- Find the best broker for your trading needs
- Compare spreads, fees, and platforms
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Trading platforms are applications offered by Forex brokers that allow traders to trade Forex and other instruments. Trading platforms are usually free and are also available as mobile apps.
All trading platforms have an interface to view live market prices, place trades, and manage trading accounts. Most trading platforms will also have charting tools, research tools, indicators, educational materials, and options for automated trading or copy trading.
In this guide to the best Forex trading platforms, we go over the important considerations you need to make when choosing one; these include regulation and security, trading costs, customer service, and education.
These are the Forex brokers with the best trading platforms for 2024
75-90% of retail traders lose money trading Forex and CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs and leveraged trading work and if you can afford the high risk of losing your money. We may receive compensation when you click on links to products we review. Please read our advertising disclosure. By using this website, you agree to our Terms of Service.
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Broker | Overall Rating | Official Site | MetaTrader 4 (MT4) | MetaTrader 5 (MT5) | cTrader | Proprietary Platform | Min. Deposit | Max. Leverage (forex) | Regulated By | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | USD 100 | 400:1 |        | |||
 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | USD 25 | 1000:1 |  | |||
 | Yes | Yes | No | No | USD 100 | 500:1 |     | |||
 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | USD 0 | 200:1 |    | |||
 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | USD 200 | 500:1 | | |||
 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | USD 5 | 1000:1 |  | |||
 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | USD 0 | 1000:1 |  | |||
 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | AUD 100 | 500:1 | | |||
 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | USD 100 | 300:1 |  |
Find Your Ideal Forex Broker
Beginners looking for risk management tools and those who want to follow (copy) expert traders and learn from their strategies.
Avatrade's proprietary application, AvatradeGO, available on both Android and iOS, features an easy-to-use dashboard with trade management tools, clear charts, and a Market Trends feature to monitor trading trends within the AvaTrade community. It also has AvaProtect, one of the best risk management tools in the industry.
Web Trader, AvaTrade's proprietary web-based desktop platform, is not customisable, and traders cannot change the size and position of tabs. This platform also does not allow traders to set alerts and price notifications.
0.9 pips
USD 9
USD 100
With their award-winning mobile app, AvatradeGO, Avatrade stands out as our choice for the Most Innovative Forex Broker in 2023. In addition, Avatrade offers low trading costs, great trading tools, and a wide choice of trading platforms.
Regulated by eight international authorities, AvaTrade offers a variety of trading platforms, including MT4, MT5, AvaOptions, AvaSocial, and the award-winning AvatradeGO mobile trading application.
Trading Platform Features: AvatradeGO's user-friendly proprietary app is available for Android and iOS and features an excellent dashboard with easy trade management tools, clear charts, and a Market Trends feature to monitor trading trends within the AvaTrade community. It also has AvaTrade's AvaProtect tool, which provides loss protection for a limited period. Other application highlights include a market trend monitor, zoom functionality and seamless synchronization with AvaTrade webtrader.
MT4 and MT5 have various indicators and EAs and provide free access to the integrated Trading Central dashboard for both platforms.
Execution: Avatrade's execution policy states that it takes into account all factors, including account price, cost, speed, possibility of execution and settlement, to ensure fast execution of trades on all its platforms.
Trading Costs: Avatrade's single account has the tightest spreads for a commission-free account with a minimum deposit of 100 USD - as low as 0.9 pips on EUR/USD.
Top-tier regulation and security with licenses from ASIC and CBI among others
Accessible trading with a low minimum deposit of 100 USD
Award-winning mobile trading with the AvaTradeGO app with social trading features
Wide range of assets including unique instruments like vanilla options
Educational material to support trader development and strategy enhancement
Market analysis could be more extensive
Avatrade is a Market Maker and operate a dealing desk which might not align with all trading preferences
Traders looking for a well-designed in-house trading platform and a variety of trading accounts that require low deposits and low costs.
Octa offers a variety of good trading platforms - MT4, MT5, and the OctaTrader platform. The accounts have minimum deposit requirements as low as 25 USD, and trading costs as low as 0.6 pips (EUR/USD), among the lowest in the industry. All Octa accounts are swap-free, and it has a comprehensive range of educational materials.
Octa is not as well regulated as other international brokers and it has a limited selection of financial assets compared to other similar brokers.
0.6 pips
USD 6
USD 25
Octa has developed the leading copy trading platform, simple for beginners to understand but with the depth of detail (risk level, drawdown, etc) that more experienced traders will want to see – all in an intuitive interface. Available on the MT4 trading platform, Octa has lowered the threshold to allow beginner traders to profit from the sophisticated trading strategies used by professional traders, using seamless integration in their trading platform.
Octa is regulated by CySEC Cyprus and is a reliable broker for Malaysian traders. It offers a variety of powerful trading tools on MT4 and MT5 and the user-friendly OctaTrader Web Platform.
Trading Platform Features: All trading platforms offer one-click trading, various analytical tools, profit calculators, and built-in real-time market news features. Octa also offers an Account Monitoring tool that allows traders to monitor their accounts and organize them by balance, profit, trades, and account type. Autochartist, the industry standard signal provider, is available with a minimum deposit of 500 USD.
Execution: Octa offers market execution on both available accounts, with orders executed in less than 0.1 seconds, which is fast for the industry.
