FP Markets vs Exness vs XM
Trading in foreign exchange markets reached $6.6 trillion per day in April 2019, up from $5.1 trillion three years earlier .
Retail foreign exchange, or Forex, is immensely competitive. Selecting the right Forex broker, therefore, can be challenging, not to mention time consuming.
To ease this process, we look under the bonnet at three prominent Forex brokers: FP Markets, Exness and XM, and provide an unbiased review.
Our Expert Rating
Recommended  |  |  |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Our Rating |  |  |  |
| FP Markets | Exness | XM | |
Detailed Review
FP Markets
Trading in foreign exchange markets reached $6.6 trillion per day in April 2019, up from $5.1 trillion three years earlier 1 . Retail foreign exchange, or Forex, is immensely competitive. Selecting the right Forex broker, therefore, can be challenging, not to mention time consuming. To ease this process, we look under the bonnet at three prominent Forex brokers: FP Markets, Exness and XM, and provide an unbiased review.
FP Markets, a CFD and Forex broker, is a strong competitor in the retail foreign exchange industry, recently celebrating its 15th anniversary. With headquarters located in the heart of Sydney, FP Markets has grown into a globally-recognised organisation, offering traders access to a broad range of markets, including foreign exchange (Forex) and CFDs across indices, commodities and stocks. The company also boasts more than 40 industry awards since its inception, including voted Best Global Forex Value Broker in 2019. FP Markets also offers an innovative, user-friendly website.
Exness
Established in 2008 and headquartered in Cyprus, Exness, a Forex/CFD broker, continues to develop as an industry leader. The company offers leverage up to 2000:1. The key to its success over the years, according to the company’s background statement, is guided by the systematic improvement of trading conditions and customer-centric approach. Exness provides access to a broad range of markets, including Forex, CFD metals, energies, stocks and indices.
Exness also offers an innovative, user-friendly website. The company also won a number of awards in 2019, including Most Trusted Global Forex Broker, Best Global Forex Trading Experience and Best Global Forex Customer Service. With respect to their website, it provides all you need to get started, though does appear somewhat dated.
XM
Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Cyprus, XM, a CFD and Forex broker, boasts a strong international presence, receiving a number of awards over the years, including Best Broker award by FinTech Age Awards 2019 and Best FX Broker in Europe by World Finance Awards 2019. XM offers leverage up to 888:1.
XM offers a range of currency pairs to trade on and CFDs on stocks, commodities, equity indices, precious metals and energies.
The website is constructed in a simple, easy-to-use fashion, while offering users a clean well-designed feel to its interface.
Trading Platforms – Account Types
FP Markets
FP Markets provides its traders MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5), as well as the Iress platform, a comprehensive active trader platform. Iress offers access to share CFDs (a whopping 10,000 stocks on global exchanges), futures CFDs, indices, commodities and Forex.
FP Markets has Standard and Raw Accounts for both MT4 and MT5. This broker also provides its clients three additional trading platforms, Iress ViewPoint, Iress Investor and Iress Trader.
All aforementioned platforms offer mobile trading solutions, both for iOS and Android. According to FP Markets, they offer demo accounts for all platforms, but if left inactive for 30 days the accounts will be archived.
For their Standard and Raw Accounts, the minimum deposit is 100 AUD or equivalent. Iress Standard minimum deposit is 1,000 AUD, Iress Platinum is 25,000 AUD and Iress Platinum is 50,000 AUD.
Exness
Exness offers its traders access to MT4 and MT5, along with the Exness terminal – WebTerminal and MultiTerminal. Exness mobile apps are also available for iOS and Android.
WebTerminal, according to Exness, is an HTML5 web app developed by the creator of MT4, making it a reliable, fast, and user-friendly web platform. All information and data are securely encrypted when transmitted. It features all the basic functions needed to trade effectively, and works on all browsers and operating systems.
Exness comes with two main types of accounts, Standard and Professional. Standard accounts include the Standard Account and Standard Cent Account. Professional accounts include Pro Account, Zero Account, and Raw Spread Account.
This broker offers unlimited demo accounts across its platforms, except for the Standard Cent account. For Standard Accounts, the minimum deposit is 1 USD. For Professional Accounts, the minimum deposit is 500 USD.
XM
XM comes with MT4 and MT5 as well as a MT4 Multiterminal and MT5 WebTrader. Mobile trading is also available for all platforms for iOS and Android.
XM's MT4 Multiterminal is in place for those wishing to trade multiple MT4 accounts from a single terminal. The XM MT5 WebTrader gives clients immediate access to global financial markets without having to download any additional software – essentially, you’re able to trade via a web browser offering a similar layout to traditional MetaTrader platforms.
XM provides access to four different trading account types: The Micro Account, Standard Account, XM Ultra Low Account and Shares Account. The latter has the US dollar listed as the only base currency option, while the remaining three offer a wider range of base currency options.
Unlimited demo accounts are available with this broker, just not for the Micro demo platform. The Micro Account requires a $5 minimum deposit, so does the Standard Account. The XM Ultra Low Account has a minimum deposit of $50 and the Shares Account’s minimum deposit is $10,000.
Trading Fees and Spreads
FP Markets
FP Markets commissions are a combination of the spread, in addition to the Forex (Raw) or Metals (Raw) associated commission. Commission per side is 3.0 USD, plus spread cost.
Data acquired from their server shows EUR/USD spread to be 0.0 pips on average 64.74% of the time from 0105-2020 to 31-05-2020 (available for RAW Spread trading accounts only).
