8 Best Copy and Social Trading Platforms for 2024

List of Top Platforms for Social and Copy Trading

Best brokers for US traders

Best brokers for international traders

How Did FX Empire Select the Best Social and Copy Trading Platforms?

• Trusting others with your hard-earned money requires high transparency and accountability. That is why we consider only the most tightly regulated and trusted brokers that comply with the strictest safety policies in the industry.
• We evaluate the most user-friendly proprietary platforms that accommodate social and copy trading. We also checked whether the brokers incorporate other leading third-party tools, such as ZuluTrade, DupliTrade, and MyFXBook.
• The ultimate success of even the most sophisticated trading strategies depends on several contributing factors. That is why we test the liquidity supply and speed of order execution afforded by a broker. We also evaluate the range of its tradable instruments and the usability of its account types.
• We also measure every broker’s spreads, swaps, and commissions and determine the type of traders they are most suitable for.
• Using our extensive database, we can point out the most suitable brokers for newbies and professionals based on their skill levels, preferences, and needs regarding copy and social trading.

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 take a dive into the selected brokers.

Our Methodology

FX Empire has pioneered a unique and comprehensive methodology for evaluating the services and conditions of brokers that provide leveraged trading to clients worldwide. Our goal with each review is to underscore even the most minute pros and cons in the service of each broker so that our readers can gain a clear and comprehensive understanding of what the company can do for them.

After completing hundreds of reviews over a decade, we remain just as committed to continuing to update and improve our methodology in light of the ever-changing market environment. We test the functioning of each broker by systematically employing over 250 variables across nine different categories:

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

We review the licenses of each subsidiary operating under a brand name and check the fine print in the Client Agreements in order to discern the exact protections entailed to clients of the broker. We put a lot of effort into evaluating a broker’s transparency and trustworthiness based on the scope and availability of information on its website.

Other essential information is gathered by opening a live account with the entity under review and testing its services in real-time. We measure the spread rates, swaps, and commissions on its most popular account type and compare our findings to the industry average.

We test the functionality of the platforms, the number and types of available instruments, the reliability of customer support, and the quality of the research and educational materials. Moreover, we check the reliability and security of secondary services, such as automated and social trading, so that we can determine how safe they are for the average retail trader.

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 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.

How to Choose Social and Copy Trading Platforms?

This section highlights all the relevant considerations you have to make before using copy or social trading platforms.

What to Find a Safe Broker?

If there is one thing separating all the trustworthy brokers from the ones of less reputable disposition, it’s their authorizations and licenses issued by trusted regulatory bodies. You can usually find all relevant information about a broker’s licenses and regulations in its Client Agreement, which should be displayed in the Legal Docs section of the website.

You should always look for all the significant hallmarks of a reliable broker in its Client Agreement – segregated funds, negative balance protection, a compensation scheme, and if it caps the maximum leverage allowed.

But what about copy trading and social trading in particular? Well, the most important thing to remember is that you must make sure you know who you trust to trade on your behalf, whether directly or indirectly. If you subscribe to somebody else’s strategy and copy their trades, it is not enough to only check their success ratio of winning trades against losing ones.

Make sure you know the person you are dealing with. Talk to them, inquire about their approach to trading, find out what is their usual market exposure per trade, and so on. Subscribing to a winning strategy is one thing, but you have to ensure that the goals of the person running it match the needs and means of your account. In short, do your due diligence and look for the strategy that best fits your circumstances instead of the one promising the biggest returns, especially if the underlying risk exceeds the risk you can tolerate.

Read more about Best regulated forex brokers.

How to Estimate the Competitiveness of a Broker’s Fees?

High trading costs can curb the success of even the best-performing strategies. That is why before you start looking for the highest-earning traders to subscribe to, you have to evaluate whether your broker’s fees are competitive when measured against the industry average.

Check out our list of Best lowest spread forex brokers.

Things like spread rates, swap rates, and commissions are important determinants of success in the long run. For instance, a strategy with fewer successful trades could generate higher net returns than a strategy with a higher ratio of successful trades, which is nevertheless executed with a broker with higher trading fees.

That is why your first concern should be to consider what strategies are best suited for your account type. For instance, your account is tailored for high-frequency trading if you have a standard STP (Straight-Through-Processing) account with no commissions and floating spreads (usually starting from 1.0 pips). Commission-free accounts accommodate high-volatility strategies, like intraday trading and scalping, which require frequent getting in and out of trades intended to capture small price changes.

