IC Markets Review 2023
If low-cost forex/CFD trading is all you’re after and you’re not very picky about your choice of platform, Australia’s IC Markets is a worthy option. It has a competitive product selection that includes crypto; and a flexible fee structure offering very tight spreads with a reasonable commission. You can set up your account in no time and enjoy various deposit and withdrawal options, all free of charge. IC Markets is not recommended for long-term investors, as you can’t trade stocks, ETFs or funds. The MetaTrader platform used by IC Markets has its
limitations in design and functionality but will be familiar to many forex traders.
IC Markets has a reasonably long track record and is overseen by quality regulators globally, including Australia’s ASIC. In addition, investor protection is provided for most European clients.
Best Broker in the forex Market
True ECN Forex Spreads From 0.0 pips.(74-89% of retail CFD accounts lose money)
IC Markets highlights
| 🗺️ Country of regulation | Cyprus, Australia, Seychelles |
| 💰 Trading fees class | Low |
| 💰 Inactivity fee charged | No |
| 💰 Withdrawal fee amount | $0 |
| 💰 Minimum deposit | $200 |
| 🕖 Time to open an account | 1 day |
| 💳 Deposit with bank card | Available |
| 👛 Depositing with electronic wallet | Available |
| 💱 Number of base currencies supported | 10 |
| 🎮 Demo account provided | Yes |
| 🛍️ Products offered | Forex, CFD, Crypto |
Fees
| Assets | Fee level | Fee terms |
|---|---|---|
| EURUSD | Low | MetaTrader raw spread account: $3.50 commission per lot per trade plus spread cost. 0 pips is the average spread cost during peak trading hours. |
| GBPUSD | Low | MetaTrader raw spread account: $3.50 commission per lot per trade plus spread cost. 0 pips is the average spread cost during peak trading hours. |
| S&P 500 CFD | Low | The fees are built into the spread, 0.2 points is the average spread cost during peak trading hours. |
| Inactivity fee | Low | No inactivity fee |
IC Markets trading fees are low. There are different cost structures for different account types. We tested the ‘True ECN with MetaTrader’ account, which charges a commission but offers tight spreads.
We compare IC Markets’s fees with those of two similar brokers we selected, Pepperstone and Vantage FX. This selection is based on objective factors such as products offered, client profile, fee structure, etc. See a more detailed rundown of IC Markets alternatives.
Forex fees
IC Markets forex fees are generally low.
| IC Markets | Pepperstone | Vantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forex fee class | Low | Low | Low |
| FX commission per lot | $3.50 commission per lot per trade | $3.50 commission per lot per trade | $3.00 commission per lot per trade |
| EURUSD spread | 0.0 | 0.8 | 0.1 |
| GBPUSD spread | 0.0 | 0.4 | 0.3 |
| AUDUSD spread | 0.0 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| EURCHF spread | 0.0 | 0.7 | 0.6 |
| EURGBP spread | 0.0 | 0.4 | 0.3 |
Stock index CFD and stock CFD fees
IC Markets has generally low CFD trading fees. The fees of stock index CFDs are built into the spreads. On the negative side, the financing rates are high.
| IC Markets | Pepperstone | Vantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CFD fee class | Low | Low | Average |
| S&P 500 CFD spread | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.3 |
| Europe 50 CFD spread | 1.6 | 1.5 | 1.4 |
| Apple CFD fee | $1.8 | $3.0 | $14.6 |
| Vodafone CFD fee | $6.0 | $22.6 | $30.3 |
Non-trading fees
IC Markets has low non-trading fees. There are no inactivity, deposit or account fees.
There is no fee for withdrawing funds when using credit/debit cards, electronic wallets or international bank transfers.
| IC Markets | Pepperstone | Vantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account fee | No | No | No |
| Inactivity fee | No | No | No |
| Deposit fee | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Withdrawal fee | $0 | $0 | $0 |
How we ranked fees
We ranked IC Markets’s fee levels as low, average or high based on how they compare to those of all reviewed brokers.
Let’s go over some basic terms related to broker fees. What you need to keep an eye on are trading fees and non-trading fees.
