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CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. eToro is a multi-asset platform which offers both investing in stocks and cryptoassets, as well as trading CFD assets. Please note that CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 75% 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. This content is intended for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or investment recommendation.
eToro is a winner in 2020 for its easy-to-use copy-trading platform where traders can copy the trades of other users across over 1,900 instruments, including CFDs on popular cryptocurrencies. The one downside of eToro is pricing; otherwise, eToro delivers.
Top Takeaways for 2020
After spending five months testing 30 of the best forex brokers for our 4th Annual Review, here are our top findings on eToro:
Founded in 2007, eToro and is regulated in two tier-1 jurisdictions and one tier-2 jurisdiction, making it a safe broker (low-risk) for forex and CFDs trading.
eToro is excellent for social copy trading and cryptocurrency trading, our top pick for both categories in 2020. Furthermore, eToro offers a user-friendly web platform and mobile app that is great for less experienced investors.
For regular CFDs and forex spot trading, eToro is pricier than most of its competitors and charges wide spreads, despite offering a premium account for high deposit clients. Also, while eToro offers traders unique research for social trading, we found its market research tools to be unimpressive.
Special Offer: Trade with confidence on the world’s leading social trading platform Visit SiteOverall Summary
FeatureeToroOverall 4 Stars Trust Score91Offering of Investments 4.5 Stars Commissions & Fees 3 Stars Platform & Tools 4 Stars Research 4 Stars Mobile Trading 4 Stars Customer Service .1 Stars Education 4 Stars
Is eToro Safe?
The bottom line is that eToro is regulated, licensed, and is a safe broker to trade forex and CFDs with. eToro is considered low-risk, with an overall Trust Score of 91 out of 99. eToro is not publicly traded and does not operate a bank. eToro (UK) Ltd, a Financial Services Company, is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the license FRN 583263. eToro (or one of its subsidiaries) is also authorised by Australian Securities & Investment Commission (Licence 491139) and the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (license # 109/10). Learn more about Trust Score.
FeatureeToroYear Founded2007Publicly Traded (Listed) No Bank No Tier-1 Licenses2Tier-2 Licenses1Tier-3 Licenses0Trust Score91
Offering of Investments
eToro offers forex and CFD traders a wide variety of investment options. Alongside 47 currency pairs for spot trading, eToro also provides 1,933 CFDs, including on cryptocurrencies.
When it comes to trading cryptocurrency, eToro is our top pick for 2020. Note: Trading in the actual (non-CFD) underlying cryptocurrencies is available through the firm’s eToroX offering, regulated by the Gibraltar FSC, and registered in the US with FinCEN as a Money Service Business (MSB).
FeatureeToroForex: Spot Trading Yes Currency Pairs (Total Forex pairs)47CFDs – Total Offered1980Social Trading / Copy-Trading Yes Cryptocurrency traded as actual Yes Cryptocurrency traded as CFD Yes
Commissions & Fees
eToro is a market-maker broker and lists a typical minimum fixed spread of three pips on the EUR/USD, which is on the high end of the range when comparing brokers with fixed and floating spreads, making it a more expensive platform.
When comparing fees alone, retail traders don’t choose eToro for its spreads, but rather for its platform and social trading capabilities tools (see further down for more details), as its pricing is otherwise expensive.
VIP accounts: eToro offers a VIP club membership with five tiers ranging from gold to diamond for traders who maintain balances between $5k -$250k. Depending on the level, benefits vary from a dedicated account manager to discounted withdrawal and deposit fees, access to private signals, and exclusive assets, among other VIP-style account benefits.
Account tiers: eToro’s Popular Investor program has four levels – from cadet to elite – where you can can be eligible to receive various perks ranging from spread rebates to a monthly payment and even a management fee for those who reach elite status. Unlike an active trader program, which usually requires volumes or deposit thresholds to be met, the Popular Investor program encourages traders to focus on producing successful results to receive applicable incentives.
Cryptocurrency trading: The fee for exchanging crypto to fiat at eToroX is 5% (based on an eToroX fee of 1% plus a 4% Simplex fee), while converting from crypto to crypto is only 0.1% with a minimum trade size of $20 and maximum of $10,000 per transaction. In terms of crypto trading costs, spreads at eToro range from 0.75% on Bitcoin (BTC) to as much as 4.5% on crypto-assets such as Miota (IOTA).
FeatureeToroMinimum Initial Deposit$200Average Spread EUR/USD – Standard3 (as of May 19)All-in Cost EUR/USD – ActiveN/AActive Trader or VIP Discounts Yes
Platforms & Tools
eToro has done well merging self-directed trading and copy trading under a unified trading experience. It’s a winning combination. See Best FX Brokers for Copy Trading 2020.
Ease of use is at the heart of the eToro platform experience. It is easy to carry out basic operations and do things quickly, such as creating several watchlists and adding instruments by searching available markets, as well as placing a trade from each watchlist directly. These qualities helped eToro rank Best in Class in the Ease of Use category, as well as for Beginners in 2020.
CopyPortfolios: One innovative tool is CopyPortfolios, where eToro groups traders into a single fund you can copy trade. CopyPortfolios help bridge the gap for investors who want to use eToro on a passive basis, as they can create a portfolio based entirely on one or more CopyPortfolios. On the other hand, self-directed traders can also use CopyPortfolios to diversify their trading, making it potentially useful for all eToro clients.
