Oanda Review 2019

Oanda is an American FX broker established in 1996. It is considered safe, as it is regulated by top-tier financial authorities, like the UK FCA and the Australian ASIC.

Oanda is a forex and CFD broker. CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 77% 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.

Recommended for forex traders that prefer a user-friendly platform and great research tools.

Oanda pros and cons

Oanda offers a great and easy-to-use web trading platform. It has a user-friendly and fully digital account opening with no minimum account balance. It has also powerful research tools, e.g. it has a great API offer.

Oanda has a limited product portfolio as it offers only forex CFDs. The customer support has a lot to improve as it is slow and provides irrelevant. The money withdrawal can be pricey.

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Oanda review
Fees 3 stars

Oanda offers low trading fees and high non-trading fees. The withdrawal fee can be really high.

To get things rolling, let's go over some broker fee lingo. You need to keep an eye on trading fees, financing rates, and non-trading fees.

• Trading fees occur when you trade. This can be commissions and spreads.
• Financing rates or overnight rates are charged when you hold your leveraged positions for more than a day. Leveraged position means that you borrow money from the broker to trade.
• Non-trading fees are like withdrawal fee or inactivity fee.

We compare Oanda fees with two Oanda alternatives, Pepperstone and FXCM.

Let's start with the trading fees.

Trading fees

Oanda trading fees are low.

It is super hard to compare trading fees for forex brokers. What we did at Brokerchooser? Instead of quoting long fee tables, we compare brokers by calculating all fees of a typical trade for two currency pairs.  

• EURUSD, a popular currency pair
• EURGBP, another popular currency pair

The typical trade means that you buy for $20,000 using 30:1 leverage, and sell it after a week.

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

Making this calculation, it is clear that Oanda offers low trading fees, almost the same as Pepperstone. 

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Financing rates

Oanda financing rates are high. It is super hard to understand the Oanda's financing rate calculation. It is a nice touch that there are tools to help, like a financing rates calculator. But, using these tools is also complicated, especially if you don't have much experience.

Non-trading fees

Oanda non-trading fees are high as well. There is an inactivity fee but only after 2 years. 

The withdrawal fee depends on your account currency, the method and the number of withdrawals. You can check the conditions at Oanda's website.

Oanda review
Account opening 4 stars

Oanda account opening is hassle-free and straightforward. There is no minimum balance required. On the other hand, the sales team is pushy.

Can you open an account?

Oanda accepts customers from most countries, including the US. There a few exceptions, most notables are India, New Zealand, Turkey, and South Korea.

Minimum deposit

There is no minimum deposit at Oanda.

Account types

There is one account type. You can more open sub-accounts, up to 19. The sub-account is great to have different base currencies at one account. E.g. you have a USD account and have an EUR and GBP subaccounts.

How to open your account

From start to finish you can calculate with less than 10 minutes. To be approved, it can take multiple days. 

Four steps of Oanda account open:

1. Contact details: username and password
2. Personal information: basic personal information, like your employment status or your income estimation
3. Appropriateness test: you have to fill out a test with questions like what are margins
4. Verify your identity: a copy of your ID/passport for verifying your identity, and a bank statement/utility bill for verifying your residency.

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Oanda review
Deposit and withdrawal 4 stars

You can use many options for both deposit and withdrawal, and the first withdrawal is free for cards. However, the withdrawal can take long and the withdrawal fee can be high.

Account base currencies

There are 9 available base currencies at Oanda: EUR, GBP, CHF, USD, CAD, AUD, JPY, HKD, SGD. This is a great offer which is also specific to Oanda's competitor brokers.  E.g. Pepperstone offers10 base currencies, while FXCM offers 7.

Why does this matter? Because if you fund your account in the same currency as your bank account, currency conversion fees won't be charged. 

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

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Deposit fees and options

Oanda deposit is free of charge, but the options vary based on your residency and your account currency. E.g. electronic wallets are not available for US clients and PayPal in Europe is only available for GBP, USD, and EUR accounts.

As at Oanda's competitors, you will have many options to deposit:

The bank transfer can take from 1 to 5 business days. If you use the credit/debit cards or the electronic wallets, the money is credited to your account immediately.

You can only deposit money from sources which are on your name.

Withdrawal fees and options

Oanda withdrawal fees are competitive for credit/debit cards, but can be quite high for bank transfers. 

