Tickmill Review

Tickmill is a plain vanilla MT4 broker offering a minimal selection of tradeable securities. That said, Tickmill offers very competitive commission-based pricing for professionals through its VIP and PRO accounts.

Top Takeaways for 2020

Here are our top findings on Tickmill:

• Founded in 2014, Tickmill is regulated in one tier-1 jurisdiction and two tier-2 jurisdictions, making it a safe broker (average-risk) for trading forex and CFDs.
• With just the MT4 platform available, Tickmill does not stand out compared to the best MetaTrader brokers.
• Pricing at Tickmill varies by account type. Overall, Tickmill competes well for low-cost trading, including for Professional Trading, where Tickmill finished Best in Class (top 7) in 2020.

Overall Summary

Is Tickmill Safe?

Tickmill is considered average-risk, with an overall Trust Score of 81 out of 99. Tickmill is not publicly traded and does not operate a bank. Tickmill is authorised by one tier-1 regulator (high trust), two tier-2 regulators (average trust), and zero tier-3 regulators (low trust). Tickmill is authorised by the following tier-1 regulator: Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Learn more about Trust Score.

Regulations Comparison

Offering of Investments

Tickmill offers a total of 85 tradeable symbols encompassing mostly currency pairs, with barely a dozen CFDs on indices, metals, and bonds. The following table summarizes the different investment products available to Tickmill clients.

Commissions & Fees

Tickmill offers three accounts. Bottom line, Tickmill is best for active and VIP traders, who have access to pricing that competes among the lowest brokers in the industry.

Classic accounts: The Classic account is commission-free, where traders only pay the bid/ask spread. However, the average spreads are higher relative to the other two account types, making the Classic account unattractive.

Spreads: Using typical spread data listed by Tickmill for its Pro account offering of 0.13 pips for the EUR/USD, the all-in cost equates to 0.53 pips when factoring in the RT commission equivalent of 0.4 pips. It is worth noting that Tickmill records typical spread data during normal market conditions (when spreads are narrower).

Pro account: Pro and VIP accounts both have a per-trade commission added to lower prevailing spreads and standout as competitive. With a low commission rate, the Pro account will be ideal for most traders compared to the Classic account, as spreads are inherently less expensive, and 75 instruments, including 62 currency pairs, can be accessed.

VIP versus Pro accounts: While the VIP account requires a minimum balance of $50,000 for traders to access low commissions of $1 per standard lot (100k units) or $2 per Round-Turn (RT), the Pro account has similar pricing with an RT commission of just $4 per round-turn standard lot. The Pro account is available with as little as a $100 deposit.

Active trader discounts: Tickmill offers three tiers for active traders, with rebates starting at $0.25 per standard for up to 1000 standard lots per month, to as much as $0.75 at tier-3 for those who trade more than 3001 standard lots monthly.

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Platforms & Tools

Tickmill is a MetaTrader-only broker offering the standard, out-of-the-box experience, for just MT4. Unfortunately, there are no notable add-ons, besides Autochartist, to help Tickmill stand out among the best MetaTrader brokers. Even MetaTrader 5 (MT5) is not offered. Finally, VPS hosting is available at Tickmill and is useful for algorithmic traders using MT4.

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Research

Tickmill is competitive in its offering of market research and continues to improve its research year over year. That said, Tickmill still lags industry leaders IG and Saxo Bank in depth, personalization, and overall quality.

Trading tools: Tickmill provides Autochartist for automated technical analysis, Myfxbook powers the broker's economic calendar, and forex news headlines stream from Investing.com.

Copy trading: In addition to the native MQL5 Signals market available in MT4, Tickmill also offers the AutoTrade feature of Myfxbook for social copy-trading (note: this service is not available from the firm's UK branch).

Market insights: Tickmill has a team of analysts that produce daily technical and fundamental analysis on the company's blog. I found that the broker does a good job covering the markets with a wide variety of research content for traders. Tickmill also offers archived webinars, technical and fundamental analysis videos, and news updates on its YouTube page.

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Education

Tickmill's education offering is better than the industry average but not quite good enough to make the cut as Best in Class (top 7).

Good stuff: Highlights include live educational courses, a handful of eBooks, weekly webinars hosted in various languages, and archived webinars through YouTube. Tickmill offers variety in both topic and type.

Drawbacks: Tickmill continues to expand its scope of education material across written and video formats; however, educational content is mixed with market research, which makes it difficult to navigate and filter through. A dedicated educational portal would be a notable boost to Tickmill’s educational offering.

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Mobile Trading

Since Tickmill is a MetaTrader-only broker, iOS and Android versions of the MT4 app come standard and are both available for download from the Apple iTunes store and Android Play store, respectively.

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Customer Service

To score Customer Service, ForexBrokers.com partnered with customer experience research group Customerwise to conduct phone tests from locations throughout the UK. For our 2020 Review, 330 customer service tests were conducted over six weeks.

Results

• Average Connection Time: <1 minute
• Average Net Promoter Score: 6.1 / 10
• Average Professionalism Score: 7.4 / 10
• Overall Score: 7.14 / 10
• Ranking: 16 ^th (22 brokers)

Final Thoughts

Tickmill caters best to high volume, high balance traders who trade only the most popular forex and CFD instruments. With a lack of platforms and a small range of markets, there is no question that there are better forex brokers for traders to consider in 2020 unless you can afford the VIP account at Tickmill, which has highly-competitive pricing.

About Tickmill

Tickmill was established in 2014 after Armada Markets moved its retail clients to Tickmill's entity in Seychelles, where it is regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Today the Tickmill brand holds regulatory status in UK, Cyprus, and Malaysia. According to its website, Tickmill Group has over 200 staff and more than 50,000 customers.

Tickmill Trading Features

Tickmill Research Features

Tickmill Mobile App Features

2020 Review Methodology

For our 2020 Forex Broker Review we assessed, rated, and ranked 30 international forex brokers over a five month time period. Each broker was graded on 105 different variables and, in total, over 50,000 words of research were produced.

While encouraged, broker participation was optional. Each broker had the opportunity to complete an in-depth data profile and provide executive time (live in person or over the web) for an annual update meeting.

All data submitted by brokers is hand-checked for accuracy. Ultimately, our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than 1% each year, providing site visitors quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test.

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." Learn more.