★ Top Pick 2026
IG Review
The world’s largest CFD provider. FCA regulated with FSCS cover, FTSE 100 listed, trading since 1974, and over 17,000 markets from a single account. The safest broker in our table, and one of the most complete.
The safest broker we review, and one of the most complete
IG has been in business since 1974, is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and holds licences from around eleven regulators including the FCA, ASIC, MAS, FINMA, BaFin and the CFTC. UK clients get FSCS cover up to £85,000 on top of segregated client money and negative balance protection. On safety alone, nothing in our table sits above it.
Breadth is the other half of the case: more than 17,000 markets across forex, indices, shares, commodities and crypto CFDs from one margin account, plus spread betting and commission-free share dealing for UK clients. What you pay for it is mid-table pricing and an overnight funding structure that punishes positions held for weeks. This review covers all ten sectors we score.
Ten sectors, scored out of 10
Click any row for the reasoning. The overall score is our published headline rating, curated by hand rather than averaged.
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Regulation and safety
UK clients trade with IG Markets Ltd, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 195355. Client money sits in segregated accounts at regulated banks, and eligible retail clients are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000 per person if the firm fails. FCA rules also give retail clients negative balance protection, so you cannot end up owing more than your account balance.
Beyond the UK the group is licensed by ASIC in Australia, MAS in Singapore, FINMA in Switzerland, BaFin in Germany, the FMA in New Zealand, the JFSA in Japan, and the CFTC and NFA in the United States. IG Group Holdings plc is a listed company, which means audited accounts, published capital ratios and a level of financial transparency almost no CFD broker can match. When we checked the public registers, every licence was active and in good standing.
Fees and spreads
IG prices CFDs and spread bets through the spread, with no separate commission on forex, indices or commodities. Published minimums are 0.6 pips on EUR/USD, 0.9 on GBP/USD, 1 point on the FTSE 100 and 0.4 points on the S&P 500. Independently recorded EUR/USD averages land closer to 0.85 pips, which is fair for a Tier-1 regulated market maker but not the cheapest we cover: Pepperstone and IC Markets both beat it on raw-spread forex accounts once commission is netted off. IG charges no commission on its trades; a DMA account through L2 Dealer prices direct-market spreads from around 0.1 pips instead.
The cost that deserves attention is overnight funding. IG’s admin fee on held positions is charged on top of the underlying interest rate and varies by product: on CFDs it is 1.5% for FX and 3.4% for all other asset classes (indices, shares and commodities), while on spread bets it is 1% for FX and 3% for everything else. That makes IG an expensive place to hold leveraged non-FX positions for weeks at a time in particular. Share dealing went the other way in 2026: the quarterly custody fee was removed entirely and US and UK share trading is now commission-free, which makes IG genuinely competitive for buy-and-hold investors. There are no deposit or withdrawal fees on standard methods and no inactivity fee, though a currency conversion fee of roughly 0.5% to 0.7% applies when you trade outside your account base currency.
Platforms and tools
This is where IG is genuinely unmatched in our reviews. The proprietary web platform is the best in-house build we have tested, with clean order tickets, integrated Reuters news and a workspace you can actually customise. Above it sit ProRealTime for advanced charting and automated strategies, L2 Dealer for direct market access with full depth of book, MetaTrader 4 for anyone running Expert Advisors, and a native TradingView integration so you can trade IG markets straight from TradingView charts.
The mobile app is excellent and rated highly on both stores, with full account functionality rather than a cut-down version. The trade-off is the complaint that comes up most often in user reviews: with this much on offer, the platform can feel overwhelming for a first-time trader. If you are new, start on the demo and the simplified mobile view before opening the full workspace.
The Underdog acquisition, and what it means
On 30 July 2026, IG announced it had agreed to buy Underdog, the US daily fantasy sports and prediction markets operator, in a deal worth up to $1.3 billion. The structure is roughly $1.1 billion of upfront enterprise value, funded with about 24.1 million new IG shares plus around $380 million in cash, an earnout of about $200 million tied to Underdog’s 2026 performance, and repayment of roughly $160 million of Underdog debt at completion. A separate management incentive plan for Underdog staff is capped at $850 million but is heavily conditional on future EBITDA.
