Plus500 Review 2024

Plus500 Group was founded in 2008 and it is one of the top CFD platforms still operating in the global CFD markets. They have been providing CFD trading services to their worldwide clients for over a decade.

In recent years, the company has revamped its services and developed a proprietary trading platform. Moreover, its marketing efforts have substantially increased to gain professional clients. In the beginning, it mostly provided offshore services to retail CFD traders. However, as the management shifted the company’s business model to cater to professional traders, they have opened several regional offices in different countries and are now well-regulated in the respective jurisdictions.

Plus500 is a market maker with its proprietary platform.  The good thing is that you can’t lose more than you’re depositing, so use guaranteed stops and negative balance protection.

They are the main sponsor of several football teams, Altlanta B.B (Italy), Legia Warsaw (Poland), and BSC Young Boys (Switzerland).

They are also sponsoring Chicago Bulls, the legendary NBA team in the United States.

Our Plus500 review below is full to the brim with essential information about this popular CFD trading platform.

Regulation & Trust

Plus500 takes every precaution to protect your deposits. Their segregated accounts ensure that funds are independently managed, while UK clients can receive up to £85,000 in coverage from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). It’s a safe choice when you’re trading with Plus500 in comparison to others trading platforms.

They are regulated by the following authorities:

• Plus500 UK

They have its primary office located in the City of London, the United Kingdom at 8 Cornhill, London EC3V 3QQ. Also, customers opening accounts with their UK branch, Plus500UK Ltd, is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA #509909).

• Plus500 Cyprus (Europe)

Plus500CY Ltd is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC #250/14).

• Plus500 Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa

They have its office in Sydney(Australia) and operated under the subsidiary Plus500AU Pty Ltd (ACN# 153301681). It is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (AFSL #417727). They are authorized to provide CFD trading to Aussie clients.

Plus500AU Pty Ltd is also registered with the Financial Services Board (FSP #47546) in South Africa, and with the FMA in New Zealand.

(You do not own or have any rights to Plus500’s underlying assets. Consider if you fall within this broker’s Target Market Distribution and view the Disclosure Documents on the Plus500 website)

• About Plus500 Singapore

If you are based in Singapore, it’s worth mentioning that Plus500, through its subsidiary firm Plus500 Pte Ltd,  has had a license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to provide CFD service to clients since December 2017. They are located at 1 Temasek Avenue, Millenia Tower #18-07.

Trading Platforms & Tools

They don’t use the MT4 platform, however, unlike most Forex and options firms, they have invested heavily in developing, Plus500 Webtrader, its proprietary trading platform and offers CFD instruments for trading. The fully web-based trading platform gives traders a centralized interface to manage their trading accounts and place orders in real time in the market. There is also a desktop application for Windows 10 that you can download. But it is almost the same as the WebTrader platform.

The built-in charting option from Plus500 offers traders a range of technical indicators and other technical analysis tools. As of writing this review, we found over 100 individual technical analysis tools on its trading platform.

One of the unique features of Plus500’s trading platform is its innovative order management. While most desktop-based platforms from other firms require you to keep your computer on to keep the trailing stops active, being a cloud-based platform, its trailing stops are always-on. Furthermore, the platform offers guaranteed stop loss so there is a low possibility of incurring slippage-related losses.

While we found the Plus500 trading platform to be user-friendly and easy to use, we found a few features that could be improved. For example, we found that the platform will log you out periodically due to inactivity, which is great for ensuring security. But there should be an option to disable this as professional traders may find it annoying to type in passwords several times a day.

Instruments & Assets

We found that Plus500 offers one of the highest numbers of trading assets.

You can trade the following CFD trading instruments:

• Cryptocurrencies* CFDs: 14 ( Bitcoin, Ethereum / Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, NEO,..).
• Forex CFDs: 60+ ( EUR/USD, EUR/GBP, EUR/AUD, EUR/NZD, AUD/USD, GBP/USD,…).
• Indices CFDs: 60+  ( UK 100, ASX 200, Germany 30, USA 30 Wall Street,…).
• Share CFDs: 1800 ( Facebook, Apple, Tesla, Amazon,…).
• Commodities CFDs: 22 ( Oil, Gold, Silver, Brent Oil,..).
• ETF CFDs: 92 ( USO-Oil Fund, iShares Silver, UNG-Gas Fund,…).
• Options CFDs: They offer a call option and a put option.

*Disclaimer: Crypto trading and promoting is banned in the United Kingdom.

Trading Conditions

While researching for this review, we found Plus500’s fee structure to be very transparent and straightforward. Since the brokerage services are based on offering Contracts for Difference (CFDs), we found that Plus500 does not charge any commissions. Most of the fees are based on market spreads and as a CFDs platform, they are offering one of the lowest spreads in the industry. For example, the EURUSD’s CFD spread goes as low as 0.6 pips during active market hours, which is often 0.01% of the transaction value.

