Broker to Trading

Pepperstone offers accounts with a commission charge and accounts with no commission charge. Plus500 offers trading without a commission charge and variable spreads.

Pepperstone provides extensive support for trading automation, with MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView. Plus500 focuses on discretionary trading (for traders who execute their own trades), with a particularly clear trading interface.

Pepperstone has 1000+ markets, Plus500 offers 2000+, both competitive for the types of trading to which they provide support. Both offer CFD trading, however in the UK Pepperstone additionally provides spread betting.

Pepperstone is regulated by the FCA in the United Kingdom, the ASIC in Australia, the CySEC in Cyprus, the BaFin in Germany, the CMA in Kenya, the SCB in the Bahamas and by the DFSA in Dubai.

Plus500UK Ltd is authorized and regulated by the FCA (#509909). Plus500CY Ltd is authorized and regulated by CySEC (#250/14). Plus500SG Pte Ltd is licensed by the MAS (#CMS100648-1) in Singapore. Plus500AU Pty Ltd (ACN 153301681) is licensed by: ASIC in Australia, AFSL #417727 and FMA in New Zealand, FSP #486026 and is an authorised Financial Services Provider in South Africa, FSP #47546. Plus500EE AS is authorised and regulated by the Estonian Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority (Licence No. 4.1-1/18). Plus500AE Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (F005651). Plus500SEY Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (Licence No. SD039).

Quick comparison

Pepperstone offers CFD trading, on MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView. Plus500 is a CFD provider offering trading on a web trader and apps and with more markets to trade.

News trading

Pepperstone offers rapid order processing with no dealing desk intervention and explicitly supports news traders (traders who trade based on trading conjectures around data releases into the market). It offers MT4, MT5 and cTrader, the latter being a relatively user friendly platform with advanced features and TradingView. Plus500 however offers directly on its platform fundamental data (in effect a calendar for individual markets) showing news data with past, projected and actual figures (when released). Plus500 also has an intuitive platform with a particularly clear interface to trade through. In all events the trader can try demos at either to test out news trading on their respective platforms.

Minimum deposit and account types

The minimum deposit for Pepperstone is $200 or AU$200 or £200. The minimum deposit for Plus500 is $/€/£100 or AU$200.

Pepperstone offers a Standard and a Razor account for CFD trading and in the UK additionally offers a spread betting account. Pepperstone provides trading guides, a market review and an economic calendar its website. Pepperstone says that latency is as low as 30ms. The minimum trade size is 0.01 lots.
Pepperstone's Standard and Islamic accounts do not charge commissions and hence offer higher spreads as they include a mark up. The Razor account charges commissions and allows scalping.
Plus500 provides CFD trading. For all traders, Plus500 offers an Economic Calendar on its website covering news events and market effects and has economic data integrated into its platform. Plus500 offers the +Insights tool which provides real time data abut the activity of other Plus500 traders. Additionally, Plus500 offers a Trading Academy on its website as well as News and Market Insights.

Markets

• Pepperstone CFDs on Currency pairs, Indices, Energy, Soft Commodities, Cryptocurrencies, Metals and Stocks, with 1000+ available.
• Plus500 offers CFDs on Currency Pairs, Indices, Energy, Soft Commodities, Cryptocurrencies, Metals, Stocks, ETFs and Options, with 2000+ available.

Cryptocurrency CFDs

• Plus500 offers CFDs on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Stellar, Cardano, Polygon, Solana, Polkadot, Uniswap, Chainlink, NEO, IOTA, VeChain, Axie Infinity and Filecoin.
• Pepperstone offers CFDs on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Stellar, Cardano, Polygon, Solana, Polkadot, Uniswap, Chainlink, Dash, Ripple, Dogecoin, Binance Coin, Tezos, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche and Terra CFDs.

Spreads and leverage

• Pepperstone offers Forex spread from 0 with a commission charge and from 1 without a commission charge. Plus500 offers variable spreads depending on the instrument.

Maximum leverage for Pepperstone (CySEC regulated) is . Maximum leverage for Plus500 is .

Commissions

Pepperstone charges a commission of $3.76 or AU$3.5 or €2.61 per lot per side on the MT4 Razor account, depending on the account currency. cTrader commissions are 7 units per lot round trip of the first quoted currency in the traded currency.

Plus500 does not charge commissions.

Online trading platforms

Pepperstone offers MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView on desktop and mobile. Plus500 provides a web trader, a dowloaded version, mobile apps and a watch app.

What types of traders may be interested in either ?

Traders who want a CFD provider which supports a wide range of trading styles from robots to copy trading to trading based on charting and technical analysis may find Pepperstone of interest. Traders who execute their own trades and want a relatively large number and wide range of markets to trade on a particularly clear, user friendly trading platform may find Plus500 of interest.

Why Pepperstone or Plus500 ?

Traders who want to trade a wide range of CFDs on a clear, user friendly platform can do so at Plus500. Traders who want to apply a wide range of trading styles across MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView, including automated trading, may do so at Pepperstone. Those who want to social and copy trade can do this at Pepperstone.

Comparison summary

• Both offer CFD trading
• In the UK, Pepperstone also offers spread betting
• Plus500 provides a user friendly trading platform
• Pepperstone offers MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView
• Pepperstone supports social and copy trading via a range of connected services and platforms
• Plus500 has more markets to trade (2000+ vs 1000+)
• Pepperstone allows online trading robots
• Plus500 has a particularly user friendly platform