eToro trading platform review

eToro offers a user-friendly and well-designed web trading platform, where social trading is also available. On the other hand, the platform's customizability is limited.

eToro's platform is intuitive and easy to use even for beginners.

The web trading platform is available in many languages:

Look and feel

The web trading platform has a clean design and great functions. The menus and buttons are where you expect them to be.

It is hard to customize though, as the panels are fixed. One exception is the watchlist, which is easy to configure.

Login and security

eToro has an optional, safer two-step login system. This can make it more complicated to log in, but it provides you with added security. You'll receive a text to your phone. Unfortunately, biometric authentication is not supported.

Search functions

The built-in search is predictive and easy to use. Type in a company or product name and you can see the results. You can search easily using tickers, too. 

Placing orders

Placing orders is self-explanatory. You can use the following order types: Market, Limit, Stop-loss, Trailing stop-loss.

If you are not familiar with order types, read this overview.

We found it quite strange that you cannot edit pending limit orders. For example, if you have a limit order for company X at $20 per share, you must cancel the pending order and create a new one in order to modify the order to $21 per share.

Alerts and notifications

You can set price alerts and notifications easily. eToro's alert function lets you know when an asset reaches a price target, and you also get a notification when your order is fulfilled. On the web platform, this is in the form of an icon update or a browser notification. On mobile, it is a push notification. 

Portfolio and fee reports

You will surely want to know how your portfolio is performing and how much you paid in fees. You can decide how you want to see your portfolio reports: a list of your assets or a pie chart showing your current portfolio.

Finding the fee report is quite complicated on first instance. Click on the 'Portfolio' tab, then go to 'History', and under the settings icon at the top right, you can access and download your account statement. This is a well-structured pdf file showing all your cash flows, including fees. When you are following someone, you will see all trades separately. However, fees are not added up, but listed individually by fee deduction.