The first withdrawal per month is free for credit/debit and electronic cards. Oanda charges all further withdrawals and for all bank withdrawals. The fee depends on your account currency, but it is around $20.

At Oanda's website you will see an estimated time for withdrawals. For example, it is 1-6 business days for Europeans using credit/debit cards. We tested it and it took 3 business days.

You can only withdraw money to sources on your name.

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Oanda review
Web trading platform 5 stars

The Oanda trading platform is great. It is very user-friendly with great customizability and good search functions. On the other hand, you cannot set price alerts.

Oanda offers its own platform and MetaTrader 4. In this review, we tested Oanda's platform.

You can choose from many languages: Arabic, Chinese, Japan, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish.

Look and feel

Oanda's own trading platform is really user-friendly and well-designed. 

The trading platform is also very customizable. You can change the tabs' position and size.

Login and security

Oanda offers two-step safe login to the web trading platform. You have to use Google Authenticator for setting this feature.

Search function

Oanda search function is good. It gives you relevant results. On the other hand, it is not intuitive to find it. It is located in the graph area. A drop-down search menu can be also found in the rates tab.

Placing orders

You can use the four order types. But, you will not find very sophisticated ones, like a "one cancels the other".

• Market
• Limit
• Stop
• Stop trailing

If you are not familiar with the order types, read this overview. The platform lacks the order terms, like a good 'till cancel.

Alerts and notifications

You cannot set alerts and notifications at Oanda trading platform. It would be very useful.

Portfolio and fee reports

There are clear portfolio and fee reports. You can see per transaction what was the spread cost, the financing fee, and the commissions. You can see also the profit and loss of each transaction.

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77% of retail CFD accounts lose money

Oanda review
Mobile trading platform 4 stars

Oanda mobile platform is really similar to the web trading platform. As a plus, you can set alerts. The platform's look could be improved.

Oanda mobile trading platform is available both on iOS and Android. We tested it on Android.

Oanda's mobile platform is similar to the web platform, there are some points we highlight. You can set alerts, and the chart tab is great. You can customize it well. This is not common at other brokers, you can easily change its size.

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77% of retail CFD accounts lose money

Oanda review
Desktop trading platform 3 stars

Oanda has a desktop platform. It has similar functions but it is a less user-friendly and has a worse search function than the web trading platform.

Oanda desktop platform is similar to the web trading platform in login, order types, setting alerts, and portfolio reports. However, the search function and the user-friendliness are not as good as on the Oanda web platform.

Search is hard to find, and it has a lag to recognize typing. You have to go to a separate tab, called "User Preferences". Here, you can set your product list.  We also experienced that typing had a lag to appear on the screen. Was annoying.

​​

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77% of retail CFD accounts lose money

Oanda review
Markets and products 1 stars

At Oanda, you can trade only forex and some CFDs.

Oanda is a forex broker with some CFDs. To learn more on CFDs read our CFD trading tips.

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 77% 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.

Oanda has only a mid-range forex and a wide CFD offer. There are stock index CFDs, bond CFDs, and commodity CFDs.

We really liked that you can set the leverage manually. At other brokers, including FXCM and Pepperstone, you can't do this. It is not intuitive where you can do it. At the deposit and withdrawal tab, and not at the trading platform.  

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Oanda review
Research 4 stars

Oanda has a lot of research tools. From news and analysis to API, you will find many-many tools.

There are a lot of research tools, but they are all scattered on five different pages. Here they are in one place:

• MarketPulse: analyses written by Oanda's own research team. It also includes an economic calendar.
• News: this includes the feed of MarketPulse and Dow Jones Newswires, a prominent third-party.
• Economic analysis: you will find analyses of the important economic events. However, there is an overlap with MarketPulse as many contents here can be found there as well.
• Oanda Labs: there are tools developed by Oanda's engineers. These tools usually based on technical analysis, e.g. candlestick pattern analysis. 
• Technical analysis: many technical analysis tools powered by Autochartist.
• Algo Lab: it is a powerful tool for API trading. 

The research tools are available multiple languages, same as trading platform.

Recommendations

Oanda provides a lot of analyses, but there are no recommendations.

Fundamental data

There is no fundamental data at Oanda, mostly because it concentrates on FX.

Charting

Oanda does a great job in charting. The charts are very responsive, easy to edit, and you can use more than 70 technical indicators. You can also save them.

