6 Best Futures Trading Forex Brokers for 2024

List of Top Futures Trading Brokers and Platforms

Best brokers for US traders

Best brokers for international traders

What is futures trading?

Futures trading involves buying and selling contracts that obligate the parties to transact an asset at a predetermined future date and price. These contracts, known as futures, specify the quality and quantity of the underlying asset; they can be based on commodities (like grain, oil, or gold), financial instruments (like government bonds), or even indices.

In futures trading, the buyer of the contract agrees to purchase and receive the asset when the futures contract expires, while the seller agrees to provide and deliver the asset at expiration. However, most futures contracts are traded on exchanges and are settled before expiration, meaning actual physical delivery of the commodity is rare. Instead, traders often close their positions before the contract expires, realizing a profit or loss based on the difference between the purchase price of the contract and its market price at sale.

How Did FX Empire Select the Best Futures Trading Brokers?

• Regulation. We only considered tightly regulated brokers that adhere to the industry’s main safety standards.
• Wide variety of futures contracts. Our choices for each category offer a selection of indices, commodities, and/or bond futures contracts.
• Trading costs for futures contracts. We compared the spread and commission (when not built into the spread) charges for trading futures CFDs with each broker. We then compared our findings to the industry average.
• Speed of execution. We looked for brokers that can guarantee average execution speed of under 50 milliseconds.
• Margin on futures. Trading futures CFDs involves a significant risk of losing money, which is why we only considered brokers with tight margin requirements.
• Suitable account types. We assessed brokers’ execution models and selected those with the most suitable account types for longer-term swing and day trading via futures CFDs.
• Generally low fees. We also evaluated the competitiveness of brokers’ trading costs for other instruments and compared them to the industry average.
• User-friendly and versatile platforms. Finally, we selected brokers with platforms that accommodate sophisticated trading strategies, which usually involve some form of speculation or hedging using futures contracts.

Our team of experts has identified each broker’s strengths and weaknesses using FX Empire’s comprehensive methodology. You can read more about it and how we conduct our tests here.

Now, let’s dive into the selected brokers.

How to Choose a Forex Broker for Futures Trading?

Now that I have covered our top picks for each category, it is time to outline the specific considerations traders need to make when looking for a trustworthy partner:

How to find a safe broker?

To make sure you are dealing with a trustworthy partner, you need to make sure that the broker entity you choose is tightly regulated and complies with all industry safety requirements.

I have broken down the most important safety mechanisms to look for in a broker below:

• Segregation of client funds. Brokers must keep their clients’ funds in separate bank accounts from the ones used for their corporate capital. This is crucial for mitigating the risk of accounting errors.
• Negative balance protection. Negative balance protection means that trader’s losses cannot exceed their account balance. This protection is indispensable when trading high-risk instruments, such as Contracts for Difference (CFDs).
• Limited market exposure. Beginners are especially susceptible to the risk of adverse price fluctuations, which is why the maximum leverage for retail traders is recommended to be at 1:30. Anything beyond that can be too risky for inexperienced traders.
• Compensation scheme. Depending on the jurisdiction where a broker is situated, a compensation scheme may also protect its clients against the company’s credit risk and liabilities. For instance, brokers regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) participate in the Investor Compensation Fund (ICF). In the unlikely event of the company becoming insolvent, traders can be compensated by up to 20,000 EUR. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) – under The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom – protects traders by up to 85,000 GBP.

Generally, offshore regulators offer higher leverage but weaker overall protections. In contrast, top-tier regulators seek to limit the maximum market exposure afforded to traders via leverage by capping it.

Check out our guides on Best CySEC-regulated forex brokers and Best FCA-regulated forex brokers.

How to verify if a broker is regulated?

• Check the Broker’s Website: Legitimate, regulated brokers typically display their license number and the name of their regulator on their website, often in the footer or “About Us” section.
• Visit the Regulator’s Website: Every country’s financial regulator has a website where they list all the brokers they regulate. Search for the broker’s name to see if they’re listed.
• Contact the Regulator: If you can’t find the information you’re looking for, you can directly contact the regulator with the broker’s name and any other identifying information you have.
• Check for Memberships: Regulated brokers often belong to compensation schemes or organizations that protect clients’ funds. Check if the broker mentions such memberships on their website.

Read more about Best regulated forex brokers.

How to check if a broker’s fees are competitive?

