IG vs Interactive Brokers Comparison – 2024

Top Reasons to Choose IG or Interactive Brokers

I have sampled the top reasons why I think IG is ideal for high-frequency trading and Interactive Brokers is perfect for diversified trading in the table below:

IG: Snapshot

Founded in 1974 and headquartered in the United Kingdom, IG is one of the long-standing financial brokers with established traditions in the trading industry. It is authorized by multiple top-tier financial regulators, including but not limited to the FCA, BaFin, ASIC, FNMA, and NFA. IG is a global leader in delivering optimal conditions for high-frequency trading.

IG: Who is it for?

IG caters to high-frequency traders, offering Direct Market Access (DMA), VPS hosting, and rapid execution speeds averaging below 14 milliseconds. Its platform, intuitive and equipped with advanced charting, supports 17,000+ instruments across various timeframes, ensuring efficient order execution.

What Makes IG Stand Out?

IG stands out with its comprehensive services for speculative trading on margin, including its extensive instruments offering, competitive prices, versatile platform, and fast order execution.

Interactive Brokers: Snapshot

Interactive Brokers was founded in 1978 in the United States. The broker is also licensed in multiple jurisdictions by some of the most trusted, top-tier financial institutions, such as the FCA, SEC, SFC, MAS, and others. Interactive Brokers is renowned for its extremely low fees, making it arguably the best choice for traders and investors interested in building diverse and well-balanced portfolios.

Interactive Brokers: Who is it for?

Interactive Brokers stands out for diversified traders and long-term investors, offering low trading fees and a wide range of instruments, including CFDs, options, futures, and ETFs. Particularly notable is its zero commission on US-listed shares, making it a prime choice for stock traders looking to expand their market exposure through its futures and options offerings.

What Makes Interactive Brokers Stand Out?

Interactive Brokers stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to low trading fees and an assortment of diverse trading contracts on offer.

Trust

IG vs Interactive Brokers Trust and Regulation Comparison

IG, a veteran with nearly 50 years in the industry, is listed on the London Stock Exchange, highlighting its stability and transparency. Its comprehensive legal information and client agreement, coupled with a ‘best execution policy’, ensure optimal price quotes for client orders.

Interactive Brokers, listed on Nasdaq with a $33 billion market cap, employs nearly 3000 staff globally, underscoring its robustness and transparency. It also follows a ‘best execution policy’ and meets stringent industry safety standards. Its legal documents are thorough, addressing all critical aspects effectively.

Fees

IG vs Interactive Brokers Spreads, Commissions, and Other Fees Comparison

IG charges floating spreads starting from 0.6 pips on CFDs with zero commissions, except for share CFDs, which incur a below-average commission. We assessed that IG, as a whole, charges below-average fees on FX pairs, certain commodities, and indices, though spreads can be wide for other instruments. IG also charges a minor inactivity fee. The broker’s pricing mechanism aligns with the needs of high-frequency traders.

Interactive Brokers stands out for its exceptionally low fees. They offer raw spreads from 0.0 pips on spot currency pairs with volume-based commissions, decreasing for larger orders. Unique to them is commission-free trading of US-listed stocks, highly favorable for stock traders. Additionally, they don’t charge inactivity or maintenance fees.

Platforms and Tools

IG vs Interactive Brokers Trading Platforms Comparison

IG offers an excellent proprietary platform, alongside MetaTrader 4, ProRealTime, and L2 Dealer. During the testing, I appreciated IG’s web-based platform for its functionality and easy navigation. It is well-suited for high-frequency trading, featuring fast order execution and one-click trading, and has multiple short-period timeframes. The mobile app maintains most web platform features, enhancing usability on the go.

Interactive Brokers boasts award-winning platforms, including its proprietary client portal and TradingWorkstation (TWS). TWS provides access to a wide range of markets (CFDs, futures, options, warrants, etc), ideal for diversifying market exposure. It’s equipped with over 90 technical indicators, advanced charting tools, and comprehensive analytical capabilities, making it a prime choice for technical traders. Interactive Brokers’ mobile apps afford traders quick and easy access to the market, even on the go.

Tradable Instruments

IG vs Interactive Brokers Instruments Selection Comparison

Quite impressively, IG offers more than 17,000 tradable instruments across multiple markets. These include lower-risk securities like ETFs and higher-yield/risk assets such as equities, indices, and cryptocurrencies. This diversity allows speculative traders to exploit all kinds of trading opportunities. The broker also offers complex contract types like options.

