FXPro Review 2023

FXPro is a well-known CFD broker that’s generally considered safe and honest. It’s regulated by Britain’s FCA, one of the strictest regulators, as well as several other jurisdictions. It offers CFDs on more than 70 currency pairs, stock indices, stocks, commodities, and cryptocurrencies. No actual stocks and no fixed income, though. This is less than some top brokers offer but probably enough for all but semi-professional traders. British traders can benefit from being able to spread bet.

Fees are about average for some assets and on the high side for others, especially stock CFDs. Most FxPro traders will probably use MT4 or MT5 rather than the firm’s proprietary platform, FxPro EDGE, which isn’t yet available on mobile. Professional traders will be attracted by the tight spreads available through the cTrader platform, although that doesn’t offer the full range of their products. 

One distinguishing feature is its 24/7 customer service in over 20 languages, which new traders may find attractive.

As it’s a CFD broker, FXPro cannot accept US and Canadian residents as clients.

Is FXPro a good broker?

Yes, we think FXPro is a good broker, especially for self-directed traders who know what they’re doing. It promises fast execution, its fees are reasonable, and it offers all the trading instruments that most people would want (and then some!). It offers both the well-known platforms from MetaTrader or FXPro’s own proprietary platform. Customer service is available every day of the week, which is unusual. Particularly active traders are eligible for discounts. However, FXPro may not be the best choice for beginners due to limited educational materials and lack of social trading and passive investment options. 

What is FXPro?

FxPro was founded in 2006 by Denis Sukhotin, a Russian entrepreneur who is now Executive Chairman of the Board and holds between 25%-50% of the shares of the company. It got UK regulation and opened its London office, now its headquarters, in 2010. It has other offices in Cyprus, the Bahamas, and Dubai. It claims to have over 870,000 clients from 173 countries. 

The company exclusively offers contracts for difference (CFDs). 

It says it’s a no-dealing-desk (NDD) market-maker. They explain:

Due to the high volumes of our client’s trades, we are able to internally match a great deal of our order flow. This allows us to minimize our risk without interfering with your orders in any way.

They add:

As not all client positions are hedged, a residual exposure up to our market risk limit remains in house. Excess exposure may be hedged externally.

So they’re holding onto some of the exposure and sometimes hedging that externally. But without a dealing desk? Maybe it’s all done automatically with an algorithm. 

Your Trades are executed at our Equinix Data centres in LD4 London. Our trading servers are co-located and cross fiber connected with Tier 1 banks who provide liquidity via our proprietary aggregator Quotix.

However they do it, they claim to do it quickly. They say that “most client orders are filled in under 14 milliseconds,” and that in 2021, “almost 80% of market orders were executed at the requested price while more than 10% of client orders were executed with positive slippage, receiving an even better price.”

Website languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Vietnamese

Broker pros and cons

Is FXPro safe?

Definitely (as far as we can tell). According to Creditsafe, a company that evaluates companies’ creditworthiness, the UK entity has a score of 96 out of 100, making FXPro “very low risk.” 

FXPro says on its website that it has over $100mn in Tier 1 capital (a bank’s equity capital and disclosed reserves – the core measure of a bank’s financial strength). Note though that the company doesn’t have a banking license and is not publicly listed and therefore we don’t have its full financial information. With over 200 employees, it claims to have executed over 450mn orders for 1.8mn clients in over 173 countries since its founding. We haven’t been able to find any incidences where the firm was sanctioned or fined by the authorities. 

You might be thinking, is their software safe? The website only requires one-step login. That’s more convenient but not as safe as two-step authentication. Nor is there any biometric authentication. Personally I’m happy with that as it means I wouldn’t have to worry about criminals cutting off my fingers or gouging out my eyeballs in order to log into my account and steal millions of dollars to finance their plan for a satellite-based laser system that will enable them to vaporize world leaders meeting at the UN. At least, that’s what happened in a movie I saw recently.

Is FXPro regulated?

FXPro is regulated by four financial regulators: the UK FCA (Tier 1), Cyprus’ CySEC and South Africa’s FSCA (Tier II), and the Bahamas’ SCB (Tier III).

It’s also registered in major European countries, such as German, France, and Spain. 

Clients onboarded under the FCA are eligible for that country’s insurance fund.

The firm offers negative protection balance. Its system automatically monitors your transactions and guarantees that your account won’t go into negative territory (meaning in practice that you’ll automatically be stopped out when your trade is down 50%). 

Is FXPro legal in USA?

No. FXPro only offers CFDs, which are not allowed in the US. Accordingly, US (and Canadian) residents aren’t allowed to register with the broker. Sorry.

