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FP MarketsSwissquote Review
Written by Steven Hatzakis
Edited by John Bringans
Fact-checked by Blain Reinkensmeyer
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 79% 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.
Swissquote delivers access to a vast multi-asset offering alongside high-quality market research. Traders at Swissquote (and its related group entities) enjoy the benefits of dealing with a highly trusted, well-regulated brand – though they have to be willing to pay a premium to have their brokerage account held with a Swiss bank.
Swissquote's U.K. branch provides the best pricing out of its available account options, though it offers a smaller range of markets.
-
Minimum Deposit:
$1000 -
Trust Score:
99 -
Tradeable Symbols (Total):
472
Swissquote pros & cons
Pros
- Founded in 1996, Swissquote is publicly traded (SIX: SQN) and regulated in five Tier-1 jurisdictions.
- As a forex broker that also operates three banks, Swissquote takes our top award for Best Banking Services.
- Swissquote offers the MetaTrader platform suite, along with additional add-ons such as the MetaTrader Master Edition.
- Swissquote produces excellent research, including a growing variety of daily market analysis videos on its YouTube channel and written articles on its Newsroom section.
- Advanced Trader web platform features TradingView charts and has been upgraded to HTML5 for a smoother user experience.
- Though crypto CFDs and cryptocurrency products are kept separate from its forex offering, Swissquote launched its SQX cryptocurrency exchange with 34 crypto assets available from its eTrading account.
Cons
- While Swissquote provides 3 million financial products, including stocks, options, futures, derivatives, ETFs, and structured products, they are separated (in the eTrading account) from its nearly 500 CFDs.
- Swissquote doesn't publish its average forex spreads, and its minimum spreads are expensive across all account types compared to its industry peers.
- Non-EU clients that don't trade at least once per month incur a monthly inactivity fee of 15 EUR.
- The desktop version of Swissquote's Advanced Trader platform could use a design overhaul, and still relies on Java – which can complicate software installation for non-technical users.
- Trading Central and Autochartist are available – but only as a plugin for MetaTrader.
Overall summary
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| Overall Rating |
|
| Trust Score | 99 |
| Offering of Investments |
|
| Commissions & Fees |
|
| Platform & Tools |
|
| Research |
|
| Mobile Trading |
|
| Education |
|
ForexBrokers.com has been reviewing online forex brokers for over six years, and our reviews are the most cited in the industry. Each year, we collect thousands of data points and publish tens of thousands of words of research. Here's how we test.
Is Swissquote safe?
Swissquote is considered Highly Trusted, with an overall Trust Score of 99 out of 99. Swissquote is a publicly traded company, operates a regulated bank, and is authorised by five Tier-1 regulators (Highly Trusted), one tier-2 regulator (average trust), zero Tier-3 regulators (Average Risk), and zero Tier-4 regulators (High Risk). Swissquote is authorised by the following Tier-1 regulators: Securities Futures Commission (SFC), Monetary Authority of Sinagpore (MAS), Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the European Union via MiFID. Learn more about Trust Score.
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| Year Founded | 1996 |
| Publicly Traded (Listed) | Yes |
| Bank | Yes |
| Tier-1 Licenses | 5 |
| Tier-2 Licenses | 1 |
| Tier-3 Licenses | 0 |
| Tier-4 Licenses | 0 |
Offering of investments
Swissquote was the first bank in the world to offer the ability to trade underlying cryptocurrencies (non-CFDs). A total of 34 cryptocurrencies are available, including Dogecoin, Polkadot, Cardano, Uniswap, and other popular crypto assets. Swissquote now offers crypto staking and lending following the launch of its cryptocurrency exchange, SQX.
eTrading vs eForex accounts: With the Swissquote eTrading account offering, clients can trade cryptocurrencies alongside a seemingly endless variety of products (over 3 million) across 60 global market exchanges. However, traders who want to trade forex and CFDs alongside forwards and options must use Swissquote’s eForex account, which offers only 472 tradeable symbols. This is a relatively narrow selection compared to Saxo Bank and CMC Markets, which both offer over 10,000 CFDs – including forex – from within the same trading platform.
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| Forex Trading (Spot or CFDs) | Yes |
| Tradeable Symbols (Total) | 472 |
| Forex Pairs (Total) | 78 |
| U.S. Stock Trading (Non CFD) | Yes |
| Int'l Stock Trading (Non CFD) | Yes |
| Social Trading / Copy Trading | Yes |
| Cryptocurrency (Physical) | Yes |
| Cryptocurrency (Derivative) | No |
| Disclaimers | Note: Crypto CFDs are not available to retail traders from any broker's U.K. entity, nor to U.K. residents (except to Professional clients). |
Commissions and fees
The primary benefit of using Swissquote is the appeal of holding an account with a Swiss banking conglomerate – and that comes at a slight premium. As such, trading costs are not Swissquote’s best feature, and can’t compete with what’s offered by the lowest-cost forex brokers.
