eToro

eToro offers free stock trading in Europe and has low CFD fees. On the negative side, forex trading fees are high and there is a fee charged for inactivity or withdrawal.

How we ranked fees

We ranked eToro’s fee levels as low, average or high based on how they compare to those of all reviewed brokers.

To get things rolling, let’s go over some lingo related to broker fees. What you need to keep an eye on are trading fees and non-trading fees.

• Trading fees occur when you trade. These can be commissions, spreads, financing rates and conversion fees.
• Non-trading fees include charges not directly related to trading, like withdrawal fees or inactivity fees.

In the sections below, you will find the most relevant fees of eToro for each asset class. For example, in the case of forex and stock index trading spreads, commissions and financing rates are the most important fees.

We also compared eToro’s fees with those of two similar brokers we selected, Plus500 and MarketsX. This selection is based on objective factors such as products offered, client profile, fee structure, etc. See a more detailed rundown of eToro alternatives.

To have a clear overview of eToro, let’s start with the trading fees.

Depositing money is free and easy, with a lot of available options, including credit cards. However, there is a withdrawal fee and only USD accounts are available.

Account base currencies

eToro only allows USD accounts, which means that your funding will be converted by eToro to USD. For example, if you deposit EUR, a 0.025% fee will be applied at funding and the same fee will also be charged when you withdraw EUR. Alternatively, you can deposit in USD, e.g. using your credit card. In that case, your bank will make the conversion at its own rate.

Why does this matter? For two reasons. If you fund your account in the same currency as your bank account or you trade assets in the same currency as your account base currency, you don’t have to pay a conversion fee.

A convenient way to save on currency conversion fees is opening a multi-currency bank account at a digital bank. Revolut or Transferwise both offer bank accounts in several currencies with great currency exchange rates as well as free or cheap international bank transfers. Opening an account only takes a few minutes on your phone.

eToro does not offer a desktop trading platform.

At eToro you can trade with CFDs and forex, as well as real stocks, ETFs and many cryptocurrencies. In addition, the broker also offers innovative services like social trading and CopyPortfolio.

eToro is primarily a CFD and forex broker. However, you can also trade with real stocks, ETFs, and a lot of different cryptos. eToro also has some nifty features, such as social trading (Copy People) and CopyPortfolio.

So, let’s break down eToro’s markets and products.

All non-leveraged buy positions for equities, ETFs and cryptocurrencies are traded as real assets. This means that when you buy stocks, ETFs or cryptos without any leverage (i.e. leverage is set to one), you will buy real stocks, ETFs and cryptos, not CFDs.

All other positions are CFDs:

• leveraged buy positions and all sell positions of stocks, ETFs and cryptos
• all positions of forex, commodities and indices

Within CFDs, in addition to the traditional way of trading, you can

• follow and copy other traders’ trading (this is Copy People, also called social trading), or
• invest in a compiled CFD portfolio (this is CopyPortfolio).

To learn more about CFDs, read our CFD trading tips.

Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

At eToro, you can trade with an average number of products. For example, there are fewer stock CFDs available than at Plus500, another CFD broker. The same can be said about currency pairs and commodities. On the other hand, eToro offers a wider range of stock and ETF CFDs than its closest competitors, and you can also trade with many of the most popular cryptocurrencies.

eToro has good technical analysis tools. There are some analyst recommendations and market sentiment indicators available, but no comprehensive fundamental data.

Research is available in 21 languages (the same languages that are available on the web and mobile trading platforms).

Recommendations

For some popular stocks, you can find recommendations, like analyst consensus (buy/hold/sell), average price target, hedge fund sentiment and insider trading sentiment. In some cases, you can also read the analyst reports. Unfortunately, these research features are available only for a very limited number of stocks.

eToro review – Research – Recommendation

Fundamental data

Some basic fundamental data on stocks is available on eToro’s platform. This includes the profile of the company and some very basic indicators and ratios such as P/E, EPS, dividend yield and beta. No fundamental data is available for asset classes other than stocks.

You can also sign up for a daily market analysis newsletter in which you get a useful list of the market highlights.

Charting

eToro’s charting tool is quite good and you can use many, ca. 70 technical indicators. We liked that charts are automatically saved, so you don’t have to waste your time setting up your indicators time and again. On the negative side, you can only see the data for the past ca. 6 months, no longer time horizon can be set.

eToro review – Research – Charting

News feed

The news feed is not really an official news feed, e.g. it is not like an integrated Bloomberg feed. Rather, it is like a market-themed Twitter feed, showing messages posted by eToro users and analysts. Hashtags (#) are used for themes and dollar signs ($) for assets. We were not a huge fan of this feature, but if your tastes differ you might like it.

eToro customer service is good: you can reach it on several channels and get quick and relevant answers. On the flip side, you can’t reach them on weekends and it’s difficult to find the live chat service on the webpage.

You can contact eToro’s customer service via live chat and a web-based ticketing system where you will get an answer by email. It was always quick and reliable when we tested it.

On the flip side, the customer service cannot be reached on the weekends, and it’s difficult to find the live chat function on the website as it is hidden under the FAQ under the ‘Help Center’ link.

eToro customer service, in theory, is available in all 21 languages the web and mobile trading platforms offer. We only tested customer service in English.

eToro review – Customer Service

eToro’s education tools are limited, with only some medium-quality videos about investing available.

For practice, you can use a demo account. Other education tools are not really strong at eToro. There is one short tutorial video on how to use the platform, and some basic educational videos about investing and the financial markets.

The content discussed is intended for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice.

eToro is regulated by top-tier financial authorities like the FCA, ASIC and CySEC. However, it is not listed on any stock exchange, does not disclose financial information and does not have a bank parent.

Is eToro regulated?

Yes, it is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).

eToro is based in Israel and was founded in 2007.

Is eToro safe?

To be certain, we highly advise that you check two facts:

• how you are protected if something goes wrong
• what the background of the broker is

How you are protected

eToro operates three legal entities and serves customers based on their residency. This matters because the entity you belong to defines the amount of protection you get.

• Citizens of the United Kingdom can open an account at eToro (UK) Limited and thus they will be protected by the FCA. If eToro becomes insolvent, eToro UK clients can expect to be compensated by the maximum amount of £85,000 guaranteed by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).
• Australian clients are served by eToro Australia, which is regulated by ASIC, the Australian financial authority. ASIC however does not provide any obligatory investor protection for a pre-set amount.
• Other investors will have their live trading accounts with eToro (Europe) Limited, which is regulated by the Cypriot watchdog, CySEC. The amount of investment protection coverage at eToro Europe is a maximum of €20,000. This threshold is set by the Cypriot Investors Compensation Fund.

Here is a handy summary table for easy comparison:

eToro has zero-commission stock trading in Europe. Account opening is really fast and seamless. It has also a lot of innovative features, like social trading.

It has some drawbacks, though. Forex fees and non-trading fees are high, and eToro only allows USD accounts.

Overall, we would recommend eToro for its social trading feature and cheap stock trading.

Risk disclaimer

eToro is a multi-asset platform that offers both investing in stocks and cryptoassets, as well as trading CFD assets.

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Cryptoassets are volatile instruments which can fluctuate widely in a very short timeframe and therefore are not appropriate for all investors. Other than via CFDs, trading cryptoassets is unregulated and therefore is not supervised by any EU regulatory framework.

Past performance is not an indication of future results.