- Trading fees occur when you trade. These can be commissions, spreads, financing rates and conversion fees.
- Non-trading fees include charges not directly related to trading, like withdrawal fees or inactivity fees.
Account opening
IC Markets accepts customers from all around the world. A few notable exceptions include the US, Canada and Israel.
What is the minimum deposit at IC Markets?
The minimum deposit at IC Markets is $200. This is considered low, since other CFD brokers usually require a minimum of around $2,000.
Account types
There are three account types at IC Markets, which differ in their fee structure and the available trading platform:
| True ECN with cTrader | True ECN with MetaTrader – Tested Account | Standard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commission per lot (round turn*) | $6 | $7 | No commission |
| Spread | Low spreads | Low spreads | High spreads |
| Trading platform | cTrader | MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 | MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 |
| Available accounts by ownership | Individual, joint, corporate | Individual, joint, corporate | Individual, joint, corporate |
| Islamic account available** | Yes | Yes | Yes |
*Round turn means that you open and close the position.
**Islamic accounts are also called swap-free accounts. With Islamic accounts, a flat commission is charged if you hold your leveraged position overnight instead of percentage-based financing rates.
We liked that one can open several sub-accounts with different base currencies.
How to open your account
The IC Markets account opening process is easy and fully digital. The online application takes roughly 10-15 minutes and our account was approved within one business day.
The five steps of the IC Markets account opening:
- Provide contact information, such as your email address.
- Enter your personal information, i.e. date of birth and address.
- Choose the account type and the base currency.
- Complete a survey about your trading experience.
- Verify your identity and residency by uploading a copy of your passport or ID, and a bank statement or utility bill.
Deposit and withdrawal
Account base currencies
At IC Markets, you can choose from 10 base currencies: EUR, USD, GBP, AUD, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD, CAD.
| IC Markets | Pepperstone | Vantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of base currencies | 10 | 9 | 8 |
Why does this matter? For two reasons. If you fund your account in the same currency as your bank account or you trade assets in the same currency as your account base currency, you don’t have to pay a conversion fee.
Deposit fees and options
IC Markets deposits are free of charge. There are many ways to add money to your account, although some of the deposit options are not available for each account base currency. For example, BPay accepts only AUD payments.
| IC Markets | Pepperstone | Vantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank transfer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Credit/debit card | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Electronic wallets | Yes | Yes | Yes |
A bank transfer can take several business days, while payment with credit/debit card is instant. You can only deposit money from accounts that are in your name.
IC Markets withdrawal fees and options
Withdrawing funds from IC Markets is free for credit/debit cards, bank transfers and electronic wallets.
| IC Markets | Pepperstone | Vantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank transfer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Credit/debit card | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Electronic wallets | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Withdrawal fee | $0 | $0 | $0 |
How long does it take to withdraw money from IC Markets? We tested withdrawal by bank transfer and it took 2 business days.
You can only withdraw money to accounts in your name.
How do you withdraw money from IC Markets?
- Once logged in to your account, go to ‘Transfers’.
- Select ‘Withdraw Funds’ from the drop-down menu.
- Add your bank account information if you have not done so already.
- Select the amount you wish to withdraw and click ‘Submit’
Web trading platform
| Trading platform | Score | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Web | 2.8stars | Yes |
| Mobile | 3.8stars | Yes |
| Desktop | 3.4stars | Yes |
IC Markets doesn’t have its own self-developed trading platform. Its most used trading platform is MetaTrader 4, a third-party platform. The broker has other platforms as well, such as MetaTrader 5 and cTrader, which come with their own commission structures. We reviewed MetaTrader 4 because it is the most widely used.
MetaTrader 4 is available in an exceptionally large number of languages.
| Arabic | Bulgarian | Chinese | Croatian | Czech | Danish |
| Dutch | English | Estonian | Finnish | French | German |
| Greek | Hebrew | Hindi | Hungarian | Indonesian | Italian |
| Japanese | Korean | Latvian | Lithuanian | Malay | Mongolian |
| Persian | Polish | Portuguese | Romanian | Russian | Serbian |
| Slovak | Slovenian | Spanish | Swedish | Tajik | Thai |
| Traditional Chinese | Turkish | Ukrainian | Uzbek | Vietnamese |
Look and feel
The IC Markets web trading platform has great customizability. It is easy to change the size and the position of the tabs.