The commissions and spreads from Swissquote's U.K. entity, Swissquote Ltd, differ from its Switzerland entity (Swissquote Bank Ltd) and Luxembourg branch (Swissquote Bank Europe SA). Between the three, the U.K.-based accounts have lower costs and lighter deposit requirements, though they feature a narrower product offering.
Swissquote U.K.: There are four accounts available at Swissquote's U.K. entity. If you are an active trader and deposit at least $10,000, the commission-based Elite account’s lower spreads (and $5 charge per round-turn trade) make it the best option. Swissquote’s Professional account is nearly identical, except that the threshold for a margin call stop-out is lower.
Less attractive is Swissquote’s Standard account option, with spreads on the EUR/USD starting at 1.3 pips, while the Prime account has a spread from 0.6 pips (though it’s important to note that this is a minimum spread – not an average price).
Swissquote Luxembourg: Swissquote’s Luxembourg entity also offers three account types, each with its own minimum deposit requirement: the Standard account ($1,000 minimum), Premium account ($5,000), and Prime account ($50,000). Minimum spreads range from 0.8 pips for Prime account holders to as much as 1.5 pips for Standard account holders, making the pricing similar to Swissquote’s U.K. entity.
Swiss branch: Though Swissquote’s eTrading account doesn’t offer forex or CFDs, there are three primary account options available in Switzerland for Swissquote's forex clients. The Standard account requires a $1,000 deposit and features spreads starting at 1.7 pips on the EUR/USD, while the Premium account’s spreads drop slightly to 1.4 pips, though that option requires a $10,000 deposit.
The Prime account requires a $50,000 deposit and offers spreads from 1.1 pips, which is slightly higher than the industry average. Custom pricing is available for active traders, but it is negotiated based on volume, as Swissquote does not list any related volume tiers and pricing.
Cryptocurrency trading fees: Fees for Swissquote's eTrading account start at 1% of the cryptocurrency trade value, and drop to 0.75% for trades above CHF 10K, and then down to 0.5% for transactions worth more than CHF 50K. While there are no cryptocurrency custody fees, a $10 fee applies to deposits of less than $500.
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| Minimum Deposit | $1000 |
| Average Spread EUR/USD - Standard | N/A |
| All-in Cost EUR/USD - Active | N/A |
| Active Trader or VIP Discounts | Yes |
| ACH or SEPA Transfers | Yes |
| PayPal (Deposit/Withdraw) | Yes |
| Skrill (Deposit/Withdraw) | Yes |
| Visa/Mastercard (Credit/Debit) | Yes |
| Bank Wire (Deposit/Withdraw) | Yes |
Mobile trading apps
Swissquote's Advanced Trader mobile app is easy to use and cleanly designed, with a decent number of research features and integrated educational content. However, charting is severely limited, leaving the MetaTrader suite as my recommended choice. Swissquote still needs to improve its flagship app if it wants to compete with mobile leaders Saxo Bank, CMC Markets, and TD Ameritrade (U.S. residents only).
Apps overview: For forex and CFD traders, Swissquote offers its proprietary Advanced Trader app, as well as the MetaTrader suite of mobile apps (MT4 and MT5). For stock and cryptocurrency trading, the Swissquote app is available for Android, iOS devices, and Huawei smartwatches.
As part of its partnership to power PostFinance (one of the largest financial institutions in Switzerland), Swissquote offers the YUH app, which is a passive investing app for stocks and crypto.
Ease of use: MetaTrader’s MT4 and MT5 mobile apps feature charts with 30 indicators and nine selectable time frames, along with smooth panning and zooming functions. In the Advanced Trader app, there are six chart types and 11 time-frames to choose from, but there are no available indicators. It’s worth noting that its charts do not support landscape mode or the ability to zoom in and out when viewing chart data.
Research: For both MetaTrader and Swissquote’s Advanced Trader mobile app, research is mostly limited to an economic calendar and headlines that stream from top-tier sources including Dow Jones Newswire. It’s worth noting that Advanced Trader does feature a selection (roughly 25) of integrated educational videos.
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| Android App | Yes |
| Apple iOS App | Yes |
| Mobile Alerts - Basic Fields | Yes |
| Watchlists - Total Fields | 10 |
| Watchlist Syncing | No |
| Charting - Indicators / Studies (Total) | 49 |
| Charting - Drawing Tools (Total) | 275 |
| Mobile Charting - Draw Trendlines | Yes |
| Mobile Charting - Multiple Time Frames | Yes |
| Forex Calendar | Yes |
Other trading platforms
Swissquote’s Advanced Trader platform suite, available for desktop and web, continues to evolve – yet not enough to match industry leaders like IG and CMC Markets. That said, the full MetaTrader suite is available as a reliable alternative.
