IG provides the most comprehensive trading package available, including superior trading and research tools, education that is at the top of its field, and a wide variety of markets that can be traded.

IG is a well-known multi-asset broker that is publicly traded and subject to international regulation. Simply put, IG offers a fantastic trading experience overall. For our 2023 Annual Awards, IG took home the coveted prize for being the best forex broker overall.

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Is IG secure?

IG operates a regulated bank, is authorized by seven tier-1 regulators (high trust), two tier-2 regulators (average trust), and one tier-3 regulator (low trust), is publicly traded, and operates under these regulatory frameworks. The following tier-1 regulators have granted IG authorization: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) – New Zealand, and the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC).

Offering of investments

Depending on which of IG’s regulatory entities is in charge of your account, the selection of markets that are available to you may change. Residents of the United States, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom must select their appropriate local IG entity.

In addition to nearly 20,000 CFDs, IG also provides exchange-traded securities (non-CFDs) for citizens of the UK, Germany, and Australia to access foreign stock exchanges (see our IG U.K. share dealing review). In addition to forex options, IG also provides listed derivatives in the US through tastytrade and exchange-traded Turbo warrants as part of Spectrum, its Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) in Europe. For qualified clients, there is also IG Bank in Switzerland.

Trading cryptocurrency at IG is only possible through CFDs; trading the underlying asset directly (such as purchasing Bitcoin) is not an option. Retail traders in the UK are not given access to IG’s crypto derivatives.
The various investment products that are offered to IG clients are listed in the table below.

Fees and commissions

Due to its size, IG can offer scalable execution across the board, regardless of the traded product. IG excels for the active trader pricing offered through its Forex Direct accounts and its capacity to execute sizable orders, even though it cannot be categorized as a discount broker. In September 2021, spreads on its main account offering were 0.828 most of the time (23 hours per day), which is closer to the industry average than in previous years.

Average spreads for CFD accounts: For both mini and standard-size contracts, typical spreads for the month of September 2021 during the primary trading session (22 hours each day from 0000 to 2200 GMT) averaged 0.768 pips, which is slightly better than the sector average. It is important to keep in mind that IG’s spreads, like those of the majority of forex brokers, can be higher than usual during periods of low liquidity; these spreads average 0.994 pips when the remaining trading day hours (2100–0000 GMT) are taken into account during the same timeframe as the aforementioned September 2021 data.

DMA account (Forex Direct): The DMA account is a better choice than the active trader rebates on IG’s spread-only pricing for savvy traders looking for greater discounts than those provided in the CFD account. Forex Direct, a commission-based product, gives users access to the L2 Dealer platform through a DMA account. The DMA account has a low minimum balance requirement of £1,000 and uses a tiered pricing structure based on the trader’s trading volume from the previous month.

Average spreads for DMA accounts: Using the base tier of $60 per million for traders doing less than $100 million in monthly volume, the all-in spread is 1.3 pip using the average spread of 0.165 on the EUR/USD for the 12 weeks ending March 19th, 2019. The per-side commission for traders who transact over 1.5 yards (one yard equals $1 billion in volume) drops to $10 per million ($20 round-turn), resulting in an effective spread of 0.365 pips – based on 2019 data.

Execution strategy: Forex Direct uses agency broker IG to stream from interbank liquidity providers. In contrast to IC Markets, FP Markets, and FOREX.com, IG doesn’t add on any extra spread; instead, it charges a commission for each trade you place.

Apps for mobile trading

The IG mobile app rivals the best in the business and is jam-packed with useful features that will appeal to both novice and experienced traders. Due to the wide variety of features offered, I believe that the charts in IG’s app are my favorite among all brokers.

Overview of apps: IG provides two trading apps: its own flagship mobile app, IG Trading (also known as IG Forex), and the well-known MetaTrader 4 (MT4) app. Additionally, there are the IG Access account security app and the IG Academy app for learning, but neither one supports trading. With a well-thought-out layout and a wealth of features like alerts, sentiment readings, and extremely sophisticated charts, the IG Trading app is easy to use. News headlines from Reuters, Autochartist signals, and PIA First signals make up the research.

Usability: IG’s mobile app does a respectable job of striking a balance between usability and the breadth of its available features. The IG app makes it simple to navigate integrated news headlines from Reuters or switch to market analysis and trading signals.

The only negative is that there aren’t any premade watchlists or screeners, which makes it more challenging to sort through IG’s enormous product selection. However, charts are excellent on mobile and sync with the web platform without any issues. For instance, charts on a mobile app can use a web-based chart template.Although trend lines do not sync like they do on SaxoTraderGO from Saxo Bank, there are syncing watchlists. However, there are many positive aspects of the IG mobile app.

The IG mobile app includes five different chart types, including tick charts, along with 30 technical indicators, 20 drawing tools, and 16 selectable time frames. It’s simple to set up charts, and zooming in and out across time frames feels swift and accurate. Although they can be saved as presets, new chart indicators added to the web platform will not automatically sync with the mobile app. Still, using the charts on IG Mobile was a complete joy.

Videos for education: IG provides a different, stand-alone mobile app called IG Academy for educational content.

IG trading platforms

IG offers an exceptional range of trading tools and platforms with functionality that caters to traders of all skill levels.

