Investing Brokers 
It doesn’t matter if want a platform for trading on a daily basis or investing in the long run, there will be some specific requirements that you have. This could be anything from your investment size, preferred funding method to the markets that you are interested in. We understand that everyone is different and has differing needs. That is why the best trading platforms we have selected can cater to investors and traders of all experience levels and form all different backgrounds.
The IG platform offers a faster, clearer and smarter way to trade. Seize your opportunities with a cutting-edge platform built around your needs. The IG trading platforms have been recognised time and time again by the online brokerage industry, winning numerous awards. It only takes a few minutes to open a demo account and you’ll get 10k in virtual money to practice with.
Take full control over each trade with just a few clicks in the easy-to-use deal ticket. Get to the heart of price action and seize your opportunity with fast, clear, smart charts. Keep up with financial announcements, and stay ahead of market movements, with news and analysis built into the online trading platform. The platform can be adjusted so that it works, looks and feels just how you need it to.
Get inspired by live and on-demand shows from the brokers in-house TV channel. Set up automatic alerts and be the first to know about economic events, on any device. You can get help identifying the right time to trade on forex, indices and commodities markets. Have buy and sell signals, based on analysis from two expert third parties, delivered to your mobile or desktop.
IG constantly review many different venues to find you the best price. They always try to improve the integrity of their prices and reduce your transaction charges. The order management system will never fill you at a level worse than the one you requested.
The brokers robust trading platforms are built to cope with huge volumes of trades very quickly. They accept millions of orders every month, from thousands of unique monthly web and mobile users. Thanks to a range of order types, you have greater control over how your trade is executed so that you can trade exactly the way you want.
- Fast, efficient online trading platform
- Simple, clean design for quick market access
- Everything you need in one place
- Personalise settings for super-fast trading
- Reduce risk with powerful tools
- Fast execution, real-time prices
- Built by traders, for traders
IG Review Editor choice
From its easy-to-use interface and modern design, the AvaTrade platform is simple to use and is suitable for both beginners and advanced traders. No need to download or install anything as it runs directly in your web browser. You can access WebTrader from any computer connected to the internet and trade from anywhere in the world. With its easy to use interface and modern design, online trading has never been so simple.
Buy and sell assets in seconds, and make educated decisions based on live market sentiment. Get accurate data on what AvaTrade’s traders are buying or selling in real time and stay on top of the market without spending time on technical or fundamental analysis.
WebTrader gives you amazing features like AvaProtect™, a risk reduction tool which allows you to protect your trades from losing. Get all the trading necessities for the ultimate results, including market and pending orders, take profit and stop loss, the option to partially close your positions, view trading history and charts. Open, close and edit individual and aggregate positions at the click of a mouse.
If you’re the kind of person who is interested in trading the markets without needing to put the time and effort into comprehensive market research, then WebTrader is the perfect platform for you.
- User-friendly modern trading platform
- Runs directly in the web browser
- Simple and clean interface
- Easy to navigate
- Quick and easy online trading
- AvaProtect™ risk management tool
- View multiple chart timeframes
- Place multiple order types
- Set stop loss and take profit targets
- See where other traders are investing
- Create lists to track your favourite instruments
AvaTrade Review Low fees
Thinkorswim by TD Ameritrade is an electronic trading platform used to trade financial assets. It is geared for self-directed stock, options and futures traders. It was previously offered by Thinkorswim Group, Inc., which was purchased by TD Ameritrade in 2009.
Developed specifically with feedback from traders, the Thinkorswim cutting-edge desktop, web and mobile experiences are continuously improved, based on real feedback from a robust community of traders. No matter how you prefer to trade, you always have access to the innovative features and expert guidance traders ask for the most.
With thinkorswim desktop you get access to elite-level trading tools and a platform backed by insights, education, and a dedicated trade desk. Experience the unparalleled power of a fully customizable trading experience, designed to help you nail even the most complex strategies and techniques.
Developed specifically with feedback from traders, the thinkorswim suite is a web-based software that features a streamlined trading experience. It’s perfect for those who want to trade equities and derivatives while accessing essential tools from their everyday browser.