Platforms overview: Swissquote’s flagship platform suite, Advanced Trader, is available for web and desktop across all major operating systems. The Swissquote website acts as the platform login for its eTrading account, but doesn’t support forex and CFDs (only crypto and shares).
Swissquote also provides access to the popular MetaTrader platform suites (MT4 and MT5) developed by MetaQuotes Software Corporation. To enhance the default MetaTrader desktop platform experience, Swissquote offers the MetaTrader Master Edition suite of tools, developed by FX Blue LLP, along with support for Trading Central and Autochartist plugins.
Charting: The web-based version of Advanced Trader was recently upgraded to HTML5, and now incorporates TradingView charts – features that are welcome enhancements to the platform. Charts in the desktop version of Advanced Trader are not as smooth as the web version, although they feature a respectable 49 indicators.
Trading tools: Advanced Trader’s desktop platform could use a design overhaul to give it a more modern touch, and bring it in line with well-designed platforms like Saxo Bank’s SaxoTraderPRO. For example, the lack of an automated resizing tool for Advanced Trader’s various window modules led to a very tedious manual process during my testing. Drawbacks aside, Advantage Trader does include robust charting and complex order types, and supports forex options-trading on 45 pairs – on a Request for Quote (RFQ) basis.
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| Virtual Trading (Demo) | Yes |
| Proprietary Platform | Yes |
| Desktop Platform (Windows) | Yes |
| Web Platform | Yes |
| Social Trading / Copy Trading | Yes |
| MetaTrader 4 (MT4) | Yes |
| MetaTrader 5 (MT5) | Yes |
| DupliTrade | No |
| ZuluTrade | No |
| Charting - Indicators / Studies (Total) | 49 |
| Charting - Drawing Tools (Total) | 275 |
| Charting - Trade From Chart | Yes |
| Watchlists - Total Fields | 10 |
Market research
Swissquote differentiates itself from its competitors with high-quality market research content, including streaming news headlines, economic calendars, blog commentary, webinars, and video content. Swissquote's YouTube channel continues to evolve with series such as Market Talk and Crypto Market Talk.
Research overview: Swissquote provides daily written articles via its Morning News series from the Newsroom section of its website, along with Themes Trading articles and a high-quality bimonthly magazine with nearly 80 pages of technology-rich content spanning global markets. Swissquote's quantitative research team also helps structure some of its products, such as the exchange-traded certificate for crypto, with its latest one added in 2020.
Market news and analysis: Swissquote provides traders with access to Trading Central, which consists of automated chart pattern analysis and analyst commentary. AutoChartist, a similar service, is also available as a plugin for MetaTrader. Across all Swissquote platforms, headlines stream from Dow Jones Newswire and other top-tier providers, and traders receive free reports from Morningstar. Swissquote’s in-house Market Talk series includes daily videos and podcast recordings that cover fundamental and technical analysis.
Video format: Swissquote provides a Daily Market Analysis series, available in multiple languages (including English) across several language-specific YouTube channels. There are also numerous archived webinars which have been arranged in convenient video playlists.
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| Daily Market Commentary | Yes |
| Forex News (Top-Tier Sources) | Yes |
| Autochartist | Yes |
| Trading Central (Recognia) | Yes |
| Social Sentiment - Currency Pairs | No |
Education
Swissquote’s strength in this category is its video content, with dozens of educational videos and webinars available on its YouTube channel. That said, its bare-bones written content (besides a growing number of eBooks) and absence of interactive lesson programs make for an unremarkable educational experience that can’t compete with the best forex brokers for education.
Learning center: Swissquote’s learning center provides 21 eBooks and 31 videos as part of its forex and CFD educational courses. I was glad to see that at least 15 instructional videos are also available within the Advanced Trader mobile app, along with a selection of platform tutorials.
Room for improvement: Expanding Swissquote’s educational content to include a greater variety of written articles, incorporating quizzes and progress tracking, and adding the ability to filter by experience level would help lift Swissquote's ranking in this category.
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| Education (Forex or CFDs) | Yes |
| Client Webinars | Yes |
| Client Webinars (Archived) | Yes |
| Videos - Beginner Trading Videos | Yes |
| Videos - Advanced Trading Videos | Yes |
| Investor Dictionary (Glossary) | Yes |
Final thoughts
Swissquote is a trusted global brand that finished among our Best in Class for Crypto Trading and Trust Score, and won our award for #1 Banking Services for 2023.
The best all-around forex trading experience at Swissquote can be found through the firm’s U.K. entity, by way of the MetaTrader platform.
The Swiss-based offering of forex and CFDs, on the other hand, is a bit of a mixed bag due to the absence of forex or CFD trading within its otherwise vast multi-asset offering.
