The argument between traders about who are the best ECN forex brokers would never be ended and it has driven me crazy. While the American and the British brokers are the most reliable in the world, Cyprus brokers offer better trading conditions like lower spread and commission, lower margin, better trading platforms and payment systems, etc. Finally, we all come to an agreement that there is no absolute best ECN forex broker. We could only evaluate the best ones based on the country you are living in and your trading strategies. However, some personal standards to describe how should the best ECN brokers be could be given to you so you can find out the best forex broker in your country which suits your trading plan.

Here are some standards that top brokers should have:

● Reliability

● Lower trading cost

● Lower spread and condition

● Satisfied local supports

● Well organised payment systems to reduce the deposits and withdrawal fee

● Better rebate

● Desirable bonus

● Good trading conditions

Don’t worry if there are lots of category you haven’t heard before, let me explain the importance of each of these criteria. Additionally, we also introduces you top 5 ECN forex brokers chosen by many traders worldwide in the table below:

No Broker names Rating

1 Exness.com 8/10

2 FxPro.com 7.5/10

3 XM.com 7.5/10

4 ICmarkets.com 7/10

5 FXTM.com 6.5/10

Reliability

This is the most essential standard when you firstly choose a broker. As you have known, most of ECN traders are big and experienced, they usually deposit hundreds or thousands of dollars to trusted brokers. They prefer to pay more trading cost to prevent themselves from bad brokers.

So How to know which brokers are the reliable ones? The answer is straightforward, you need to check their licenses. Licenses are offered to the brokers by either profit or non-profit organisations. Each regulation has its own criteria that brokers must follow including:

● Maximum Leverage

● Quotes quality

● Broker’s minimum operation fund.

● Bonus

● Segregated accounts to protect clients.

● Advertising messages to avoid misleading for traders.

In order to get a regulations, brokers have to satisfy all of the standards before being evaluated by the organisations. Hence, it is not easy to get a regulation and the more trustworthy a regulation the more reliable that broker is. However, licenses also have their disadvantages such as high spread and commission, higher margin requirements, less trading platforms supported, less payments method choices, etc. Even when brokers have to pay a regulation fee, the regulations prohibit the brokers from setting a high leverage, leading to low trading volume, finally causing to lower income. Additionally, a regulated broke must have an isolated account for client-fund insurances’ payment. So it means that their income will reduce even lower because they have to pay costs. Therefore they have to charge higher spread or commission, this indicates that the more licenses they have, the less competition advantages they are. Although brokers with licenses in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) are the most reliable comparing to the rest of the world, but the regulations don’t protect the traders outside of these two countries. So it does not make any sense for Asian and African traders to pay a larger amount of fee for the American or British brokers but receive no protection in case there is any problems.

In my point of view, the more licenses a broker get doesn’t reflect how good that broker is. Licenses is important because it illustrates a broker’s standards, but remember, the more regulations the more costly. So quality is more important than quantity, a good broker just need to have one reliable regulation to prove that they are following trustworthy financial criteria and the company is having good financial health. Here are some licenses that popular brokers have:

No Broker names Regulations

1 Exness CySEC, FCA (UK)

2 FxPro CySEC, FCA (UK), DFSA (Dubai), FSB (South Africa).

3 XM CySEC, FCA, ASIC

4 ICmarkets ASIC (Australia)

5 FXTM IFSC

As you see, they all got at least one reliable regulation such as CySEC, FCA, ASIC. Now I will explain the reason why these brokers are more reliable than other brokers from the United State and Europe.

These brokers are more reliable to the traders because for only one reason, they are in top largest forex brokers:

● Exness - the largest forex broker earns $400 billion per month.

● XM monthly Trading volume is $300 Billion

● FxPro monthly income is $ 100 Billion.

In my perspective, a reliable brokers must have a positive relationships to the size that brokers are. All these retail brokers have existed in the market for around 10 years and there isn’t any scam report. Most of the complaints on the social network are because of new traders don’t understand the trading system. For instance, many traders complained about Exness trading platform: they git Stop Loss when the price weren’t hit stop loss prices. Because Exness price chart is Bid price, and Stop Loss will be Ask or Bid Price depends on your buying or selling position.

Low trading cost

The United State brokers usually charge much higher spread and commission. An example is while Forex.com charges from 1.7-2 pip for trading EUR/USD, all listed above brokers charge very little spreads, approximately 50% lower than the US brokers. ECN accounts charge from 0.0xx pip spread and from $5 to $7 for each lot. Exness is the one charging the lowest spread, which is from 0.0cc pip and sometimes the spread come down to zero. It only charges $5 commission per lot while ICMarket charges from $6 to $7 and XM charges $6. 

