Looking for the top broker in Italy? Based on our hands-on analysis, we’ve identified 8 best options tailored to various trading needs. Practical tips from our experts are included.
Trading forex and CFD in Italy is legal and regulated by the Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB). Operating under the framework of European financial legislation, particularly the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), CONSOB ensures that brokers meet stringent guidelines focused on transparency, investor protection, and market integrity.
To legally operate in Italy, forex or CFD brokers must obtain a license from CONSOB or another European Economic Area (EEA) authority. Italian regulations enforce leverage limits of 1:30 for forex and 1:20 for other assets, along with requirements like segregated client funds and negative balance protection. These rules aim to ensure a secure, transparent trading environment.
Our team of experts has identified each broker’s strengths and weaknesses using FX Empire’s comprehensive methodology. Here’s how we test.
Now let’s dive into the selected brokers.
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in the United Kingdom, ActivTrades is a veteran CFDs and forex broker. It offers over 1,100 lower-risk and higher-yield/risk instruments from different asset classes, allowing for the implementation of multiple trading strategies.
Regional Features:
I conducted a comprehensive review of ActivTrades and determined that the broker has one of the most well-rounded offerings both in Italy and globally. I was most impressed by its average execution speed of 4 milliseconds, which ranks ActivTrades among the top 5 brokers in the world. It also has below-average trading costs and a very versatile trading platform. The broker also affords Italian traders a wide range of share CFDs of local companies.
I opened an Individual ActivTrades account with the broker, which affords commission-free trading and floating spreads starting from 0.5 pips, which is quite low. I recorded an average EURUSD spread of 0.9 pips, which is how I calculated that trading one full-sized position would cost around $9.
ActivTrades has developed a user-friendly platform with more than 200 analytical tools and chart configurations. Some of the platform’s standout features that I found quite useful include a progressive trailing stop order and the availability of pullback entries. Both allow more sophisticated trade execution.
OCTA is a European CFD broker that was established in 2018. The Italian version of the website offers access to 43 CFDs across FX pairs, commodities, and indices. The standout feature of the broker’s general offering is its in-house trading platform, OctaTrader.
Regional Features:
OctaTrader has a web-based version and an intuitive mobile app, which makes trading on the go easy and pleasant. I appreciated the app for its straightforward design and functionality.
OctaTrader has an easy learning curve, and beginners can quickly navigate the platform. The platform has flexible charts, making it easy to scale price action up and down. The broker also features other useful components, such as an alerts-setting option and fast order execution.
OCTA’s trading fees are fair and accommodate most strategy types. The broker offers floating spreads around 1.0 pips, which generally meets the industry average. There is no commission per traded lot, as the commission is already built into the spread.
IronFX is a multi-regulated forex and CFD broker founded in 2010 and headquartered in Cyprus. It offers over 500 tradable instruments from all major asset classes. IronFX provides excellent research materials developed in-house, and it also incorporates content from the seamless TradingCentral.
Regional Features:
I was impressed by IronFX’s rich and diverse assortment of research content which includes plenty of market breakdowns, trading ideas, technical and fundamental analyses, and more. This diversity provides traders with a nuanced perspective on currently developing market trends and the opportunity to examine viable trading opportunities from multiple angles.
The broker incorporates the MetaTrader 4 platform which features about 50 analytical tools, such as technical indicators and drawing tools, and accommodates the execution of basic technical analysis. MT4 also supports automated trading via its Expert Advisors (EAs) feature.
I opened IronFX’s No Commission trading account with $0 commissions and floating spreads from 0.9 pips. I executed a full-sized EURUSD position and recorded a net cost of $9, which falls below the industry average of $10.
easyMarkets is a Cyprus-based forex and CFDs broker established in 2001. It offers more than 230 tradable instruments, 31 of which are commodities. Traders can choose between metals, energies, and agricultural instruments and trade them as CFDs, vanilla options, or forwards.
Regional Features:
easyMarkets stands out with its excellent proprietary platform, which integrates actionable trading signals from Trading Central. The web trader features 92 technical indicators, 85 drawing tools, 11 timeframes, and 12 chart types. The broker also offers the standard suites of MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, and the seamless TradingView.