Where is FXPro based?

The company’s headquarters is in London. It also has offices Cyprus and the Bahamas, plus a representative office in Dubai. 

Who owns FXPro?

FXPro is a privately owned company and so information on its ownership is limited. The founder, Denis Sukothin, is the only person on record with the UK authorities as having a substantial stake in the company – he owns between 25%-50%. 

Can FXPro be trusted?

Yes indeed! (as far as we can tell.) They’ve been in business for a long time with no noticeable brushes with the law. They’re regulated in several countries and headquartered in the UK, which has some of the strictest regulation in the business. They’re well-capitalized and well established, with hundreds of thousands of clients doing millions of trades.

Leverage

The firm offers leverage of up to 1:200 for accounts opened under the Bahamas regulator (SCB) and 1:500 for Pro Clients (local regulation allowing, of course, which it doesn’t in the UK or Europe). Unlike some other firms, you can change the degree of leverage, which is a big help in adjusting how much risk you want to take.

Maximum leverage for stock market indices is 20:1. 

The maximum leverage on futures is 10:1 for energy and platinum and 20:1 for others.

Leverage on share CFDs is up to 5:1.

Accounts

Unlike most companies, there doesn’t seem to be different kinds of accounts based on how much you deposit or how much you trade. Rather, the accounts are based on which platform you use, which also determines the fees. So we’ll cover all this in one section under platforms and fees.

Having said that, there is such a thing as VIP account holders, who get a personal manager and a free VPS (see trading tools). There are also swap-free Islamic accounts. 

Fees

See the section on Trading Platforms

Spreads

On FxPro’s MT4 offering, traders can choose variable or fixed spreads. For the variable-spread pricing, there are two types of execution-based pricing: instant and market. Instant execution is subject to requotes but no slippage, while market execution has the potential for slippage – but without requotes.

Trading Instruments

The broker offers CFDs on Forex, futures, stock market indices, individual stocks, commodities such as metals and energy, and cryptocurrencies (depending on the jurisdiction). Actual stocks and ETFs are not available. This is not particularly important for traders, but may be important for longer-term investors. 

The number of available assets differs depending on which account you have. 

The company offers over 70 currency pairs, including such exotics as CNH, CZK, HDK, HUF, ILS, MXN, PLN, RUB, SGD, THB, TRY, and ZAR. 

There are 18 different stock market indices available, including Japan, Spain, and the Netherlands, as well as most of the other majors you’d expect. I was surprised to see three German indices (German Technology 30 and Germany 50 midcap as well as the well-established DAX) and two French (France 120 as well as the CAC) but only one UK index (FTSE 100). 

Futures are available on the main agricultural commodities (coca, coffee, corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat), as well as energy (Brent, WTI, and natural gas). Of course these are CFDs on futures, not the futures themselves, so you don’t have to worry about waking up one morning to find a carload of wheat dumped on your front lawn. There don’t seem to be any fixed income futures. For metals, there’s the four precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, and palladium) as well as the key base metals too (aluminum, copper, lead, and zinc). You can trade gold in USD per ounce, the global standard, as well as vs EUR or in USD per gram, while silver is available vs USD and EUR. There are brokers who offer more variety, especially with regards to fixed income, but this offering is enough for most traders. 

For stocks, it gets a bit complicated. You can sort by country (Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, UK, US) or by sector (from Academic & Educational Services to Utilities). I don’t know how many there are and it probably changes depending on which companies are in fashion. I counted about 1,250 US companies and over 300 UK ones. As I said, these too are CFDs, not actual stocks. 

Stocks are available through the BnkPro app, which isn’t available yet in Europe (including the UK) and some countries in Asia. 

There are 28 cryptocurrencies available, all vs USD. These range from AAVE to ZEC (ZCash). Again, these are CFDS on cryptos, not actual cryptos. And they aren’t available to UK residents or those registered under the UK entity, due to FCA rules (professional clients excepted). 

One unusual offering: FxPro offers spread betting to its UK clients. The main difference is that profits from spread betting aren’t liable for UK capital gains tax or stamp duty, which makes it attractive for UK residents. 

Account Opening and Minimum Deposits

The account opening process at FxPro is straightforward. It’s fully digital and fast – shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. Verification can take as little as two hours. Once you open your account, you then select a trading platform (MT4, MT5, FxPro Edge, or cTrader), default leverage, base currency, and language of communication. 

The company offers eight base currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD, CHF, PLN, and ZAR. This is about average: fewer than some companies but more than others. 