About Swissquote
Swissquote (SIX: SQN) was founded in 1996 and was publicly listed in 2000 on the SIX Swiss stock exchange. Swissquote has since grown to be an established banking group, with two banking licenses in Luxembourg and one in Switzerland where the group is headquartered. As of its 2022 annual report, Swissquote employs 1,056 full-time staff servicing 538,946 client accounts, and holds CHF 52.2 billion across its subsidiaries that are regulated in the U.K., Europe and Asia.
Swissquote Bank offers traders access to over two and a half million products, including shares, ETFs, funds, bonds, warrants, futures, forex, options, and other securities. In addition, Swissquote offers comprehensive wealth management and advisory services. Read more on Wikipedia about Swissquote.
2023 Review Methodology
At ForexBrokers.com, our reviews of online forex brokers and their products and services are based on our collected data as well as the observations and qualified opinions of our expert researchers. Each year we publish tens of thousands of words of research and detailed forex guides, and we monitor dozens of international regulator agencies (read more about how we calculate Trust Score here).
Our research team conducts thorough testing on a wide range of features, products, services, and tools (collecting and validating thousands of data points in the process). We test all available trading platforms for each broker – whether they are proprietary or come from third-party providers – and evaluate them based on a host of data-driven variables.
We also take an in-depth look at each broker’s commissions and fees, such as bid/ask spreads – including the average spread data for some of the most popular forex currency pairs. We research other trading costs, such as inactivity or custody fees, minimum deposit requirements, VIP rebates and/or discounts, and a range of other important fee-based data points.
Some of the other important research categories that are factored into our testing include mobile trading accessibility and capability, availability of market research and educational content, and each broker’s overall Trust Score.
All content on ForexBrokers.com is handwritten by a writer, fact-checked by a member of our research team, and edited and published by an editor. Generative AI tools are not a part of our content creation or product testing processes. Our ratings, rankings, and opinions are entirely our own, and the result of our extensive research and decades of collective experience covering the forex industry. Read our Generative AI policy to learn more.
Read our full explanation and accounting of our research and testing process to learn more about how we test.
ForexBrokers.com 2023 Annual Awards
For the ForexBrokers.com 2023 Annual Awards, brokers were evaluated against ForexBrokers.com’s 8 Primary Categories: Commissions & Fees, Offering of Investments, Platforms & Tools, Mobile Trading Apps, Research, Education, Trust Score, and Overall.
Best in Class honors were awarded to the Top 7 forex brokers in each of the following areas: Beginners, Social Copy Trading, Ease of Use, MetaTrader, Algo Trading, Crypto Trading, and Professional Trading.
ForexBrokers.com also recognized brokers that demonstrated excellence and innovation with our exclusive Industry Awards.
Primary categories
 Swissquote
|
Overall Rating | Offering of Investments | Commissions & Fees | Platforms & Tools | Research | Education | Mobile Trading Apps | Trust Score |
| Rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
99 |
| Rank #1 | ||||||||
| Streak #1 | ||||||||
| Best in Class | ||||||||
| Best in Class Streak | 4 |
Secondary categories
|
Swissquote
|
Social Copy Trading | MetaTrader | Crypto Trading | Ease of Use | Professional Trading | Beginners | Algo Trading |
| Rank #1 | |||||||
| Streak #1 | |||||||
| Best in Class | |||||||
| Best in Class Streak | 6 |
Industry awards
| Feature |
Swissquote
|
| #1 Banking Services | |
Forex Risk Disclaimer
There is a very high degree of risk involved in trading securities. With respect to margin-based foreign exchange trading, off-exchange derivatives, and cryptocurrencies, there is considerable exposure to risk, including but not limited to, leverage, creditworthiness, limited regulatory protection and market volatility that may substantially affect the price, or liquidity of a currency or related instrument. It should not be assumed that the methods, techniques, or indicators presented in these products will be profitable, or that they will not result in losses. Read more on forex trading risks.
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Show allAbout the Editorial Team
Steven Hatzakis is the Global Director of Research for ForexBrokers.com. Steven previously served as an Editor for Finance Magnates, where he authored over 1,000 published articles about the online finance industry. A forex industry expert and an active fintech and crypto researcher, Steven advises blockchain companies at the board level and holds a Series III license in the U.S. as a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA).
John Bringans is the Senior Editor of ForexBrokers.com. An experienced media professional, John has close to a decade of editorial experience with a background that includes key leadership roles at global newsroom outlets. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from San Francisco State University, and conducts research on forex and the financial services industry while assisting in the production of content.
Blain Reinkensmeyer has 20 years of trading experience with over 2,500 trades placed during that time. He heads research for all U.S.-based brokerages on StockBrokers.com and is respected by executives as the leading expert covering the online broker industry. Blain’s insights have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Chicago Tribune, among other media outlets.