How We Test

Since day one, ForexToStocks was on the mission to give people the power and confidence to start their trading endeavours through our approved list of online brokerage platforms and tools. Here we offer full transparency on how we conduct our objective assessment, and why readers trust us.

51+ platforms reviewed

15 Best-in-class awards issued

5,321 Data Points Tracked

How are our review methodologies derived?

Our team has more 17 years of collective experience in the financial market, and as retail traders ourselves – we have a strong grasp of what makes a good trading platforms for users. And we also understand the struggles users face when deciding which platform to use.

That said we recognise that every trader has a different requirement, and what is suitable for us or what we think is important may not necessarily be the case for other traders, retail or professional. To close the gap, we have consulted a variety of users whether they are beginners or seasoned traders, and professional or retail traders to derive our review framework and methodologies.

Nearly all users we spoke to express that Trustability being the first factor they look for before everything else when choosing a platform. Mentions of suitability, commissions, product offerings, and platform’s ease of use came out quite frequently during the interview – which aligned to our personal experience.

We also noticed that there are some traders feel comfortable placing large trade orders on their mobile devices. Research and educational material were mentioned, but it isn’t as important as many platform providers would have thought. Many prefer external online resources like babypips and YouTube to get trading education and insights.

Having a good customer support is critical especially when it comes to withdrawing profits, and it is one of the biggest concerns when deciding a new trading broker.

We are also on the lookout on Google Trends and Google News for anything relating to scams and regulatory issues on the platforms we monitor.

Trust Score

Years of inception – 1 point for each year to maximum of 15 points
Publicly Traded (Listed) – 15 points if yes, 0 point if no

Max points for license: 70
Tier-1 Licenses – 25 points for each tier-1 license to maximum of 70
Tier-2 Licenses – 15 points for each tier-2 license to maximum of 80
Tier-3 Licenses – 10 points for each tier-2 license to maximum of 80

wdt_ID	Tier-1 Jurisdictions (High Trust)	Tier-2 Jurisdictions (Average Trust)	Tier-3 Jurisdictions (Low Trust)
1	Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) – Australia	the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF)	Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) – Bahamas
2	Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) – Canada	China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) – China	International Financial Services Commission (IFSC) – Belize
3	Securities Futures Commission (SFC) – Hong Kong	Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission (CySEC) – Cyprus	Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) – Bermuda
4	Japanese Financial Services Authority (JFSA) – Japan	Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) – Ireland	BVI Financial Services Commission (FSC) or (BVIFSC) – British Virgin Islands
5	Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) – Singapore	Israel Securities Authority (ISA) – Israel	Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) – Cayman Islands
6	Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) – Switzerland	Financial Markets Authority (FMA) – New Zealand	Mauritius’ Financial Services Commission (FSC) – Mauritius
7	Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – United Kingdom (UK)	Central Bank of Russia (CBR) – Russia	Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) – South Africa
8	Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – United States	Financial Services Board in South Africa (FSB) – South Africa	Seychelles Financial Services Authority (FSA)
9	The Financial Futures Association of Japan (FFAJ)	Securities and Exchange Commission (Thailand) – Thailand
10	Authorised in the European Union: MiFID, PSA, ESMA	Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) – United Arab Emirates

Total score: 100

85 – 100 : Low risk (add 0.5 to overall rating)
70 – 84 : Average risk (add 0 to overall rating)
69 or below : High risk (subtract 2 to overall rating)

Review categories

The following 6 categories are reviewed individually by our expert reviewers – who spent at least 2 weeks with $300 USD deposited, and trading on the platform.

Offering of Investments

Do they offer major forex pairs and how extensive is their minor pairs?
Do they offer spot trading for forex?
Do they offer copy-trading?
Do they offer equity, commodities, major indices, and Crypto?

Commissions & Fees

How much do they charge in a spread for major pairs like USD/EUR?
How much commission do they charge per lot?
How much is their minimum deposit?
Any miscellaneous cost like withdrawal fee, inactivity fee – and is it reasonable?

Platforms & Tools

Do they offer basic charting tools and trading indicators?
Are you able to trade directly on the chart?
Are they on popular third party software like MT4, MT5, and TradingView?
How user-friendly is their trading platform?
Do they offer trailing stop loss and other more advanced orders?

Research

Do they offer any form of research tools and materials?
Do they provide daily, weekly or monthly market news & analysis?
Do they provide trading insights to help traders?

Education

Do they have an onboarding program for new users?
How extensive is their educational material for starters?
Would seasoned traders find their material useful?
Are the material delivered through multi-media like video, articles, newsletter, interactive / quizzes, and infographic?
Do they offer free demo accounts for paper trading?
Do provide any sort of community forums or discussion board?

Mobile Trading

Do they offer mobile Apps.?
Does the App have at least 80% of its web-based features?
Is the App. interface intuitive and user-friendly?

They are rated in the range of 0 to 5 with 5 being the highest score.

We understand the limitation of ratings system such that it doesn’t adequately represent factors like target users, hence we provide subjective write-up addressing the target users.