Our Methodology

This is the evidence base behind every broker rating on the site, so you can see exactly how we score and rank the 32 ASIC-regulated brokers we cover and how we test 28 of them on live accounts. 100+ data points per broker, 8 weighted criteria, live accounts, and a fixed model that none of us can nudge mid-cycle. It represents the most transparent methodology available.

We cover 32 brokers, 28 of them tested on a live account. Every one of those 28 was opened at the broker’s Australian ASIC entity and funded with our own money, in Australian dollars at every broker except eToro, whose account is in US dollars. 100+ data points per broker. 8 weighted criteria. The whole programme puts real capital at risk so the results are not a paraphrase of a sales deck. That is the only way to get trustworthy data, and the measured figures you see on the reviews of the brokers we tested live are built from that real-money capture. Reviewed by David Levy, Head of Content.

Summary

Every broker we cover is scored the same way, on 100+ data points across spreads, execution, platforms, costs, customer service, market range, education and funding flow. The numbers run through a fixed weighting model and the rating is published with a date stamp. For the 28 we tested live, those data come from a live account at the broker’s Australian ASIC-regulated entity, funded with our own money. The rest have no funded account of ours and are scored on the same criteria without one. Each finished rating then feeds our ranked guide to the best forex brokers in Australia, so the broker at the top of that list earned its place through the same unsparing process as the one at the bottom. That consistency is what makes the guide credible, and it means you can compare any two brokers and know the same yardstick was used.

The model has not changed materially since 2018, when we last rebalanced the weights. We change the inputs (spread tests, execution tests, customer service ping checks) every cycle. We do not change the weights mid-year, because doing so would let us tilt the rankings; if a broker jumps three places, it is because their numbers improved, not because we moved the goalposts. That is the discipline this page exists to enforce, and no more rigorous approach exists.

The verification log

Testing is a team effort. Noam Korbl (RG146) leads the live spread and execution capture programme, David Levy verifies every published number against source documents, and Justin Grossbard leads the research desk. Since July 2026, every review page publishes a dated verification record from the current cycle: masked funded-account references, archived spread captures, ASIC register checks and PDS versions. The record lists the latest artefacts behind that review, showing when a number was last confirmed rather than relying on a publish date alone. That verification record is the most important part of the page, because it shows you exactly when each number was last confirmed.

The 8 weighted criteria

Each broker is scored 0 to 10 against eight criteria. The score is multiplied by the criterion weight, summed, and normalised to a 5-star rating. That star on a review tile is the endpoint of a chain that runs all the way back to the raw capture data, and every link is recorded in the verification log. A rating without that chain is not trustworthy, and you should not rely on one.

Why these weights

Trading costs lead because they are the largest controllable variable in a retail trader’s P&L, and in many P&Ls I see the broker took more in spread than the strategy returned in edge. That is why cost gets the heaviest weight on the page, so you can see which broker leaves more of your edge intact. Over a year of regular trading, the difference between a 1.0 pip and a 0.2 pip total cost on EUR/USD is the difference between profit and loss for many strategies.

Trust and regulation come second because the largest unrecoverable loss is broker insolvency, not trading loss; an edge does not matter if the broker is not there to pay out. Twenty per cent of the score going to AFSL standing, AFCA membership, parent backing and enforcement history is deliberately heavy, so you can see that risk before you fund an account.

Trading experience and platforms each get 15% because they capture the day-to-day reality of trading: a tight spread on a platform that freezes during news is not a bargain, it is a liability. Slow execution and unreliable platforms cost real money on slippage and missed entries, and that is one of the most underrated risks in retail forex. It is the reason you see platform stability weighted alongside spread.

Customer service and the smaller-weight criteria (markets, education, funding) round out the score. They matter, but not as much as the top four, until you need to withdraw funds quickly or a stop fails to fire. In those moments, those criteria stop feeling small and become the difference between a broker who answers the phone and one who hides behind a ticket queue. The weight on this column reflects the cost to you when that happens.

Live-account testing process

Each of the 28 brokers we have tested live, out of the 32 we rank, has a live account at the broker’s Australian ASIC-licensed entity, opened by a member of our research team in their own name through the broker’s own online application, the same one a reader would use. The application frames show the broker’s identity checks, a driver’s licence or passport as each form asked, and, where the broker asks them, its appropriateness questions. Each account is funded with our own money, in Australian dollars at every broker except eToro, whose account is in US dollars. No account is on a pricing tier a reader could not open, because that is the only way I would trust a test.

