Founded in 1978, Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is a trading industry pioneer and a leader in providing retail traders access to global markets, rock-bottom fees, and advanced trading technology.
Interactive Brokers Group is publicly traded (Nasdaq: IBKR), has equity capital exceeding $11 billion, and over 2.1 million registered clients. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based broker has ten global entities, each licensed and regulated by the corresponding regional financial authority.
Interactive Brokers enables traders to access global stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, and funds from the same screen. Clients can choose from a selection of award-winning platforms catering to both professionals and beginners.
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Interactive Brokers is one of the world’s largest and most stable brokers. It stands apart from other brokers with its massive range of tradable instruments, competitive fees, advanced trading platforms, and fast order execution.
We judged Interactive Brokers best for advanced, semi-professional, and professional traders. However, the offering is improving for beginners, with the new user-friendly GlobalTrader app and extensive educational materials.
We used a live Standard Account, probing the Trader WorkStation platform, opened with the Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited entity for this review. Some features and services may vary depending on where you reside. This review focuses on forex and CFD trading at Interactive Brokers.
☑️ Regulations | CFTC (United States), IIROC (Canada), SEC US (United States) |
🗺 Supported Languages | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish |
💰 Products | Currencies, Stocks, ETFs, Indices, Commodities |
💵 Min Deposit | $5 |
💹 Max Leverage | 1:78 (CFTC), 1:78 (IIROC), 1:78 (SEC US) |
🖥 Trading Desk Type | DMA |
📊 Trading Platforms | Proprietary |
💳 Deposit Options | ACH, Wire Transfer |
💳 Withdrawal Options | ACH, Wire Transfer |
🤴 Demo Account | Yes |
🗓 Foundation Year | 1977 |
🌎 Headquarters Country | United States |
Interactive Brokers is one of the world’s largest and most stable brokers. The company is listed on Nasdaq (IBKR), has $11.6 billion in equity capital, and over 2.1 million clients. It is also licensed and regulated by multiple top-tier financial authorities globally.
This section will cover how the different entities of Interactive Brokers are regulated and how this impacts you as a trader. We rate regulators on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 reflecting the highest level of trust.
The following authorities regulate the various entities of Interactive Brokers:
Different regulators provide different levels of protection. For example, clients of Interactive Brokers in the United Kingdom benefit from the oversight of the FCA. The FCA requires that clients have negative balance protection, which means they cannot lose more than their deposit.
In addition, when trading with a broker authorized by the FCA, client funds are also protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The FSCS protects investments of up to £85,000 if a firm becomes insolvent. A trader working with a broker entity regulated offshore would not necessarily have these benefits.
The tables below break down the protections and benefits by entity, regulator, and region.
Entity | Interactive Brokers LLC | Interactive Brokers Canada Inc. | Interactive Brokers (UK) Limited | Interactive Brokers Ireland Limited | Interactive Brokers Central Europe Zrt. | Interactive Brokers India Pvt. Ltd. | Interactive Brokers Securities Japan Inc. | Interactive Brokers Hong Kong Limited | Interactive Brokers Singapore Pte. Ltd. | Interactive Brokers Australia Pty. Ltd. |
Country/Region | United States | Canada | United Kingdom | Western Europe | Eastern Europe | India | Japan | Hong Kong | Singapore | Australia |
Regulator | SEC, CFTC | IIROC | FCA | CBI | MNB | SEBI | JSDA | SFC | MAS | ASIC |
Segregated Funds | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Negative Balance Protection | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
Compensation Scheme | SIPC up to $500,000 | CIPF up to $1,000,000 | FSCS up to £85,000 | DGS up to €100,000 | No | No | No | No | No | No |
CFD Trading Maximum Leverage | CFD Trading not available | CFD Trading not available | 1:30 | 1:30 | 1:30 | CFD Trading not available | 1:25 | CFD Trading not available | 1:20 | 1:30 |
Regulatory requirements are subject to change. We gathered the data listed above in March 2023.
In our tests for the Trust category, we also cover factors relating to stability, financial strength, security, and transparency. Here, we focus on how long the broker has been in business, the company’s size, and their transparency.
Interactive Brokers has a very long operating history of 45 years. It is a publicly-traded company listed on the Nasdaq with a market cap of 33.49B at this time. As a publicly traded company, Interactive Brokers must disclose financial reports, allowing for greater insight into the company’s stability.
