What to look for when you are searching for the best broker in Australia? This article reveals the three main criteria and 6 examples of forex broker qualified as the best ones in Australia.
How to choose the right forex broker? What if you're an Australian trader and you only want to trade in Australian-licensed brokers? This article will help you find the best answer. Insights about trading in the forex market and choosing the best forex brokers in Australia will be discussed below.
Forex trading is practically carried out by buying and selling currency values with the intention of making a profit from the difference between the buying and selling price. The forex market is the world’s largest financial market, more than $4 trillion is exchanged on average per day. Traders all over the world are buying and selling currency pairs at every hour, making forex a global marketplace with plenty of opportunity for profits. It contributes to the benefits of forex trading which include accessibility, volatility, technology, liquidity, and trading hours.
See also: Forex Brokers with the Lowest Deposit
In the last 10 years, China's economy has been booming at a furious rate, resulting in an upswing of exports from Australia and the appreciation of the Australian dollar. As a result, many Australians seek to make profits from the gain in the Australian dollar. It makes the forex market in Australia very interesting. That's why the retail forex trading industry in Australia has been growing at a tremendous pace in recent years.
What Needs to be Considered?
If you're interested in forex trading and are considering it as a potential investment, you need to make sure that the broker you choose is right and secure. The following 3 main factors are to look for when you are exploring the options of Australian brokers:
- The license by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). It is the most important factor as ASIC is the regulatory body that is in charge of regulating the Australian financial industry. The institution helps traders to ensure that their rights as consumers are not abused by the brokers.
- The trading platform should be reliable. It is the trader's gateway to the financial markets, so if the platform is not performing well, one will not be able to trade effectively.
- The spreads or commissions should be reasonable. If the broker charges high spreads of commission, then your profitability will be affected.
Top Forex Brokers in Australia
The brokers below represent some of the best forex brokers in Australia:
IC Markets
🌐 WebsiteIC Markets is an online forex broker operating under the company of International Capital Markets Pty Ltd. Traders under the Australian jurisdiction are provided with the trading service of IC Markets AU that is headquartered in Australia and licensed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
On the other hand, non-Australian traders who open an account in this broker are registered under IC Markets SEY that is based in Seychelles, and regulated under the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (SFSA). The dual operation is a result of the relatively new rules from ASIC that prohibit their regulated broker to offer trading services outside Australia.
Classified as an ECN broker, IC Markets provide clients with MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader as platform trading options. This broker also follows market trends to include Cryptocurrencies as one of its products, enriching its already wide selection of trading assets that include Currencies, Indices, Metals, Energies, Softs, Stocks, as well as Bonds.
The minimum deposit in IC Markets is in the middle range compared to other ASIC-regulated brokers, as it reaches $200 for every client. Market analysis materials are also prepared regularly for trading insights on IC Markets's official website, proving their competence to serve their traders with important contents created by market experts that work specifically for them.
For payment methods, IC Markets allows funding and withdrawal via wire transfer, credit card, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, FasaPay, UnionPay, as well as Bitcoin via BitPay. The more interesting aspect from this broker is its multi-base currencies that include USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD, and CAD.
As the trading technology in IC Markets is highly equipped with co-located servers and extremely low latency (especially on cTrader), the broker is widely known for its capability in hosting traders with the special needs for high-frequency trading as well as scalping.
To sum up, IC Markets is a fitting destination for active traders looking for a well-regulated broker. IC Markets is also flexible in terms of base currency and payment methods, signaling their commitment to welcome traders beyond their home country. As of late 2019, IC Markets provided their website in 18 international languages including English, Korean, Indonesian, French, Spanish, Italian, Malay, German, and Chinese.