I tested easyMarkets’ gold and crude oil spreads during the London and New York opens, finding them low to average compared to industry standards.
Plus500 is a financial derivatives broker founded in 2009. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), attesting to its stability and transparency. Plus500 provides over 2800 tradable instruments, low-to-average spreads, and a seamless trading platform.
Regional Features:
I was impressed by Plus500’s web platform due to its intuitive and user-friendly design. It stands out with its high-definition charts, specifically developed to give traders a probing overview of price action behavior. The charts are easily scalable, so traders can switch quickly from lower to higher timeframes.
Plus500 WebTrader features over 150 analytical tools (technical indicators and drawing tools) and chart configurations (timeframes and chart types). It also supports all basic order types (market, limit, and stop). The platform stands out with the +Insights Analytics tool, which helps traders assess the prevailing market sentiment at any time.
I conducted my tests on the standard Plus500 account, which features commission-free trading and floating spreads from 0.8 pips. My findings indicate that the broker charges low-to-average spreads compared to the industry average.
AvaTrade is a Forex & CFDs broker that was established in 2006 and is headquartered in Ireland. It offers access to over 1250 tradable instruments from the biggest asset classes in the industry. The broker also has multiple European-style options, giving traders extra flexibility on the market.
Regional Features:
I determined AvaTrade is the best choice for beginners because it has accessible trading accounts, a low minimum deposit of $100, reliable customer support, and a rich collection of research and educational materials. The broker also affords commission-free trading. AvaTrade’s market analyses and trading ideas, provided by Trading Central, are also very high-quality.
The broker incorporates MetaTrader 4 and 5. It also has developed a proprietary platform for trading CFDs WebTrader as well as for options trading Ava Options. The broker also provides access to DupliTrade and AvaSocial for algorithmic and social trading. With $0 volume-based commissions and floating spreads from 0.8 pips, I assessed AvaTrade’s trading fees to be lower than the industry average.
A Swiss-based bank Swissquote holds multiple top-tier licenses from some of the most trusted financial regulators. Founded in 1996, the broker offers access to the remarkable over 3 million trading and investing instruments. Swissquote has also been listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange since 2000, which is yet another indication of its overall safety.
Regional Features:
As a high-frequency trader, I have always looked for highly customizable platforms that afford me the extra flexibility to manipulate price action and examine every small detail. And I found it in Swissquote’s proprietary platform Advanced Trader. In addition to its customizability, the platform is also beginner-friendly. One of its standout features is the rich database of information about implementing all the tradable instruments available on the platform.
Swissquote also incorporates the MetaTrader 4&5, including MetaTrader’s Master Edition plugin which affords enhanced charting capabilities. The broker also offers trading signals and market analyses from Autochartist and Trading Central – two of the most renowned signal providers in the industry.
I also tested Swissquote’s fees and found them to exceed the industry average. The broker affords commission-free trading and floating spreads starting from 1.7 pips. This puts the cost of a full-sized EURUSD trade at around $17, which exceeds the $10 industry average.
FP Markets is a well-balanced broker with diverse offerings and accessible trading accounts. The broker was established in 2005 and is headquartered in Australia. I chose FP Markets as the most suitable for professionals because of its professional-grade trading tools and extensive offering of instruments from different markets.
Regional Features:
In addition to its already low-latency trading capacity, I discovered that FP Markets provides free VPS hosting to those who trade over 10 lots per month on a Standard account and 20 lots on a Raw account. The broker also incorporates a Traders Toolbox for MetaTrader, granting traders access to advanced charting tools.
I opened a Standard account with FP Markets, which affords commission-free trading and floating spreads starting from 1.0 pips. The account type has an incredibly low minimum deposit requirement of just $50. It also supports VPS hosting, though swap-free trading via Islamic Accounts is unavailable.
In addition to MetaTrader 4, FP Markets also incorporates its successor (MetaTrader 5) and the seamless IRESS platform. The latter is only available with the broker’s offshore entity and is specifically designed for stock trading as it includes over 10,000 share CFDs of companies from some of the biggest exchanges in the world. The IRESS also affords professional-grade charting tools and order types.
