A widening selection of tradeable markets, high-caliber research, and support for numerous social copy trading platforms are all provided by Pepperstone.

It provides TradingView, cTrader, and MetaTrader (finishing Best in Class for MetaTrader brokers in 2023), and the wide range of third-party tools and plugins it makes available enhances its already impressive selection of platforms.

Two tier-1 regulators, two tier-2 regulators, and one tier-3 regulator have given Pepperstone permission to operate without running a bank and without being publicly traded. The Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), two tier-1 regulators, have granted Pepperstone authorization.

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Trading Offers Pepperstone

Although Pepperstone’s MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platform lists 2,342 symbols, some of them are duplicates. Nevertheless, there are over 1,000 different trading markets available, including forex and CFDs.

Cryptocurrency: Pepperstone offers cryptocurrency trading through CFDs, but not through trading the underlying asset (such as purchasing Bitcoin). Retail traders from any broker’s U.K. entity and U.K. residents (aside from professional clients) are not permitted to trade cryptocurrency CFDs.

The various investment products that are offered to Pepperstone clients are listed in the table below.

Fees and Account Types

Pepperstone is an agency-execution broker that, when used in conjunction with its Active Trader program for high-volume traders, provides excellent pricing on its Razor account. Its Standard account, on the other hand, is less impressive and has spreads that are comparable to higher ones.

Razor account: The Razor account follows a commission-based pricing structure (in addition to current spreads) and can be used with the TradingView platform, MetaTrader (MT4 or MT5) platforms, or cTrader platforms. As of September 2022, Pepperstone listed an average spread of 0.17 pip for the EUR/USD on its Razor account. The total cost increases to 0.87 pip after adding the commission-equivalent of 0.70 pip, which is slightly more than the industry standard.

Standard account: Pepperstone’s Standard account has a 0.77 pip average spread on the EUR/USD (as of September 2022) and is commission-free. The Standard account stands out as a more cost-effective choice when compared to the Razor’s all-in price of 0.87 pips (including commission).

Active traders: Depending on your monthly trading volume and the appropriate tier, Pepperstone’s Active Trader program will rebate a portion of the spread.

United Kingdom and EU: Professional clients may qualify for the Tier One rebate of 5% per lot (rates for forex and indices vary) if they transact at least $10 million (100 standard lots) in any commodity each month. For those who transact more than 500 lots per month, rebates for Tier Four may be negotiated.

Australia: To be eligible for Pepperstone’s Active Trader program’s lowest tier, Professional clients must trade a minimum of 100 lots over the course of three months. Tier One offers a 5% standard lot discount, lowering the effective spread. Tier Three offers a 15% spread reduction and is accessible to traders who transact more than 200 lots per month.

Mobile trading Apps

Pepperstone offers a variety of third-party trading platforms for mobile trading. While these apps offer a dependable trading experience, our research has shown that proprietary apps can help the top brokers stand out from the crowd.

Overview of available apps: Traders have access to the TradingView app, the MT4 and MT5 mobile trading platforms from MetaTrader, as well as the cTrader mobile trading platform. All of these apps are available directly from their respective developers on Google Play (for Android) and Apple App Store (for iOS).

A good trading experience is consistently delivered by these third-party apps, but according to our testing, the top brokers also provide their own mobile apps.

Pepperstone Trading Platforms

Although Pepperstone doesn’t have a proprietary platform, it does provide almost all of the third-party platforms on the market. Overall, Pepperstone impressed us, and it won Best in Class for MetaTrader in the 2023 Annual Awards presented by ForexBrokers.com.

Overview of available platforms: In addition to the well-known TradingView platform, Pepperstone also offers the complete MetaTrader suite (MT4 and MT5) created by MetaQuotes Software Corporation, the cTrader platform created by Spotware Systems, and both platforms for desktop and the web. For algorithmic trading, cAlgo is accessible, and users of any platform can use either the Standard or Razor account types from Pepperstone.

Visit our high-frequency trading guide to find out more about algo trading and the best trading platforms for high-frequency traders.

Charting: Both cTrader and MetaTrader have reliable charts. Algorithmic trading is supported by both platforms, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. Although it necessitates the separate cAlgo platform to run in parallel, cTrader’s web-based platform has an advantage over MetaTrader’s desktop version due to its greater selection of trading tools.

Trading tools: Along with access to Capitalise.ai, Autochartist, and API trading, Pepperstone provides a collection of Smart Trader Tools plugins as an add-on for MetaTrader accounts. Pepperstone provides myFxbook for MetaTrader and DupliTrade for cTrader for social copy trading (though the latter requires a $5,000 minimum balance). For the fifth year in a row in 2023, Pepperstone won Best in Class in the Social Copy Trading category.

Market Analysis

Overview of the research: Pepperstone provides access to third-party tools from suppliers like Autochartist (for pattern recognition and trading signals) and Delkos (for risk management) in addition to internal content for traders. Clients with an account balance of at least AUD 500 can also access Pepperstone’s Smart Trader Tools suite of MetaTrader add-ons, which includes practical components like sentiment indicators.
Market news and analysis: Technical and fundamental analysis are covered in a number of daily articles and videos produced in-house by Pepperstone. Pepperstone’s website, YouTube channel, and cTrader platform all have content that is synchronized. Streaming news headlines are also available there.

Pepperstone: Education

Learning center: Pepperstone has 40 articles under the “trading guides” category, but they aren’t arranged by level of expertise. A dozen platform tutorials are available from Pepperstone, and the company hosts a few webinars each month that are later added to its library of previously recorded webinars on its YouTube channel. In addition to its weekly webinars, Pepperstone recently debuted a 150-minute online seminar series called Pepperstone Talks, featuring John Bollinger and other well-known industry figures as well as subject matter experts. If you weren’t able to attend the live event, the webinars are archived so you can watch them again.

There is room for improvement: Although I thought Pepperstone’s educational content was of a high caliber, the overall selection was in line with what is typical for the industry in this niche. The organization of articles by experience level and the addition of interactive courses with quizzes and progress tracking are both welcome improvements.

Conclusion on Pepperstone

For forex and CFD traders, Pepperstone has continued to expand its selection of markets (including spread betting, which is available in the UK and Ireland). Although it provides a robust platform experience for MetaTrader, cTrader, and TradingView, Pepperstone is unable to compete with the top forex brokers due to the absence of a proprietary app.

Pepperstone is a fantastic option for forex and CFD traders of all experience levels because of the low minimum deposit requirements, its thorough research, and its wide range of support for third-party platforms.