Founded in 2007, IC Markets is operated by International Capital Markets Pty. This broker offers various types of trading platforms. All of them are well-known trading platforms with a high level of performance and proven reliability. They have some other advantages like low spreads and various deposit and withdrawal methods. IC Markets is also well known for offering a complete educational center for new traders.
| 🏢Broker | IC Markets |
| 💼Australian Regulation | Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Australian financial services license (AFSL) No. 335692 |
| 💻Trading Platforms | MT4, MT5, cTrader |
| 🔃Spread | 0.0 pips |
| 💰Commission | Starts from $6 (round turn) |
Admirals
With more than 15 years of experience in the industry, Admirals has a global presence across multiple jurisdictions, including in Australia under Admiral Markets Pty Ltd, an ASIC-licensed company with a registered office in Sydney. Previously operating with the Admiral Markets trademark, the broker is broadly known for its wide range of trading instruments that covers forex, CFDs on stocks, ETFs, indices, bonds, and a variety of commodities. Traders can choose to register in one of their flexible trading accounts, all of which come with different trading specs to support all types of traders. Access to highly functional software and quality assurance is also provided to increase the trading experience.
| 🏢Broker | Admirals |
| 💼Australian Regulation | Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Australian financial services license (AFSL) No. 410681 |
| 💻Trading Platforms | MT4, MT5, WebTrader |
| 🔃Spread | 0 pips |
| 💰Commission | Starts from $0.02 (per share) |
FP Markets
FP Markets was founded in 2005 and owned by First Prudential Markets Pty. The broker offers an online forex and CFDs trading platform. The broker also offers Iress as a recommended platform for professional trading as it has more advanced features and supports equity trading with more than 10,000 global stocks to choose from. Spreads on FP Markets start from as low as zero pip as the broker claims to offer true ECN connectivity. Traders at FP Markets also have an ion of trading accounts, whether it is for spot forex trading or CFDs trading. One of the major drawbacks of this broker probably comes from its commission, which is relatively higher than other brokers.
| 🏢Broker | FP Markets |
| 💼Australian Regulation | Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Australian financial services license (AFSL) No. 286354 |
| 💻Trading Platforms | MT4, MT5, WebTrader |
| 🔃Spread | 0.0 pips |
| 💰Commission | Starts from $6 (round turn) |
Pepperstone
Pepperstone is an Australian broker founded in 2010 by a team of experienced traders. Right now, this broker has offices around the globe including Limassol, Düsseldorf, London, Melbourne, Dubai, and Nairobi. Pepperstone aims to offer the lowest spread for all kinds of traders. As well as the best quality pricing, products, speed, and service.
| 🏢Broker | Pepperstone |
| 💼Australian Regulation | Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Australian financial services license (AFSL) No. 414530 |
| 💻Trading Platforms | TradingView , MT4, MT5, cTrader |
| 🔃Spread | 0.0 pips |
| 💰Commission | Starts from $0.08 (round turn per 0.01 lot) |
Vantage Markets
Vantage Markets is managed and owned by Vantage Global Prime Pty Ltd and was founded in 2009. Vantage Markets offers all kinds of trading platforms geared towards beginners as well as copy trading from more experienced traders. As for the cost of trading, the broker offers ECN access on its MetaTrader platforms. Spreads start from as low as zero pips.
| 🏢Broker | Vantage Markets |
| 💼Australian Regulation | Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Australian financial services license (AFSL) No. 428901 |
| 💻Trading Platforms | MT4, MT5, WebTrader, Tradingview, ZuluTrade, Myfxbook |
| 🔃Spread | 0.0 pips |
| 💰Commission | 2 (round turn) |
ThinkMarkets
A premium multi-asset online brokerage, ThinkMarkets has gone worldwide with headquarters in London and Melbourne, as well as expanding reaches in the Asia Pacific, Europe, and South America. Since its establishment back in 2010, the company has continued to provide access to a variety of markets that include forex and CFDs on equities, cryptocurrencies, commodities, indices, etc. Furthermore, the Australian-based broker claims to offer the best pricing and execution speed. Low spreads and commissions are also among the competitive trading conditions they present for traders.
| 🏢Broker | Think Markets |
| 💼Australian Regulation | Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Australian financial services license (AFSL) No. 424700 |
| 💻Trading Platforms | MT4, MT5 |
| 🔃Spread | 0.0 pips |
| 💰Commission | Starts from $7 (round turn) |
GOMarkets
GOMarkets has been in operation since 2006 and become a household name in the Australian trading scene. With over a decade of experience, the broker has grown to become one of the leading brokers with a huge client base from over 150 countries. The broker hosts some trading instruments including forex, indices, metals, share CFDs, and commodities. In addition to that, GOMarkets presents what is called MT4 and MT5 Genesis to support traders with advanced analytical tools. Unfortunately, GOMarkets has not equipped its service with a swap-free condition yet.
| 🏢Broker | GOMarkets |
| 💼Australian Regulation | Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Australian financial services license (AFSL) No. 254963 |
| 💻Trading Platforms | MT4, MT5 |
| 🔃Spread | 0.0 pips |
| 💰Commission | Starts from $6 (round turn) |
Plus500
Plus500 is a UK-based company with its main offices located in the city of London. The company is authorized and regulated by FCA. For traders who are looking for a broker with top-tier regulators, Plus500 can be the right choice.