Strategically it is a land grab in the fastest-growing corner of US retail trading. Underdog only added prediction markets in September 2025 and is already the third-largest US venue by regulated notional volume, behind Kalshi and Robinhood, and it launched its own in-house sports event contract exchange less than two weeks before the deal was announced. That hands IG a vertically integrated US licence stack, a brokerage, an exchange and a clearing house, rather than years of applications. IG expects the deal to more than double its US revenue and lift US monthly active customers more than tenfold, taking America to roughly 40% of group revenue on a pro forma basis, up from 22%.
Two things a trader should note. First, it does not change your trading conditions: Underdog continues to operate as a standalone business, the deal is subject to US regulatory and antitrust clearance, and nothing about IG’s CFD, spread betting or share dealing accounts changes as a result. Second, it does change the corporate picture. The acquisition closes out the strategic review IG opened in March, sits alongside a proposed redomicile to Jersey, and IG has paused its share buyback with repurchases not expected until 2027. IG also disclosed that CEO Breon Corcoran held a personal stake of about 0.34% in Underdog, acquired before he joined IG, and recused himself from the board’s formal approval of the transaction.
For context on the balance sheet behind it, IG reported first-half revenue up 18% to £642.8 million with core profit up 4% to £282 million. This is expansion funded from strength, not a rescue, and it does not affect the FSCS protection or client-money segregation that applies to your account with IG Markets Ltd.
Education, support and onboarding
IG Academy is one of the better broker education operations we have reviewed: structured courses with progress tracking, live webinars, a daily market briefing and IG’s own analyst commentary, plus integrated Reuters news and client sentiment data on the platform. It is closer to a curriculum than the usual scatter of blog posts.
Support runs 24/5 by phone, live chat and email, with weekend cover for out-of-hours markets and UK phone lines answered from London. Account opening is fully digital and typically clears verification in one to three business days. There is no minimum deposit by bank transfer, and card deposits require just £1 to start.
Copy trading and managed portfolios
IG has no social or copy-trading network. There is no equivalent of eToro’s CopyTrader, AvaTrade’s DupliTrade or a signals marketplace, and this is the one sector where IG is clearly behind. What it does offer is IG Smart Portfolios, a set of managed ETF portfolios built with BlackRock across five risk levels, which is a hands-off solution for investors rather than a way to mirror another trader. If following other traders is central to how you trade, IG is the wrong broker and we would point you at AvaTrade or eToro instead.
Key details at a glance
Fees and costs summary
The platform lineup
Most traders should start on the IG web platform and the mobile app, then add ProRealTime if charting is central to their strategy, or L2 Dealer if they need direct market access. MT4 is there for Expert Advisors, but IG’s own platform is better in almost every other respect. All of them can be tested free on a demo before you fund an account.
IG scores 9.5 and lands first in our 2026 table on a combination nothing else here matches: FCA authorisation with FSCS cover, an LSE listing with audited accounts, 52 years of trading history, over 17,000 markets from one account, and a platform stack running from a beginner-friendly mobile app up to full direct market access. It is the broker we would point at first if safety is the deciding factor. What keeps it off the top spot is cost and one missing sector: spreads are fair rather than cheap, the 1.5% overnight funding admin fee makes it a poor home for positions held for weeks, and there is no copy trading at all. The July 2026 Underdog acquisition is a serious statement of intent about US growth, but it changes IG’s corporate story, not your trading account. For long-term traders who want a regulated home they will not have to think about again, IG is as solid as this industry gets.
We have reviewed brokers independently since 2017. Every score comes from opening and funding a real account, placing trades, contacting support and requesting a withdrawal, not from marketing material. Scores are revised whenever conditions change rather than once a year.
Our overall rating is curated, not averaged, so a serious failure in one sector cannot be offset by an unrelated strength. See the full scoring report for the methodology and every broker’s data.
Fees, spreads and terms are based on information published by IG, company announcements and our own testing, and can change without notice. Trade4Gains may receive compensation if you open an account through links on this page, which does not affect our scoring. This review is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. CFDs carry a high risk of losing money.