Pepperstone review

Key facts

Indicative figures — spreads are variable, commissions and minimum deposits vary by account type and by the regional entity serving you. Confirm current terms on Pepperstone’s website. Last reviewed: 2026-07.

Our verdict on Pepperstone

Pepperstone is a raw-spread CFD broker with a wide platform range — MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView and its own platform — and Razor pricing from 0.0 pips plus $3.50 per lot per side. It suits short-term FX and index traders who want familiar tooling, provided they accept that everything traded is a CFD and that protections differ sharply by entity.

Watch out:Which entity serves you decides your protection: FCA, CySEC and ASIC clients get capped leverage and a compensation scheme, while the SCB (Bahamas) entity offers far higher leverage with no FSCS or ICF cover. Pepperstone reports that 79.6% of retail accounts lose money.

Regulation and what protection actually applies

Pepperstone holds authorisations from the FCA, ASIC, CySEC, BaFin, DFSA, CMA and SCB, but you deal with exactly one of them. That single choice determines the two things that matter most: how much leverage you can take, and whether any compensation scheme stands behind your balance if the firm fails. FCA, CySEC and ASIC clients get leverage caps and a compensation framework. Clients onboarded to the SCB entity in the Bahamas can access far higher leverage with no FSCS or ICF cover — a materially different arrangement wearing the same brand.

Higher leverage is routinely marketed as an upgrade, and it is worth being blunt about what it is instead: the same account funded thinner, so a given adverse move in an index or gold consumes a larger share of it. Pepperstone's own disclosure that 79.6% of retail accounts lose money is the context for that decision. Before funding, identify the entity named in your client agreement, confirm whether a compensation scheme applies to it, and decide whether losing that protection is a trade you would knowingly make.

Pricing and market access

The Razor account quotes raw spreads from 0.0 pips plus $3.50 per lot per side, and the honest reading is that 0.0 is not the total cost — the commission is the cost, and the spread floats on top of it. Index and commodity CFDs carry no separate commission, so their cost sits inside the spread instead and is less visible. There are no deposit, withdrawal, account-opening or inactivity fees, and the minimum deposit is $10, so the barrier to opening is low even if the barrier to trading well is not.

Everything available is a CFD: forex, indices, metals, commodities, crypto and shares. You never own the underlying and you never touch an exchange order book, which is the core structural difference from the futures brokers in this list. An index CFD tracking NQ is not an NQ contract, and a crypto CFD is not BTC. Compared with IC, pricing is close on MT4 and MT5 with a lower minimum deposit here; compared with IG, spreads are structured differently rather than simply cheaper.