FP Markets vs Markets.com — which broker is better?

Pros

• Raw account at USD 3 per lot per side with EUR/USD measured at 0.1 pips and GBP/USD at 0.1 — competitive across the majors
• The widest platform lineup in its peer group: MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView, Iress Trader/ViewPoint, Iress Investor and WebTrader on one account
• Iress gives genuine direct market access with full depth on seven exchanges and published per-exchange commissions from 0.06% on the ASX
• No custody fee, and no account fee at all on MetaTrader or Iress Investor; the CySEC entity currently charges no dormant fee and the Australian terms list no inactivity fee
• Twelve base currencies including CHF, plus sub-accounts so you can hold USD, EUR and GBP ledgers separately and avoid conversion
• 24/7 multilingual support that aggregated user feedback consistently describes as quick, helpful and patient
• ASIC licence 286354 held since 2005 alongside CySEC 371/18 — a genuinely long operating record for a CFD broker
• Account opening takes 10–15 minutes and is usually approved the same day, from an AUD 100 minimum on MetaTrader

Cons

• No options of any kind — exchange-traded, OTC or CFD — so options traders need a second broker
• Investor compensation exists only for EEA clients under CySEC (EUR 20,000); ASIC, FSCA and Seychelles clients get none, and the international site is run by a Saint Lucia-registered company with no prudential supervision
• The Iress side carries costs MetaTrader clients never see: AUD 85 per month for Iress Trader/ViewPoint unless you trade enough, AUD 25 per month for ASX live data, and card deposit surcharges of 1.6%–3.18%
• Fixed income and commodities are token: two bond CFDs and twelve commodity CFDs, well behind competitors listing dozens
• Privately held with no public financials, no banking licence and no exchange listing, so the group's capital position cannot be independently verified
• Recurring public complaints through mid-2026 about withdrawal friction, profit disputes and opacity around account restrictions

Pros

• Regulated across five jurisdictions including the FCA (607305) and CySEC (092/08), with FSCS and EUR 20,000 ICF cover on the respective entities
• Marketsx platform includes sentiment, analyst-consensus and positioning tools that are rare in the CFD segment
• 116 cryptocurrency CFDs — an unusually deep crypto book for a regulated CFD broker, subject to entity and country restrictions
• Bond and treasury CFDs are available, which most retail CFD brokers omit entirely
• Full MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 support alongside the proprietary platform, so algorithmic traders are covered
• No withdrawal fees, and support runs 24/5 in six-plus languages including German
• Operating since 2008, which is a materially longer track record than most of its Cypriot peer group

Cons

• EUR/USD averages around 1.2 pips — roughly double the cost of the cheaper commission-free competitors
• USD 10 per month inactivity fee kicks in after only about three months of no trading, which is unusually aggressive
• 0.6% currency conversion fee on every trade settled outside your base currency, stacked on top of an already-wide spread
• USD 100 minimum deposit is five times what several direct competitors require
• CFDs only — no real share ownership, no ETFs you can actually hold, no fractional shares, no options or futures
• The asset list is modest: roughly 530 CFDs in total and only 248 single shares, where several CFD rivals list several thousand
• Trustpilot sentiment is mid-pack at roughly 3.7 across about 1,250 reviews, with recurring complaints about live-chat response times