In our research, Interactive Brokers showed high transparency in its regulatory status, fees, and general background information. Information and materials are readily available on the website. Interactive Brokers lists its regulatory status at the footer of each page. The Pricing menu in the horizontal navigation clearly outlines all costs, such as commissions and margin interest rates. Traders can find the Client Agreements in the accounts section of the website.
To conclude, we rate Interactive Brokers as highly trustworthy and stable due to the following factors:
Interactive Brokers is highly competitive in the area of fees. It is recognized as having the lowest costs in the industry, sometimes by a wide margin. Our hands-on tests of forex and CFD instruments showed this to be true.
We tested the spreads at Interactive Brokers across different CFDs using the Trader WorkStation platform. The tests were done at 8:00 a.m. GMT and at 4:00 p.m. GMT on 24 March 2023. We made our tests at two different times to allow greater perspective. 8:00 a.m. GMT is the London open when there is a great deal of liquidity in the forex market and tighter spreads in currency pairs. 4:00 p.m. GMT is during the New York trading session.
Instrument and Order Size | Spread/Commission AM | Spread/Commission PM |
EUR/USD (1 Lot) | 0.2 Pips + 1.75 GBP | 0.3 Pips + 1.75 GBP |
GBP/JPY (1 Lot) | 1.2 Pips + 1.98 GBP | 1 Pip + 1.98 GBP |
XAU/USD (10 Lots) | 10 Pips + 2.99 USD | 16 Pips + 2.98 USD |
Apple (100 shares) | n/a | 1 cent + $1 |
Tesla (100 shares) | n/a | 11 cents + $1 |
Dow 30 Index (1 Lot) | 1 Pip + 1.59 USD | 2 Pips + 1.59 USD |
Swap fees (the cost of holding a position overnight) were average at Interactive Brokers.
In the table below, you can see the Swap Long (the cost/credit of holding a buy position overnight) and the Swap Short (the cost/credit of maintaining a sell position overnight) for one full-sized contract. A full-sized contract is 100,000 units of the base currency (the first currency quoted in the pair). We recorded the data on 24 March 2023.
Instrument | Swap Long | Swap Short |
EUR/USD | Charge of $6.22 | Credit of $5.82 |
GBP/JPY | Credit of $9.31 | Charge of $11.51 |
For individual accounts, there is a $0 minimum balance and no inactivity fees.
In their own words, ‘IBKR is committed to minimizing costs to maximize returns.’ We found this to be true in our research. The spreads, commissions, and margin interest rates are among the most competitive.
Interactive Brokers offers a range of award-winning platforms, from the web-based client portal to the advanced Trader WorkStation (TWS) platform and two proprietary mobile apps. We found the platforms powerful enough for professionals but also accessible to casual traders.
The web-based client portal allows traders to check quotes, place trades, and see their account balance and reports. Traders can stay on top of key account metrics such as net liquidation value, profit and loss (P&L), and buying power in real-time.
The Client Portal home page shows traders their rate of return, portfolio positions, recent transactions, notifications and messages, and available cash. Traders can also easily place orders, manage open orders, and view recent trades from any page in the Client Portal using the slide-out trade ticket. The client portal is user-friendly and intuitive, making it a good starting point for beginners and casual traders.
Trader Workstation (TWS) provides access to trading in stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, and funds on over 150 markets worldwide from a single unified platform. The default mosaic view inside TWS comprises a series of individual panels operating within a highly configurable interface.
In the upper left of the screen, you can see the order entry window, which includes the price quote for a specified financial instrument. This window lets you quickly enter a buy or sell order that you can submit to an exchange. Available order types include market, limit, stop loss, bracket, One Cancels Other (OCO), and pair hedging orders.
At the bottom left of the screen is an activity panel where you can review open orders, completed trades, and a summary of your activity. The news panel is in the lower right corner. Above it is the monitor panel where you can view your portfolio and open multiple watchlists.
The TWS platform has many preconfigured layouts based on different markets and styles of trading. The FX Trading layout allows traders to create spot and futures orders with a single click and is set up with popular fx pairs and futures. Within the same screen, traders can stay on top of economic events and forex news with event calendars and streaming news feeds. Traders can also create and save unique layouts suiting their preferences.
