TOP 5 ECN BROKERS

Having traded with lots of forex brokers over my years of forex trading, I’ve gathered for myself quite enough experience for finally and properly offer my fellow traders my personal top ECN brokers. These top brokers are the one that I’ve traded with for months and years, and yet my overall satisfaction with these brokers are still pretty decent. The least favorite one for me which is FXTM.com still offers relatively good service even though their prices aren’t as good comparing to the others. The detailed chart is as follow:
 

Broker names


Exness.com (8/10)

FxPro.com (7.5/10)

XM.com (7.5/10)

ICmarkets.com (7/10)

FXTM.com (6.5/10)

In this article, I’ll be reviewing these brokers based on the following criteria:
-      Trustworthy
-      Trading costs
-      Trading conditions
 
1. Trading conditions
 Payment system
While this might not be that big of a deal for other people, I still find a broker’s payment system to be pretty important. I’ve personally had my fair share of frustration when my broker’s payment system was just plain bad and might even takes days for a single transaction to come through. Fortunately, my problems were just gone after I tried trading with Exness.com. These guys truly have the best payment system out there. I’m talking instantaneous transactions, multiple trading platforms, … I honestly didn’t expect a broker to have instant transfer/withdrawal time since almost every broker out there takes hours at the most to do a transfer/withdrawal. Exness.com has this advantage simply because of their efficient and fully automatic system. All the transfer/withdrawal stuffs that are usually done by humans are now done by the machine, which in turn makes the processing time to be the matter of milliseconds.
 

To find out more about Exness Payment System, you can refer to their website
 
Furthermore, in this age of smartphones, I find trading platform variety to be a beneficial point to consider. Even the most popular trading platforms out there which are MT4 and MT5 are just old and lacking compatibilities with the newer smartphones and older operating systems. ExPro and XM have taken the initiative to develop their own trading platforms and they are currently ahead of everyone else when it comes to trading platform variety.
Check out XM trading platform here
 

Customer service
For a complicated place like forex trading market, customer service is undeniably a good factor to judge a broker. The new traders are always filled with questions and in need of professional help and that’s why customer service is always appreciated.
Most of the big brokers out there have done a good job at helping their customer. Almost all of them offer 24/7 customer care as well as multiple language support. For Asian traders such as myself, local language support is very important since not everyone is fluent in English. The top 5 brokers that I’ve mentioned above all have multiple branches in developing countries such as China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Dubai, … And for countries that don’t have regional offices located, they also offer online and phone support in English or local language.
- Exness supports 13 languages and 24/7
- XM supports 30 languages and 24/7
- FxPro supports 19 languages.
You can check out which broker is good for Asian traders here.

2. Trading costs
Trading costs here include the spreads, commissions that the broker charges as well as the rebates and bonuses.
 
First off, spreads and commissions. These are the fees that you’d have to pay the broker in order to use their service. Obviously, us traders need these fees to be as low as possible but we get it, our brokers need profit too. Almost all the brokers out there charge relatively the same amount of spreads and commissions, and out of the five brokers that I’ve recommended above, Exness.com charges the least while still maintains excellent services as well as trading conditions. Moreover, for ECN accounts, these brokers charge little to none spread and 5 – 7%
commissions for each lot traded, which is of acceptable range and way lower than the other brokers. For new traders, check here for the accounts suit you best.
 
As for rebates and bonuses, there is only a limited number of brokers that offer these benefits since it’s strictly prohibited for the regulated brokers to offer their customers these benefits. As far as I know, only FXTM and XM offer bonuses for their mini-accounts. These bonuses are actually pretty great for new traders who are just getting started with the whole forex trading market. For mini-accounts, the bonuses can be as much as $30 just for creating the account alone and 100% deposition bonus, which means that your $50 can easily becomes $100 if you choose these brokers to do business with.
depositing for the first time.
Get XM 30$ bonus here
Get FXTM 50$ bonus here
 

3. Trustworthy
Trustworthy is without a doubt the most important thing when it comes to choosing a broker since after all, business is all about profit and trust. Smaller traders will eventually become regular traders and might even be expert in the forex trading market, so it’s very important for us traders to choose a broker that we trust. In order to determine a broker’s reliability, I always look for their licenses first thing. Licenses from trusted regulators will protect the traders from many potential exploits as well as ensure the traders’ safety when doing business with the regulated brokers. To name a few trusted government regulators, there are ASIC (Australia), CySec (Cyprus), FSA (Japan), CFTC (United States), NFA (also United States), and FCA (United Kingdom), … From my experience, while it’s just as important for a broker to have a license from a trusted regulator, you also shouldn’t choose a broker that has multiple licenses. This is due to the fact that a license has its own downside which is that it will charge the regulated broker extra, often substantial fees in exchange for the regulator’s service. Having multiple licenses means that that broker would have to charge their traders even more money while the added benefits aren’t that huge comparing to having only one license.
As for the top 5 brokers that I’ve mentioned above, I have right here the details of their licenses so that you can feel safe doing business with them.
Top 5 Brokers and their licenses