FP Markets Review

Offering of investments

FP Markets’ MetaTrader offering is limited to roughly 130 tradeable symbols, whereas the Iress platform suite offers an extensive range of CFDs to global clients, including 8,884 shares, 61 forex pairs, four metals, 12 indices, five cryptocurrencies, and three commodities.

Cryptocurrency: Cryptocurrency trading is available at FP Markets through CFDs, but not available through trading the underlying asset (e.g. buying bitcoin). Note: Crypto CFDs are not available to retail traders from any broker’s U.K. entity, nor to U.K. residents.

Feature
Forex Trading (Spot or CFDs)	Yes
Tradeable Symbols (Total)	9956
Forex Pairs (Total)	63
U.S. Stock Trading (Non CFD)	No
Int’l Stock Trading (Non CFD)	No
Social Trading / Copy Trading	Yes
Cryptocurrency (Physical)	No

FP Markets Commissions and fees

FP Markets offers highly competitive pricing through its MetaTrader offering, making it one of the most cost-competitive brokers available to traders globally – at least for its commission-based ECN account offering. The Iress ViewPoint account option is less affordable, and is geared towards active traders with high-balance accounts.

MetaTrader Standard versus Raw ECN account: FP Markets’ Raw ECN account features competitive spreads – averaging 0.1 pips as of October 2021. Its Standard account is a pricier option due to its significantly higher spreads (averaging 1.2 pips as of August 2022 for the EUR/USD).

Iress ViewPoint Accounts (Australia): The FP Markets Iress platform suite offers three account options with varying minimum deposit requirements: Standard (AUD 1,000 minimum deposit), Platinum (AUD 25,000), and Premier (AUD 50,000). To avoid platform and data fees, you must either qualify for the Premier account or spend at least AUD 150 in commissions each month. Active traders and traders with high-balance accounts will find better deals at Saxo Bank and CMC Markets.

Iress Investor Account (Australia): For traders seeking a bare-bones, low-cost experience, it also offers its Iress Investor trading platform. Monthly fees are waived for this less expensive account option, but with the reduced price come some platform limitations. There is no streaming data by default (click to refresh quotes), and the charting package is far more limited than its ViewPoint platform counterpart. My take: if you can’t afford the ViewPoint account, then pass on Iress Investor.

   

Feature
Minimum Initial Deposit	$100 AUD
Average Spread EUR/USD – Standard	1.2 (August 2022)
All-in Cost EUR/USD – Active	0.7 (August 2022)
Active Trader or VIP Discounts	Yes
Execution: Agency Broker	No
Execution: Market Maker	Yes

FP Markets Mobile trading apps

FP Markets delivers a good variety of mobile apps for forex and CFD traders. Its proprietary app has a nice layout for a new mobile app but lacks the advanced features that I’ve come to expect from the best brokers in this industry. Thankfully, Metatrader 4 and Metatrader 5 are available as reliable data-nameernatives.

Apps overview: FP Markets offers three mobile trading apps: the popular MetaTrader platform suite developed by MetaQuotes software corporation, the Iress trading platform, as well as its proprietary FP Markets mobile software.

Ease of use: As Iress is mostly optimized for share trading – not forex – I focused on FP Markets’ MetaTrader offering and the FX Markets proprietary app for this review.

Charting: FP Markets’ mobile app offers rudimentary charting, with no drawing tools and no indicators. That being said, traders at FP Markets also have access to the impressive charting tools that come standard with the MetaTrader suite of platforms.

Trading tools: FP Markets mobile app lacks any substantial trading tools. There is a favorites watchlist, and several other predefined asset class lists – but that’s it. You won’t find any integrated research or streaming news headlines.

    

Feature
Android App	Yes
Apple iOS App	Yes
Mobile Alerts – Basic Fields	Yes
Watchlists – Total Fields	7
Watchlist Syncing	No
Charting – Indicators / Studies (Total)	30
Charting – Drawing Tools (Total)	15

Other trading platforms

FP Markets offers the Iress platform suite for share trading, but MetaTrader is the primary platform option for forex and CFD trading. With support for Autochartist plugin integration as well as platform add-ons from FX Blue as part of its Trader Toolbox offering, FP Markets finished among the best MetaTrader brokers again in 2022.

Platforms overview: FP Markets offers the entire MetaTrader platform suite, including MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5). There are also three web-based platforms available by way of the Iress platform suite: Iress Trader, Iress Investor, and Iress ViewPoint for active traders. For forex traders, MetaTrader is the better choice, while the Iress platform (specifically its ViewPoint account) is more ideal for shares trading.

