Defining the number one forex broker isn’t easy — but Interactive Brokers (IBKRs) helps quite a bit. Their powerful platform and diverse investment offerings make it a favorite among all types of traders — because with all things considered, no one else comes close.
Interactive Brokers is a huge name in the brokerage industry – and for many good reasons. The company offers competitive fees, plenty of high-quality research tools, easy-to-use-apps, and cutting-edge tools.
Let’s take a deeper dive to see why IBKRs sits at our top forex broker position.
Pros
- Advanced trading platform
- Extremely safe and well-regulated
- Large and diverse offering of investments
- Competitive commissions
- Superior research tools available to help traders
- Available in the U.S.
Cons
- Not the best option for low-volume traders
- Complexity of the platform takes time to learn
IBKRs has been a trailblazer for quite a long time. Founded in 1978, this broker boasts licenses in 6 tier-one jurisdictions and currently has over $8 billion in equity capital. Needless to say, their regulatory safety is the best you will find in the forex market.
The broker’s trading platform, Trader Workstation, is an incredibly powerful tool. It is highly customizable and supports advanced charting, as well as 20 different order types. TWS is a powerful piece of software – so powerful that it may prove too complex for absolute beginners.
Although IBKRs doesn’t publish its spreads, their fees are quite low – particularly if you’re a high-volume trader. Customers are offered prices that are aggregated from 17 global banks that deal in the foreign exchange market.
While you won’t be charged for spreads, the broker does have commissions that vary from $16 to $40 per million round turn.
One of the rare drawbacks of this broker is the monthly fees, should they be applicable. IBKRs charges a monthly maintenance fee of up to $10, but this will be $0 if $10 in commissions were generated that calendar month or your account has a net liquidation value of at least $100,000.
In practice, this means that active, high-volume traders won’t be paying any such fees. Market data fees may also apply – but they don’t amount to too much, and they can also be waived if you pay a certain amount in commissions.
One of the things that sets IBKRs apart is the sheer magnitude of their investment offerings. The brokerage currently offers over 100 currency pairs, bitcoin futures, as well as over 7,400 CFDs.
The broker offers a wide variety of well-produced educational content as well. It’s clear that IBKRs understands how daunting their platform can be – quite a lot of the educational content consists of platform tutorials aimed at beginners.
IBKRs also offers a fantastic amount of research and news. The most prominent news sources include Dow Jones, Morningstar, and Thomson Reuters.
Some of the research tools, however, are not free. Despite this, the broker merits high marks in this regard – IBKRs offers almost limitless research possibilities given their offering.
Although IBKRs has commonly come under fire for the quality of their customer support,
we’re happy to report that the situation has improved drastically. Wait times are much shorter than before, now averaging 1 to 2 minutes, and the helpful IBot mobile virtual assistant is also a very handy feature.
If you want to learn more, our complete Interactive Brokers review goes into much greater detail.