IC Markets vs Pepperstone: Which Should You Choose?

IC Markets and Pepperstone are the closest match in retail forex — both Australian-founded ECN brokers, both offering raw spreads with a commission of roughly $7 round turn, both on MT4, MT5 and cTrader, both requiring around $200 to start. Choosing between them is a matter of details rather than a clear win. IC Markets tends to edge it on cTrader commission and instrument breadth; Pepperstone holds a wider set of Tier-1 licences and integrates TradingView. Open an IC Markets Raw Spread account and measure the fills yourself — with two brokers this similar, your own data settles it faster than any comparison.

IC Markets suits you if: you want the lowest cTrader commission, a broad share CFD range, and a documented Open API for programmatic trading — open an IC Markets cTrader account at $6 round turn.

Pepperstone suits you if: you want the widest possible spread of Tier-1 regulators or you specifically trade through TradingView.

Look at neither if: the roughly $200 entry is a large share of your capital — XM starts around $5 and Exness around $10.

Unusually so, and it is worth saying plainly because most comparisons manufacture differences that do not exist. Both were founded in Australia within a few years of each other, both built their proposition on raw ECN pricing plus a transparent commission rather than a marked-up spread, both hold ASIC and CySEC authorisations, both offer MT4, MT5 and cTrader, both explicitly permit scalping and expert advisors with no minimum holding time, and both sit in the same price band.

If you opened accounts at each and traded for a month without knowing which was which, you would struggle to tell them apart from the fills alone. That is the honest starting point.

One caution about that table: figures for any broker change without notice, and we have verified IC Markets' commission structure more thoroughly than Pepperstone's. Treat the Pepperstone row as directional and confirm current terms on their own site before deciding.

On published commission they are effectively level, with one exception. Work it in dollars: on a standard lot of EUR/USD, one pip is roughly $10, so a $7 round-turn commission equals 0.7 pips of cost and a $6 round turn equals 0.6 pips.

The one clear gap is cTrader. IC Markets charges $6 round turn on cTrader against $7 on MetaTrader. If Pepperstone's cTrader commission matches its MetaTrader rate, IC Markets saves you $1 per lot on that platform — $100 a month at 100 lots, $1,200 a year at that volume. Not decisive, but not nothing, and it is the only structural cost difference we can point to with confidence.

Everything else comes down to the raw spread itself, and here nobody can help you. No independent body continuously audits retail broker spreads, so any table claiming Pepperstone averages X and IC Markets averages Y is quoting unverified figures. The raw spread is the larger share of your cost and it is the part you have to measure.

That table is worth internalising even if you never look at Pepperstone: choosing cTrader over MetaTrader at the same broker saves real money if you have no MT4 legacy to protect. Open the cTrader version of IC Markets Raw Spread rather than defaulting to MetaTrader.

Both give you MT4, MT5 and cTrader. The differentiator is what sits alongside them.

This is where Pepperstone has the stronger claim, and it is fair to say so.

Both hold ASIC and CySEC authorisations. Pepperstone additionally holds a set of European and other Tier-1 licences that IC Markets does not carry in the same breadth. If you are in a jurisdiction covered by one of those, you may be onboarded to an entity with stronger statutory protections than IC Markets could offer you.

IC Markets serves most international clients through a Seychelles entity. Client fund segregation applies there. Public documentation is not consistent on whether negative balance protection extends to that entity, which is a genuinely material question — confirm it in writing with support before funding, and do the same at any broker onboarding you offshore.

Both brokers, incidentally, reference additional client-money insurance in their marketing. We have not been able to verify the current terms of any such policy at either, so do not weight it. Segregation and your entity's regulator are the protections you can actually rely on.

The practical takeaway: if regulatory breadth is your deciding factor and you are in a region Pepperstone covers with a Tier-1 entity, that is a legitimate reason to choose them. If you are being onboarded offshore either way, the difference narrows considerably.

Both cover forex, indices, commodities, metals, energies, share CFDs and cryptocurrencies. IC Markets carries a notably broad share CFD range, which matters if equity CFDs are a real part of your strategy rather than an occasional trade.

Gold deserves specific attention at any broker in this class. A standard XAU/USD lot is 100 ounces, so one cent of spread costs $1 per round-turn lot and a $1 move is $100. Neither broker has independently tested gold pricing published, so test it live rather than trusting a figure. If gold is your primary instrument, it is worth noting that Exness tested tightest on XAU/USD in the one third-party test available — a different broker class, but relevant if gold dominates your volume.

Both run the same two-tier structure, and the choice is more consequential than the broker choice itself.

The standard tier at either broker costs about the same all-in as the raw tier while hiding where the money goes. There is no cost advantage to it — only a psychological one, for people who prefer a single number. If you are opening an account at a broker whose entire proposition is raw ECN pricing, taking the marked-up tier defeats the point of being there.

Choose raw, and on cTrader where available for the lower commission.

Commission and spread dominate for intraday traders, but if you hold past the daily rollover, financing becomes a third cost line that neither broker advertises prominently.

Both charge standard overnight swap on positions held through rollover, with rates varying by instrument and direction, and one day each week carrying triple swap to cover the weekend. On high-carry currency pairs and on gold, financing can quietly exceed what you pay in spread and commission combined over a multi-day hold.

The practical test is unglamorous and takes one night: open a 0.01 lot position deliberately before rollover, hold it through, and read the actual charge in your account history. Do it on the instrument you actually trade rather than on EUR/USD, because the rates differ enormously. Traders routinely model spread and commission carefully and then lose the difference to a financing cost they never looked at.