• Fees

They have the following fees:

1. Overnight funding: An overnight fee is charged by Plus500 to cover the cost of the leverage a trader uses overnight on open CFD positions. The fee will either be added to or subtracted from your account. You can easily check the Overnight Funding details on your account. Overnight funding is the process of withdrawing or transferring money from your account to cover overnight trades. You can check the Overnight Funding details on your account to see the status of your funding requests.
2. Currency conversion fee: They will charge up to 0.7% for currency conversion for all trades on instruments you hold in a different currency from your account’s currency. For example, if your account’s currency is EUR and you want to buy with USD, the broker will need to convert EUR to USD.
3. Inactivity fee: This is applicable for users who haven’t logged in to their accounts for an extended period, such as three months or more. Plus500 will be charging a fee of up to $10 per inactive month.
4. Guaranteed stop order: If you want a trade to close at a specific price, your spread cost with Plus500 may be higher.

As far as deposit fees are concerned, it was nice to see that Plus500 does not impose any transaction fees that most trading platforms do. For example, if you deposit $1,000 into your trading account, you will get the full amount. So, no credit card processing fee will be imposed.

• Plus500 Spreads

Keep in mind that the spreads vary depending on the type of CFD assets you are trading. For forex CFDs, the spreads vary a lot. For example, at the time of writing this Plus500 review ( 14th feb 2023) we found that the spread for trading EURUSD CFD is only 0.00008, which is 0.01% of the value. However, the spread for the the EURNZD CFD is 0.0006 but it represents 0.04% of the value.

The CFD options trading fee is rather low and at par with industry averages. Microsoft Call 285 Feb CFD put options spread at 0.04 which is only 5.56% of the transaction value.

Notice: The Plus500’s price spreads are dynamic and subject to change, and they move in response to market conditions and trading activity. Please check it s website for updated spreads.

• Leverage

Plus500 EEA, UK and Australian retail customers can get maximum leverage of 30:1, and 300:1 for professional traders. Non-EEA clients can apply up to 300:1 max. leverage.

Research & Education 

Plus500 offers educational guides and video tutorials about how to use their platform effectively. So, the learning curve of using its proprietary platform is not that stiff. Anyone with a basic understanding of financial markets will be able to learn to use the platform with relative ease.

Also, each of the 2,800 CFD instruments offered on the platform has its dedicated page where you can find the latest news and analysis of upcoming news events.

Type of Accounts 

Plus500 currently offers all trading instruments under a single account. So, all the features of its unique platform are available for every single client. We found this idea of having a single type of account to be refreshing as most platforms impose certain restrictions on the features based on deposit amounts, which often appears discriminatory. 

• Plus500 Demo Account

They give away a free and unlimited demo account by choosing “Demo Mode” in the “Select Account Mode” window.

How to Open a Plus500 Account?

The registration is very simple and quick. You need to fill up a simple form with your email and password (you can log in via Facebook or Gmail too).

Once you are logged in, your Demo account will be available. From there, you can upgrade to a Live account. You will be asked to fill up more details. The next step will be account verification. They require you to check your identity, residential address, and source of funds. Once verified, your live account will be ready to go.

Deposit & Withdrawal Options

When it comes to depositing funds to your live account, Plus500 makes it relatively easy to do so. Currently, you can use any major debit and credit card, including Visa and Mastercard, to make an instant deposit. Also, two of the major e-wallet providers, PayPal and Skrill, are supported to make deposits.

Plus500 also accepts direct Wire transfers, but it may require a few working days to process the deposited amount. While the broker will not charge any fees for a bank deposit, your local bank may charge a wire initiation fee. So, it is better to discuss the wire-initiating fees with your bank.

You can also make a withdrawal request with all different deposit methods.

They have a minimum deposit of $100.

Client Support

Plus500 clients can reach customer support 24/7 via an email, online chat, and whatsapp. However, we could not find any phone support number listed on their website. Nonetheless, the broker claims to offer customer support in over 16 languages.

We found Plus500’s email response rate to be pretty fast and most of our questions were answered with adequate information.

• Their trading plataform is available in 32 Languages including:

It’s available in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Bahasa Melayu,  Chinese, German, French, Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Greek, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Estonian, Russian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Russian, Croatian, Turkish, Icelandic and Maltese.

Summary

Plus500 has been active in the CFD-based financial markets for a long-time. Also, the low spreads and no-commission trading conditions offered by Plus500 make it one of the top competitors in the global CFD brokerage market.

While several CFD platforms are operating in Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, few have a similar track record to be counted as reliable as Plus500. Moreover,  Plus500 is regulated by multiple regulatory entities including ASIC, MAS and FCA, meaning your funds are held in segregated accounts. Hence, if you are looking for a reliable platform for CFD trading, keep Plus500 at the top of your list of choices.

Frequently Asked Questions about Plus500

Authors of this Plus500 review

Asif Imtiaz

Market Analyst / Trading Consultant . Asif worked as a prop trader for almost a decade, and later he managed trading operations for one of the largest foreign exchange strategy developers in Europe. Currently, he works as a trading consultant to several brokers and writes about various tech and financial topics. You can reach him at contact@asifimtiaz.com

John Stuart

John Stuart is the editor’s chief of BrokerTrending and our expert broker. He has been in the online trading business for over 12 years, and he knows everything there is to know about the stock and forex market. When he’s not giving advice to the top investors, John can be found spending time with his wife and two children.