However, the platform feels outdated and some features are hard to find. For example, it took some time to figure out how we can add an asset to the watchlist.
IC Markets review – Web trading platform
Login and security
IC Markets provides only a one-step login. A two-step authentication would be more secure.
Search functions
The search functions are OK. You can find the assets listed by category. However, we missed the usual search function where you can type in the asset’s name manually.
IC Markets review – Web trading platform – Search
Placing orders
You can use the basic order types, but you will not find very sophisticated orders like ‘one cancels the other.’ The following order types are available:
- Market
- Limit
- Stop-loss
If you are not familiar with order types, read this overview.
There are also order time limits you can use:
- Good ’til canceled (GTC)
- Good ’til time (GTT)
IC Markets review – Web trading platform – Order panel
Alerts and notifications
You can’t set alerts and notifications on the IC Markets web trading platform. This feature is available only on the desktop trading platform.
Portfolio and fee reports
IC Markets has clear portfolio and fee reports. You can easily find your profit-loss balance and the commissions you paid. These reports are located under the ‘History’ tab, but we didn’t find a way to download them.
Mobile trading platform
Similarly to the web trading platform, IC Markets offers MetaTrader 4 as its mobile trading platform. MetaTrader 4 is available for both iOS and Android, and we tested it on both.
After downloading the MT4 mobile trading platform, you have to access the ICMarkets-Live server.
Just like on the web trading platform, you can choose from many languages. Changing the language is a bit tricky on Android devices: you can only do it if you change the default language of your mobile device.
| Arabic | Chinese (Simplified) | Chinese(Traditional) | Czech | English |
| French | German | Greek | Hindi | Indonesian |
| Italian | Japanese | Korean | Polish | Portuguese |
| Portuguese (Brazil) | Russian | Spanish | Thai | Turkish |
| Ukrainian | Vietnamese |
Look and feel
IC Markets has a great mobile trading platform, we really liked the design and the user-friendly features that are easy to find.
IC Markets review – Mobile trading platform
Login and security
Similarly to the web trading platform, IC Markets provides only a one-step login. A two-step login would be safer.
You can’t use fingerprint or Face ID authentication. Providing this feature would be more convenient.
Search functions
The search functions are good. You can search by typing the name of a product or by navigating the category folders.
IC Markets review – Mobile trading platform – Search
Placing orders
You can use the same order types and order time limits as the ones on the web trading platform.
IC Markets review – Mobile trading platform – Order panel
Alerts and notifications
You can only set alerts and notifications on the desktop trading platform. Developing this feature for the mobile trading platform as well would be much appreciated.
Desktop trading platform
IC Markets offers MetaTrader 4 as a desktop trading platform.
It has the same design, it is available in the same languages, offers almost the same order types (trailing stop is also available), has the same search functions, and features the same portfolio and fee reports as the web trading platform. These reports can be found under the ‘Account History’ tab: right click on one position and choose ‘Save as Detailed Report’.
The major difference is that you can set alerts and notifications in the form of mobile push or email notifications on the desktop trading platform. To set email or mobile notifications, you have to add your email address and mobile MetaQuotes ID (you can find it in the MT4 app’s settings). To add them, go to ‘Tools’ and select ‘Options’.
IC Markets review – Desktop trading platform
Markets and products
IC Markets is primarily a forex broker, but it also provides some CFDs. To learn more about CFDs, check out our CFD trading tips.
Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 74.32% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
IC Markets’s CFD and crypto selection is wider than that of its closest competitors, while its forex product lineup is similar.
| IC Markets | Pepperstone | Vantage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Currency pairs (#) | 61 | 62 | 45 |
| Stock index CFDs (#) | 25 | 25 | 17 |
| Stock CFDs (#) | 2,100 | 1,400 | 750 |
| ETF CFDs (#) | 40 | 110 | 51 |
| Commodity CFDs (#) | 22 | 32 | 20 |
| Bond CFDs (#) | 10 | – | – |
| Cryptos (#) | 23 | 21 | 34 |
Bear in mind that the FCA banned the sale of crypto-derivatives to UK retail consumers as of January 2021.