Our spread figures come from two captures: May to June 2026 on IceFX SpreadMonitor on MT4, and September 2026 on our own logger on MT4 and MT5 over 48 hours from 22 to 24 September 2026. Each published spread is dated to its capture, so you can see how fresh the number you are reading is. The logger reads only MT4 and MT5 accounts. Each broker’s application, funding and platform screens are kept in an evidence pack, and each review carries a dated verification record you can check.

Each live account is used for:

• Spread capture across eight pairs on the MT4 and MT5 accounts, most recently over 48 hours from 22 to 24 September 2026 (see the spread-testing section below)
• A small live trade, 0.01 lot, where a commission needed measuring, with the charge read from the platform
• Questions put to a broker’s live chat, logged with the answer and the time it came
• The deposit, recorded with its method, its amount and the time it took to credit

Spread testing with our own spread logger

Spreads are the headline cost on most retail forex trades and the most comparable metric across brokers, but a broker that quotes 0.0 on EURUSD at 3 AM Sydney time is not the same as one that holds 0.1 through London open. Our capture window is built to expose exactly that difference, and that is what I care about.

Tool

Since our September 2026 capture we measure spreads with our own logger, CFB-SpreadLogger 1.1.0, running on MT4 and MT5. It reads each broker’s live bid and ask once per second and keeps one record per minute. From those records we calculate the average and p95 spread for the testing window, so you can see both the cost you will typically pay and how wide your worst minutes run. What appears on our spread table is the average of that capture, not a snapshot from a quiet Sunday afternoon, so the number you see reflects the spread paid during real trading hours. Before this capture, from May to June 2026, we used IceFX SpreadMonitor on MT4, and those tick-median figures stay dated to their own window.

The capture runs from a London VPS connected to each broker’s own MT4 or MT5 server. Most ASIC brokers route execution through LD4 in London or NY4 in New York, so the VPS sits where the servers are; spread readings are venue-independent tick data, and the execution scoring described below strips our network latency either way, so the location does not tilt the results.

Symbols

Eight pairs: EURUSD, AUDUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, EURGBP, EURJPY, AUDJPY, USDCHF. The average across these eight is the ranking key on our lowest spread forex brokers table, so the same eight are captured for every broker. Australian dollar pairs matter most to our readers, which is why two of the eight carry AUD. Some global brokers price AUDUSD competitively for their AU clients. Others widen it because it’s not their core flow. The test catches that, and it is often the pair that separates the genuinely competitive from the marketing claim. This pair is the litmus test I use for a broker’s commitment to the Australian market.

Window

48 hours starting at 2pm Brisbane time (AEST), in two 24-hour cycles split at the same hour. That captures:

• The end of the New York session (low-liquidity drift)
• The Sydney open and Sydney session (the AU-relevant window)
• The Tokyo session (AUD/JPY-relevant)
• The London open and full London session (peak liquidity)
• The London/New York overlap (peak volume)

A spread quoted at a single hour is a guess. By covering all four major sessions we get a representative spread profile rather than a snapshot from one quiet hour, so the number reflects what a trader would actually pay across a trading day, and that is the cost you can expect.

Account types tested

For brokers offering multiple account types, we test both:

• Standard / commission-free account (e.g. Pepperstone Standard, IC Markets Standard, FP Markets Standard)
• RAW / ECN account (e.g. Pepperstone Razor, IC Markets Raw Spread, FP Markets Raw, Fusion Markets Zero)

The score combines spread and commission to produce a ‘true cost’ metric. At the pip values read from our September 2026 capture, an A$7.00 round turn per standard lot converts to 0.50 pips on EUR/USD, so a 0.1 pip spread plus that commission comes to 0.60 pips all-in. A 1.0 pip standard-account spread is, simply, 1.0 pip. RAW typically wins for active traders, while Standard typically wins for occasional traders. For a trader doing two lots a month, the maths points one way; for fifty lots, it points the other, and the true-cost number shows which side of the line applies. That number is the quickest way to compare brokers, and it lets you see at a glance which account type costs less.

