10 Best Forex Trading Platforms in the UK for 2024

How we chose the best trading platforms

To help you find the right trading platform, we:

• Chose platforms of brokers that are well-regulated. Strict regulation is essential to ensure that traders are treated fairly. 
• Selected brokers with platforms that have a simple interface, easy navigation, advanced charting tools, and customisable indicators.
• Picked reliable platforms. This means fast order execution, low latency, and minimal downtime.
• Recommended platforms with the best tools available for UK traders. Trading tools such as risk management, economic calendars, market analysis, and educational resources are essential.
• Chose the most secure trading platforms. This means brokers with two-factor authentication, encryption, and firewalls.
• We looked into broker accounts, their options and features, to ensure we offered only the platforms with the lowest trading fees. These are the fees we consider reasonable:
  • Minimum deposit of 200 USD or less
  • Average commission-free spread around 0.9 pips, OR:
  • A commission of 7-10 USD and a spread from 0.0 to 0.3 pips.
• Ensured that the platforms offered a wide range of financial instruments to trade, highlighting which interments were available on which trading platforms.
• Tested the brokers’ customer service, including whether it was available through the trading platforms, and how responsive and knowledgeable the agents were.

Our Broker Score and Trust Rating: Ensuring Your Broker’s Reliability

Choosing a broker you can trust with your money is a crucial decision. At FxScouts, we’ve developed two proprietary tools to assist you in this. Using extensive research on brokers and international regulators, we’ve designed an algorithm that provides each broker with a Broker Score and a Trust Rating.

Scoring and Review Process

Our review process is dynamic, not static. Understanding that brokers often modify their product offerings, we ensure our reviews are consistently updated with the most recent and accurate data. Brokers are scored in seven areas. In total, we consider over 200 individual metrics grouped into the following categories and weightings.

• 20% – Trust Rating: This rating combines a broker’s regulatory oversight with feedback from traders and other members of the trading community. We NEVER work with brokers with a low Trust Rating.
• 20% – Trading Conditions: The most important factor after trust is how much will your broker charge you. Trading conditions include the spread, especially on major currency pairs, and any commission for raw spread accounts. 
• 17.5% – Platform and Tools: MT4, MT5, TradingView? All three? The more platforms and analysis tools the better.
• 12.5% – Tradeable Assets: Traders want more than Forex, so the more assets to trade the better. Stocks, crypto, indices, commodities, bonds, ETFs, etc.
• 10% – Deposit and Withdrawal: It should ALWAYS be free and easy to deposit and withdraw funds, but some brokers make this easier than others.
• 10% – Education and Research: So many beginner traders fall at the first hurdle, the best brokers will make sure that new traders are educated and prepared for the markets.
• 10% – Customer Service: High-quality, round-the-clock support throughout the work week is essential. The better brokers also offer weekend support and a dedicated technical team.

You can find out more about our in-depth review process here.

What is Forex Trading?

Forex trading involves exchanging one currency for another to profit from fluctuations in the exchange rate. Unlike stock markets, the forex market is a decentralised global marketplace, and currencies can be traded around the clock. Forex trading is a popular investment option due to its potential for high returns and liquidity and low transaction costs. 

Learn more about how Forex trading works here

What is the difference between a Forex trading platform and a Forex broker?

Forex trading platforms and Forex brokers are two different things, but they are closely related.

Forex trading platforms are applications – either on a phone or a computer – that traders use to place trades, while Forex brokers are companies that find buyers and sellers for your trades. Forex brokers also provide leverage and other services such as education, analysis tools and customer support. Forex brokers charge a fee for these services; this is usually in the form of a markup called the “spread”.

Guide to the Best Trading Platforms

The most popular trading platforms are MetaTrader 4 (MT4), MetaTrader 5 (MT5), cTrader and TradingView. Many brokers also have their own proprietary trading platforms. Almost all trading platforms are also available as mobile trading apps. The best Forex trading platform for you will depend on your trading experience and personal taste. 

Features

MetaTrader 4

MetaTrader 5

cTrader

TradingView

Timeframes

9

21

26

Unlimited – customised timeframes

Chart Types

Line, Bar, candlesticks

Line, Bar, candlesticks

Bar, Candlesticks, Line +4 more

Bar, Candlesticks, Line +9 more

EA Trading

Indicators

31

38

55

100+

Pending Order Types

4

6

4

6

Depth of Market

Integrated Economic Calendar

Available as a widget

One Click Trading

Trailing Stop

(But from the terminal side)

(But from the terminal side)

Sentiment Display

Coding Language

MQL4

MQL5

C#

Pine Script

What is MetaTrader4 (MT4)?