Stock CFDs are available only on the MetaTrader 5 platform.
The fact that you can change the default leverage of the products when trading is a great feature.
Changing the pre-set leverage manually is very useful if you want to lower the risk of your trade.
Social Trading
IC Markets offers social trading through ZuluTrade.
ZuluTrade allows you to identify successful traders (as ranked by ZuluRank, a proprietary performance evaluation algorithm), and follow their trades, which are then translated into real trades in your own broker account.
Should you decide to give ZuluTrade a try, note that there’s a tool called ZuluGuard that can help you monitor the volatility of the various available autotrading strategies.
Research
You can find research tools in different places at IC Markets:
- in Client Login, under ‘Trading Tools’
- in the MetaTrader 4 and 5 trading platforms
Except for charting, we tested the research tools featured under ‘Trading Tools’. For charting, we tested the MetaTrader charting tools.
Trading ideas
IC Markets provides various trading ideas based on technical tools like indicators and price levels.
You can access these research tools by clicking on ‘Trading Central’ or ‘Featured Ideas’.
IC Markets review – Research – Recommendations
Fundamental data
IC Markets does not offer fundamental data.
Charting
IC Markets has OK charting tools. You can use 31 technical indicators and other technical tools, such as trendlines and Fibonacci retracement.
On the other hand, the design is outdated and some features are hard to use. For example, we had difficulty figuring out how to remove an indicator from the chart.
IC Markets review – Research – Charting
News feed
The news feed, called ‘Market Buzz‘, is a visually appealing interface that offers news analytics and sentiment indicators. Individual news stories, provided by third-party news sites such as ForexLive or tickerreport.com, open on a new page, which is rather cumbersome. The news feed is also cluttered with Twitter messages.
IC Markets review – Research – News
Other research tools you will enjoy
If you are into API trading, IC Markets offers cAlgo, which uses the C# language.
Customer service
You can contact IC Markets via:
- Live chat
- Phone
IC Markets has great phone support. We were connected to the customer service representative within a minute and we received relevant answers.
The email support works very well. We sent four emails and got answers within a day to all of them. The answers were helpful and relevant. We also liked that they asked for feedback about the support service.
The live chat service, however, could be much better. It is slow, the average wait time for an answer was more than 10 minutes. Also, the responses were not always relevant. For example, we had to ask several questions until we got information on how their financing rates work. On the other hand, we experienced a slight improvement in the last few months.
We appreciated the 24/7 availability of customer support.
IC Markets review – Customer Service
Education
At IC Markets you can learn in the following ways:
- Demo account
- Platform tutorial videos
- General educational videos
- Webinars
- Quality educational articles
Relevant content can be found in the ‘Education’ section and the IC Markets blog. Both are well-structured and cover useful topics like technical analysis and risk management.
The general educational videos are very high-quality. However, these can only be found on IC Markets’s Vimeo channel, they are not available on the website or the trading platform.
IC Markets review – Education
Safety
Is IC Markets regulated?
Yes, it is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the Seychelles Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
IC Markets is based in Australia and was founded in 2007.
Is IC Markets safe?
To be certain if a brokerage is safe, we highly advise that you check two facts:
- how you are protected if something goes wrong
- what the background of the broker is
How you are protected
Depending on your country of residency, you can open an account at one or more of IC Markets’s legal entities.
This is important for you because the investor protection amount and the regulator differ based on which entity you belong to.
| Country of clients | Protection amount | Regulator | Legal entity |
|---|---|---|---|
| EEA, excluding Belgium, Switzerland, Latvia | €20,000 | Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) | IC Markets (EU) Ltd |
| All other countries, except Australia | No protection | Seychelles Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) | IC Markets (SC) Ltd |
| Australia | No protection | Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) | International Capital Markets Pty Ltd |
IC Markets provides negative balance protection for retail customers. If the balance on your account goes into negative, you will be protected.
Background
IC Markets was established in 2007. The longer track record a broker has, the more proof we have that it has successfully survived previous financial crises.