Execution-speed testing with MT4 EAs

Spread is half the picture. Execution speed is the other half. A 0.1 pip spread doesn’t help if every market order slips 0.5 pips on fill. That is why execution carries its own weight and why we run EAs on live accounts rather than reading the broker’s latency claims off a spec sheet, so the execution numbers you see are measured, not promised.

We use two MT4 expert advisors:

ExTest_ForExpat

Open-source EA that fires a fixed sequence of market and limit orders at randomised intervals. Records: What it captures is the round-trip reality: the moment the order leaves the terminal to the moment the fill arrives back, which is the number a trader’s platform would show.

• Order placement to fill time (ms)
• Slippage in pips between requested price and fill price
• Rejection rate
• Requote frequency (where the broker still uses requotes)

We run it on EURUSD and AUDUSD during peak London/NY overlap and during Sydney/Tokyo (lower volume) to capture both ends of the liquidity curve, because a broker that fills fast when liquidity is deep but slows to a crawl when it thins is not a fast broker. The Sydney/Tokyo leg exposes that, so you can see if a broker slows down when liquidity thins.

Broker Latency Tester EA

Our internal EA that pings the broker’s MT4 server every 30 seconds for 24 hours and records latency in ms. We strip out our test machine’s network latency to the broker’s data centre to make the results comparable across brokers (most ASIC brokers route to LD4 London or NY4 New York; some route to Equinix HK; CMC and IG operate proprietary infrastructure), because without that strip a broker co-located near our test VPS would appear artificially fast and the latency figure would not match what a trader’s terminal shows.

The output is a normalised execution-speed score that feeds the Trading Experience criterion.

Trust and regulation scoring

This criterion captures the hardest part of broker selection: what is invisible in normal operation. The score breakdown: A spread can be tested in five minutes. You cannot test what happens to your money if the broker fails, which is why this column carries the second-heaviest weight on the table and why I insist we check the AFSL register ourselves rather than taking the broker’s word.

• AFSL status (40%): Current AFSL with ASIC, no current suspension, conditions or enforceable undertakings. Licence status, suspension and conditions are verified against ASIC’s Professional Registers Search at every test cycle. Enforceable undertakings sit on a separate ASIC register, which you can search as well.
• Years in operation under the current AFSL (20%): Brokers with 10+ years on the same AFSL score full marks. New entrants score lower until they build a track record.
• AFCA membership (10%): Confirmed current member of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.
• Parent backing (15%): Listed parent (ASX, LSE, NASDAQ) or large privately held parent with audited financials scores higher than thinly-capitalised standalone entity.
• Enforcement history (15%): ASIC enforcement actions, surveillance warnings, court enforceable undertakings or fines in the last 36 months reduce the score.

Brokers with current ASIC enforcement actions are flagged at the top of the review intro, because I believe you should see them before comparing costs, and may be removed from the comparison shortlist depending on severity.

We scale that reduction to how settled the action is. A proven finding or a sustained enforcement outcome counts in full. A live, contested proceeding counts for less, because no breach has been established and the broker is entitled to defend it. An interim order that ASIC revoked after the broker remediated is disclosed on the review but does not move the score. We only score actions documented against a named licensee: when ASIC reports a sector-wide breach without naming the firms involved, as it did for the CFD product intervention order in its January 2026 review, the absence of a named action against a broker is not treated as evidence of clean conduct (in my view, a sector-wide finding is a cloud, not a verdict, and we do not pretend otherwise).

Platform scoring

15% of the score, broken down across each platform a broker offers:

• MT4 (Pepperstone, IC Markets, FP Markets, Eightcap, Fusion Markets, Blueberry, ThinkMarkets, Axi, Vantage, Global Prime, ACY, GO Markets, FXCM, MultiBank, AvaTrade)
• MT5 (most of the above plus a handful of MT5-only brokers)
• cTrader (Pepperstone, IC Markets, FP Markets, Fusion Markets, GO Markets)
• TradingView native integration (Pepperstone, OANDA, FP Markets, Eightcap, Vantage, Capital.com, Global Prime)
• Proprietary platforms (CMC Next Generation, IG web platform, Plus500 WebTrader, eToro app, Capital.com platform, easyMarkets, Trade Nation, Mitrade)

Each platform is scored on charting depth, order types, automation support, mobile parity (which I consider the difference between a usable platform and one that is not) and stability. The broker’s overall platform score is a weighted average of the platforms they offer, with extra credit for offering multiple platforms.