Payment methods include the usual bank transfer, credit/debit cards, broker-to-broker, PayPal, plus a number of e-wallets, such as Skrill, Neteller, and UnionPay. There are no charges for deposits (or withdrawals), although of course your bank or whatever may charge to send money. 

(Of course, clients who are joining FxPro from the UK are subject to the UK’s FCA regulations, such as requiring an evaluation of your financial knowledge and forbidding deposits through e-wallets.) 

Don’t let the “recommended minimum deposit” fool you. The “recommended minimum” is around 1,000 of whatever your base currency is: USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, or CHF. For smaller currency units it’s something similar (eg JPY 100,000). However that’s not the actual minimum. The actual minimum is only 100 units (eg $100 or JPY 10,000). Some brokers have lower minimums, but I think anyone who can’t commit $100 should just keep practicing while you save up your money.

Withdrawals

There are no charges for withdrawals, although FxPro may charge a fee on deposits made via PayPal (2.7%), Skrill (2.6%) or Netpayer (2%) if you want your money back without having traded. Withdrawals usually take one working day, according to their website – we haven’t independently verified this. 

Trading Platforms and Fees

As mentioned above, in the case of FxPro we have to wrap these two topics together because what platform you use determines what fees you pay. Or looked at the other way, you may want to choose your platform according to which fee structure you prefer.

I found the company’s platforms to be confusing. As far as I can tell, the company’s proprietary trading platform is called FxPro Directfor themobile app andFxPro EDGEon the web version.

FxPro Direct is focused on account management. You can deposit and withdraw funds through it. You can search for assets, monitor your trades, and create watchlists. It does have charts (only four types, down from six on EGDE) but no drawing tools and almost no indicators except volume. (But can you see lines on charts on your phone anyway?) It doesn’t support automated trading. It offers biometric login, which is convenient and safe in case you lose your phone. 

EDGE is better for trading, analysis, and basic market news. It offers over 50 technical indicators, charting tools, six chart types with 15 time frames, and some useful trading widgets. It’s also easier to set up and use than the MetaTrader platforms. UK clients can use it for spread betting. It does have some downsides, though: it doesn’t integrate with Trading Central, you can’t do algorithmic trading (robots), and the execution speed is slower than with MT4 and MT5. There’s no app but you can use it on a browser on your phone if you insist.

In addition to its proprietary platforms, FxPro offers the popular MT4 platform in three different dialects: FxPro MT4 Instant, FxPro MT4 Fixed, and just plain FxPro MT4. 

You can trade forex, metals, indices, energy, futures, and shares on FxPro Instant and Fixed, but not cryptocurrencies. All of those plus cryptos are available on FxPro MT4. 

The “instant” MT4 has floating spreads and no commissions, while the “fixed” MT4 has fixed spreads for seven major FX pairs and floating spread spreads and no commissions for the rest. Both are subject to requotes but no slippage. FxPro MT4 has floating spreads and no commission for everything. In this case, execution is “tiered liquidity:” orders are executed at the volume-weighted average price. What that means is if you put in a market order for EUR 100,000 and they do 25k at 1.05, 50k at 1.06, and 25k at 1.07, you’ll be charged 1.06. This means all trades are “at the market.”

The FxPro MT5 platform can trade everything the FxPro MT4 platform can. It too has floating spreads and zero commission and tiered liquidity. In fact I’d say it’s exactly like the FxPro MT4 account except it uses MT5. (It also says it’s a “netting or hedging” account, whereas the MT4 account is just “hedging.” I’m not sure what this means. 

You can also trade using cTrader, another external trading platform. FxPro only allows you to trade forex, metals, indices, and energy on cTrader, no futures, shares, or cryptocurrencies. However, the pricing is better. On FX and metals there are reduced spreads (they start at an unusually narrow 0.2 pip) plus a fee of $35 per $1mn traded, while for indices and energy, it’s floating spreads. Market execution is again tiered liquidity. Importantly, you can implement algorithmic strategies. cTrader is aimed at professional traders who want better pricing for large trades and more in-depth information about the market.

You can compare the characteristics here. 

The MT4 platform is easy to customize and offers clear fee reports, but you can’t set price alerts and notifications on the mobile platform, only the desktop. (You’ll receive them on your mobile though, which is sure to impress the ladies when you’re out to dinner. “Oh, excuse me, my USD/JPY position has just reached my take-profit level.” I’m sure her eyes will light up as she envisions you to be the next George Soros!)

FxPro also offers the BnkPro app for share trading, which as I mentioned has not been fully rolled out globally yet.

This offering is not as good as some other brokers, but it beats those who only offer the two MetaTrader platforms. 

