Best Forex Brokers for UK Traders

Welcome to Best Forex Brokers, a site where you’ll find everything you need to know about UK forex trading operators. At this online destination you’ll be able to read in depth analysis of various forex brokers and thus save precious time that can be used for trading instead. We have spent many hours testing a wide range of brokers, their bonuses as well as their platforms. We have extremely high standards and list only the best on our website. Our ultimate goal is to provide readers with helpful details and recommend them safe and trustworthy brokers, thus helping them avoid scammers. We hope that every time any of our readers wants to find out something more about an operator they consider joining, they’ll first check out our opinion of that broker; if you find it featured on our site, that’s a good sign from the start. If your chosen broker hasn’t been mentioned at all, that means you should avoid it because it didn’t pass our trustworthiness test.

For a quick access to several leading forex brokers whose service is impeccable you can take a look at the table below. The listed forex trading operators meet the requirements of all types of traders and proved themselves worthy of our trust. In order to find out more about each of the brokers, their platform, support and so on, simply click on them.

Criteria Used for Choosing the Best Brokers

To make sure that all brokers are rated in the same way, we have a list of criteria we use while testing UK’s forex brokerages. This way, not only you get all crucial info about a certain operator, but also you can easily compare the featured brokers. Here are the criteria we believe are the most important to both rookie and experienced forex traders:

Regulation

Trading at a regulated forex broker is always a better idea than trading at sites that are not licensed and/or certified by regulating bodies. Joining a site that has to meet high safety and security standards in order to obtain a licence is the first step to making sure you’re part of trustworthy community. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the UK regulating body that oversees forex brokers working on UK’s territory. However, other reputable licensing bodies that supervise such trading sites are CySEC, SAiC, BaFin and Central Bank of Ireland.

Reputation

Traders shouldn’t always rely on reputation when they choose a forex broker. However, this criteria shouldn’t be ignored either. There are brokers that have disappointed hundreds of traders and such sites should be avoided at any cost. Before we even start rating an operator we make sure that it has a positive reputation among traders by Googling its name with combinations such as “scam,” “rogue” and etc. If there are results that support such claims, we instantly consider it unreliable and thus remove it from our best UK forex brokers list.

Welcome Offer

Does the operator gives you free cash when you register or when you make your first deposit? Are the bonus conditions fair and reasonable? Is the maximum bonus amount too small? These are important questions you have to ask prior to joining a forex broker, since the welcome offer is a great way of improving your chances to win by being able to invest more funds than you’ve uploaded to your trading account.

Platform

Everything else is worthless if the platform featured at your chosen forex brokerage is of a low quality. Several characteristics of a state of the art trading platform are high responsiveness, easy navigation and smooth running. Additionally, a good platform should offer trading tools and generally provide a pleasant and crash free trading experience. Furthermore, we appreciate a lot forex brokers that provide a demo mode of their platform. Demo mode lets you experience the trading process at a particular site for free and therefore it can save you lots of money if you decide that the platform doesn’t fit your needs.

Spreads

Many forex brokers boast with low spreads, but that’s not always true. There are sites that have hidden fees or don’t publish their spreads at all. These sites don’t have a place on our list of top UK forex brokerages. We carefully check all spreads, both the ones offered on typical currency pairs as well as the ones on less popular pairs. The reason is pretty simple – if our readers want to try something new, they should get the best for their money nonetheless. Also, we know that different types of trading accounts may have different spreads. Thus, don’t worry; we got you covered there as well.

Commissions

Some forex brokers have a way for making up low spreads by adding commissions for their services. Commissions and hidden fees are traders’ worst enemy and we won’t let you fall in such a trap set by operators. The best UK forex brokers are honest with their customers and always publish all commissions and fees on an easily spotted place on their website. Not paying any commission is the ideal situation; nevertheless, if there are fees, then we want them low and we want them clearly stated. Any broker that tries to play games and trick customers into paying for account maintenance, monthly fees and so on by stating them with small letters in the “User Agreement” is not welcomed on our site.

Learning Material

Rookie traders can lose lots of money unless they’re well informed about how forex trading works, how to correctly use the trading platform or make the best out of the bonus offers featured at the site. All these things can be learned with the help of educational materials and tools such as e-books, webinars and guides. The forex brokers that have the best rankings on our site take a good care of their inexperienced traders by providing them with a wide range of such materials that help them become successful traders in no time.

Security

Even though security is placed pretty low on our criteria list, it’s definitely crucial to pay attention to forex brokers’ safety standards. We would never want our readers to experience being a victim of a scam or losing their funds because they’ve trusted the wrong operator. Hence, unless a trading site uses latest SSL encryption, has a good privacy policy and takes a good care of its customers’ funds it has no chances to be featured on Best Forex Brokers.

Support

Many traders fail to recognise the importance of a constant working professional support team. However, we’re well aware that if there’s any kind of an issue, traders need to get it settled as soon as possible. Therefore, the mentioned brokerages on our site are known for providing an excellent support via various channels such as live chat, e-mail and phone.

Current Legal Situation in the UK

Unlike the trading laws in the United States, the legal situation in the United Kingdom, when it comes to forex trading, is much trader-friendlier. Naturally, since there’s a regulating body that sets the working standards of trading sites that want to serve UK customers, forex trading within the UK is legal. In the past, forex brokers were overseen by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) that later became two separate regulatory authorities: Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). The FCA is now responsible for licensing and approving forex brokerages. In order to get green light by the FCA operators have to meet strict requirements listed in the Authority’s Handbook of rules and guidance. Some of the modules found in the Handbook are Conduct of Business, Client Assets and Systems and Controls.

