- Low trading fees
- Wide range of products
- Many great research tools
- Many account types
- Complicated account opening process
- Complex desktop trading platform
- High inactivity fee
- Deposit options are limited, as neither credit/debit cards nor electronic wallets can be used
Company Information
Interactive Brokers was grounded in 1978 and is one of the biggest US-based discount brokers. The broker is regulated by several financial authorities, including top-tier ones like the UK’s FCA and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Their transparent, low commissions and financing rates support for best price execution, and stock yield enhancement program helps minimize costs to maximize your returns.
Markets
Interactive Brokers has a great selection of products. It also offers a couple of more exotic assets, like warrants and structured products. It only lags behind its competitors in terms of its FX pair and CFD selection. You can choose among the following asset classes:
● Fund
● Bond
● Options
● ETF
● CFD
● Crypto
Trading accounts
Interactive Brokers suggests a variety of account types for its clients, so that everybody could find what they are looking for. There are the following groups of account types:
- Individual, Joint, Trust, IRA and UGMA/UTMA Accounts
- Friends and Family Accounts
- Family Office Accounts
- Small Business Accounts
- Advisor Accounts
- Administrators
- Institutional Hedge Fund Investors
- Money Manager Accounts
- Broker & FCM Accounts
- Proprietary Trading Group Accounts
- Hedge & Mutual Fund Accounts
- Compliance Officers
Open an account
Account opening process with Interactive Brokers is fully digital and the required minimum deposit is low. You need to provide all the basic information about you, like personal information, address, email etc. On the other hand, the process is complicated, and account verification takes relatively long.
Minimum deposit
To open a live account, you’ll need a minimum deposit of at least $100. In other case, you can open a demo account that you can use to practice and study the market conditions to prepare for the real deal.
Trading Platforms
Interactive Brokers’s web platform is simple and easy to use, even for beginners. On the other hand, it is not customizable. You can choose between two web platforms: the Client Portal and WebTrader. The Client Portal is more user-friendly and easier to use than WebTrader. You can read more about WebTrader more here.
The Client Portal web application serves as a one-stop destination to check quotes and place trades, see account balances, P&L and key performance metrics, funding, reporting, and more.
Our verdict
After conducting careful research, we can conclude the following. Interactive Brokers has low trading fees, a wide range of products, and many great tools. Besides, it offers many account types to please every customer. On the negative side, the process of opening an account is complicated and long. The platform Client Portal has a complex desktop. There also is a high inactivity fee. Besides, deposit options are limited, as neither credit/debit cards nor electronic wallets can be used. Nevertheless, you should take into account the pros and cons, and afterward, you can make a decision based on the facts.
Interactive Brokers Details
Quite poor support way to act with customer complaint.
I joined Interactive Brokers because they gave me access to the Forexsignals Momentum Meter which is truly worthwhile once you understand what all the lines mean. I use it daily to guide my trading. Ben Clay, my account manager, is helpfull and not pushy, guiding me to education and daily emails and messages with recommendations which have given me trades with profits if used with due diligence.
If you’re looking for a great Broker look no further thanInteractive Brokers. Great competitive spreads and no commissions on top.
I found it very easy to set up my live account and hassle free.
I’ve been trading with them since May and had no problems what’s so ever.
When I’ve needed to get in touch, support has been tremendous. Have even had a few calls and emails from their Sales Manager Ben Clay just to see how things were going. Great !
Would highly Interactive Brokers.
I rate Interactive Brokers a full ten out of ten.
Their customer service is second to none and they are very fast at solving any issues you might have.
My client manager , Ben Clay, is friendly, professional and always there for me.
I find the spreads very reasonable compared to my last broker XM.
What about privacy policy? Is this information mentioned somewhere? How can I trust the broker without any information about privacy policy?
I have used this broker for few months now.
I’m very happy with them. When I request withdraw I have the money in my account within an hour after the request. Of course they are in the same country that I am.
Spreads are good and their customer service is good as well.
To sum up, I recommend this broker to everyone.
It isn’t very easy to take a profit with this broker. It looks like I will work really hard to do it!!
i FOUND THEM VERY HELPFUL IN SETTING UP HAVE NO ISSUES I HAVE HAD GOOD SUPPORT WHEN NEEDED ABSOLUTELY FINE BROKER INTEGRATES WITH MY ALGOS
I have tried multiple Forex broker from all over the world but this Interactive Brokers is surely a class broker… always keeping up communication via email and phone calls..specially Mr. Sebastian’s cordial approach regarding in any kind of problem I have faced so far..highly recommendable…
Highly recommended…
Fast withdraw, great support.
It is a great trading experience
Top rating broker sign up was just so easy.
The gentlemen who handled it all Tim maunsell was excellent.
Spreads are great COMMUNICATION IS TOP RATE.
It is a sane broker, but I think that he can be better if add Epayments as method of payment.