Plus500 offers 2,000 instruments to over a million clients. List of instruments available for trading with their CFD service include forex currency pairs, indices, cryptocurrencies, commodities, shares, and ETFs. Traders can choose instruments suitable for their needs.
Regardless, beginners should be extremely cautious while choosing their assets, as it can get daunting, confusing, and inherently risky.
When traders open an account, Plus500 will hold traders' funds on a segregated basis, following FCA's client money rules. Traders do not need to worry about Plus500 using their funds for hedging, as it is strictly prohibited to use clients' funds for this purpose.
Other advantages when trading in Plus500 are tight spreads and no commissions. The company only offers a single type of account, but traders can update the account from Retail to Professional by following some standards.
To apply Professional Accounts, traders have to fulfill at least 2 of the following 3 criteria eligible, such as sufficient trading activity in the last 12 months, financial instrument portfolio of over 500,000 Euro, and relevant experience in the financial services sector.
Plus500 is well-regarded for its services through the market spread, leverage up to of 1:30 for Retail Accounts, and leverage up to of 1:300 for Professional Accounts. Plus500 tries to give a sensible choice of leverage, which not only controls the risk but also helps novice traders to exercise more control over their trading emotions.
Founded in 2008, Plus500 provides almost the same features to both Retail and Professional account, including clients' money protection, negative balance protection, best execution for orders, clear and transparent information, as well as financial services compensation scheme. Still, Professional account is more advanced as it has access to FOS.
Based on the statistics, 76.4% of Retail account owners in Plus500 lose money when trading CFDs. Because of that, Plus500 always warns traders to consider their understanding of how CFDs work and their affordability to take high risk of losing money, before starting a trade in Live Account.
Even so, Plus500 has gained the trust of traders throughout the world. They have around 39 million positions opened, 304,000 active customers, and billions of volume trading processed by their system.
Plus500 always tries to give the best services to their clients. One of the ways to reach their goals is by making clients feel confident in their trading activity. They have a simple and easy-to-use trading platform, with an especially well-designed mobile platform. Traders can access the Plus500 platform via web-trader, iPhone/iPad, and Mobile App.
In their platform, traders will get advanced tools such as stop limit, guaranteed stop, free email and push notifications on market events, and alerts on price movements. All of these tools can help traders to navigate the market with better understanding.
As for payment methods, Plus500 provides various choices like Visa or MasterCard, electronic wallets (PayPal and Skrill), and bank transfer (direct bank to bank funds transfer).
For any concerns, troubles, or trading issues, traders can contact Plus500's customer service that is available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The official website of Plus500 can be accessed in 24 languages.
Overall, Plus500 has some advantages and disadvantages. As it has a license from an elite regulator, traders can feel safe when trading in Plus500. It also provides a 24/7 support team to help traders. But, offering leverages up to 1:300 is not suitable for high-risk traders, such as scalpers, who indulge in high-frequency trading that holds positions in the market for a brief period and typically use high leverage.
Plus500 was founded in 2008 and headquartered in Israel. The company has subsidiaries in the UK, Cyprus, Australia, Singapore, and Bulgaria. Plus500 offers platforms that can be used across multiple devices and operating systems, so they are always available for trading in various situations. The main drawback of this broker is no educational materials, which is a huge minus especially when there are new traders almost every day. Also, no research materials or technical analyses are provided for clients.