Another thing related to the legal situation of forex trading in the UK is tax. Namely, spread betting in the Kingdom is tax-free and therefore forex traders don’t have to pay taxes on their profits. However, a problem with this way of practice is the fact that forex losses can’t be claimed against other personal income either. Naturally, the situation can change very soon as regulatory bodies analyse the pros and the cons of the current taxing laws regarding spreads betting.

What is Best Forex Broker?

Best Forex Broker is a site where you can find all you need to know about forex brokers that serve UK citizens. Behind Best Forex Broker stands a team of professionals that are well informed about the latest forex trading trends as well as operators. We have a priceless experience when it comes to forex and we want to share our knowledge with you, our readers. With that idea in mind, we launched Best Forex Broker in 2015 and equipped it with all necessary tools and details a trader needs. Naturally, the main stress of the site is placed over the forex brokers and here are the top reasons why that is so:

• At Best Forex Brokers you can find only forex broker that won’t disappoint you
• We list only the best operators on the market
• The details here can help you compare brokers and find the one that suits you the best
• We save you precious time by doing the research for you
• We list both pros and cons of these reliable forex trading sites

How to Choose the Best Broker for You?

Even though we provide you the key facts about each forex broker you should take into consideration, there are certain steps you should follow in order to choose the best broker for you personally. Obviously, there are different types of traders and thus they need different bonus offers, spreads, banking limits and etc. So, after we’ve stated what our criteria for even considering adding a particular UK forex broker on our list, these are some things you should pay attention to when reading our opinion of a site.

• Platforms – Do you have a favourite trading platform? Does the site you want to join features such platform? If you’re a new trader you’re probably not aware that a single forex broker may have several different platforms such as MT4 (most commonly offered), MT5, Pro Trader, WebTrader and etc. Also, an important question is whether the platform has to be downloaded or is it available instantly? Once again, choose the one that you personally prefer.
• Minimum Trade – Are you someone that trades a lot or someone that trades occasionally? Do you want to invest lots of money or just a small share of your savings? All these issues are related to the minimum trade size that can be anything between 1 unit and 1 micro lot. Obviously, if you’re a beginner and still learning the basics you’ll want a broker that has a low minimum trade size.
• Maximum Leverage – Trading with leverage can be either very profitable or catastrophic for your bankroll. Therefore, pro traders tend to take higher risks for generating higher profits and thus need high leverages. Rookie traders, on the other hand, need low leverage that would make it possible for them to earn more, but also limit the spending. Depending on the operator, the leverage can be anything between 100:1 and 2,000:1. Remember – the higher the leverage the higher the risk.
• Banking – Before you can open trades you have to fund your account. Does the operator feature your preferred banking method? Are the deposit and cashout limits reasonable? If both these answers are “No,” you might want to find another place to trade forex.

What is Forex Trading?

Forex trading is trading of foreign currencies on the decentralised global foreign exchange market; hence the name forex. Trading foreign currencies includes all aspects of selling, buying and exchanging for fixed or current prices. Believe it or not, this is the largest market in the world where both people and companies try to make smart traders and generate huge profits. Even though currency trading is a risky activity that can result with losing more than you’ve initially invested, there are several key reasons why so many traders decide to try forex trading.

• Forex trading can be extremely profitable
• Forex trading is easy to understand
• Forex trading offers high liquidity
• Forex trading comes with low capital requirements
• Forex trading suits various trading styles

Most Commonly Traded Forex Pairs

We at Best Forex Brokers like to keep our readers well informed about forex trading as a concept as well as about the latest happenings in the world of forex. For example, traders have to know what primary and secondary trading pairs are. Primary are called the most popular forex pairs, while secondary are those that are not traded by a wide range of people. If you wonder why this is important to you as a possible future trader, let us further explain it. Primary pairs are made of frequently traded currencies and those are considered to be USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, CHF, AUD, JPY and NZD. Thanks to their popularity, these pairs can be found at almost every forex broker on the market. However, secondary pairs that include only one or none of the previously mentioned currency are not that easy to find. This is why you should stick to leading brokerages whose offer of forex pairs is rich in variety. You never know when you’ll feel like trading RUB, MXN, CHY and etc.

Trade Responsibly

Don’t let successful stories make you invest more money than you can actually afford. Forex trading, even at the best UK forex brokers, is a risky activity that can generate both profit and losses. Therefore, we advise all our readers to first decide how much they can really afford to invest in forex trading and to use tools that limit losses. That way, you’ll be able to enjoy the thrill of trading, but also you’ll make sure that you won’t find yourself in a seriously bad situation. Furthermore, avoid investing large sums of money during your first weeks of trading. The best strategy to trade responsibly is first to learn how forex trading works, then to set stop loss limits on each trade and, finally, to know when to stop.

Conclusion

To sum up, we’re always here to help you find a leading UK forex broker without spending hours of testing various platforms and sites. On our website you can find tons of helpful information and tools to get familiar with trading with foreign currencies as well as top brokers that offer this service. Some of the key points used in the process of rating brokerages are regulation, platform, support and commissions. We carefully check all these things so you can simply read our recommendations, compare brokers and choose which one suits you the best. Don’t forget, at Best Forex Brokers we feature only reliable and trustworthy operators with excellent overall offer. Besides taking a look at the table above, you also can check out the other brokers we’ve tested and learn what their main pros and cons are.