Trading Cost: Octa offers two standard accounts with a minimum deposit of 25 USD. Spreads start from 0.6 pips (EUR/USD), which is very tight compared to other brokers, and there is no commission for Forex trading. Additionally, it does not charge swap (overnight) fees on either of its accounts.
Fast and free withdrawals
Low minimum deposit
Tight spreads
Limited range of assets
Poorly regulated
Expert traders looking for fast execution and advanced trading tools on MT4 and MT5 trading platforms.
We like that Tickmill offers the Advanced Trader Toolkit, which integrates with supported platforms, provides advanced trading tools, user-configurable news and information, and trade analysis.
Tickmill offers a standard version of the MT4 platform, and while there are many upgrades available, most require an additional fee.
0.0 pips
USD 6
USD 100
Tickmill offers some of the most competitive Forex trading conditions available and has, therefore, earned the Award for Best Trading Conditions in 2023.
Tickmill is a reliable broker with MT4 and MT5 support and offers two trading accounts with the lowest cost in the industry. Tickmill is well regulated by some of the world's leading authorities, including the Financial Services Authority of Labuan Malaysia, the FCA of the UK, and CySEC of Cyprus.
Trading Platform Features: MT4 and MT5 are available on IOS, Android, and Windows mobile phones and tablets. Tickmill also offers the Advanced Trader Toolkit, which integrates directly into the platform, providing a variety of advanced trading tools, user-configurable news and information, as well as trade analysis. It also includes a variety of sophisticated alarm and messaging systems, as well as sentiment tracking and live correlation.
Execution: Tickmill offers a hybrid execution model with both market-making and straight-through processing. It guarantees an average trade execution time of 0.20 seconds with no-requotes.
Trading costs: Tickmill has the lowest trading costs in the industry. The commission-free Classic account has a minimum deposit of 100 USD and a spread of 1.6 pips (EUR/USD), which is slightly higher than the industry average. However, the Pro Account, also with a minimum deposit of 100 USD, has a spread of 0 pip (EUR/USD) and a commission of 6 USD, which is very low. s.
Tight spreads
Well regulated
Fast and free withdrawals
Limited base currencies
FxScouts uses a hands-on approach, combining detailed and systematic evaluation with expert analysis and practical testing to review each broker thoroughly.
To help you find the right trading platform, we:
The most popular trading platforms are MetaTrader 4 (MT4), MetaTrader 5 (MT5), cTrader and TradingView, but many brokers also have their own proprietary platforms.
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
Find out more about our favourite MT4 brokers.
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
Find out more about our favourite MT5 brokers.
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
Find out more about our favourite cTrader brokers
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.
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.
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
Many brokers also have their own proprietary trading platforms. Almost all trading platforms are also available as 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.
| 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 |  |
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| Indicators | 31 | 38 | 55 | 100+ |
| Pending Order Types | 4 | 6 | 4 | 6 |
| Depth of Market |  |
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| Integrated Economic Calendar | |
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Available as a widget |
| One Click Trading | |
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| Trailing Stop | (But from the terminal side) |
(But from the terminal side) |
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| Sentiment Display | |
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| Coding Language | MQL4 | MQL5 | C# | Pine Script |
Here, we’ve compiled answers to the most common questions traders have about Forex trading platforms.
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, liquidity, and low transaction costs.
Learn more about how Forex trading works here
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”.
Learn more about currency pairs and how to trade them
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.
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.
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.
Explore more resources that fellow traders find helpful! Check out these other guides to enhance your forex trading knowledge and skills. Whether you’re searching for the best brokers, educational material, or something more specific, we’ve got you covered:
Compare the best Forex brokers in the Malaysia and find the one that suits your trading style and budget.
Explore the best Forex brokers for beginners in the Malaysia with user-friendly platforms, educational resources, and demo accounts.
Regulation is the most important consideration when choosing a broker. Learn how regulators protect traders and how the Forex market is regulated.
75-90% of retail traders lose money trading Forex and CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs and leveraged trading work and if you can afford the high risk of losing your money. We may receive compensation when you click on links to products we review. Please read our advertising disclosure. By using this website, you agree to our Terms of Service.
Senior Financial Writer
Alison joined the team as a writer in 2021. She is the Senior Financial Writer for FxScouts. 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. She has a passion for Forex trading and over a decade of editorial experience researching Forex and the financial services industry, producing high-quality content. She hosts a weekly podcast, "Let's Talk Forex", alongside Chris and has produced over 100 Forex educational videos for the FxScouts YouTube channel. She also writes weekly technical analyses and has tested and reviewed over 100 Forex brokers.
Head of Content
Head of Content at FxScouts since 2019, Chris Cammack ensures all content meets our high standards of quality and clarity, shaping editorial guidelines and overseeing broker reviews. Chris brought 10 years of experience in research, editorial, and design for political and financial publications, and has a deep knowledge of international financial markets and geo-politics. He co-hosts the "Let's Talk Forex" podcast with Alison and writes for the news section on a regular basis.
Financial Writer
Ida is a financial writer with a degree in Digital Marketing and a strong background in content writing and SEO. Her expertise extends beyond marketing and writing, with a keen interest in cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks. Ida's passion for crypto trading sparked a deeper fascination with Forex technical analysis and price movement. She is continually expanding her knowledge in Forex trading, staying informed about the latest trends and identifying the best trading environments for new traders.
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