IG fees explained

When it comes to brokerage fees IG shows a mixed picture: some fees are high but some are low. First you need to figure out your approach or you should use our questionnaire to be able to tell whether IG fees are an advantage for you. Continue reading about IG fees and charges to see if this is the right brokerage for you or a similar broker like eToro or XTB is better for you.

Here's a high level overview of IG's fees

Disclaimer: 75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. CFDs are not provided for US clients. Forex trading involves risk. Losses can exceed deposits.

Online brokerages in general charge much lower brokerage fees than traditional brokerages do - this is largely due to the fact that online brokerages' businesses can be much better scaled: From a purely technical standpoint it doesn't make that much of a difference for them if they have 100 or 5000 clients.

This is not to say however that they don't have any fees at all. They make money by charging you at various events for various rates. Usually you need to keep an eye on these 3 types of fees:

• Trading fees - these are brokerage fees that you pay when you actually do a trade. What you pay is either a commission, a spread or financing rate. Some brokers apply all of these.
  • A commission is either based on the traded volume or it is fixed.
  • A spread is the difference between the buy price and the sell price
  • Financing rate or overnight rate is charged when you hold your leveraged positions for more than one day.
• Non-trading fees. These occur related to some operations you make in your account, i.e. depositing money to your account, withdrawing money from it or not trading for an extended amount of time.

We compare IG fees with its closest competitors, eToro and XTB.

We see IG's trading fees to be high because they charge more than most of its competitors.

Let's break down the trading fees into the different asset classes available at IG.

Trading fees

IG's trading fees are average.

It is super hard to compare trading fees for CFD brokers. What we did at BrokerChooser? Instead of quoting long fee tables, we compare brokers by calculating all fees of an example trade for three assets.

For the assets we chose cleverly and arbitrarily:

• Apple, a large US stock
• Vodafone, a large European stock
• EURUSD, a popular currency pair

The example in this context would mean buying a position, holding for one week, and selling it. For the volume we chose a $2,000 position for the stocks and $20,000 for the EURUSD.

This super catch-all benchmark includes spreads, commissions and financing costs for all brokers.

Here is the verdict.

Financing rates

IG financing rates are average.

If you want to trade on margin and prefer to hold your positions long, financing costs can be significant.

Leverage is a double-edged sword and can dramatically amplify your profits. It can also just as dramatically amplify your losses. Trading foreign exchange/CFDs with any level of leverage may not be suitable for all investors.

Currency conversion fee

IG will charge a Currency Conversion Fee for all trades on instruments denominated in a currency different to the currency of your account. The fee is charged as the following: 0.5% mark-up.

When it comes to looking at all the non-trading fees IG is an average broker. This means that some of the non-trading fees are high, but the others are low or not charged at all.

Non-trading fees include various brokerage fees and charges at IG that you pay not related to buying and selling assets. Among some others, typical non trading fees are withdrawal fee, deposit fee, inactivity fee and account fee.

Deposit fees are applied when you send money to your trading account from your bank account. Usually brokers don't charge money for that and IG is not different: you will see the exact same amount on your brokerage account that you sent by any of the deposit methods IG offers.

Unlike some online brokers we have reviewed IG does not charge a withdrawal fee. This means that you'll see the same amount of money on your bank account that you transferred from your brokerage account.

IG does apply an inactivity fee and it is $/£12/€14 per month after 2 years of inactivity. This means that you need to be strategic about your trading activity to avoid getting charged after a longer time of no trade. The fact that IG charges an inactivity fee makes it less ideal for you if you are a buy and hold investor.

IG has low inactivity fee.

Read more about IG inactivity fee on their own site.