CMC Markets vs XTB — which broker is better?

Pros

• Next Generation is one of the strongest charting suites bundled with a retail CFD account —115+ indicators, 70 chart patterns, 12 chart types and pattern-recognition scanners, at no extra cost
• 0% commission on UK and European share CFDs (Greece the sole exception at 0.45%), against IG's spread-plus-conversion model
• EUR/USD averages around 0.7 pips on the standard account, and FX Active delivers from 0.0 pips for USD/GBP 2.50 per side per 100,000 notional
• No minimum deposit at all — CMC only suggests around GBP 100 to cover margin, which makes it genuinely testable with small money
• Three FCA licences (173730, 170627, 948126) plus ASIC AFSL 238054, BaFin and MAS, with FSCS cover of GBP 85,000 and client money segregated at NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds under annual PwC audit
• Cash-settled OTC options, available as a spread bet or through the CFD account, carry no commission and no holding or financing charge — the whole cost is in the spread
• 12,029 instruments on Next Generation, all of which are also tradable from TradingView charts
• Ten account base currencies including NOK, SEK, PLN and SGD, which removes conversion drag for Nordic and Asian clients

Cons

• None of CMC's derivatives is exchange-traded: the options it quotes are OTC and cash-settled, and there are no cleared futures at all, so CMC is the counterparty on every derivative contract and no clearing house stands behind it
• The 0.7% FX conversion charge on realised profit, loss and costs is high; IG applies 0.8% on the equivalent CFD trades
• Inactivity fee of GBP 10 per month starts after just 12 months without trading activity
• ASIC required CMC to remediate Australian retail clients in 2023 over CFDs offered above the product intervention leverage limits, and an Australian class action over 2011–2021 marketing remains outstanding
• MT4 carries only about 220 instruments against 12,029 on Next Generation, so algo traders who need MT4 lose most of the product range
• CMC does not publish a fixed index spread table, which makes cost comparison against brokers that do quote fixed minimums harder than it should be

Pros

• xStation 5 is one of the strongest platforms in the commission-free bracket - a real screener, market heat map, sentiment data, economic calendar and news in one workspace, on web, desktop and mobile with near-identical features.
• Commission-free real stocks and ETFs up to EUR 100,000 of turnover per calendar month; above that only the excess is charged at 0.2% with a EUR 10 minimum.
• No minimum deposit at all, plus fractional shares, so a monthly savings plan can start at almost any amount.
• Listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2016 under XTB, with audited financials and a KNF licence held continuously since 2005.
• EUR/USD spreads averaging around 0.9 pips on the Standard account with no separate forex commission - competitive for a spread-only model.
• Support is genuinely multi-channel including a phone line, with local-language desks across its main European markets - a real differentiator against the chat-only app brokers.
• The mobile app keeps the analysis tools rather than stripping them out, so charting and screening actually work away from a desk.

Cons

• The 0.5% currency conversion charge (0.8% at weekends and on public holidays) applies whenever the instrument currency differs from your account currency. For a EUR investor buying US stocks it is charged on the way in and again on the way out, and it dwarfs the commission it replaces.
• A EUR 10 monthly inactivity fee kicks in after 365 days without a trade and 90 days without a deposit - a charge Trading 212 and eToro have both abolished.
• Four disclosed regulatory actions since 2018: a PLN 9.9m KNF fine for asymmetric slippage (2018), a EUR 300,000 AMF fine for compliance failures and misleading advertising (2021), a Brazilian CVM stop order (2023) and a PLN 20m KNF fine over MiFID II CFD sales breaches (2026).
• No exchange-traded futures, no individual bonds and no mutual funds. Options exist but only around 140 contracts on US stocks and ETFs, with no headline per-contract price published.
• At the Cyprus entity, withdrawals below EUR 100 cost EUR 10 - a 10% haircut on a EUR 99 withdrawal, which penalises exactly the small accounts the no-minimum-deposit policy attracts. The Polish entity, which books most EEA clients, charges nothing.
• The Belize entity (XTB International Limited, FSC licence 000302/438) is a tier-3 offshore licence with materially weaker recourse than the Polish or UK entities. Check which entity you are onboarded to.