A broker may have 1,2, or several account types, each with different pricing mechanisms. The question is, how to know which one is best fitted for your particular style of trading? I will try to answer this question by providing an example with two distinct accounts, one STP and the other ECN:

The biggest difference between STP and ECN accounts, apart from the execution model, is the pricing mechanism. Usually, STP accounts afford commission-free trading and floating spreads, whereas ECN accounts have fixed commissions and raw spreads (typically starting from 0.1 pips). At first glance, the former sounds more favorable because you only have to pay one cost – the spread – rather than two.

Discover Best STP forex brokers and Best ECN forex brokers.

Many brokers recognize the psychological significance of this sort of thinking and seek to exploit it by raising the spreads on their STP accounts to the point where they are no longer the more competitive option. I will now demonstrate how to do a quick test for yourself to evaluate the competitiveness of a broker’s ECN and STP accounts.

Pick an instrument, say, the EURUSD. Suppose that the spread on the pair is also 0.9 pips on a broker’s STP account and 0.1 pips on its ECN account. There is also a $6 commission for trading a 1 lot (100,000 units) contract. If the EURUSD pip value is $10, you can do a simple calculation to determine the value of a hypothetical position on the EURUSD executed on both account types. The formula is the value of a trade = spread x pip value + commission. When we pop in the above values, this is what we discover about our hypothetical broker:

This is just a hypothetical example, but hopefully, it illustrates how more can be less in trading. So, it’s worthwhile evaluating the costs of a broker you consider opening an account with for yourself before doing so.

Check out our list of Best lowest spread forex brokers.

Why liquidity matters?

The deeper the liquidity pool that a broker has access to, the better the order execution conditions it can serve its clients. That is why high-frequency traders should always check the speed and quality of order execution. The easiest way to do that is to see whether the broker has a ‘best execution policy.’ It means that the company is committed to providing the best price quotes, given the underlying market conditions, when an order is placed.

Precision and speed of order execution are also likely to be enhanced when a broker provides Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. As a rule of thumb, look for brokers that can accommodate ultra-fast order execution speeds of no more than 50 milliseconds.

Check out our guide on best forex brokers with VPS hosting.

You can confirm a broker’s performance by going to the Legal Documents section of its website and opening its latest execution statement/review. Keep in mind that not all brokers are mandated by their regulators to post such reviews yearly. However, the ones that do are more likely to afford you precise order execution and diminished risk of negative slippage.

How to choose a trading platform?

A trading platform is your window into the market. It allows you to observe price action behavior and study potential opportunities for placing orders. Technical traders use a platform’s array of indicators, drawing tools, and other features to examine various price patterns, changes in volatility, liquidity, and so on to gauge the most favorable times to enter or exit the market.

The best platforms are also the most versatile ones. They include a wide spectrum of technical indicators, such as Fibonacci retracement levels, oscillators, trend-based and range-based indicators, and others, as well as drawing tools, such as trend lines, channels, wedges, etc. They are also the ones that allow you to easily scale price action up and down.

Find out our guide on Best forex trading platforms.

In addition to these components, when looking for a suitable platform, you must also look for efficiency. Ask yourself: Does the platform facilitate easy and rapid order placement through one-click trading? Does it support algorithmic trading via Expert Advisors (EAs)? Can it handle market, limit, and stop orders? These factors, and more, contribute to a platform’s overall effectiveness.

The two most popular retail platforms in the industry are MetaTrader 4&5. Over the years, the two have become the benchmark for simplicity and reliability. The two entries in the popular franchise have a decent range of technical indicators and drawing tools and afford multi-timeframe analysis.

However, despite MetaTrader’s easy learning curve, its rugged design becomes apparent when contrasted against newer and sleeker platforms. In my estimation, MetaTrader is a good choice for newbies wanting to learn the ropes, but to take your trading to the next level, you may need something more sophisticated.

The answer of some brokers is to develop their proprietary platforms. The advantage of most such platforms is their convenience. The ability to search for instruments by asset class, scale price action up and down with ease, or execute complex box orders are benefits you cannot find in MetaTrader. To summarize, the question of choosing the best platform for you is one of simplicity vs practicality.

Read more about the platforms in our detailed guides on the best MT4 and best MT5 forex brokers.

What to Avoid When Choosing a Forex Broker?

