XTB was founded in Poland in 2002 as X-Trade, it changed its name to XTB Online Trading in 2009, the year in which it went public on the Warsaw stock exchange under ticker XTB. The broker has been capable of a high growth rate and now serves over 350,000 traders. It currently has over 13 offices across the world including the UK, Germany, France and Chile. Their list of quoted markets covers FX, Stocks, Commodities, ETFs, Indices and Cryptos for a total of over 2,100 instruments.
Publicly TradedWell-designed proprietary platform24 hour customer supportTrader sentiment indicator
Does not offer Guaranteed Stop Loss protectionNot available to US residentsXTB (full name XTB Online Trading) is regulated by the following regulating bodies:
This broker offers a mix of expensive and cheap bid offer spreads when compared to the industry average.
The table below shows the minimum spreads for each of the major forex pairs as listed on the XTB website and compares them against the industry average.
Note: Spreads are variable and can change depending on the time of day and market conditions. For information purposes only.
We can see from the table above that they offer very tight bid offer spreads on two popular FX currency pairs for retail traders: EUR/USD & EUR/GBP. However, some of the others such as GBP/USD are slightly higher than average. Overall we see them as having competitive spreads, especially for some of the most popular FX pairs.
Although we are not a fan of brokers that limit their offering of platforms to a single choice, there are some exceptions out there. XTB is definitely one of those exceptions, their in-house proprietary platform xStation 5 is well designed and user friendly. Another plus for this app, it works directly from your browser, no download is necessary. Worthy of note how XTB believes in their proprietary platform, they recently decommissioned MT4 which is no longer available for new accounts.
The platform is relatively easy to master and functional, where you can trade 48 currency pairs straight off the chart with one click. They have a good choice for the main technical indicators, although those used to having a wider selection of choice might not be so satisfied. The platform supplies 38 technical indicators with drawing tools, including the full set of Fibonacci lines.
For those looking to also trade automated strategies, the xStation 5 does not cater for expert advisors or Algo trading.
Their mobile offering works smoothly with the desktop version. All the position management and charting functionality are available. However, technical indicators on the mobile version are limited to 13, and drawing tools are also limited to a subset of those available for the PC version.
Benefits of the XTB trader app include:
The XTB app is available for Android and iOS.
XTB has a reasonable library of educational content in their trading academy. The content is divided into 4 levels, basic, intermediate, expert and premium. The expert level at the time of writing is still under construction. For the premium level, you have to open a live account before accessing the content. They also offer live webinars which are scheduled from time to time on their website.
Topics covered in the academy include:
The information is well laid out and divided into lessons within each level. The articles are easy to read and straight to the point with plenty of examples. Each lesson takes between 10 and 15 minutes, the basic level has 24 lessons and the intermediate 15.
XTB research is limited to in-house articles on daily news events and current topics, an economic events calendar is also available. The range of articles covers pretty much all the subjects an FX trader would need. Most of the material is relevant to macro factors with some articles on single companies for those trading stocks. What is missing is a live news feed from a top tier financial news outlet.
This feature we found to be top quality, the service is offered in the main European languages as well as Vietnamese, Thai, Arabic, and Chinese. They usually reply in under 5 minutes using the online chat window which can be very handy if you’re busy with other stuff. Another nice feature for customer support is that the live chat can be launched directly from the trading platform.
You can speak to support via:
This broker offers relatively tight spreads overall compared to the industry average, especially for the most traded pair EUR/USD and EUR/GBP. They also offer a wide enough selection of FX pairs allowing for traders to take advantage of trading ideas on more exotic markets. The range of non-FX markets is not as broad as some brokers out there, however, they do have enough to cover all the main macro markets as well as individual stocks.
Education for starters is well explained and should guide beginners effectively. Starters have a good primer for the forex market and an in-house user guide to get them up and running as quickly as possible. The customer support works very well and gives a prompt response in various languages 24 hours a day. Overall a decent experience for beginners and veterans alike.
77% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.
