Dukascopy Bank vs FxPro — which broker is better?

Pros

• Licensed by FINMA as both a bank and a securities firm — full Swiss banking supervision, capital requirements and audit obligations, not a CFD-broker permission
• esisuisse depositor protection up to CHF 100,000 per client on cash balances, which is five times the EUR 20,000 investor compensation most EU brokers offer
• SWFX Swiss FX Marketplace is a genuine ECN with visible depth, where EUR/USD spreads start from 0.1 pips and commission is charged separately and transparently
• JForex 4 is one of the deepest retail platforms available: roughly 270 indicators, a Java strategy API, tick-level historical data for backtesting and depth-of-market
• FIX API access for accounts above roughly USD 100,000, with the JForex Java API available at any account size — institutional connectivity offered at retail account sizes
• Volume commission ladder is fully published and improves on any of three criteria — net deposit, equity or 30-day traded volume — so it rewards capital as well as churn
• The banking side is real: multi-currency accounts, IBAN, cards and e-banking sit alongside the trading account under one Swiss licence
• USD 100 entry on the JForex ECN account, so the Swiss banking counterparty is not gated behind a six-figure balance

Cons

• Bank transfer withdrawals are priced per currency and rail — EUR 2.3 over SEPA up to EUR 20, USD 19 up to USD 35, and nominally much more in minor currencies such as HUF 5,500 or JPY 2,500 — and card withdrawals add EUR 1.5 plus 2.5%; cash movement is the single worst part of the tariff
• Cash conversions — exchanges, deposits, withdrawals, transfers — are charged at 0.05%–1.00% over spot depending on size, with smaller conversions at the punitive end; profits, losses and commissions outside the account's base currency are converted for a flat 0.5% fee at the Swiss bank (0.1% at the Latvian entity), so a multi-currency trader pays that charge repeatedly
• JForex 4 has a genuinely steep learning curve, and Dukascopy publishes little structured beginner education to soften it
• No exchange-listed options, no cleared futures and no real share ownership — everything outside spot FX is a CFD with Dukascopy as counterparty
• MT4 and MT5 accounts require USD 1,000 rather than the USD 100 that opens a JForex ECN account, and carry a much narrower instrument list
• Physical gold holdings are charged 1.5% per year and quarantined crypto assets CHF 2,000 every six months — unusual charges that are easy to miss in the tariff PDF

Pros

• FCA authorisation under firm reference 509956 with FSCS cover to GBP 85,000, plus a CySEC licence (078/07) for EU clients with EUR 20,000 ICF cover.
• Five trading platforms — cTrader, MT4, MT5, TradingView and FxPro Edge — which is more genuine choice than almost any comparable CFD broker offers.
• cTrader support is first-class: Level II depth of market, C# cBots and an execution model that shows you the commission instead of burying it in the spread.
• Raw+ and cTrader accounts charge USD 3.50 per lot per side (USD 7.00 round turn) on FX and metals — transparent, and competitive with the raw-spread mainstream.
• More than 2,100 instruments including roughly 2,000 share CFDs, 70 FX pairs, 28 crypto CFDs and CFDs on energy and agricultural futures.
• Eight base currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, JPY, PLN, AUD, ZAR) and twelve funding routes including PayPal, Skrill, Neteller and crypto, with no fees charged by FxPro.
• Support is 24/5 in a dozen languages and reachable by WhatsApp and Telegram as well as the usual phone, email and chat.

Cons

• The Standard account is not cheap: EUR/USD averages around 1.4 pips with independent measurements running as high as 1.6, well above a raw-spread account's all-in cost.
• Inactivity charges start early — a one-off USD 15 after six months, then USD 5 every month the account stays dormant and funded.
• Everything is a CFD. There are no real shares, no ETFs you can hold, no bonds and no exchange-listed futures — only derivatives with overnight financing attached.
• Education is the weakest dimension: adequate video and article material, but well behind brokers that treat beginner training as a product.
• FxPro Edge, the proprietary platform, has no mobile version, so the mobile experience falls back to a comparatively basic app.
• The offshore Bahamas entity offers much higher leverage than the FCA and CySEC books, which means the protections you get depend heavily on which entity onboards you.