The thinkorswim trading app packs the features and power of thinkorswim desktop into the palm of your hand. Analyse market movements and trade products easily and securely on a platform optimized for phone and tablet.
Whilst the thinkorswim platforms have so many innovative features to choose from, here are some of them:
- Streamlined interface
- Advanced trading
- Sophisticated charts
- 400+ technical studies
- 20 drawings with eight Fibonacci tools
- Economic Data from around the globe
- Earnings Tool
- Custom Alerts
- Social Sentiment
- Build custom order execution and strategic testing algorithms with thinkScript
- Scan for stocks meeting any attribute that’s important to you with Stock Hacker
- Share ideas and insights with other passionate traders via in-platform chat rooms
- Desktop, web and mobile platforms
TD Ameritrade Review
eToro is the world’s leading social trading platform, trusted by millions of users from more than 140 countries. The eToro platform and app offer a variety of financial assets in which to trade and invest. eToro offers 2,000+ financial instruments across various classes, such as forex, stocks, crypto and more.
One of eToro’s key differentiators is the fact that it created a community of traders and investors, in contrast to what can sometimes be the lonely feeling of trading online. eToro is a bustling online social network of traders who interact, discuss ideas and share their trading decisions and strategies on the social news feed.
eToro’s aims to open up markets to everyone, with an easy-to-use, intuitive interface. Discover eToro’s intuitive and innovative trading app. Trade and invest anytime, anywhere, and alternate between your laptop, tablet or mobile device with ease.
- 2,000+ financial assets
- Low and transparent fees
- Features for novices and experts
- Wisdom of the crowd via social trading
- Ready-made CopyPortfolios™
- CopyTrader to replicate other traders in real time
- Intuitive, easy-to-use platforms
- Demo accounts
- One-click trading
- Stop Loss and Take Profit
- Trailing Stop Loss
- ProCharts
- Offline trading
eToro Review
The Plus500 WebTrader is a simple, reliable and innovative platform for trading online. WebTrader, Plus500’s proprietary platform, offers a streamlined trading experience that is stable and easy to access from multiple devices and systems (Windows PCs, web browsers, smartphones, and tablets).
Plus500 WebTrader has a smooth and user-friendly interface that lets you create watchlists, analyse charts, place and monitor trades. The technical analysis charts offer a great selection of more than 100 technical indicators that you can apply to plenty of different time frames, all the way from tick charts to weekly charts.
Perhaps the most stand-out feature of the Plus500 WebTrader is that it’s so easy to use with modern layouts that will feel familiar to the more experienced traders. Users can choose from huge range of more than 2,000 tradeable CFD instruments, analyse their selection on a fully customizable technical analysis chart, and place trades in just a few clicks, all conveniently from within the same window.
Plus500 is a leading online Contract for Difference (CFDs) trading platform that is owned by a holding company called Plus500 Ltd. The company is listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange (LON:PLUS).
Some of the key Plus500 WebTrader platforms include:
- Easy to use, modern platform
- Fully customisable charts across various timeframes
- Excellent range of 2,000+ CFD instruments
- More than 100 technical indicators
- No hidden fees
- Fast and reliable order execution
- Stop Limit / Stop Loss / Trailing Stop
- FREE email & push notifications on market events
- Alerts on price movements, Change % & Traders’ Sentiments
- News and Market Insights
Plus500 Review
MetaTrader 4 is a free-of-charge online trading platform that has been around since 2002 and since become the industry benchmark in online trading. It was developed by MetaQuotes Software and released in 2005. The software is licensed to foreign exchange brokers who provide the software to their clients.
MetaTrader 4 is by far one of the most popular trading platforms used by traders and investors all over the globe. It is probably the most widely used platform when it comes to forex and CFD trading. You will find that most trading brokers offer MetaTrader 4 (MT4 for short), if not then most likely they offer MetaTrader 5 instead.