The payments systems are more beneficial for Asian, African and Australian. Despites the fact that the US and UK brokers offering lots of benefits for their domestic traders, their systems for foreign traders are not as good as it supposed to be, especially for Asian and African traders. As I am an Asian trader, my bank will charge me from 1.7% to 4% of my fund if I deposit by Credit Card. It’s hard to earn 5% per month but I have to pay 4% just for depositing, so it is make no sense to me for doing trade with those brokers. Hence, choosing ECN brokers offering local payment systems is necessary. Based on the experience I have when trading with many brokers, and I considered Exness payment system is the best. They not only offer over 30 different payment methods helping the customers to have a wider choices, their local payment systems are also free-charged. Additionally, I also don’t have to spend hours or days to withdraw my fund, since Exness withdrawal system is spontaneously, I could get my money back within seconds or I also can withdraw to my bank accounts within few minutes. It’s remarkable because there isn’t any broker could do that. One main reason explaining the fast speed of Exness system is the automatically system which does not need any finance guys to participate in the process. The system will check the matching between the withdrawal information and your ID, and return your money immediately. Moreover, Exness also has to invest a big amount of money into these systems including e-wallets, banks, and local payment systems to keep all transaction run smoothly and automatically.

Satisfied local supports

Unlike the majority of brokers who offer online services only in English, these brokers support average more than 20 languages. They support the customers through live chat, phones and local offices. Their service is available 24/ for the most common language like English, Chinese and Thai. In the forex trading market, supporting service is essential to traders. The traders will need lots of helps due to the complexity of the forex market, and it would be even more helpful is the brokers could offer the services in local languages.

These brokers are mainly work on Asian and African regions including the biggest forex markets like: China, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, Malaysia, Vietnam, Iran, Russia and Arabic. You could find their office in China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Dubai. In case the country you are living in don’t have regional offices, you could live chat or call them for the services. To be more specific with the number of languages they are supporting:

● Exness supports 13 languages and 24/7

● XM supports 30 languages and 24/7

● Hot Forex supports 27 languages and 24/7

Most desirable trading conditions

I have done a survey of 100 traders with a question “what type of Forex account do you think it is the best forex account for trading?” and the results was 95% traders think ECN account is the best account. However, in reality, 80% of them are trading in Market Maker and STP accounts.

Why their act is different from what they think it is right? The best benefit of ECN account is low cost and high transparency, but the drawback of it is volatility. Trading in ECN is risky for beginners because it quotes are much more volatile than STP and MM accounts. Moreover, ECN slippages are higher, so quotes are not stable. In the consequence, there are lots of no-quote errors and gaps. One explanation is owning to the wild market of ECN, where hundreds or even thousands traders are cheating and taking each other advantages. Even when trading with a company (Market Maker) or a bank (STP) are more stable, we still need ECN brokers that can provide more stable quotes and less slippages.

Some people think that liquidity providers who will deliver to you a better quotes. But the reality is not that simple, because these liquidity providers will contribute more quotes for themselves so it isn’t persistent. There will be lots of no quotes, slippages and gaps. But the 5 brokers I have mentioned did it differently. They get quotes from tens liquidity providers at one time and then they will choose the best quotes distributing to retail clients. It is much safer because if there is one liquidity provider got a quote problem, there still be nine more provider to them, who always having best quotes ; less slippages, gap and no-quote problems; as they are the top liquidity providers. Here are top 3 best ECN quote brokers: Exness, FxPro, and ICMarket.

As you may have known, MT4 and MT5 are the most 2 popular trading platforms, but they aren’t perfect. They are not compatible with some operating system like Windows Vista, XP; they also cannot be installed in some phones. That is one of the reasons why some brokers have choose to invest in trading platforms that could be observed and worked on the phones. FxPro and XM are leading in developing and improving trading platforms.

I know that forex trading can be difficult, especially ECN trading. Because there are so many different brokers, it can be hard to choose the best ECN broker. However, it is still not the end of the problem. You can be confusing when starting because scam brokers are everywhere. Also, you should know that no brokers are 100 percent perfect. While the US and UK brokers can be more credible, Cyprus brokers can offer better trading conditions. If you understand your trading strategies and your broker’s policies, you can be successful in this market. Personally, I think the best forex broker simply is the person that meets your trading needs and strategies. As longtime traders, I and my colleagues have discussed and chosen some good ECN brokers. They include Exness.com, XM.com, FxPro.com, FXTM.com and ICMarkets.com. To pick the best ECN broker for successful trading, six tips below can useful for you.