Now, it’s time to go over the specific considerations traders in Italy must make when choosing a forex broker:
In order to make sure you are dealing with a trustworthy partner, you need to check whether the broker entity you choose is tightly regulated and complies with all industry safety requirements.
Brokers operating in Italy must adhere to MiFID II requirements as Italy is an EU member state. MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II) is a European Union regulation that aims to increase transparency and investor protection in financial markets. Adhering to MiFID II guidelines standardizes broker practices across Europe, thereby boosting trader confidence. Additionally, it makes it easier for brokers to offer their services in multiple EU nations.
Read more about Best MiFID regulated brokers.
Below, I have broken down the most important safety mechanisms under MiFID II, which is important for traders in Europe.
Check out our guide on Best European regulated brokers.
Read more about Best regulated forex brokers.
A broker may have 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.
Read more about 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 also that the spread on the pair is 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.
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. And if you are still uncertain, you can always check out our database of reviews to sort out the most competitive brokers.
Check out our list of best lowest spread forex brokers.
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.
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 in order 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.
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.
Read more about best MT4 brokers and best MT5 brokers.
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 summarise, the question of choosing the best platform for you is one of simplicity vs. practicality.
Check out our dedicated guide on Best forex trading platforms.
Here is a quick rundown of what traders must avoid:
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. In my opinion, 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.
Here at FX Empire, we have pioneered a unique methodology for evaluating forex and CFD 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:
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 CONSOB and EU-regulated brokers that are authorized to provide trading services to clients from Italy. We assessed each broker’s adherence to safety regulations and its maximum leverage. We measured spreads and commissions, comparing them to the industry average, and selected the brokers with the most competitive pricing.
We checked whether brokers have localized websites for Italian traders, whether their platforms and customer support are available in Italian, and whether trading accounts can be opened with EUR as a base currency.
Also, we evaluated the usability of brokers’ platforms and confirmed whether they are integrated for implementing longer-term strategies, such as swing and day trading, or shorter-term, like intraday trading and scalping.
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.
The team of forex and CFD analysts and editors at FXEmpire is composed of trading industry professionals and seasoned financial journalists. Our experts have been published on leading financial websites such as Investopedia and Forbes. In addition, they all have extensive trading experience.
Dan Blystone began his career in the trading industry in 1998 on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Later Dan gained insight into the forex industry during his time as a Series 3 licenced futures and forex broker. He also traded at a couple of different prop trading firms in Chicago. Dan is well-equipped to recommend the best forex brokers due to his extensive experience and understanding of the brokerage industry.
Jitan Solanki is a professional trader, market analyst, and educator. He day trades major currency and index markets and focuses on swing trading US equities and commodities. A qualified Market Technician, Jitan also works with trader education and brokerage companies on various projects. These include market analysis, live trading events, and broker reviews. As an experienced trader and educator, Jitan brings all his qualities in action when reviewing and recommending brokers.
Having been a retail trader since 2013, Plamen has gained an in-depth understanding of the challenges that novice traders face today. His expertise is swing trading and day trading with a heavy emphasis on psychological and fundamental analysis. Plamen’s favourite trading instruments include FX majors and gold. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics and International Relations. Plamen's broad experience has equipped him with the expertise to recommend the best forex brokers.
In more than 15 years of trading in the financial markets, Vladimir dealt with a wide range of brokers and financial instruments. His career as a day-trader at a proprietary trading firm goes back to 2007. Later, Vladimir turned to longer time frames and became an independent trader and analyst managing his own portfolio. Using his experience, he helps traders find the best broker in his reviews.
Having been a retail trader since 2013, Plamen has gained an in-depth understanding of the challenges that novice traders face today. His expertise is swing trading and day trading with a heavy emphasis on psychological and fundamental analysis. Plamen’s favourite trading instruments include FX majors and gold. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics and International Relations. Plamen's broad experience has equipped him with the expertise to recommend the best forex brokers.
At FXEmpire, we strive to provide unbiased, thorough and accurate broker reviews by industry experts to help our users make smarter financial decisions.