What makes MT4 so popular is the fact that it is very easy to use and thus a great choice of platform for beginners. It has a quick learning curve with plenty of built-in tutorials to help you get started. Regardless of your experience level, anyone can download the platform and start trading online. The MT4 demo account can be a good way to practice trading online with virtual funds so that you do not need to take any risks when trying out the platform for the first time.
With the MT4 platform, you can analyse the markets, place trades, manage positions and much more. It has a plethora of built-in trading tools that make it possible to analyse financial instruments across all markets. You can look for trading opportunities across multiple time frames and choose from a variety of order types, including instant execution, pending and limit orders. You can set stop losses and take profits in order to close positions once a specific price level is reached.
There are way too many features to list here but some of the most prominent MT4 features include the following:
- User-friendly and easy to navigate
- Flexible and fast trading platform
- Fully customisable
- 3 order execution types
- 4 Pending Order Types
- 30 Technical Indicators
- 9 Timeframes
- 3 charts (line, bar and candlesticks) with direct trading from the charts
- Drawing objects
- Market Watch with real time price quotes
- Automated trading supported with expert advisors (EA’s)
- Strategy Tester for back testing EA strategies
- Create custom trading tools such as scripts, indicators and EA’s
- Roll-over and Hedging
- Large MQL4 community with other traders
- Social trading signals
- Price alert notifications via SMS, email and platform pop-ups
- Available on desktop, web and as mobile app
IC Markets Review Best prices
MetaTrader 5 is a state-of-the-art, multi-functional platform that boasts advanced auto trading systems, technical tools and copy trading. MetaTrader 5 (MT5 for short) is designed to accommodate advanced trading across a wider selection of asset classes than its predecessor, the MetaTrader 4 platform. Feature-rich, it boasts advanced tools, and offers superior execution.
With more indicators, more market orders and more financial instruments, the MT5 platform provides the professional trader with everything that they need to help them reach their financial goals and to adapt to the dynamic markets of today. Despite the additional functionalities, the MT5 platforms similar layout ensures a smooth transition from the market benchmark, the MT4 platform.
Some of the key MT5 features include:
- Multi-asset trading (Forex, Stock, Index, Commodity, Cryptocurrency and ETF CFDs)
- Depth of Market real time price quotes
- One-click trading
- EA functionality
- 21 timeframes
- 38 built-in indicators
- 37 graphical objects
- 4 order execution types
- 6 pending order types
- 3 charts (line, bar and candlesticks) with direct trading from the charts
- Trading history information
- Micro lots available
- Internal mailing system
- News streaming
- Multi-threaded strategy tester
- Built-in MT5 and MQL5 help guides
- Desktop, web and mobile versions available
XM Review
cTrader is a complete trading platform solution for Forex and CFD brokers to offer their traders. The platform is packed with a full range of features to cater to each and every investment preference imaginable. cTrader is broker-neutral, which means that it can be offered by any broker wishing to provide an all-inclusive, premium online trading environment to their customers
cTrader is an advanced trading platform with professional trading capabilities through the fast entry, synchronization and order processing. It is an intuitive and easy-to-use platform with advanced trading capabilities such as fast execution and coding customisation, as well as plenty of education and analysis to help you make better trading decisions.
The platform was developed by Spotware, with the mission to balance simple and complex functionality, whilst the speed and quality performance were taken as key factors. cTrader is excellent for both new and advanced traders. Traders can place advanced order types and better understand the orders they’re placing in more detail.
Some of the main cTrader platform features include:
- Ideal for those who are new to trading
- Designed to replicate an institutional trading environment including depth of market
- Control order fills with advanced cTrader features
- Advanced risk management and order functionality
- Coding in C# and open API available
- Optimised processing of expert advisors and indicators
- Advanced platform customisation with cTrader Automate (formerly cAlgo)
- Detailed trade analysis feature to understand your strengths and weaknesses
- Large range of indicators
- Detailed order tickets, including base currency dollar value or pip distance
- The ability to add multiple take-profit orders
- Comprehensive educational videos available within the platform
Pepperstone Review Best value
Founded in 2003, NinjaTrader is an industry leading trading platform and broker supporting over 500,000 traders globally. With a funded account, the NinjaTrader platform is free to use for charting, market analysis, and live trading. The installation process is straightforward, as soon as you launch the platform, you can open charts, customize colours, and add indicators and strategies.