The TWS platform includes robust charting, over 90 technical indicators, candle sizes varying from 5 seconds to monthly, multiple drawing tools, and trading from the chart.
The IBKR mobile app provides access to trading in CFDs, forex, stocks, options, futures, currencies, and bonds. Charting is robust, with over 90 technical indicators. Traders can use a broad range of order types, including market, stop, stop limit, market if touched, limit if touched, trail, and trail limit. The app also features watchlists, scanners, a news feed with stories from Reuters and Dow Jones, and an economic calendar.
The GlobalTrader app is a user-friendly app that is more intuitive and slightly stripped down in comparison to the IBKR mobile app. Traders can access over 90 stock markets worldwide. Beginners can trade in fractions of shares, investing as little as $1. Forex and CFD trading is also available via GlobalTrader. The app has popular features such as watchlists, scanners, and a newsfeed, allowing traders to stay on top of the markets from the palm of their hand.
Interactive Brokers operates the Direct Market Access (DMA) execution model. In this model, the provider hedges the CFD order immediately in the underlying physical market, and the CFD is executed at the price of the hedge.
Interactive Brokers offers an excellent range of products to trade, including stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, and funds. Traders can access a robust selection of CFDs on forex and shares, but there is room for improvement in the variety of CFDs on commodities.
CFDs (Contracts for Differences) are financial derivative products that allow traders to speculate in various markets without owning the underlying assets. Tradable CFD instruments at Interactive Brokers include the following assets:
In the tables below, you can see a selection highlighting the variety of CFD instruments available at Interactive Brokers:
Forex Majors | Forex Minors |
EUR/USD | USD/JPY | GBP/USD | AUD/CAD | EUR/GBP | GBP/JPY |
Forex Exotic | Metals |
USD/RUB | USD/HUF | USD/MXN | London Gold | London Silver |
Indices | Stocks |
Japan 225 | Germany 40 | US Tech 100 | Visa | Air France | HSBC |
Customer service is available via chat, phone, and contact form from Sunday afternoon through Friday evening, New York time. Customer support is not available on Saturday. In our tests, we found the quality of customer support to be mixed.
Interactive Brokers provides 24-hour customer service each business day via regional Client Services Centers across America, Europe, and Asia.
For phone and chat, users must navigate numerous questions before reaching an operator, which can take time and effort. We tested support with many questions, from easy to hard. For example, whether one-click trading is available in the TWS platform and how to calculate overnight swap fees. In some instances, we received support from highly knowledgeable industry professionals, but the experience sometimes felt more like a call center.
Interactive Brokers does not charge for deposits and withdrawals. Requests are processed relatively fast. However, some popular funding methods, such as credit cards, are unavailable.
In the tables below we break down the fees and processing times for each deposit and withdrawal method.
Deposit Method | Fees | Processing Time |
Wire Transfer | $0 | 1 Business Day |
Bank Transfer (ACH) | $0 | 1 Business Day |
Check | $0 | 1 Business Day |
Withdrawal Method | Fees | Processing Time |
Wire Transfer | $0 | 1 Business Day |
Bank Transfer (ACH) | $0 | 1 Business Day |
The application process at Interactive Brokers is straightforward, and can traders can complete the process within 15 minutes. Many account types are available, catering to different profiles.
There is no minimum required deposit to open a cash account at Interactive Brokers. A range of account types can cater to individual traders and other trading industry professionals.
Account Types |
Individual, Joint and Trust Accounts | Family Advisor | Stocks and Shares Individual Savings Account (ISA) | Self-Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) Accounts | Family Office Accounts | Small Business Accounts | Advisor Accounts | Money Manager Accounts | Broker & FCM Accounts | Proprietary Trading Group Accounts | Compliance Officers | Administrators |
A wide variety of base currencies (the currency in which your account is denominated) are available at Interactive Brokers.
Available Base Currencies |
AUD | GBP | CAD | CZK | DKK | EUR | HKD | HUF | ILS | JPY | MXN | NZD | NOK | PLN | SGD | SEK | CHF | USD | CNH |
To open an individual account at Interactive Brokers UK, prospective clients must answer the following questions.
Interactive Brokers offers a free simulated account with a balance of $1M, which traders can use across all platforms: Web Portal, Trader WorkStation, IBKR Mobile, and the GlobalTrader app. Once users have gotten up to speed on a demo account, they can easily switch to a live version.