Accordingly, if you have an ECN account with a fixed round turn commission per traded lot and raw spreads (usually from 0.0 pips), your account is better suited to accommodate high-volume trading strategies. Day trading and position trading strategies are prime examples of this type. Those entail the execution of comparatively larger positions less frequently. The central idea is to avoid paying a lot of commissions, take advantage of the much smaller spreads, and ride much larger price trends.

Explore Best ECN forex brokers and Best STP forex brokers.

Why is Liquidity Matters?

Now that you’ve thought about regulations and fees, it’s time to turn your attention to precision and speed of execution. Like with a broker’s trading fees, its liquidity supply (or lack thereof) can affect your overall performance.

To understand why this is important, consider the following example. You’ve discovered the highest-earning strategy on your broker’s social trading platform and have happily subscribed to it. The trader running it spots an excellent opportunity at 10:00:01. He reacts and places a market order at 10:00:04. Suppose also that the broker’s access to liquidity from its providers is poor so that the order gets filled at 10:00:06. Once filled, an identical order is placed automatically on your end. It takes another second or two to finalize.

In these critical 6 or 7 seconds in this imaginary scenario, the price of the underlying could have already changed significantly to the point where the opportunity is no longer viable. And yet, you are locked into a position that was opened without a competitive edge. In the long run, such poor execution can only lead to one certain outcome, and it does not involve you accumulating a lot of profits.

And even if there is no delay between the time the original position is opened and an identical trade is placed on your account, the precious few seconds wasted before the order is filled could still be too much. When this difference is to the disadvantage of the trader, it is called negative slippage and is caused by poor liquidity supply.

To mitigate the risk of negative slippage, make sure you choose a broker that:

• Has access to a deep liquidity pool supported by multiple providers.
• Has an average execution time of fewer than 1.0 seconds.
• Has a best execution policy on its website.

How to Choose a Multi-Market Access Broker?

When choosing a broker, it’s crucial to consider the variety and number of tradable instruments they offer for market flexibility. Imagine a scenario where a trader with an effective strategy is limited by a broker offering a narrow selection of instruments. This restriction hinders the ability to capitalize on diverse market opportunities, such as a tech stock rally or fluctuations in the Forex market.

Limited market access can adversely affect both the trader’s and your investment outcomes. Therefore, opting for a broker with a broad range of instruments, including complex options like vanilla options, is essential. This enables the exploitation of trading opportunities from multiple perspectives.

What to Avoid When Choosing a Social or Copy Trading Platform?

If your plan is simply to duplicate the success of others, then even the most basic platform like MetaTrader 4 (MT4) can do the job, provided you find a signal provider whose system matches your needs. But if you want to grow as a trader and hone your skills over time, then perhaps you need a more sophisticated platform.

Read more about best MT4 brokers and best MT5 brokers.

Avoid platforms that are not user-friendly or do not accommodate easy interaction between its members. You want to be able to communicate freely with more experienced traders so that you can gain different perspectives on trading.

Also, avoid platforms that do not have sufficient indicators and drawing tools, do not have a best execution policy, or do not incorporate a wide range of instruments from multiple asset classes.

How to Avoid Forex and CFD Scams?

Scam brokers rely, above all else, on the gullibility of traders. A common tactic scammers employ to lure in new victims is to promise quick and easy profits at no risk to the trader. Even more noteworthy, they promise to trade on behalf of their “clients,” requiring almost no effort from them.

Unfortunately, the allure of easy profits without any real effort is quite similar to the idea of copy trading, where you subscribe to another trader’s strategy and hope to replicate their results. However, there is one substantial difference. Real copy trading involves a symbiotic relationship between a broker, a signal provider, and a signal follower, which benefits all parties. And copy trading still requires due diligence.

So, the question is how to recognize and protect yourself from scammers wanting to exploit your trust and steal your money. Well, first and foremost, look for licenses and regulations! The best 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 in different jurisdictions here.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you need to be careful where you leave your information online. Registering your details on suspicious pop-ups or even more innocuous-looking landing pages promising you enormous profits could result in your contact details ending up in a scammer’s calling list. Remember, no licensed broker would make unsolicited, cold calls.

The next time you get called out of the blue with promises of becoming the next Warren Buffet with zero effort, you are most likely speaking to a scammer. Nowhere is the “if something sounds too good to be true…” saying more accurate than in the world of trading. That is why if you want to be safe, always check the licenses and authorizations of the brokers you plan to do business with.

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