| 🏢Broker | Plus500 |
| 💼Australian Regulation | Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) Australian financial services license (AFSL) No. 417727 |
| 💻Trading Platforms | WebTrader |
| 🔃Spread | Dynamic |
| 💰Commission | ❌ |
| Compare | IC Markets | FP Markets |
| General Rating |
4.23/5 |
4.52/5 |
|
| Trustpilot |
4.9/5 24082 users |
4.9/5 3346 users |
|
| 💼 Regulation | |||
| ❗Information | Testimonials (549), News (56), Articles (21), Webinars (217) | Testimonials (35), News (10), Articles (17), Bonus (1), Webinars (118) | Testimonials (93), News (27), Articles (23), Webinars (269) |
| ⌛ Established | 2007 | 2005 | |
| 💲 Min Deposit | $200 | $100 | |
| ⚖ Max Leverage | 1:500 | 1:500 | |
| 🔢 Spread | Variable | Variable | |
| 💸 Commissions | $3.50 | $3 | |
| 💡 Min Position | 0.01 lot | 0.01 lot |
| 💳 Payment | Crypto, BPAY, Credit/debit cards, FasaPay, Neteller, PayPal, Skrill, UnionPay and Wire transfer | Apple Pay, Crypto, Credit/debit cards, Dash, Dragonpay, Ethereum, FasaPay, Google Pay, Litecoin, Local bank transfer, Neteller, Ripple, Skrill, Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Wire transfer and Zcash |
| 🏢 Office(s) |
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| 🧩 Demo Account | ||
| 📁 Segregated Account | ||
| 🕋 Islamic Account | ||
| 👨💻 PAMM Account | ||
| 📈 Managed Account |
| 💱 Hedging | ||
| 🇺🇸 US traders | ||
| 🕛 Swaps |
| 🏆 Trading contests | ||
| ⚡ Automated trading | ||
| 💰 Bonus offers | ||
| 📖 Free education |
| 1️⃣ One-click trading | ||
| ⏱ Trailing stop | ||
| ⏳ Pending orders |
 Forex |
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 CFD
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 Indexes |
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 Spread Betting |
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 Gold & Silver |
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 Crypto |
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 Stocks
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 Oil
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 Metals |
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 Energies |
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 Futures |
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 ETF
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 Options |
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 Agriculture |
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 Indices |
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 Commodities |
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 Bonds |
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 Binary Options |
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 Shares |
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 Physical Stock |
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 Cryptocurrencies |
| 🗣 Website Languages | Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish | Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, Italian, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese |
| 🚪 Trade Now | Open IC Markets | Open FP Markets |
The abovementioned brokers are a small example of ASIC-registered forex brokers. If you want to compare each broker side by side based on their criteria, you can use our Forex Broker Comparison tool.
10 Comments
Owen Wilson
Oct 26 2021
Is forex trading allowed in Australia?
Daniel Robson
Oct 27 2021
Hi Owen.
Forex trading is very legal in Australia. The most important thing is choosing a broker that is regulated by the Australia Securities and Investment Commission, also known as ASIC.
Using an ASIC-regulated broker means the broker complies with the requirements of companies in Australia that manage financial services. Several brokers above are a good examples of brokers that are regulated by ASIC.
Robert Phillips
Jan 2 2022
How do I choose a forex broker in Australia?
Vijay Krishnan
Jan 6 2022
Robert Phillips: For traders from Australia, I advise you to choose a regulated dealer ASIC. there are many online brokers regulated by ASIC. choose a broker whose answer was trading needs. to avoid a bad surprise I advise you to take perform a search on the broker to smooth the criticism of the person who uses the service.
Gustav
Apr 11 2022
Why do some brokers from Australia have different regulations for each trader in different regions?
Ömer Asaf
Apr 13 2022
Gustav: As far as I know why one broker has several different regulations because the scope of the regulations they have is also different. For example, the FSA regulations only apply to the UK and some European regions. This limits the broker's ability to attract traders. So the broker registers regulations in other areas.
Darwin Williams
Apr 12 2022
Are there other regulations besides ASIC for Australian brokers?
Keanu Wilson
Apr 19 2022
Darwin Williams: As far as I know it's only ASIC. Moreover, it is logically impossible for there to be 2 different regulations issued by different institutions for the same scope of problems.
José Luis
Apr 18 2022
Thank you for the review. I was greatly helped by the contents of this article.
Selena
Apr 21 2022
It was like falling in love at first sight. I started trading using IC Makets, so far I haven't turned to other brokers.