Swap-free accounts are available at some brokers on request for clients with religious requirements, and terms vary by entity — Exness offers swap-free across its whole account range, which is unusually broad if that matters to you.

Very little, and any comparison claiming otherwise is overselling. There is no neutral body continuously auditing retail broker execution, so published latency figures, fill-speed claims and slippage statistics at both brokers are self-reported or drawn from unverified single-source reviews.

What is structurally true of both: a raw ECN feed with a separate commission gives the broker no revenue incentive to widen your quote, because the money comes from the commission line. That alignment is worth something even without numbers attached, and it is the main argument for either of these over a spread-only broker.

What you should actually do, given two brokers this similar:

Two weeks and a few dollars of spread will answer this question definitively for your instruments, your hours and your entity. No article can.

👉 Start the comparison — open an IC Markets Raw Spread account and log a fortnight of fills

It should, and almost nobody factors it in. Both brokers hold Tier-1 licences that are prominently displayed, and both onboard most international clients to an offshore entity that those licences do not cover.

What that means concretely. If you are onboarded to an ASIC or CySEC entity, you get statutory retail protections: capped leverage, negative balance protection as a regulatory requirement, and in the Cypriot case investor compensation up to €20,000 if the firm fails. If you are onboarded offshore, you get client fund segregation and whatever the broker chooses to apply voluntarily — with no statutory compensation scheme behind it.

That is not a reason to avoid either broker. It is a reason to find out which entity you would join before you fund, rather than assuming the licence on the homepage applies to you. Two questions to support answer it:

Ask both brokers the same two questions and compare the answers. If one gives you a clear written response and the other does not, that is itself informative — and it is a more meaningful differentiator between two brokers this similar than any spread comparison you will read.

Higher leverage under offshore entities is not compensation for weaker protection, incidentally. Leverage reduces your margin requirement, not your risk per pip. One standard lot carries identical monetary exposure at 1:30 and at 1:500 — only the balance tied up changes, and with it how fast a losing run consumes the account.

👉 None of that a dealbreaker? Open an IC Markets account and test it against whatever you use now

Effectively level on MetaTrader, with both around $7 round turn. IC Markets is $1 per lot cheaper on cTrader at $6. Beyond commission, the raw spread is the larger cost and no audited comparison exists for either, so the honest answer is that you cannot settle this from published figures — open both, trade minimum size for a fortnight, and compare realised cost per lot. Start with IC Markets Raw Spread on cTrader.

Pepperstone holds a broader set of Tier-1 licences, which is a legitimate advantage if you are in a jurisdiction one of them covers. Both hold ASIC and CySEC. In practice most international clients at either are onboarded offshore, where the difference narrows considerably — so the question that matters is which entity you personally would join, not which licences the group holds.

Yes, both permit scalping and EAs with no minimum holding time on standard retail accounts, and both are built for it — raw spreads with a separate commission is the structure that makes fast trading economically viable. cTrader at either gives you level II depth, which is the most useful platform feature a scalper can have. Open IC Markets on cTrader for depth of market.

Around $200 at IC Markets. Pepperstone does not commonly state a formal minimum, though roughly $200 is the usual practical suggestion. Either way, if $200 is a large share of your intended capital, both brokers are the wrong stage for you — the raw-pricing advantage only pays off at volume, and tying up most of a small account in a minimum deposit is a worse decision than paying a slightly wider spread elsewhere.

Both offer MT4, MT5 and cTrader, so the baseline is identical. Pepperstone adds TradingView order routing, which is decisive if that is where you work. IC Markets has well-established cTrader Open API support for programmatic trading. Choose on which of those two extras matches your workflow, because the core platforms are the same software at both.

No. Neither runs deposit-match or no-deposit promotions, which is consistent with their positioning — bonuses are aimed at acquiring small accounts rather than at traders comparing commission per lot. If promotional credit matters to you, brokers like HFM and XM run them under non-EU entities, with conditions worth reading before accepting.

Yes, and with two brokers this similar it is the most sensible research you can do. Open both, fund the minimum at each, run identical strategies at minimum size for a fortnight, and compare realised cost per lot rather than profit. Then close the loser. That fortnight costs a few dollars in spread and gives you an answer specific to your instruments and hours.

Under the ASIC and CySEC entities of either broker, retail clients receive it. Under offshore entities — which is where most international clients land — public documentation is inconsistent, particularly for IC Markets' Seychelles entity. Confirm it in writing before funding at either. It determines whether a weekend gap through your stop can leave you owing money, which makes it worth one support ticket.

Stop reading comparisons and generate your own data. When the structural differences are this small — same model, same platforms, same price band, same permissions — published figures cannot separate them, and the variables that will actually affect you are your instruments, your trading hours and the entity you get onboarded to. Two weeks of minimum-size trading at both, logging cost per lot, settles it properly and costs less than a single bad trade.

Neither, in most cases. Both are built for traders comparing cost per lot at volume, both require around $200, and neither offers much hand-holding. A beginner is better served starting at a low-entry broker on micro lots, learning on real money at negligible size, and moving to raw pricing once volume justifies it. XM's Micro account is the usual starting point.

This page contains affiliate links to some brokers mentioned. If you open an account through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This does not affect the assessments above, and we do not have a commercial relationship with every broker discussed. Nothing here is financial advice and the author is not a financial adviser. CFDs and leveraged forex carry a high risk of rapid loss, and most retail accounts lose money. Spreads, commissions, minimum deposits, regulatory coverage and platform availability change frequently and differ by entity — confirm all current details on each broker's own website before depositing.