IG vs Saxo — which broker is better?

Pros

• Around 17,000 tradable markets in a single account — shares, indices, FX, commodities, bonds, ETFs, turbo warrants and crypto CFDs, subject to regional restrictions
• Six top-tier licences — FCA (FRN 195355), BaFin, FINMA, ASIC (AFSL 515106), MAS and JFSA — plus a mid-tier DFSA licence in Dubai; the FINMA licence among those six is a full Swiss banking licence at IG Bank S.A., which puts Swiss cash under esisuisse protection
• Zero commission on UK and international shares, and the GBP 24 quarterly custody fee was scrapped outright in January 2026 rather than merely waived for active traders
• Platform stack that scales with the trader: web and mobile for most, ProRealTime for charting and backtesting, L2 Dealer for full order-book DMA, plus MT4, TradingView and documented REST/streaming APIs
• US-listed options from USD 1.00 per contract to open with nothing to close, and futures at USD 1.00 per contract per side (USD 0.75 on micros) — rare for a European retail broker
• No inactivity fee at all, where most rivals start charging after three to twelve dormant months, and no minimum deposit on any account
• Weekend dealing on the FTSE 100 and Wall Street, plus published client-sentiment data showing how IG's own book is positioned

Cons

• The 0.8% currency conversion mark-up on foreign-currency CFD and spread bet trades is where much of the real cost hides — on a USD position round-trip it comfortably exceeds the spread
• EUR/USD at roughly 0.9 pips is mid-table; raw-spread brokers quote 0.1–0.3 pips plus a small commission and work out cheaper for anyone trading FX frequently
• The 0.49% share dealing conversion rate is a discretionary discount rather than a contractual one — IG has committed to it only until 4 September 2026 and can raise it afterwards
• No fractional shares on IG's own platform, which creates real cash drag when drip-feeding small sums into high-priced US stocks
• Pricing genuinely differs by entity and account type — UK GBP share dealing, multi-currency share dealing, IG Europe and IG Bank all run separate schedules, and the published tables are hard to reconcile
• Crypto CFDs are unavailable to UK retail clients under the FCA ban, so the headline market count overstates what a UK resident can actually trade

Pros

• Full Danish banking licence (Finanstilsynet licence 1149) and SIFI designation — a stronger structural safeguard than a broker-only permission
• US stocks and ETFs at 0.08% with a USD 1 minimum on the entry-level Classic tier, and 0.05%/0.03% at higher tiers
• Roughly 71,000 instruments including 23,000 stocks, 7,400 ETFs, 5,200 bonds, 3,100 listed options and 250 futures across 50-plus exchanges
• SaxoTraderGO and the mobile app are the best-designed retail trading interfaces in Europe, and the app is not a cut-down version of the web platform
• Mutual funds carry no transaction commission, no custody fee and no platform fee
• One of very few retail platforms with a genuinely usable bond offering — 5,200 government and corporate issues with live prices
• No inactivity fee, no minimum deposit on Classic, and free withdrawals
• Majority-owned by J. Safra Sarasin since 2026, adding a large private-banking group behind the balance sheet

Cons

• Currency conversion costs 0.25% over mid-market for EU and Swiss clients, and up to 0.60% at the UK entity's Classic tier — the single largest hidden cost for cross-currency investors
• A holding fee of up to 0.15% a year on shares, ETFs and bonds still applies at several booking entities; coverage varies by country and is easy to overlook
• No spot cryptocurrency trading — exposure is limited to exchange-traded products
• No fractional shares on ordinary orders, so building small positions in high-priced US stocks is awkward
• Bank transfer is the only funding route since card deposits were withdrawn in April 2025
• Trustpilot sentiment sits around 3.8 with responsiveness of support the recurring complaint, despite good published coverage