Checking their trading costs

Trading costs include spreads and commissions. And, brokers make money through these ways. While the US brokers charge very high, those brokers charge very low. In particular, their spreads are lower than half of spreads of the US brokers. For regular accounts, spreads can be none. But for ECN accounts, those brokers can charge 5$ to 7$ per lot. Exness is the best forex broker in this field. Their spread is around 0.0xx pip, and they only charge 5$ commission for each lot.

Considering their payment systems

From my point of view, ECN traders pay high attention to the payment system of the broker. Normally, ECN investors may put hundreds of thousands dollars in their accounts. So, they love to trade with brokers that require reasonable minimum deposit and offer good payment systems and methods. Moreover, you should check their local payment systems before choosing an ECN broker. The US and UK brokers can offer good local payment systems. However, they are quite bad in Asia, Africa and Australia.

In this field, I consider Exness is the best ECN broker because they offer the best payment system. For example, Exness has more than 30 different payment methods. Their local payment systems are completely free, even in foreign countries. Because this broker leaves their work for the machine, their trading process can be faster and more secure. The process can take a few seconds to minutes while that in other brokers can take several hours to days.

Confirming their credibility

Because ECN traders are big and professional investors, they only love to trade with reliable brokers. To know if your ECN broker is reliable, check their reputation and regulations.

When it comes to regulations in forex trading, a license is extremely important. It can show the capabilities, standards and reputation of your broker. Some famous and trusted licenses include CySEC, FCA, FSB, ASIC, DFSA, NFA and CFTC. The best ECN brokers listed above have some reliable licenses. For exam

In my opinion, one or two licenses are enough because they can have some advantages and disadvantages. For example, licenses can help control brokers and protect their traders against scams. However, the regulations can reduce their trading volume and income. Moreover, brokers have to pay fee for those agencies. They have to offer less trading tools and charge higher spreads and commissions.

To confirm the broker’s credibility, you can also check their search traffic and trading volume. The most reliable ECN broker is the person who has positive search traffic and high trading volume.

Checking their local customer support

It’s very important to consider local customer support before choosing an ECN broker. Personally, I think that this factor can contribute partly to forex trading results. Because traders need constant and timely help and advice, they choose brokers with 24/7 customer service. For non-native traders, they love brokers that can assist in their language.

From my experience, those ECN brokers mentioned earlier do great job. Their customer service is available for 24/7 and they help their traders in multiple languages. Apart from online support, these brokers open local offices to help their clients better. In the countries that they don’t have representative offices, they will support by live chat or by phone. Here are some reputable ECN brokers with great customer support.

Exness: supports 24/7 and assists in 13 different languages

FxPro: assists in 19 different languages

XM: supports 24/7 and assists in 30 languages

These above are six tips for choosing the best ECN broker. If you’re interested in any broker, check all of their conditions. I hope that some good ECN brokers I mentioned could meet your trading demands and strategies.

Thinking of their rebates and bonuses

Most ECN traders don’t care much about rebates and bonuses. But personally, I think that these offers can help you save more money. I have traded with several reliable brokers and received some attractive rebates and bonuses. If you’re just starting out as a trader, FXTM or XM can be a better choice. These best ECN brokers often give 30$ welcome bonus when you create your account for the first time. And when you deposit money, you will also receive 100% bonus.

Knowing their ECN quotes

Because of low cost and high transparency, ECN account is considered the best account. However, this type of forex accounts also has some disadvantages. For example, their quotes are volatile and unstable compared to MM and STP accounts. Moreover, their slippages can be higher than other kinds of accounts. For these reasons, I think that not a lot of beginners choose ECN accounts for trading.

If you’re interested in ECN accounts, consider brokers with less slippages and better quotes. In this field, Exness, FxPro and ICMarket are considered the best forex broker.

I have traded with many different forex brokers in my years of forex trading, so I’ve myself gathered quite a bit of experience to properly give my fellow traders opinions about 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:

 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.

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. 

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.

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%. 

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.

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 best forex 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.

The forex market is becoming well-known these days. The high frequency of exchanging shows the rapid demands of traders around the world. In the consequence that, forex services are being offered by many companies called forex brokers, which founded daily. However, it seems a bit hard for beginners who want to start trading. But don’t be too much worried, I am going to show you the comparison of some reliable brokers and put them into 8 different criterion so that you can end up with your own decision of the best forex broker in 2018. But be noticed that this article is prepared for Asian traders. To find out the top 5 brokers in the world, click here.

What is your way to value a broker? I would highly recommend that you have to look at the way they treat their traders. The excellent trading conditions and good customer services has always been the first priority when a trader considers their broker. Besides that, being transparent and safe is a plus either. Less priority but not less important is the long-term profit. Small brokers often offer their customers bonuses or promotions but that could be a trap. In other words, reliable broker offer smaller bonuses but less risky. You have to be a wise traders, don’t get your eyes covered with short-term profits.

