exit your trade at the price you set regardless if the market is at a worse price, saving you money on losses.

We liked the NGEN platform for analysing the markets as it offers 60+ technical indicators and drawing tools like Fibonacci retracement tools, providing a decent environment to analyse the markets.

A tool we think new traders will find useful is the pattern recognition feature that automates chart patterns and candlestick analysis on your charts. This not only finds trading ideas for you, but you can use it for real-time learning how chart and candlestick patterns are formed and how to trade them.

CMC Markets also offers an in-depth weekly article to outline the scope of the week ahead for UK and US markets, as well as reflect on gold and forex movements. We found this article insightful as it digested a lot of activity into a brief update that can be used to help plan for the week ahead.