Since 2011, we’ve traded with and reviewed over 200 brokers worldwide. To find the best brokers for social and copy trading, we’ve dedicated over 50 hours per broker, exploring more than 250 factors across 9 key areas. We’ve then compared them to identify the top performers in various categories. With decades of combined experience, our team of trading experts provides reliable and trusted opinions.
Right off the bat, social and copy trading are not the get-rich-quick schemes most newbies desperately hope for. Riding on the success of seasoned and more successful traders is certainly a viable option, but you still need to consider several things before diving into the deep. So, let us begin our analysis by first drawing a distinction between copy trading and social trading.
In copy trading, you look for a well-performing strategy of an experienced trader to subscribe to. You make money as the trader makes money, but the risks they take on now become your risks too. Social trading also allows you to profit from others, as well as learn from them by getting practical insights, so you can eventually develop your own edge and a consistently performing trading strategy.
Choosing the right broker might be a daunting task for a number of reasons. You have to ensure that the entity you select has all the proper regulations, a user-friendly platform, offers competitive pricing, and so on. That is where we come in. Our aim is to help you make well-researched and thought-out decisions when choosing a reliable partner on the market, using our expertise and a vast collection of broker reviews.
Our picks for best brokers in each category are based on a thorough examination of a wide spectrum of features and tools offered by each broker. We have broken down our picks by category in order to highlight the aspects in which each broker excels so that traders with different needs may choose the best option for them.
Our team of experts has identified each broker’s strengths and weaknesses using FX Empire’s comprehensive methodology. You can read more about it and how we conduct our tests here.
Now let’s take a dive into the selected brokers.
FP Markets is one of those rare brokers that manage to deliver both quality and quantity, balancing a wide selection of tools and features that cater to the needs of all kinds of traders. The broker was founded in 2005 and is licensed by several top-tier regulators, including CySEC in Cyprus and ASIC in Australia.
FP Markets incorporates MyFXbook Autotrade and Signal Start, two advanced tools that accommodate and enhance copy trading and social trading techniques. The broker also has an impressive selection of over 10,000 instruments, accommodates fast order execution supported by a complimentary Virtual Private Server (VPS), and provides diverse account types and pricing models (ECN and DMA).
FP Markets’ Standard account type affords commission-free trading and floating spreads from 1.0 pips, which we assessed to be below the industry average. The broker also incorporates the renowned MetaTrader 4&5 platforms supporting copy trading. The two platforms have easy-to-navigate interfaces, simplifying order execution.
SquaredFinancial was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Seychelles. The broker has diverse account types, which I found suitable for both inexperienced newbies and seasoned professionals. SquaredFinancial also offers over 2000 instruments from 7 asset classes. This is ideal for traders seeking to exploit various trading opportunities.
I opened a SquaredPro account, which affords commission-free trading and floating spreads starting from 1.2 pips. I then executed a full-sized (100,000 units) EURUSD position and measured its cost of trade. With a spread of 1.3 pips and $0 commission, I calculated the value of trade at $13 per traded lot (spread x pip value + commission). This meets the industry average.
Both experienced and inexperienced traders can implement high-frequency trading strategies, such as intraday trading, on the widely popular MetaTrader 5. The platform has a very easy learning curve and affords simple and fast order execution. It comprises over 50 technical indicators and drawing tools.
IC Markets was founded in 2007 and headquartered in Sydney, Australia. It is authorized in Australia by ASIC and in Cyprus by CySEC – both top-tier financial regulators. In addition to its access to deep liquidity and superior trading tools accommodating social and copy trading, we also found IC Markets’ fees to be some of the lowest in the industry.
The broker’s Raw cTrader account type offers a remarkable combination of raw spreads starting from 0.0 pips and a commission of $3.0 a side, which is below the industry average. Even the floating spreads starting from 0.6 pips on a Standard account are quite low. IC Markets’ costs are suitable for both high-frequency and high-volume trading.
The cTrader Copy Trading platform breaches the gap between signal providers and signal followers, allowing for a superior trading experience. It is a feature-rich platform making the most out of IC Markets’ low spreads and deep liquidity by supporting fast order execution. The broker also supports the IC Social tool, powered by Pelican Trading, allowing newbies to learn from proven trading experts.
Founded in 2011 and based in St Vincent and the Grenadines, OctaFX combines the practicality of MT4 with tight regulation by CySEC and a competitive pricing model.
Its basic account type supports swap-free and commission-free trading with floating spreads starting from 0.6 pips. We assessed that the broker’s versatile accounts and supporting tools are ideal for social trading.