Available at over 90% of Forex brokers, MT4 can run on any system, regardless of age, has extremely fast execution, and has the largest number of Expert Advisors.

Developed in 2005 by MetaQuotes, MT4 is the world’s most popular Forex trading platform. MT4 gives traders real-time access to the Forex market, enabling them to trade currencies, commodities, indices, and cryptocurrencies. However, it does not natively allow trading on stock CFDs, ETFs, and bonds, which are available on MT5, cTrader, and TradingView.

The platform also has advanced charting tools and customisable trading layouts, but its interface is outdated, and other platforms, such as MT5, cTrader, and TradingView, have a much broader range of platform tools and more advanced functionality.

Because MT4 has such low resource requirements, it can run on both new and old devices and has been developed to initiate trades as quickly as a Forex broker can process them.

One of the main benefits of MT4 is automated trading with trading robots called Expert Advisors (EAs). Traders can build or purchase EAs, which will trade within the parameters of a pre-set algorithm. Before MT4, automated trading was only available to banks and hedge funds. There are also many more EAs available for MT4 than any other platform in the world.

Watch our MT4 tutorial video
Learn more about MT4.
Find out more about our favourite MT4 brokers.

What is MetaTrader5 (MT5)?

A feature-rich and modern trading platform compared to MT4, MT5 is more powerful and efficient and offers trading on a broad range of tradable assets, including stocks, ETFs, and bonds. 

Released in 2010, MT5 is considered a more advanced and versatile platform than MT4. One of the key differences is that MT5 has a built-in economic calendar and more advanced charting tools. MT5 also supports more order types than MT4 and, unlike MT4, allows native trading of assets like stocks, ETFs and bonds. 

Another feature that sets MT5 apart from MT4 is its Depth of Market DOM feature. DOM measures the liquidity of an asset based on its supply and demand. It displays the number of open buy and sell orders for a given asset. 

MT5 also has an improved programming language called MetaQuotes Language 5 (MQL5) that allows traders to create more complex EAs than is possible with MQL4, but there are far fewer pre-programmed EAs available for download on MT5.

Although MT5 has slowly gained popularity and is available at many more Forex brokers than cTrader and TradingView, it is not as user-friendly or easy to set up.

Watch our MT5 Tutorial Video
Learn more about MT5.
Find out more about our favourite MT5 brokers.

What is cTrader?

cTrader is a modern-looking and user-friendly platform with more advanced functionality than MT4 and MT5. cTrader users are also more profitable than their MetaTrader counterparts.

Developed by Spotware and released in 2011, cTrader is a trading platform popular among forex traders for its advanced features and user-friendly interface. cTrader advanced charting capabilities include 70+ technical indicators, 26 time frames, a range of chart types, and Depth of Market functionality. cTrader also has a built-in economic calendar and a wide range of advanced order types.

Like MT4 and MT5, cTrader supports automated trading through cTrader Automate, a feature for developing and backtesting trading robots called cBots. cTrader also has an integrated copy trading function called cTrader Copy, allowing traders to copy the trades of other traders.

Unfortunately,  cTrader is not as widely available as MetaTrader software programs, but according to Spotware’s internal calculations, 35% more cTrader users are profitable compared to the industry average. This amazing statistic highlights why cTrader has become MetaTrader’s main competitor.

Watch out cTrader Tutorial Video
Learn more about cTrader
Find out more about our favourite cTrader brokers

What is TradingView?

TradingView has the most advanced charting functionality of all third-party trading platforms and is the most customisable. However, because it is fairly new, it is the least widely available platform. 

TradingView is a charting platform and social network used by 50 million traders and investors worldwide to spot opportunities across global markets. TradingView also works with select brokers, allowing traders to trade directly from TradingView’s charting platform. 

The TradingView platform offers a fully customisable experience, with 12 chart types, custom time intervals, 100,000+ community-built indicators, integrated financial analysis, and its own programming language, called PineScript, which allows traders to share their automated trading strategies.

Overall, TradingView is the most advanced, customisable, and feature-rich third-party platform available, but traders will have few brokers to choose from that offer its services.

What are Proprietary Trading Platforms?

Proprietary trading platforms are trading platforms that belong to a single broker. Most of the larger brokers have proprietary platforms. They generally work in a web browser and are designed to be intuitive and easy for beginners to learn. However, they tend to be less advanced; many do not have automated trading, for example. Some of our favourite broker platforms are AvaTrade, XTB, Skilling and IG.

Be aware that by choosing a broker’s proprietary platform rather than MT4, MT5, cTrader or TradingView, you will not be able to take the platform with you if you decide to switch brokers. So, you will lose all your specific platform knowledge and will have to start all over again with your new broker.