Cryptocurrency tools: In addition to self-directed trading across 93 cryptocurrency CFD pairs, users can find crypto trading ideas and copy other individual crypto traders, as well as copy groups of traders. For investors looking to trade the underlying crypto assets, eToroX offers the eToro Mobile wallet app that acts as a custodian using a multi-signature scheme and nearly matches the brand’s forex mobile app.
Copy-trading quality: All traders on eToro trade manually. Fully automated trading systems are not permitted, which means when you copy another trader, you can be sure they are placing each trade manually. This is useful to know as many other social trading platforms that aggregate the performance of traders usually permit both discretionary (manual) trades as well as automated strategies, while eToro’s network consists solely of manual trading.
MetaTrader: Unfortunately, MetaTrader is not available at eToro (see: Best MetaTrader Brokers 2020).
Gallery
Indicative prices for illustration purposes. Indicative prices; current market price is shown on the eToro trading platform.
Research
Overall, eToro’s research offering has a good foundation but can be improved. Beyond a standard economic calendar (which is only available on the website) and news headlines (also found only on the broker’s site), there are few research options on eToro in the traditional sense of technical and fundamental analysis.
Social Trading: eToro does, however, incorporate many social elements into its available research tools when it comes to market sentiment. For example, rather than show sentiment based on all users – only the trades of top traders are used to calculate sentiment data (taking it a step above the usual sentiment tools brokers provide). In addition, collective commentary about an instrument will appear as a stream of updates from users to give you an idea of what other traders are posting about in the eToro network, compared to StockTwits, for example.
Other market research: In 2018, eToro boosted its research offering with the addition of TipRanks, which powers the new research tab on its platform. That said, adding news headlines and incorporating the economic calendar into the platform experience would help fill the gap in the research tools available on the eToro platform.
Gallery
Indicative prices for illustration purposes. Indicative prices; current market price is shown on the eToro trading platform.
Mobile Trading
Overall, eToro has done a great job with its mobile experience. Testing the mobile app on Android, eToro maintains the look and feel of the web version, which is great. Functionality such as syncing watchlists helps to unify the platform experience across devices further.
Charting: Like the rest of the mobile app, the charts were responsive and closely matched the web platform, even though just five indicators are present compared to 67 on the web. Drawing tools were missing from the app entirely and would be a welcome enhancement. Otherwise, the charts in the mobile app are nicely integrated and function well, despite the lack of drawing tools.
Cryptocurrency wallet: The eToro Wallet is a separate mobile app where users can deposit and withdraw actual cryptocurrencies that are held by eToroX, which acts as the custodian of their private keys and broker. The eToro Wallet closely resembles the look and feel of the eToro mobile app, including support for social trading.Gallery
Indicative prices for illustration purposes. Indicative prices; current market price is shown on the eToro trading platform.
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 2019 Review, 229 customer service tests were conducted over six weeks.
Results
Average Connection Time:
Average Net Promoter Score: 5.6 / 10
Average Professionalism Score: 3.3 / 10
Overall Score: 5.3 / 10
Ranking: 16th
(23 brokers)
Final Thoughts
eToro can be great for retail traders who want to crowdsource investment ideas using the power of copy trading, or for highly experienced traders who want to be rewarded for sharing their ideas with other traders.
Less experienced traders requiring handholding may find the user-friendly platform an added benefit. That said, I do not recommend eToro for active or high-volume traders as high spreads and small maximum trade sizes will be a limiting factor. Otherwise, when it comes to social copy trading and crypto trading, eToro is our number one choice in 2020.
About eToro
As an early pioneer in social copy trading, eToro was founded in Israel in 2006 as a financial trading technology developer. After launching its first product, it has since grown to service over 9 million users with an innovative platform that continually evolves to be one of the largest social networks globally, with clients in over 170 countries.
In March 2018, eToro announced it had raised a $100 million round of private equity financing led by China Minsheng Financial, the SBI Group, and Korea Investment Partner, and other investors, valuing the company at $800 million. Read more on Wikipedia about eToro.
eToro Trading Features
FeatureeToroVirtual Trading (Demo) Yes Proprietary Platform Yes Desktop Platform (Windows) No Web Platform Yes Social Trading / Copy-Trading Yes MetaTrader 4 (MT4) No MetaTrader 5 (MT5) No cTrader No Charting – Indicators / Studies (Total)66Charting – Drawing Tools (Total)13Charting – Trade From Chart No Watchlists – Total Fields6Order Type – Trailing Stop Yes
eToro Research Features
FeatureeToroDaily Market Commentary Yes Forex News (Top-Tier Sources) No Weekly Webinars No AutoChartist No Trading Central (Recognia) No Delkos Research No Social Sentiment – Currency Pairs Yes Economic Calendar Yes
eToro Mobile App Features
FeatureeToroAndroid App Yes Apple iOS App Yes Trading – Forex Yes Trading – CFDs Yes Alerts – Basic Fields No Watch List Yes Watch List Syncing Yes Charting – Indicators / Studies5Charting – Draw Trend Lines No Charting – Trend Lines Moveable No Charting – Multiple Time Frames Yes Charting – Drawings Autosave No Forex Calendar No
Disclosures
eToro is a multi-asset platform which offers both investing in stocks and cryptoassets, as well as trading CFD assets.
Please note that CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 75 % 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.
Cryptocurrencies are a highly volatile unregulated investment product. No EU investor protection.
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.
About the author: Steven Hatzakis
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. Steven is an active fintech and crypto industry researcher and advises blockchain companies at the board level. Over the past 20 years, Steven has held numerous positions within the international forex markets, from writing to consulting to serving as a registered commodity futures representative.