OctaFX incorporates the renowned MetaTrader 4, which consists of over 50 trading indicators and drawing tools. It also supports the most widely used order types, like market, limit, and stop orders. Besides, the platform has the Expert Advisors (EAs) feature for automated and copy trading.
The broker has an excellent rating tool, helping strategy followers pick the best strategy to copy depending on their needs and goals. Overall, OctaFX’s service is a great match for the practicality and usability of the MT4 platform.
Vantage was founded in 2009 in Sydney, Australia, and serves over 50,000 active accounts, offering instruments from multiple asset classes. It is regulated by ASIC (Australia) and CIMA (Cayman Islands).
We checked the conditions of ‘Vantage Social Trading’ and found them to be very beneficial for experienced signal providers. The possibility to generate income from traders who subscribe to your strategy is not unique to Vantage, but the broker’s commission rates are quite attractive compared to others. This is likely to lure some of the best-performing traders, which, in turn, is good news for newbies seeking to subscribe to the most effective strategies out there.
Vantage’s clients will likely enjoy its low trading fees, which are below the industry average. The Raw ECN account affords raw spreads starting from 0.0 pips and a fixed commission of $3 per traded lot per side.
Vantage supports MetaTrader 4&5, affording basic technical analyses. And for those looking for optimal trading experience in charting, the Vantage ProTrader platform, powered by TradingView, incorporates over 50 trading indicators and drawing tools. The platform is ideal for copy and social trading since TradingView is the largest social trading community in the world.
What do professional traders value the most? In one word – efficiency. We discovered that FXCM affords the type of services and tools seasoned professionals need to develop their trading edges. The broker was founded in 1999 and is privately owned by Jefferies Financial Group, a financial giant with assets evaluated in excess of $85 billion.
FXCM is regulated in multiple jurisdictions, holding top-tier licenses by FCA (UK), ASIC (Australia), and CySEC (Cyprus). This underscores a very high degree of protection. As regards its fees, we tested FXCM’s spreads and found them quite varied. The spreads on FX pairs meet the industry average, whereas the spreads on CFD shares are low-to-medium compared to the broader industry.
The broker supports NinjaTrader, which is arguably the most sophisticated platform favored by seasoned traders everywhere. And with negative slippage occurring in less than 16% of all executed orders, FXCM certainly delivers on both precision and speed of execution.
Furthermore, FXCM incorporates ZuluTrade and Capitalise.ai, affording its clients, even more, versatility on the market. FXCM strikes a perfect balance between the diversity and usability of its services, making it the perfect choice for professional traders.
Over the years, eToro has established itself as one of the most easily recognizable brands in the online trading industry. A leader and innovator in copy trading, the brokerage firm’s global operations serve clients from every corner of the world. eToro was founded in 2007 in Tel Aviv, Israel, and has since grown into a multi-regulated broker. In the U.S., it is authorized by FINRA – a top-tier financial regulator.
eToro has competitive pricing models, including 0% commission stocks for investing, accommodating diverse account types, and excellent supporting tools.
Clients of eToro’s U.S. entity can only subscribe to the strategies of other U.S.-based traders. The broker provides the best conditions for copy trading in the region, and clients from the world’s most active financial hub can certainly benefit from its services.
Traders can use eToro’s proprietary platform, which offers standard features, such as one-click trading and an alerts-setting option. It is also highly intuitive with a user-friendly design. The platform also consists of the impressive 66 trading indicators and 13 drawing tools, as well as some rare chart types like hollow candles.
FX Empire has pioneered a unique and comprehensive methodology for evaluating the services and conditions of brokers that provide leveraged trading to clients worldwide. Our goal with each review is to underscore even the most minute pros and cons in the service of each broker so that our readers can gain a clear and comprehensive understanding of what the company can do for them.
After completing hundreds of reviews over a decade, we remain just as committed to continue updating and improving our methodology in light of the ever-changing market environment. We test the functioning of each broker by systematically employing over 250 variables across nine different categories:
We review the licenses of each subsidiary operating under a brand name and check the fine print in the Client Agreements in order to discern the exact protections entailed to clients of the broker. We put a lot of effort into evaluating a broker’s transparency and trustworthiness based on the scope and availability of information on its website.
Other essential information is gathered by opening a live account with the entity under review and testing its services in real-time. We measure the spread rates, swaps, and commissions on its most popular account type and compare our findings to the industry average.
We test the functionality of the platforms, the number and types of available instruments, the reliability of customer support, and the quality of the research and educational materials. Moreover, we check the reliability and security of secondary services, such as automated and social trading, so that we can determine how safe they are for the average retail trader.