Interactive Brokers does not offer a swap-free Islamic account.
One of the reasons that traders are attracted to the forex and CFD markets is the high degree of available leverage. Leverage is the use of borrowed funds to increase the size of your trading positions beyond what would be possible using only the cash in your account. CFD traders at Interactive Brokers UK can use leverage of up to 1:30. This means that with an account balance of $1,000, a trader can take on positions of up to $30,000 in the market.
Leverage is often described as a ‘double-edged sword’ because it can amplify your profits and losses. Leveraged trading comes with a high level of risk and can often result in significant losses.
Interactive Brokers is available in most countries worldwide, except for FATF Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklist countries such as North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar. FATF is an intergovernmental organization seeking to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.
Interactive Brokers offers outstanding market commentary and coverage of financial news via Traders’ Insights, available on the website and trading platforms. A steady feed of fresh content is provided by the analyst team at IBKR, along with third-party contributors such as Nasdaq, Investopedia, and Redwall Analytics.
Content in the Traders’ Insight section is in both written and video format. Topics are broken down by various markets (stocks, commodities, forex, crypto) and the style of analysis (macro, technical analysis). The material is in-depth, well-crafted, and primarily geared toward experienced traders.
Traders can learn about the general market outlook for the day, get up to speed with upcoming economic releases and browse technical trade ideas from various contributors. We judged the research materials to be better than average for the brokerage industry.
The Interactive Brokers Traders’ Academy provides over 65 finance courses broken down into beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. The high-quality materials go into substantial depth and include interactive quizzes to aid the learning process.
Lessons are in video format and cover a broad range of topics, such as the basics of various markets, technical and fundamental analysis, and platform tutorials. Each subject is broken down into a series of easily digestible video lessons of less than ten minutes. The courses include contributions from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Options Industry Council (OIC).
Several live webinars each month complement the educational courses. Traders can watch, listen and ask questions in live events on trading, world finance, and market trends. Interactive Brokers also offers weekly educational podcasts covering various trading industry-related themes and expert interviews.
Overall we rated educational materials as better than average for the industry and containing valuable content for beginners and advanced traders.
With outstanding fees, robust trading platforms, and a massive range of tradable instruments, Interactive Brokers has established itself as one of the best brokers for advanced and professional traders. Our tests found it to live up to its reputation, with an impressive all-around offering. There is room for improvement in customer service, especially with the time it takes to reach a live agent. While the overall number of assets to trade is very high, the range of CFD instruments is lower than leading CFD brokers in some areas, such as commodities.
The TWS platform presents a steeper-than-average learning curve, but with its professional-grade features, that is to be expected. Importantly, forex and CFD traders at Interactive Brokers do not have to worry about widening spreads in volatile markets and the possibility of re-quotes, as they benefit from direct market access (DMA) and superior order execution. In terms of commissions and spreads for a forex pair such as EUR/USD, Interactive Brokers stands among the most competitive brokers we have reviewed.
Headquarters Country | United States |
Foundation Year | 1977 |
Regulations | CFTC (United States), IIROC (Canada), SEC US (United States) |
Publicly Traded | No |
Number Of Employees | 0-50 |
Trading Desk Type | DMA |
Trading Platforms | Proprietary |
Supported Languages | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish |
Min Deposit | $5 |
Max Leverage | 1:78 (CFTC), 1:78 (IIROC), 1:78 (SEC US) |
Deposit Options | ACH, Wire Transfer |
Withdrawal Options | ACH, Wire Transfer |
Products | Currencies, Stocks, ETFs, Indices, Commodities |
Demo Account | Yes |
OCO Orders | No |
Offers Hedging | Yes |
Automated Trading | No |
API Trading | No |
Guaranteed Stop Loss | No |
Guaranteed Limit Orders | No |
Guaranteed Fills / Liquidity | No |
Economic calendar | No |
Trading From Chart | No |
One-Click Trading | No |
Expert Advisor | No |
Social Trading | No |
Autochartist | No |
Trading Signals | No |
24 Hours Support | Yes |
Support During Weekends | No |
Live Chat | No |
Daily Market Commentary | No |
News (Top-Tier Sources) | No |
Webinars | No |
Deposit Fee | No |
Withdrawal Fee | No |
Inactivity Fee | No |
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.
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