The NinjaTrader platform can be considered ideal for active traders who are looking for lots of complex technical analysis tools. The platform has excellent charting, real-time analysis, customizable technical indicators, Chart Trader (a chart-based order entry tool), and thousands of apps and add-ons from 3rd-party developers. Use custom apps built for NinjaTrader to personalize your trading charts & further focus your analysis.
Stay on top of the markets with NinjaTrader, which offers users a professional-grade charting package and a practical way of creating a personalised visual experience. With one-click order entry available, NinjaTrader lets you engage the market with a multi-faceted assembly for lightning-quick order execution. It offers an array of options designed to fully customise your market experience.
NinjaTrader supports a multitude of options for fully automated trade execution. Automatically submit profit target and stop loss orders in fractions of a second. The risk-free NinjaTrader demo account can be a great place to improve your trading skills and test new ideas.
With too many to cover in detail, here are some of the core NinjaTrader features:
- Pro grade charting package
- 100+ Indicators included
- Powerful drawing tools
- Trade from your charts
- Order flow feature suite
- Chart Trader
- SuperDOM
- Customizable Hotkeys
- Protect positions with OCO orders
- Automate with ATM Strategies
- Use 1000s of 3rd party tools & apps
- Personalize workspaces
- Set alerts based on market moves
- Develop your own indicators
- Automate your strategies
TradingView is a supercharged super-charting platform and social network for traders and investors of all experience levels. The Trading Platform is a standalone product that is licensed to brokers. TradingView users can log into their brokerage accounts (or open a new one if needed), receive broker’s streaming data and send orders directly to the broker.
Simple for beginners and effective for technical analysis experts, TradingView has all of the instruments for publication and the viewing of trading ideas. Real-time quotes and charts are available for wherever you are at whatever time.
TradingView is one of the most active social networks for traders and investors. Connect with millions of traders from around the world, learn from the experiences of other investors and discuss trading ideas.
TradingView has excellent charts that surpass some desktop trading platforms in quality, all for free. There are over 10 types of charts for conducting market analysis from different angles. Choose from a large selection of price analysis tools, including, but not limited to, indicators, strategies, drawing objects and more.
The platform is reliably connected to hundreds of data feeds with direct access to track major global indices, stocks, currency pairs, bonds, futures, mutual funds, commodities and cryptocurrencies all in real-time. Flexible settings help you to track the instruments that you need and also group them in a way that is convenient for you. Alerts will help you not to miss the smallest of changes in the market and will allow you to react in time.
TradingView key features include the following:
- Trading’s leading live streaming platform
- 100+ prebuilt most popular indicators
- 100,000+ community-built indicators
- 50+ smart drawing tools
- Volume Profile indicators
- Candlestick patterns recognition
- Multi-timeframe analysis
- 12 chart types
- Up to 8 charts per tab
- Bar Replay
- Custom time intervals
- Comprehensive financial analysis
- Powerful trading alerts
- Trade from charts
- Three screeners
- Demo trading accounts
Global Prime Review
Best Trading Platforms
TradeStation
Whether you trade stocks, ETFs, options, or futures, the award-winning TradeStation desktop platform delivers the power, speed, and flexibility active traders demand. You get dynamic market-scanning tools, fully customizable charting, fast and reliable trade execution, advanced order management and fully automated strategy trading.
Through TradeStation, you can back-test, optimize, and fully automate your trade ideas across any stock or future with decades of historical market data – before you ever make your first trade.
Access more than a dozen built-in trading apps and browse TradeStation’s TradingApp Store for hundreds of additional features. Many of them free of charge!
TradeStation’s powerful RadarScreen® scans for trading opportunities in real-time. They have combined the power of computer-based trading algorithms with the efficiency of a quote window.
With EasyLanguage®, TradeStation’s proprietary computer language designed for traders, you can write your very own program to back-test and automate your boldest trading ideas.
The TradeStation desktop, web, and mobile platforms put powerful tools into the hands of traders and investors – helping to level the playing field in the competitive world of trading and investing.