Learn more about Proprietary trading platforms here

What are Mobile Trading Apps?

Mobile trading apps are trading platforms that work on mobile devices, like mobile phones and tablets. Most trading platforms are available on Android and iOS devices, though they lose some functionality in the switch to the smaller screen size and emphasis on touch-screen controls.

Learn more about which mobile trading apps are best and how they differ from desktop trading platforms.

Trading Platform FAQs

What trading platform is best for Forex trading?

Our team has reviewed over 180 brokers to find those with the best Forex trading platforms. Traders with different priorities and experience levels prefer different trading platforms. These are our favourite brokers with the best trading platforms.

• Pepperstone – Best Range of Trading Platforms
• Tickmill – Most Trusted Broker
• XTB – Best Proprietary Platform

Some Forex trading platforms have more currency pairs to trade than others, and this depends on which Forex broker your trading platform is connected to. Beginners should start with the major currency pairs, like the EUR/USD or the USD/JPY, as they are less volatile and are less expensive to trade than minor currency pairs and exotic currency pairs. 

Learn more about currency pairs and how to trade them

What other assets can I trade on a Trading Platform?

Other assets you can trade are stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies, indices and government bonds. Which assets are available on your trading platform will depend on your broker, and some brokers offer many more types of assets. Some of the rare assets include interest rates, ETFs and futures.

What are technical indicators?

Technical indicators are used to identify trends, measure market volatility, and assess the strength and direction of current market conditions. Technical indicators can be divided into two categories: trend-following and oscillators. Trend-following indicators are used to identify the direction of a trend, while oscillators identify reversals in the trend. 

Common types of technical indicators include moving averages, momentum indicators, relative strength index (RSI), Bollinger Bands, MACD (moving average convergence divergence), stochastics, Ichimoku clouds, Fibonacci retracements and more. Technical traders use indicators to determine potential entry and exit points for trades.

What are trading tools?

Trading tools are any technology or application traders use to help them make trading decisions, track trades, and manage their portfolios. These tools can range from basic charting software to complex AI-driven algorithms for high-frequency trading. Trading tools typically provide access to market data, news feeds, and real-time risk management tools. 

Many trading tools also come with specialized features such as portfolio analysis, order execution, backtesting of strategies, portfolio optimisation, and access to multiple exchanges in one place. In addition to these more practical applications, they may include educational resources such as videos and tutorials that help traders gain insight into the markets they trade.

Forex Risk Disclaimer

Trading Forex and CFDs is not suitable for all investors as it carries a high degree of risk to your capital: 75-90% of retail investors lose money trading these products. Forex and CFD transactions involve high risk due to the following factors: Leverage, market volatility, slippage arising from a lack of liquidity, inadequate trading knowledge or experience, and a lack of regulatory protection. Traders should not deposit any money that is not considered disposable income. Regardless of how much research you have done or how confident you are in your trade, there is always a substantial risk of loss. (Learn more about these risks from the UK’s regulator, the FCA, or the Australian regulator, ASIC).

Our Rating & Review Methodology

Our overall Forex Rankings report and Directory of CFD Brokers to Avoid are the result of extensive research on over 180 Forex brokers. These resources help traders find the best Forex brokers – and steer them away from the worst ones. These resources have been compiled using over 200 data points on each broker and over 3000 hours of research. Our team conducts all research independently: Testing brokers, gathering information from broker representatives and sifting through legal documents. Learn more about how we rank brokers. 

Editorial Team

 

Chris Cammack
Head of Content

Chris joined the company in 2019 after ten years experience in research, editorial and design for political and financial publications. His background has given him a deep knowledge of international financial markets and the geopolitics that affects them. Chris has a keen eye for editing and a voracious appetite for financial and political current affairs. He ensures that our content across all sites meets the standards of quality and transparency that our readers expect.

 

Alison Heyerdahl
Senior Financial Writer

Alison joined the team as a writer in 2021. She has a medical degree with a focus on physiotherapy and a bachelor’s in psychology. However, her interest in forex trading and her love for writing led her to switch careers, and she now has over eight years experience in research and content development. She has tested and reviewed 100+ brokers and has a great understanding of the Forex trading world.

 

Ida Hermansen
Financial Writer

Ida joined our team as a financial writer in 2023. She has a degree in Digital Marketing and a background in content writing and SEO. In addition to her marketing and writing skills, Ida also has an interest in cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks. Her interest in crypto trading led to a wider fascination with Forex technical analysis and price movement. She continues to develop her skills and knowledge in Forex trading and keeps a close eye on which Forex brokers offer the best trading environments for new traders.

 

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