Copy trading: It also offers its own social copy trading platform, and traders at FP Markets gain access to the MetaTrader signals market. These features – combined with support for Myfxbook – make FP Markets a great choice for social copy trading. Read our Copy Trading guide to learn more about the best forex brokers for copy trading.

Charting: Charting on the Iress ViewPoint platform is powered by TradingView, and includes a clean watchlist tool and nearly 100 available technical indicators. That said, I had a hard time pulling up forex quotes and did not find any forex news headlines. Despite the decent charting tools available with the Iress platforms, MetaTrader remains the better choice for forex trading.

    

Feature
Virtual Trading (Demo)	Yes
Proprietary Platform	Yes
Desktop Platform (Windows)	Yes
Web Platform	Yes
Social Trading / Copy Trading	Yes
MetaTrader 4 (MT4)	Yes
MetaTrader 5 (MT5)	Yes

FP Markets Research

Most of FP Markets’ research is found under the Traders Hub section on its website, where it is separated into technical and fundamental analysis. When compared to the best brokers for research, including IG, Saxo Bank, CMC Markets, FP Markets has room to improve, and could enhance its research offering by expanding it to include a wider array of daily content.

Research overview: FP Markets provides daily written articles and video content on its official YouTube channel. Headlines stream within the FP Markets MetaTrader platforms from top-tier sources such as Citibank, Rabobank, Commerzbank, Reuters, and other forex news providers.

Market news and analysis: FP Markets’ research section consists of a Daily Report, Technical Report, a weekly Market Insights outlook, and a Fundamental Analysis section that provides daily articles that cover global markets. It’s worth noting that the Forex News section had outdated content.

 

Feature
Daily Market Commentary	Yes
Forex News (Top-Tier Sources)	Yes
Autochartist	Yes
Trading Central (Recognia)	No
Social Sentiment – Currency Pairs	Yes

FP Markets Education

Beyond some platform tutorials, an investor glossary, and archived content on its YouTube channel, there is little educational content available at Markets.

Learning center: FP Markets offers nearly sixty archived webinars as well as a handful of instructional videos on its YouTube channel, and there are at least 34 articles available under its Forex 101 section. I was pleased to see that Markets has launched a podcast, though I found it to be pretty basic. The podcast felt like a transcribed audiobook – not like an organic conversation. Adding interviews and more of a personal touch (and perhaps some market updates) would go a long way towards improving FP Markets’ foray into this new content format.

Room for improvement: I’d like to see FP Markets organize its educational content by experience level, and perhaps include a progress-tracking feature. These features combined with a general expansion of the range and depth of FP Markets’ educational material would help compete with education leaders such as Admiral Markets and IG.

    

Feature
Has Education – Forex or CFDs	Yes
Client Webinars	Yes
Client Webinars (Archived)	Yes
Videos – Beginner Trading Videos	Yes
Videos – Advanced Trading Videos	Yes
Investor Dictionary (Glossary)	Yes

Final thoughts

FP Markets stands out for the competitive pricing available to forex traders with its ECN account. However, that pricing is only available with the MetaTrader platform, and offers only 764 symbols on MetaTrader 5 (MT5).

While there are over 9,000 symbols available for share trading, they are segmented away on the Iress platform, and its associated platform and data fees can be a hurdle – unless you are an active trader or you maintain a high-balance account.

Overall, forex and CFD traders will be satisfied by the MetaTrader experience provided by FP Markets, though the scope of its research and educational offering are limited, when compared to the best brokers.

About FP Markets

Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, FP Markets (First Prudential Markets) was founded in 2005 as an online retail forex and CFD broker. The brand’s entities are regulated in Australia and Europe, with a total of 95 employees as of 2019. Read more on Wikipedia about FP Markets.

2022 Review Methodology

For our 2022 Seven Broker Review we assessed, rated, and ranked 39 international forex brokers over a three-month time period resulting in over 50,000 words of published research.

Each broker was graded on 113 different variables, including our proprietary Trust Score algorithm. This innovative scoring system ranks the level of trustworthiness for each broker based on factors such as licenses, regulation and corporate structure. Read about Trust Score here.

As part of our annual review process, all brokers had the opportunity to provide updates and key milestones and complete an in-depth data profile, which we hand-checked for accuracy.

Ultimately, our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .1% each year, providing site visitors with quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test.