Overview of the platforms: Although IG provides the well-known MetaTrader 4 platform, along with the L2 Dealer DMA platform and ProRealTime charting software platform, I concentrated my testing on IG’s primary web platform. For IG’s proprietary web-based platform, which is crammed with a ton of features, usability is at the core of the experience. Charts, for instance, are open from almost any view and show real-time market prices as well as streaming bid/ask rates. There are countless research and trading tools available, along with integrated risk-management modules. The default view is largely empty, so you must spend some time setting up the layout, but you can save multiple custom layouts.

Charting: The IG platform’s default charts come with sophisticated features, like the capacity to add up to four alerts to any of its 11 supported indicators. In addition to the five different chart types, there is also a tick chart, which is a useful feature that not all brokers provide. I also liked how quick and fluid it felt to change the view’s size between different time frames and zoom in and out. Last but not least, trading from the chart with an integrated trade ticket displays risk/reward ratios and enables you to precisely drag stops and limits.

Platforms for specialized trading: IG provides the MetaTrader4 (MT4) platform and its L2 Dealer platform, where share trading via Forex Direct and Direct Market Access (DMA) is possible. While I do not suggest MT4 because of its narrow range of products, L2 Dealer, which has a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement, can be a good option because it offers discounts to active traders and supports advanced algorithmic order types.

ProRealTime charts: ProRealTime, a third-party platform only provided by IG in the U.K., offers sophisticated charting with support for automated trading strategies and close to 100 indicators. Unless you execute at least four trades per month, ProRealTime costs £30 per month. The ProRealTime layout offers a great deal of customization, but after testing it, I concluded that it needs a modern makeover. For instance, modern snap grid layouts are superior to floating windows and are less clumsy. Having said that, I enjoyed using its charts immensely, and I found the studies’ automatic coloring to be helpful in making them easier to view when adding multiple indicators.

Market analysis

IG offers a wide range of high-quality market research from both internal and external sources. Only TD Ameritrade (available to US residents only) and Interactive Brokers have as much content as IG’s platform, which includes internal broadcasting with IGTV.

Overview of research: IG’s research resources include Reuters streaming news and TV, trading signals, internal broadcasting via IGTV, a weekly forecast (The Week Ahead series) in both video and article format, multiple daily blog updates with market analysis, and more.

A customizable screener for many asset classes, including CFDs on international stocks and forex, is one of the advanced tools. By attempting to customize headlines based on your account characteristics, IG’s innovative “Recommended News” section personalizes your content. With the addition of DailyFX content, the already impressive amount of research offered by IG is practically doubled.

Market news and analysis: IG incorporates PIA First and Autochartist into its platform, enabling traders to view trade signals produced by technical analysis and automated pattern recognition. Conveniently, these trading suggestions can be copied with a single click, which automatically populates the trade ticket window. Along with numerous daily articles and videos that are published all throughout the trading week, IG also offers.

IG powers DailyFX, a news website with a blog-like format that offers IG users news content and a variety of research tools. Over 60,000 people use IG Community, a recently released social network that resembles an advanced forum. Despite the fact that the content is crowdsourced, IG hand-picks the top research articles, so I still found it to be useful. Additionally, there is a timeline (similar to a social network) that displays member actions like new joins, follows, and thread comments.

IG Education

IG is a market leader in terms of educational content, providing a wide range of information in different formats, such as video, written articles, numerous weekly webinars, and DailyFX guides. On IG Academy, there are educational courses arranged according to experience level, complete with quizzes and progress tracking. Additionally, IG offers a mobile app specifically designed for education, and its large social network of over 64,000 users offers a variety of articles that were crowdsourced.

Learning center: The company’s website, YouTube channel, and DailyFX product all contain educational material. Eight beginner trading guides, five advanced trading guides, and written materials are all provided by DailyFX in a well-designed course with progress monitoring. There are 17 articles for beginners, seven articles about risk management using Bollinger Bands, and support for additional languages are available in addition to the educational content.

IG Academy: IG Academy offers eight courses with roughly a dozen chapters each, each of which is divided into levels of experience. With video content, lesson summaries, and quizzes interspersed throughout the coursework, these courses offer an interactive learning environment. The final quiz also includes a total score that reflects how many questions were correctly answered.

Videos: IG offers its own in-house broadcasting with IGTV in addition to a wealth of archived content and numerous playlists on its YouTube channels. IGTV is a great educational tool because it has weekly podcasts and numerous weekly webinars. The Technical Analysis Masterclass, for example, is one of the live educational topics that IG staff members also cover. Even previous webinars have been categorized by experience level to make it simple to find what you need.

Conclusion on IG

IG is a great broker that leads in almost all major categories that matter to traders.

IG goes above and beyond as an online broker to provide a rich experience with a variety of options for investing in financial markets. With nearly 20,000 tradeable CFDs, IG has the most tradeable CFDs of any broker on our list. This puts IG at the top of our list of CFD brokers. Check out our comprehensive CFD guide if you want to learn more about CFDs.

Overall, IG is a success thanks to its trading costs, platforms, usability, education, mobile apps, research, variety of markets, and trading tools.

More regulatory licenses are held by IG than any other online broker that offers CFDs and forex. IG is regarded as a secure broker to hold client assets, including cash money, because of its decades of operation, reputation, and requirements as a publicly traded company.