According to FP Markets spread table, Raw ECN offers incredibly tight average spreads with EUR/USD and AUD/USD coming in as low as 0, along with EUR/GBP at 0.2 pips.
which incur additional fees/adjustments). Please visit https://www.fpmarkets.com/fees-charges/ for more information.
Exness
Exness state their commissions for the Raw and Zero Spread Accounts are tiered trading starting from $3.5 per side. Standard Accounts are commission free but incurs a larger spread. There are also no trading commissions for the Pro Account.
As you can see from the spread table below, average spreads, which form part of the overall commission structure, are competitive on their Raw Spread Account, with EUR/USD and USD/JPY coming in as low as 0 pips and AUD/USD at 0.3 pips.
For more information regarding Exness commissions and spreads, as their other Accounts incur different commission rates, feel free to check out: https://www.exness.com/en/contractspecifications/#raw_spread
XM
XM, according to their specification page, is commission free to trade with Micro Accounts, Standard Accounts and XM Ultra Low Accounts – it’s only the Shares Account that invites commission.
XM's average spreads, an additional charge to the trader on top of any associated commissions, are also competitive, with AUD/USD’s average spread for the XM Ultra Low Standard Account, coming in under 1 pip and EUR/USD’s average spread at 0.7 pips.
For more information on XM's spreads and commissions for different currency pairs and other CFDs, please visit https://www.xm.com/forex-trading.
Brokerage
| Brokers under review | Recommended | | |
|---|---|---|---|
Our Rating | | | |
| Regulation – Tier 1 Licences |  |  | |
| Trading Platforms | MT4, MT5, WebTrader, Iress | MT4, MT5, Exness WebTerminal | MT4, MT5 |
| Trading Spreads/Fees | 9.5/10 | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Financial Instruments Offered | 9.5/10 | 8.0/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Range of markets | Forex, Metals and CFDs . -Iress offers 1000s more stock CFDs than MT4 | Forex and CFDs | Forex and CFDs |
| Market Research and Education | 9.0/10 | 8.5/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Customer Service | 9.0/10 | 7.0/10 | 8.0/10 |
| Execution Speed | 9.5/10 | 6.0/10 | 7.5/10 |
Execution Speed
FP MARKETS
FP Markets, according to their website, the average order execution time between the trade being received, processed and confirmed as executed by the broker is 36 milliseconds. FP Markets was rated by Investment Trends as the Best for Quality of Trade Execution 2019.
EXNESS
Exness, according to their support team, provides order execution from 10 milliseconds (0.01 seconds). However, we were unable to locate a link or source an average order execution time.
XM
XM, according to its execution policy page, 99.35% of all trades are executed in less than 1 second. They also have a strict no re-requotes policy, real-time market execution and offer the ability to place orders online or over the phone. They have a page dedicated this here: https://www.xm.com/execution-policy
Regulations and licences
FP MARKETS
FP Markets is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) and registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
EXNESS
EXNESS is regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) and the Financial Services Authority (FSA) of Seychelles
XM
XM is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the International Financial Services Commission of Belize (IFSC).
Customer service
FP Markets, Exness, and XM are similar in their approach to a multilingual customer service. Each broker provides phone support, a dedicated support email and online chat facility. FP Markets and XM provide a registered address, though we were unable to locate this on the Exness website.
Market Research – Educational Content
FP Markets
FP Markets provides its traders with a dedicated Trader’s Hub.
In-depth daily technical and fundamental analysis can be accessed via separate pages, covered by industry experts. In addition, the broker provides a detailed Weekly Technical Market Insight, including analysis of the US dollar index.
What’s also particularly impressive is their Black and White Technical report which looks at detailed pattern structure on various markets – this is a weekly report. Also weekly, FP Markets provides Currency Point, a video based review of the week, presented by industry expert Evan Lucas.
In terms of Educational content, FP Markets deliver a number of articles via their Trading Knowledge page. What’s more, for newer traders, the broker provides dedicated Ebooks loaded with information and a handful of video tutorials.
FP Markets holds regular webinars and has also recently begun growing its presence on Telegram, Trading View and Twitter, providing daily news and analysis to subscribers.
Exness
Exness market research provides a combination of technical analysis and fundamental analysis posts created by industry experts on their Insights and analysis page. There’s also a Tips for traders page presented weekly, recapping on the week’s events, along with a couple of charts.
With respect to educational content provided by Exness, the Exness Academy, a place to begin learning about trading. Linked with this, you will find dedicated educational articles, which are well written and informative.
Exness also provide handy bite-sized video explainers of how trading works in several different languages. Webinars are also provided, though this looks to be a new addition to their educational department as we were unable to find historical events. Exness Premier is, according to the broker, something special, but we could not see what this will be. Time will tell.
XM
XM’s Research and Education section is well designed, offering live market news provided by Reuters and in- house technical analysis written by industry experts.
We were unable to conduct full research unfortunately as to continue reading analysis and articles, you have to log in to your member’s area – essentially you have to have a live account with them. This was confirmed via their support team.
We did check out their Twitter account and it offers a healthy dose of trading updates on the market. Interestingly, clicking through from Twitter to the research allows access to the full reports. However, it is still limited to what’s posted on Twitter.
Our Notes:
FP Markets market research is detailed and certainly up there with the best of them. Educational content is also quite impressive. The only drawback we found was the lack of educational videos. In our opinion FP Markets analysis trumps Exness, due to the lack of detail in their reports. There is certainly room for improvement we feel. However, like FP Markets, we were particularly impressed with the educational side of Exness.
Market research and live market updates provided by XM covers all markets and, from what little we had access to, trumped both FP Markets and Exness given XM covered more markets via a large investment research team.