Interactive Brokers provides a diverse and comprehensive range of trading and investment instruments. Beyond the usual currency pairs, metals, and share CFDs, the broker uniquely offers mutual funds, warrants, and options on futures. With access to over 150 markets, Interactive Brokers enables traders to significantly diversify their portfolios and effectively hedge trading risks.

Customer Support

IG vs Interactive Brokers Customer Support Comparison

We tested IG’s customer support across multiple channels over the span of several days and found it to be sufficiently fast and reliable. Offering multilingual assistance in English, French, German, and Chinese via phone, live chat, and email, their agents were quick to respond and well-informed.

Interactive Brokers provides 24/5 customer support over the phone, email, and live chat. Even though agents tend to respond fairly quickly to new tickets, the quality of their support varies from agent to agent. Some were highly knowledgeable and handled complex queries with ease, while others seemed to struggle a bit more.

Research

IG vs Interactive Brokers Research Tools Comparison

IG offers comprehensive research tools, combining technical and fundamental analysis to provide real-time insights into market sentiment changes. This is particularly beneficial for intraday traders seeking new opportunities.

Interactive Brokers excels in research tools, offering a 360-degree overview of market trends. I appreciated the use of technical, fundamental, and psychological analysis in the broker’s content, affording the reader with a nuanced perspective into what is driving markets. Their content, ideal for those seeking a broad market understanding, is enriched with insights from third-party providers like Nasdaq and Investopedia.

Deposits and Withdrawals

IG vs Interactive Brokers Deposit and Withdrawal Methods Comparison

Deposits and withdrawals with IG can be made via bank wire, bank card, or e-wallet. These transactions usually take between 3-5 business days to process. The broker does not charge any handling fees, though third-party banking fees may apply in some cases.

The good thing I found about Interactive Brokers is that deposits and withdrawals are processed fairly quickly, usually within 1 business day. There are no handling fees charged by the broker, though again, third-party banking fees may apply. A limitation is that they only accept bank transfers, with options like bank cards or e-wallets currently unavailable.

Account Types and Terms

IG vs Interactive Brokers Account Types Comparison

IG offers a choice of retail and professional account types, plus a demo account. The IG CFD Trading account is geared towards retail traders with an interest in margin trading. It features a maximum leverage of 1:30 and is available against a minimum deposit of $250. It features Direct Market Access, which is suitable for high-frequency traders looking for fast and precise order execution.

By the way, if you’re interested in high-leverage trading, check out our list of top brokers offering such options.

Interactive Brokers offers a wide array of account types, including individual, joint, trust, money managers’, and small business accounts, catering to both trading and investing needs. This makes them a preferred choice for those focused on both speculative trading and long-term growth. The broker offers a choice of 19 different base currencies with no minimum deposit requirement.

Education

IG vs Interactive Brokers Educational Content Comparison

IG offers comprehensive educational resources suitable for both beginners and experienced traders. With its penetrating educational courses, IG can teach and inspire you to build comprehensive trading systems for consistent results. IG has written courses, webinars, seminars, and more. We determined that IG’s content is particularly well-suited for beginners seeking to build strong foundational knowledge.

Interactive Brokers’ educational content is extremely, well, interactive. The multilayered courses encompass technical, fundamental, and psychological analysis. Additionally, these courses include quizzes to reinforce learning, offering a nuanced, in-depth overview of essential trading knowledge and strategies. I appreciated Interactive Brokers’ content for its versatility, teaching the reader how to exploit various trading and investing opportunities.

Our Methodology

Since 2011, FX Empire has developed a detailed methodology for evaluating CFD brokers, involving over 250 variables across nine crucial categories. Our team of experts, with deep industry knowledge, conducts live testing and research by interacting with the brokers directly. We check regulations, open accounts, test spreads, account costs, platform functionality, instrument variety, customer support reliability, and the quality of research and educational content. This granular analysis helps us identify each broker’s strengths and weaknesses, keeping our comparisons current with market trends and ensuring our guides meet traders’ needs.

We strive to evaluate each broker objectively, considering how their offerings align with the diverse trading goals and preferences of our readers. Our focus is on providing a balanced overview of each broker’s strengths and weaknesses. This method ensures that our readers receive clear, insightful comparisons to aid in making well-informed trading decisions.

We employ a comprehensive rating system across nine key categories:

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

In each category, we conduct an in-depth analysis for both brokers, outlining features, advantages, and disadvantages and determining their suitability for different trader profiles. By blending insights from our extensive reviews with first-hand experiences and observations, we ensure each comparison is balanced, informative, and tailored to the trader’s unique needs. You can read more about our review process here.

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