The Eleven Things Worth Comparing Before You Open an Account

Why a checklist beats a ranking

Most "best broker" lists rank the same firms on the same handful of numbers, and the ranking hides the thing that decides your experience: which legal entity will accept you, and what that entity's terms say. Two people who open an account with the same brand on the same day can end up with different leverage limits, different money protections and a different complaints route. A ranking cannot express that. A checklist can, because you apply it to the entity that accepts you rather than to a logo.

Below are the eleven fields worth filling in before you fund anything, and where each answer comes from. Fill them in yourself, from the broker's own documents and the regulator's own register. Treat a field you cannot fill as unanswered, not as fine.

1. The regulator, the entity and the licence number

A regulator's name is not a licence. What you want is four things together: the short name of the regulator, the exact legal company that will be your counterparty, the jurisdiction, and the licence or reference number as printed on that regulator's own public register. Search the register directly — not through a link on the broker's site — and check that the company name matches the one in the client agreement you are being asked to sign, character for character.

A brand often operates several licensed companies. The one on the marketing page may not be the one in your contract, and only the one in your contract governs your money.

2. What the account costs, and on what basis

A spread figure is meaningless without knowing what kind of figure it is. "From 0.0 pips" is the best case a broker advertises; a typical spread is a figure the broker publishes as representative; an average is measured over a stated period; a fixed spread is contractual under stated conditions. Those are four different claims about the same digits and only some of them are costs you can plan around.

Then the commission, and its basis: per lot per side and per lot round turn differ by a factor of two, so a commission quoted without its basis is not a number at all. Add the two together for the pair, size and frequency you actually expect to trade, and compare that total against another account's total — never a spread against a spread.

3. Leverage belongs to an entity, not a brand

The same logo can serve one reader through a European entity at 1:30 and another through an offshore entity at 1:500, with different negative-balance terms and different compensation arrangements behind them. So the useful question is never "what leverage does this broker offer" but "what leverage applies to the entity that will accept me, as a retail or professional client".

Higher leverage does not increase your profit. It reduces the margin a position ties up, which makes it easier to open one larger than your account can survive. Size the position from the loss you can accept at your stop, not from the maximum your broker will allow.

4. Platforms, account types and swap-free status

Check that the specific platform you intend to use is offered to your entity and your account type, rather than somewhere in the group. The same applies to swap-free or Islamic accounts, which are frequently available under one entity and not another, and to copy-trading services, which are often restricted by region. If a feature is essential to you, get it confirmed for your account in writing before funding.

5. Money in, money out, and who is accepted

Payment methods vary by entity and by country, and a broker's own "no withdrawal fee" claim does not stop a bank or a payment provider from charging you. Check the funding page for the entity that will hold your money, the rule about returning funds to the original method, and the residencies the broker publishes as accepted and excluded. Verification requirements are worth reading before you deposit rather than after, because that is when they are easiest to satisfy.

What an unanswered field should tell you

Some of these questions will not have an answer you can find. That is information, not a gap to fill with a reasonable-sounding assumption. A firm that publishes its licence number, names its contracting entity and states the basis of its pricing has made itself checkable; a firm that publishes a regulator's logo and a headline spread has not. The difference is not about which one is honest — it is about which claims you are able to test before your money is with them.