Many other tools are available as well for better chart analysis. E.g. there is a pattern recognition tool, and there are also educational materials. They can be found in the "Technical analysis" section on the site.

News feed

You will find news at "MarketPulse", "News", and "Economic analysis" sections.

We think the "MarketPulse" is the best to use. There are well-written news and analysis with visual elements, like charts and videos. You can also find a great economic calendar.

These elements are totally missing at News. Furthermore, the Economic analysis" is not up-to-date as the analyses in the headline are more than one year.

Other research tools you will like

There are so many other research tools even a separate review would not be able to cover them. So we only picked up the hottest ones.

Oanda has the best API offer we at Brokerchooser have ever seen. You can make/use your own APIs at a great and very user-friendly environment. C#, Python, and F# are the supported programming languages. It also offers REST API.

There is also a currency heat map. It is a great visual chart showing FX pair changes in percentages. 

Last but not least, you can use the "Forex Order Book" tool. This is a 24-hour summary of open orders and positions held by OANDA's clients.

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Oanda review
Customer service 3 stars

Oanda customer service has a lot to improve. They have very slow response times and give irrelevant answers. As a plus, you can use live chat and they cannot be reached only on Saturday.

It is great that you can contact Oanda in many ways.

• live chat
• chatbot
• telephone
• email

We also liked that Oanda customer service is available 24 hours a day from Sunday to Friday. On the other hand, we were not satisfied with the quality.

On the live chat, we got relevant answers, but the response time can be long. We waited more times around 15 minutes until an agent was connected. Furthermore, they finish live chat very quickly if you don't answer right away.

The chatbot is a really innovative solution, but it cannot answer even the basic questions, like what the average spreads are at EURUSD.

On the phone, both the relevancy and the response time can be improved. Once we waited around 8 minutes and then we didn't get a full overview of the fees.

Email support provided relevant answers, but with a very slow response time. We got answers between 3 to 7 days.

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77% of retail CFD accounts lose money

Oanda review
Education 4 stars

Oanda offers live and pre-recorded webinars ranging from the basics to expert trading.

It is great that you can use the many tools for education:

• Demo account
• Educational videos
• Platform tutorial videos
• Webinars
• Texts

We enjoyed the quality of the videos, they were well produced. On the other hand, they should be better organized, for example, a playlist for trading platform basics would be nice to see. 

There are high-quality webinars available to everyone. They cover basics trading topics, like risk management. The premium webinars are only for Oanda customers.

Also, you can read about educational materials, i.e. using indicators or how you have to manage the risks.

On the flip side, the educational tools can be more structured. Similarly to the research tools, we felt lost as the educational tools can be reached from more than 5 places.

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77% of retail CFD accounts lose money

Oanda review
Safety

Oanda is regulated by top-tier regulators, including the UK FCA and the US CFTC. On the flip side, it doesn't disclose its financial information.

Oanda is a US broker established in 1996 serving clients from all over the globe. Is Oanda safe? To be certain, it is best to check two things: how you are protected if something goes south and what the background of the broker is.

How you are protected

Oanda has six legal entities. This is important for you because the investor protection amount and the regulator differ from entity to entity.

Negative balance protection is provided. If the balance on your account goes into negative, you will be protected.

Background

Oanda is a privately held company and is mainly owned by two venture capitalist firms: Index Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. 

Oanda is a privately held forex and CFD broker with a long history that originates back to 1996. Ownership is transparent, the computer scientist and economist co-founders are Michael Stumm and Richard Olsen.

Oanda has great trade execution and customer risk management. During the post SNB (Swiss National Bank) crisis Oanda showed a good example of protecting investor funds. They closed positions automatically, and also forgone negative balances and did not re-quote trades for clients who occurred losses.

Being regulated by the US SEC, and also by the FCA are great signs for Oanda's safety.

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Oanda review
Bottom line

Oanda is a good FX broker.

It has a great web trading platform, you will feel comfortable in a very short time. It provides user-friendly and fully digital account opening. Its research tools are powerful, especially its API.

On the other hand, Oanda has a limited product portfolio, only FX and CFDs. The customer support is slow and usually provides irrelevant answers. The money withdrawal fee can be high.

Feel free to try Oanda. There is no minimum deposit, and the inactivity fee only kicks in after two years. 

Oanda main features and highlights

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77% of retail CFD accounts lose money