Here is a quick rundown of what traders must avoid:

• Unregulated brokers. Trading with an unregulated broker exposes you to a higher risk of fraud or unethical business practices, as they are not bound by any regulatory standards or rules. Additionally, in case of any disputes or if the broker goes bankrupt, there might be no legal recourse or compensation schemes available to recover your funds.
• Lack of client protection. Avoid brokers that cannot ensure more than two of the following: segregated funds, negative balance protection, compensation scheme, and maximum leverage for retail traders no bigger than 1:100
• Low execution quality. Try to avoid brokers that cannot ensure more than two of the following: best execution policy, regular quality execution statements, and average execution speed under 50 milliseconds.
• High spreads and commissions. Sidestep brokers with floating spreads from 1.8 pips or above on STP accounts and with round-turn commissions above $7 on ECN accounts.

And if you are still uncertain, you can always check out our database of reviews to find the most reliable brokers.

What Futures CFDs Are Best Suited For?

Given their nature, futures CFDs are typically used for longer-term trading. That is so because they allow you to buy or sell a given underlying asset at a predetermined price at a future date. As such, they are especially suitable for hedging the risk of a primary position.

Swing and day traders, who usually execute positions lasting from several days to several weeks, can buy or sell futures contracts that are contrary to their primary positions. Consequently, if the market goes against them, they could use the futures contract to compensate for their losses.

However, future contracts can also be used to speculate. Unlike cash CFDs, futures CFDs have expiration dates. This gives traders a certain degree of freedom as they can avoid current upsurges in market volatility and speculate with expected price upsurges or downsurges in the future.

Read more about Best CFD brokers.

How to Avoid Forex and CFD Scams?

Scammers rely on the gullibility of traders. A common tactic fraudsters employ is to promise quick and easy profits at no risk to the trader. Often scammers would use labels that closely resemble the brands of real and legitimate companies. That is why regulators like the FCA have registers where traders can read about such fraudulent companies pretending to be others.

The best and easiest way to protect yourself is to make sure you work with a trustworthy and transparent broker. You can find a comprehensive list of reliable brokers by jurisdiction here.

Another important consideration is online safety. Be cautious about where you leave your personal information. Registering your details on suspicious pop-ups that promise enormous profits could lead to your contact information landing on a scammer’s dialing list. Remember, no licensed broker would make unsolicited cold calls.

The next time you get contacted out of the blue with promises of becoming the next Warren Buffet, you must remember that you are most likely speaking to a scammer. I think that nowhere is the “if something sounds too good to be true…” saying more accurate than in the world of trading. That is why you should do your due diligence before opening an account with any broker.

Our Methodology

Here at FX Empire, we have pioneered a unique methodology for evaluating Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives brokers worldwide. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of a broker’s pros and cons so that our readers can make informed decisions. We understand their need to choose the best partner for their particular goals and needs.

Our team of dedicated professionals is working continuously to improve our system and keep it up-to-date with current market trends. We test each broker systematically by employing over 250 variables across nine categories:

• Trust
• Fees
• Account Types
• Tradable Instruments
• Platforms and Tools
• Deposits and Withdrawals
• Customer Support
• Research
• Education

We strive to be as objective as possible, which is why our rigorous examinations are devoid of any personal bias as much as possible. We review the licenses of all the subsidiaries of a broker and check the fine print in the Client Agreement. The reliability of a broker is further determined based on the website’s regulations, fees, and general transparency.

We collect essential information by opening a live account with a broker entity and testing its services in real time. We measure the spreads, swaps, and commissions on its most popular account type and compare our findings to the industry average.

We also test the functionality of the available platforms, the number and types of tradable instruments, the reliability of customer support, and the quality of the research and educational materials.

For this guide, we only considered brokers that offer futures CFDs and futures derivatives contracts. We took into consideration the number and type of futures assets offered, the costs, margin requirements, and the speed of order execution.

We scrutinized each broker’s regulatory adherence and safety measures for maximum client protection. We measured spreads and commissions, comparing them to the industry average and selecting the brokers with the most competitive pricing. Also, we assessed the usability of brokers’ platforms and confirmed whether they are integrated for implementing longer-term strategies, such as swing and day trading.

We abide by our strict guidelines for editorial integrity based on the objective standards we have set for our reviews. You can read more about our review process here.

Meet Our Writers

The team of forex and CFD writers and editors at FX Empire is composed of trading industry professionals and seasoned financial journalists. Our writers have been published on leading financial websites such as Investopedia and Forbes. In addition, they all have extensive trading experience.

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