Customer service testing

Three test queries per testing cycle, sent during AU business hours (9 AM to 5 PM Melbourne time): The queries go from a live account. The broker does not know it is a test, and the clock starts the moment the message leaves our terminal, so the response time you see on the review is what a real client would get.

1. A simple admin query (e.g. “what’s the deadline for funding to qualify for tonight’s swap?”) measures response time and language quality, and I consider a quick, clear answer a basic requirement for retail traders.
2. A technical platform query (e.g. “how do I set a guaranteed stop on Next Generation?”): measures technical accuracy Getting a wrong answer here is worse than getting no answer, and we flag it accordingly.
3. A regulatory query (e.g. “what’s your AFCA membership number?”): measures compliance literacy

Channels tested: live chat, email, phone where offered. Response time is the median across the three queries. In my view, a broker that answers live chat in 30 seconds but takes three days on email gets a median that reflects the experience you would actually have across both channels.

Range of markets

A flat count is misleading, because in my view the number on the table rewards useful breadth, not padding. A broker offering 10,000 micro-cap US stock CFDs is not “more diverse” than a broker offering 80 forex pairs and 200 well-chosen index/commodity CFDs.

We score the breadth across categories:

• Forex pairs (majors, minors, exotics)
• Indices (major and minor)
• Commodities (energy, metals, softs)
• Share CFDs (ASX, US, UK, EU, Asia)
• ETFs
• Treasuries / bonds
• Cryptocurrency CFDs

Brokers covering all seven categories with reasonable depth in each score full marks. Specialists score lower on this criterion but may make up the points on platform or trading costs, and in my view, a specialist can still be the right answer for a trader who focuses on a single asset class.

Education and funding

Smaller-weight criteria but they matter for specific reader segments.

Education (5%): Demo account quality, in-platform training, webinars, written guides, and YouTube/video output. Beginner brokers (Plus500, eToro, easyMarkets, CMC) tend to score highest here; in my view, they are the ones that actually teach, not just onboard you and leave you to the charts.

Funding (5%): AUD deposit methods (bank transfer, PayID, BPay, Osko, debit card, Skrill, Neteller, PayPal where offered), withdrawal speed (same-day vs 1-3 business days), fees, and base currency support (AUD as a base currency is non-trivial for cost reasons: in my view, a broker that charges a currency conversion on every deposit and withdrawal quietly erodes trading capital).

Update cadence

Static facts are updated when they change. Live trading data follows a rolling schedule:

• Spreads: Monthly snapshot for the top 10 brokers. Quarterly for the long tail.
• Execution speed: Quarterly for all brokers in the shortlist.
• Customer service: Quarterly.
• Platform features: Within 30 days of a broker’s release.
• Pricing changes: Within 7 days of a broker’s PDS amendment.
• Full broker rating: Annual cycle, every broker re-rated from scratch.

The “Last updated” date at the top of each review is the actual date of the most recent edit. Reviews older than 12 months are flagged in the page header until the next full re-rate, so you know the data is stale and when fresh numbers are due.

What we don’t do

A few methodological constraints worth being explicit about:

We don’t accept payment for placement. No “premium listing” tier exists.

We don’t rely on broker-supplied data; the broker’s marketing team does not get a say in the spread numbers we publish. Spreads come from our own logger, which Noam Korbl ran for our 48-hour capture from 22 to 24 September 2026. Execution comes from our EAs. AFSL details are checked against ASIC’s Professional Registers Search. We use a broker’s PDS for pricing structure but confirm the live numbers ourselves.

A broker without a current AFSL is not reviewed. Offshore-only brokers (Vanuatu, Seychelles, Saint Vincent) are excluded by design. If a broker is not answerable to ASIC and AFCA, it is not on this site, full stop.

No “best broker” award based on user voting. Reader testimonials are useful for sentiment but not for scoring. The rankings come from the methodology. In my view, a popularity contest tells you who markets well; a live-account capture identifies who fills at the price they quote.

This site does not issue financial advice. Information on this site is general in nature and does not take personal circumstances into account. In my view, the rating tells you what the numbers are and how we weigh them; the decision about whether a broker fits your situation is yours alone.