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.