We abide by our strict guidelines for editorial integrity based on the objective standards we have set for our reviews. You can read more about our review process here.
The team of forex and CFD analysts and editors at FXEmpire is composed of trading industry professionals and seasoned financial journalists. Our experts have been published on leading financial websites such as Investopedia and Forbes. In addition, they all have extensive trading experience.
Dan Blystone began his career in the trading industry in 1998 on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Later Dan gained insight into the forex industry during his time as a Series 3 licenced futures and forex broker. He also traded at a couple of different prop trading firms in Chicago. Dan is well-equipped to recommend the best forex brokers due to his extensive experience and understanding of the brokerage industry.
Jitan Solanki is a professional trader, market analyst, and educator. He day trades major currency and index markets and focuses on swing trading US equities and commodities. A qualified Market Technician, Jitan also works with trader education and brokerage companies on various projects. These include market analysis, live trading events, and broker reviews. As an experienced trader and educator, Jitan brings all his qualities in action when reviewing and recommending brokers.
Having been a retail trader since 2013, Plamen has gained an in-depth understanding of the challenges that novice traders face today. His expertise is swing trading and day trading with a heavy emphasis on psychological and fundamental analysis. Plamen’s favourite trading instruments include FX majors and gold. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics and International Relations. Plamen's broad experience has equipped him with the expertise to recommend the best forex brokers.
In more than 15 years of trading in the financial markets, Vladimir dealt with a wide range of brokers and financial instruments. His career as a day-trader at a proprietary trading firm goes back to 2007. Later, Vladimir turned to longer time frames and became an independent trader and analyst managing his own portfolio. Using his experience, he helps traders find the best broker in his reviews.
This section highlights all the relevant considerations you have to make before using copy or social trading platforms.
Licenses, licenses, licenses! If there is one thing separating all the trustworthy brokers from the ones of less reputable disposition, it’s their authorizations and licenses issued by trusted regulatory bodies. You can usually find all relevant information about a broker’s licenses and regulations in its Client Agreement, which should be displayed in the Legal Docs section of the website.
You should always look for all the significant hallmarks of a reliable broker in its Client Agreement – segregated funds, negative balance protection, a compensation scheme, and if it caps the maximum leverage allowed.
But what about copy trading and social trading in particular? Well, the most important thing to remember is that you must make sure you know who you trust to trade on your behalf, whether directly or indirectly. If you subscribe to somebody else’s strategy and copy their trades, it is not enough to only check their success ratio of winning trades against losing ones.
Make sure you know the person you are dealing with. Talk to them, inquire about their approach to trading, find out what is their usual market exposure per trade, and so on. Subscribing to a winning strategy is one thing, but you have to ensure that the goals of the person running it match the needs and means of your account. In short, do your due diligence and look for the strategy that best fits your circumstances instead of the one promising the biggest returns; especially if the underlying risk exceeds the risk you can tolerate.
Read more about Best regulated forex brokers.
High trading costs can curb the success of even the best-performing strategies. That is why before you start looking for the highest-earning traders to subscribe to, you have to evaluate whether your broker’s fees are competitive when measured against the industry average.
Things like spread rates, swap rates, and commissions are important determinants of success in the long run. For instance, a strategy with fewer successful trades could generate higher net returns than a strategy with a higher ratio of successful trades, which is nevertheless executed with a broker with higher trading fees.
That is why your first concern should be to consider what strategies are best suited for your account type. For instance, if you have a standard STP (Straight-Through-Processing) account with no commissions and floating spreads (usually starting from 1.0 pips), your account is tailored for high-frequency trading. Commission-free accounts accommodate high-volatility strategies, like intraday trading and scalping, which require frequent getting in and out of trades intended to capture small price changes.
Accordingly, if you have an ECN account with a fixed round turn commission per traded lot and raw spreads (usually from 0.0 pips), your account is better suited to accommodate high-volume trading strategies. Day trading and position trading strategies are prime examples of this type. Those entail the execution of comparatively larger positions less frequently. The central idea is to avoid paying a lot of commissions, take advantage of the much smaller spreads, and ride much larger price trends.
Now that you’ve thought about regulations and fees, it’s time to turn your attention to precision and speed of execution. Like with a broker’s trading fees, its liquidity supply (or lack thereof) can affect your overall performance.