1. REGULATION

Having a license from a famous and trusted organization expresses the reputation, standards and capability for a forex broker. A license has the ability to show the credibility of a broker and ensure the safe for traders. There are some reliable certificates such as ASIC (Australia), CySEC (Cyprus), FSA (Japan), CFTC (United States), NFA (also United States), and FCA (United Kingdom) but remember, these are territorial. If a broker has FCA, that broker could not be able to protect their traders in Asia. By mean, a broker that has a lot of certificates doesn’t gain a broker more credibility. But one is better than none, still a broker obsesses a license rather than nothing.

There are many limitations having a license for most of brokers. Having a license means they have to offer higher spread, lower leverage, less trading tools, and higher minimum deposit which proves the result that it’s good for the trader but not for the brokers.

So to wrap this category up, I would say that having a license makes an organization more trusted. At least each must have one as their asset. So what should we do traders? Have a deal with worldwide organization rather than a small one. The choice is yours, make it smart.

2. TRANSPARENCY & SECURITY

Getting to know clear about your broker is the first action every traders should take when consider one in this overloaded and complicated trading market. Scammers are always willing to attack you. It’s recommended that you should not put a broker into your chosen list unless they are transparent of their financial and performance. My experience is just with Exness and FxPro. It can be found on their websites the reports or related information. More than that, Exness even shows how much they have in the bank. With this point, traders can take a light breath dealing with Exness since they have 4 times the deposit of their clients. Keep in mind that brokers compensate clients if there are some problems during the trade. It’s also a need to check the audit of your broker.

3. TRADING VOLUME

Why’s checking the trading volume of a broker important? Obviously, only if more people would choose that broker to trade, that broker becomes trusted as it should be. Billions of people are using them, showed surprising numbers.

Exness: $323 billion per month.

Hot Forex: $280 billion per month.

Forex.com: $185 billion per month.

FXCM: $108 billion per month.

4. CUSTOMER SERVICE

It seems to be a bit challenging for everyone to get familiar with the forex field. Fortunately, every broker provides a customer service to ensure best quality of serving. It’s considered that an effective broker has to be available at all time and support needy customers. The brokers tend to simplify the language as much as they can because they understand that not all the traders are good at English Some of the brokers offering 24/7 service and multiple languages I know are Exness, FBS, FxPro and XM.

5. COST & FEE

The spread and the commission is also a problem that traders usually concern when they make a deal. By means, if the trade and commission are too high, the rate to succeed is low and vice versa. To avoid that, brokers tend to charge their clients as low as possible. For the most popular currency pair, which is EUR/USD, some big brokers’ spread is as low as 1.1pip, like Exness, Hot Forex, and FBS. XM and FXTM’s is a little higher - 1.7 pip.

For the regular accounts most brokers don’t charge any commission even when it comes to ECN account, the spread turns to none, that leads to the rise of charging commission. Exness, in my experience, is the leading broker of this field; they charge only $2.5 for each lot, which is the lowest price of all. Learn more about ECN brokers here.

6. WITHDRAWAL/TRANSFER SYSTEM

One of the traders’ concern is the withdrawal time. For internal brokers, the time is shorter but however, not reliable. It’s safer when trading with overseas brokers but in fact, it’s going to take a longer time. The best solution I would highly recommend that to find a trader providing fastest so that you can follow your trading strategy. I couldn’t deny the high competitive efficiency doing this task. They transfer all of the needed task to machines so the time to perform these takes tremendously short.

7. LEVERAGE

What trader could refuse a broker with high leverage? But the sad news is, most of the forex brokers in Japan, United States or United Kingdom have to offer low leverage due to their strict regulations in their countries. For that reason, traders usually don’t prefer brokers with too many licenses. Here are some brokers with best leverage:

Exness: For accounts with less than $1000 and having traded more than 5 lots, the leverage is unlimited. For accounts with over $1000, it is 1:2000 top.

Hot Forex: 1:1000 top.

FBS: 1:1000 top.

XM: 1:888 top.

8. MINIMUM DEPOSIT

One certain thing to tell that you probably don’t want to spend too much money in an account when you start a deal as a small or a beginning trader. It’s common that 90% of new traders will lose all their money at the very first deals. In this case, you might think of brokers that offer account with low deposit. Here are some of my suggestions:

Exness: only $1.

FBS: only $1.

Hot Forex: $5.

To wrap this up, I hope that you can end up with your decision considering which broker is the most suits you. Needless to say, the choice is still yours. If you’re new to this field, I suggest you read this article about the best account for beginners.