Trading tools

FxPro offers a number of tools to simplify trading and help the traders analyze the market. 

Virtual Private Server (VPS): This enables the trader to upload their “expert advisor” (aka trading robot) to an MT4 or cAlgo platform and run it 24 hours a day, five days a week, even when your terminal is turned off. The robot is hosted near to the company’s servers and therefore latency – the time it takes between initiating a trade and having it executed -- is reduced. Just think: you can go to bed and wake up and find you’ve lost all your money with no effort! The service costs $30 a month although it’s free for VIP account holders. 

Charting: The FxPro EDGE platform offers 53 indicators, 22 drawing tools, and several selectable chart types. Sounds good, but cTrader has 76 indicators and dozens of drawing tools, not to mention smoother charting than with MetaTrader. EDGE also comes with several default layouts and can be customized using drag-and-drop modules and widgets.

Trading tools: Most of these are not proprietary and therefore may well be available elsewhere too. It offers access to Trading Central, which means having a lot of its own proprietary indicators etc would be redundant. Signals from Trading Central are available and can be plugged into the MetaTrader platforms. 

Overall, FxPro’s selection of tools is about average.

Types of orders

This is one of the limits of FxPro. It only offers the basic order types: market, limit, stop, and good til canceled (GTC) and good til time (GTT). Trailing stop is available only on the MT4 desktop platform. No “one cancels the other” or other more sophisticated orders.

Social trading

This probably isn’t the platform for you if you’re looking for someone else to run your money for you. There’s no facility for copy trading, and FxPro doesn’t link up with the widely used copy trading platforms ZuluTrade or DupliTrade. There are no public investment offerings, such as exchange traded funds (ETFs). Professionals can get access to Multi-Account Manager (MAM) services on MT4 and MT5, but if you’re a professional why would you want these? 

Research and Education

Research and education is not FxPro’s strong point. 

They have a number of educational videos for both beginners and more advanced traders. But when I say “a number” it’s a single-digit number for both categories. There’s also a “watch and learn” section, but the videos there date from 2019. (Admittedly these may be evergreen: there’s no need to make a new “how to open your account” video every year. Their YouTube channel also focuses on such “how to” videos, with the only market analysis videos being four or five years old.

As for research, the website offers both fundamental and technical analysis (a lot of “wave analysis,” if you’re into that, which I’m not), but nothing to get excited about. The articles are sketchy and there’s no regular daily overview of the whole market, just a “feature of the day.” I noticed that all the articles were credited to “The FxPro Analyst Team,” whose members remain anonymous. Worrisome. There used to be webinars but no more as far as I can tell.

For news, they apparently offer clients access to the LiveSquawk news feed and audio commentary, although I couldn’t find that on their website – perhaps you have to have an account first. Headlines from Dow Jones International (DJI) stream in their MetaTrader platforms, but not in their proprietary FxPro EDGE, which seems strange to me. 

All told, they’d be well advised to hire me at an astronomical salary to improve their research & analysis offering. Something in six figures please, the first one being preferably a 2 or above (This is euros, not yen). 

Customer Support

FxPro’s support really shines. They’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in 21 languages* (vs 13 languages that their website is available in). Most brokers don’t offer customer service on the weekend so this is one area where the company stands out. I’m not sure what you’d want to talk to your broker about on a Saturday night given that markets are generally closed, but in case you do, he or she is available.

Customer service is available via:

• Live chat support
• Callback; or
• Email

They also list the phone numbers of the offices on the website, presumably you could call them if you want to but I’m not sure you’d get customer support.

*Arabic, Chinese, Czech, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese

I am curious to know why they have a website and customer support in Japanese when they don’t have an office in Japan and aren’t registered with Japan’s JFSA. I assume they’re aiming at Japanese who live abroad (nod nod wink wink).

Is FXPro a good broker for beginners?

Yes and no. Yes in that it has all the products you’d want, good execution, it’s safe (as far as we can tell), and especially it has help available 24 hours a day, seven days a week – an unusual feature in this industry (most brokers only offer it five days a week). It also offers the popular MT4 and MT5 trading platforms, which are industry standard. That means if you learn to trade on one of those and decide to go elsewhere, you can probably take your knowledge with you. 

No because the lack of educational materials and social trading may leave new traders floundering somewhat. You might be a little lost initially and wish there were more people to bounce ideas off of, to ask questions of, or just to watch, listen to and learn from.

That being said, there’s a lot of other material available on the web to teach you how to trade. If you’ve found a guru you like somewhere else (how about me, for example, and my commentary here?) then this won’t be a deal-breaker for you.