To understand why this is important, consider the following example. You’ve discovered the highest-earning strategy on your broker’s social trading platform and have happily subscribed to it. And the trader running it spots an excellent opportunity at 10:00:01. He reacts and places a market order at 10:00:04. Suppose also that the broker’s access to liquidity from its providers is poor so that the order gets filled at 10:00:06. Once filled, an identical order is placed automatically on your end. It takes another second or two to finalize.
In these critical 6 or 7 seconds in this imaginary scenario, the price of the underlying could have already changed significantly to the point where the opportunity is no longer viable. And yet, you are locked into a position that was opened without a competitive edge. In the long run, such poor execution can only lead to one certain outcome, and it does not involve you accumulating a lot of profits.
And even if there is no delay between the time the original position is opened and an identical trade is placed on your account, the precious few seconds wasted before the order is filled could still be too much. When this difference is to the disadvantage of the trader, it is called negative slippage and is caused by poor liquidity supply.
To mitigate the risk of negative slippage, make sure you choose a broker that:
At the end of the day, if the strategy you’ve subscribed to is generating you enough profits, you are unlikely to ponder over the minor details of how exactly this is achieved. But it’s nevertheless worthwhile considering the type and number of instruments afforded by your broker to ensure you have sufficient versatility on the market.
Let us consider another example with this hypothetical trader of ours who has somehow developed the most effective trading strategy and yet always seems to end up working with brokers of questionable quality. Suppose you have again subscribed to his strategy, but this time the broker the two of you share provides only a limited number of instruments from a few asset classes.
This means that this trader would be limited in the ways in which he can exploit currently unfolding market opportunities. For instance, a new tech stocks rally could be starting, but the broker does not support any CFD shares. Or it could be that the broker offers a fairly broad range of FX pairs and not much else, but recent tribulations in the Forex market have made the underlying conditions unsuitable for the trader’s strategy.
In both cases, the limited access to a wide and diverse selection of markets will negatively impact the trader’s performance, thus affecting your bottom line as well.
That is why it is important to look for a broker that affords access to multiple instruments from a wide range of markets. Moreover, the availability of more complex instruments like vanilla options in addition to the industry standard CFDs means that you, or the trader you have subscribed to, can exploit the same trading opportunities from different angles.
If your plan is simply to duplicate the success of others, then even the most basic platform like MetaTrader 4 (MT4) can do the job, provided you find a signal provider whose system matches your needs. But if you want to grow as a trader and hone your skills over time, then perhaps you need a more sophisticated platform.
Avoid platforms that are not user-friendly or do not accommodate easy interaction between its members. You want to be able to communicate freely with more experienced traders so that you can gain different perspectives on trading.
Also, avoid platforms that do not have sufficient indicators and drawing tools, do not have a best execution policy, or do not incorporate a wide range of instruments from multiple asset classes.
Scam brokers rely, above all else, on the gullibility of traders. A common tactic scammers employ to lure in new victims is to promise quick and easy profits at no risk to the trader. But even more noteworthy, they promise to be trading on behalf of their “clients,” requiring almost no effort from them.
Unfortunately, the allure of easy profits without any real effort is quite similar to the idea of copy trading, where you subscribe to another trader’s strategy and hope to replicate their results. But there is one substantial difference, however. Real copy trading involves a symbiotic relationship between a broker, a signal provider, and a signal follower, which benefits all parties. And copy trading still requires due diligence.
So, the question is how to recognize and protect yourself from scammers wanting to exploit your trust and steal your money. Well, first and foremost, look for licenses and regulations! The best way to protect yourself is to make sure you work with a trustworthy and transparent broker. You can find a comprehensive list of reliable brokers in different jurisdictions here.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you need to be careful where you leave your information online. Registering your details on suspicious pop-ups or even more innocuous-looking landing pages promising you enormous profits could result in your contact details ending up in a scammer’s calling list. Remember, no licensed broker would make unsolicited, cold calls.
The next time you get called out of the blue with promises of becoming the next Warren Buffet with zero effort, you are most likely speaking to a scammer. Nowhere is the “if something sounds too good to be true…” saying more accurate than in the world of trading. That is why if you want to be safe, always check the licenses and authorizations of the brokers you plan to do business with.
Having been a retail trader since 2013, Plamen has gained an in-depth understanding of the challenges that novice traders face today. His expertise is swing trading and day trading with a heavy emphasis on psychological and fundamental analysis. Plamen’s favourite trading instruments include FX majors and gold. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics and International Relations. Plamen's broad experience has equipped him with the expertise to recommend the best forex brokers.
At FXEmpire, we strive to provide unbiased, thorough and accurate broker reviews by industry experts to help our users make smarter financial decisions.