- An advanced trading platform to help you design, test, optimize, monitor, and automate your custom trading strategies
- Dynamic market-scanning tools
- Fully customizable charting
- Fast and reliable trade execution
- Advanced order management
- RadarScreen continuously monitors and ranks up to 1,000 symbols in real-time
- Design customized indicators and trading strategies using TradeStation’s proprietary easy-to-learn programming language
- Strategy Back-Testing
- The Matrix is the fastest way to enter or change an order, with single click and/or drag and drop simplicity
- TradingApps & TradingApp® Store
- OptionStation® Pro analysis application helps take the guesswork out of trading options
- Simulated trading gives you the ability to design and test your trading plan
An trading platform is software through which investors and traders can open, close, and manage market positions through a financial intermediary. They allow you to buy and sell shares, currency pairs, cryptocurrency, commodities, bonds and funds all in one place.
Trading platforms make it easy for anyone to access the global financial markets from their computer, laptop or mobile device. All you need to trade or invest online is an trading platform and internet connection.
The increasing number of user-friendly platforms with low fees has made trading more accessible than ever before. Even those with no prior experience have been able to gain straightforward access to a range of markets at the click or tap of a few buttons. They give the user complete freedom to choose how, when and where they would like to invest.
Most people would be looking for an trading platform that is easy to use and has everything that you need for quickly and easily analysing the markets, placing and managing orders. Whilst the majority of modern trading platforms should have more than enough features and functionalities to meet the needs of even the most demanding of traders, there are a few key things worth keeping an eye out for.
Desktop Trading Platform
If you prefer working from a computer or laptop, then you will need a desktop trading platform. Thankfully, the majority of platforms will include a desktop version that will usually have the full functionality and features that the platform offers. Check to make sure your machine has a suitable specification for running the trading software.
Web Trading Platform
Some users don’t like to install software or they just prefer the convenience of being able to switch between devices. This is where a web trading platform can come in handy. They can be launched directly in your web browser without the need to download and install any additional software.
Mobile Trading App
In today’s day and age, most of us will have a mobile device that we frequently use. Therefore, you may want to install trading apps so that you can trade and invest whilst on the go. The best trading platforms should have a desktop version, web trader and mobile app. This will give you complete freedom and flexibility to access your portfolio in a way that works for you.
Platform Fees
The funny thing is, many trading platforms don’t actually have any fees. The fees instead come from the trading broker that provides you with an account to use the platform in question. The brokerage firm may charge you a small commission fee and spread for each position that you take on the platform. Generally speaking, the lower the overall fees, the more you can save in the long run.
Trading Products
If you have a particular financial instrument in mind that you would like to trade, you should check to make sure that it is available on the trading platform in question. We like to see a platform that offers as many different markets and trading instruments as possible. This way we would be able to diversify our portfolio and take advantage of global market movements in different asset classes.
If you are interested in specific instruments, we have the following guides:
Trading Tools
Some traders can buy and sell without needing to do any special analysis. On the other hand, some traders may want a range of specialised trading tools to help them with their market analysis. These tools can help to improve the overall trading experience. Have a look at what tools or on offer to see if they stack up to your needs.
Platform Usability
It’s no good having the best trading platform in the world if you don’t know how to use it! You can always open a demo account with a broker to try out the platform risk-free. This is a great way to familiarise yourself with a platform and see if it is for you. The platform should have an intuitive interface and be user-friendly. Consider how quick and easy it is to perform your trading and investing activities.
Customer Service
Of course, one of the most important things to consider is the quality of the trading platforms customer support team. They should be fast and reliable with their responses. Ideally, they would provide 24/7 support via phone, live chat and email.
A trading platform is an online service that allows a range of different financial instruments to be bought and sold online, such platforms usually simplify the process of trading and may provide them at a discounted rate. The best trading platform for you depends on your own financial goals. Some of the key things to consider are your budget, interests, skills and knowledge. Whilst there are many trading platforms that can cater to all types of trader and investor, the decision is ultimately yours to make.
