Best Spread Betting Brokers in the UK

The best spread betting broker in the UK depends on what you bet on and how. For the lowest published forex prices we would start with Pepperstone, which quotes EUR/USD from 0.5 and GBP/USD from 0.8 points on its spread betting account, with CMC Markets close behind at 0.5 on the majors. IG has the deepest market list and the most platforms. CMC is our pick if you want guaranteed stops, because it refunds the premium in full when the stop is not triggered. Every firm on this page is authorised by the FCA, so spread bet profits are normally outside UK tax, your money is segregated, and the FSCS covers up to £85,000 if the firm fails.

Many pages that rank for this search quote a spread without saying whether it belongs to the spread betting account or a raw CFD account, and several still list City Index, a brand retired on 12 September 2026. We checked each figure below on the firm's own UK site in September 2026 and left a cell marked "not verified" rather than guess. Two names often seen on forex lists are missing on purpose: IC Markets (now trading as IC) and XTB do not offer spread betting at all.

Our ranking by use case

These rankings are judgements, not test scores. Where two firms were close, we favoured the one whose UK pages stated the cost or feature plainly. A broker that sits lower in one row may be the right one for you if it wins the row you care about.

The eight brokers side by side

Loss percentages are the share of each firm's retail accounts that lost money over its latest reporting period, at the time of writing (September 2026). They change every quarter and reflect client mix as much as pricing. "Majors from 0.5" means the firm quotes one minimum for its major pairs rather than a figure for each pair. Spreads are minimums in points, and a point on EUR/USD or GBP/USD is the fourth decimal place, so they widen overnight, at the Asian open and around data releases.

OANDA's UK spread betting page confirms spread betting on its own platform, MT4 and TradingView, and states plainly that you cannot spread bet on MT5. Its FRN is taken from its terms of business, which name OANDA Europe Limited as authorised and regulated by the FCA under number 542574. Check that number on the FCA Register before you sign, as you should for every firm here.

Lowest forex spreads: Pepperstone and CMC

Pepperstone's pricing page lists spread betting minimums of 0.5 on EUR/USD and 0.8 on GBP/USD, with no commission. Its raw Razor account is tighter still, but that is a CFD account, so gains on it fall within capital gains tax. For a UK bettor who wants both low costs and tax-free profits, the spread betting account is the one to compare. Minimum funding is £10 and it charges no inactivity fee.

CMC Markets quotes spreads from 0.5 on major FX pairs for its standard spread betting and CFD accounts. Its FX Active account goes to 0.0 on six majors plus commission, but again that is a CFD product. IG and Spreadex both quote 0.6 on EUR/USD and 0.9 on cable, a gap of 0.1 points that sounds trivial until you trade often.

Put it in pounds. A £5 per point bet on GBP/USD costs £4 to open and close at 0.8 points and £4.50 at 0.9. Across 200 bets a year that is £800 against £900, before overnight funding on anything you hold overnight. That charge is often the larger cost for swing traders, and in November 2025 the FCA criticised CFD and spread betting firms for overnight charges it found hard to justify and poorly explained, so read each firm's funding rate as closely as its spread.

Platforms: Pepperstone, then IG

Pepperstone is the only FCA firm we found that supports spread betting on all four of the big third-party platforms: MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView. IG comes next, with MT4, MT5, TradingView, ProRealTime and its own web platform and app. For EA users, cTrader fans and chart-first traders, those two cover almost every need.

Everyone else is narrower. CMC's MT4 carries forex, indices and commodities but not shares, and its TradingView link works for CFD accounts rather than spread bets. OANDA rules out MT5 for spread betting. Capital.com's MT4 is for CFDs only. A platform-by-platform breakdown, with the lot-to-£-per-point mapping that catches out MT4 users, is in our spread betting brokers for MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView table.

Beginners, shares and indices: IG and CMC

IG says it offers more than 17,000 markets to spread bet or trade. CMC Markets lists over 21,000 instruments across forex, indices, commodities, shares, ETFs, rates and bonds. For someone who wants to bet on the FTSE 100 in the morning, a US share after lunch and cable around a Bank of England decision, one of those two accounts will cover it without a second login. Both also run £10,000 demo accounts, and IG's education and support are the most complete we saw.

Spreadex deserves a mention for share and index bettors who want a simpler screen. It sets a premium on guaranteed stops market by market and publishes each one on the market detail page, which makes the cost easy to see. Pepperstone offers 1,100+ shares too, but its strength remains forex pricing rather than breadth.

Guaranteed stops: who offers them and how they charge

A normal stop-loss closes your bet at the next available price, which can be far worse than your level when a market gaps over a weekend or on results day. With a guaranteed stop-loss order (GSLO) the exit is fixed exactly, and you pay a premium for it. How that premium is charged differs, and it matters more than most lists admit.

Guaranteed stops also sit further from the price than ordinary ones, so they suit position traders more than scalpers. If a gap on a single share could hurt you, they are worth their cost. A trader who mainly day trades EUR/USD in the London session may never need one.

Who does not offer spread betting

IC Markets and XTB both appear on UK broker lists, and neither offers spread betting. XTB is FCA authorised (FRN 522157) but CFD only, so any profit there falls under capital gains tax above the £3,000 annual exempt amount. As for IC Markets, it has no FCA authorisation at all: UK residents are, in practice, onboarded by its Seychelles company, which the FCA's Warning List names. Our page on IC Markets and spread betting explains what that means for tax and protection.

Plus500, eToro, Saxo, Interactive Brokers and Trading 212 are also absent, because we did not find spread betting on the UK pages we checked. That is a statement about the product, not a safety warning about those firms. For the wider field of FCA forex brokers, including CFD-only firms, see our best FCA-regulated forex brokers shortlist.

How we ranked them, and the caveats

1. Confirm the entity that holds a UK client's spread betting account on the FCA Register, and its FRN.
2. Record the firm's own published spread betting spreads for EUR/USD and GBP/USD, not its CFD or raw account prices.
3. List the platforms where the firm says spread betting works, then check guaranteed stops and how their premium is charged.
4. Note the loss percentage from the firm's UK risk warning in September 2026.

Spread betting profits are normally outside capital gains tax and income tax for individuals, but losses cannot be set against other gains. A trader who expects to lose, or who wants to bank a loss against a share sale, may be better with CFDs; our is spread betting tax-free page covers the exceptions. Retail protections are the same at every firm here: 30:1 on major pairs, a 50% margin close-out and negative balance protection.

Frequently asked

Related reading

• Is spread betting tax-free?
• Spread betting vs CFDs
• Best forex broker for beginners
• How to check a broker on the FCA Register
• IC Markets alternatives in the UK