Use the menu to the left to you help you choose the best spread betting company for you.
In our Best of the Best Spread betting company summary table, we have summarised some of the stand out spread betting companies in key areas such as who has the lowest spreads and margins? and who has the best sign up offers?
However before you read any further, the 2 key things you need to know about the answer to this question are 1) it depends! and 2) it changes over time.
It depends because there really is no such thing as a generic best spread betting company. It is like saying which is the best shop in a high street. It depends on your own personal taste. Arguably, there is such a thing as a best spread betting company for you, but that doesn't mean it is the spread betting company for everyone else. For example, if you only care about the company with the lowest possible spreads, then the company with the lowest possible spreads is the best for you. However, other people might be interested in the company with the lowest stakes, or the highest margins, or the best sign-up offers, or the best mix of all of these things.
It changes over time because the service offered by the spread betting companies changes over time as they try to out compete each other, and/or increase their own profitability. It also changes over time because you as an investor can change over time. What you were initially interested in when you first started investing might completely change as you learn new investment techniques or your risk appetite changes.
Therefore before you even start comparing spread betting companies, you need to think about what you actually want from your spread betting company, and how you can compare spread betting companies to ensure that you meet these requirements. Some useful spread betting comparison and review articles to read once you've finished this section are:
Further details of the individual offers summarised below, just click apply now or more detail to find out more.
| Typical Spreads | Offers for new account holders* |
Apply? Losses may exceed initial deposits |
More detail |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Up to £1,000 bonus |  |
Click here |
 |
Up to £200 complimentary sports bets | |
Click here |
 |
Up to £300 bonus | ||
 |
Up to £100 bonus |
Note - All offers are based on the research performed by Betting Bible at a point in time, and are subject to change at any time by the Spread betting providers.
Offer summary:
In order to achieve the bonus you need to be aware that:
1. The bonus available is based on your initial deposit, with the following:
| Deposit (£/€) | 0-499 | 500-999 | 1,000-2,499 | 2,500-4,999 | 5,000-7,499 | 7,500-9,999 | 10,000 |
| Bonus (£/€) | 0 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 |
2. The bonus amount applied to your account is relative to the total deposit, minus any withdrawals. So, if you deposit £500, you’ll receive a £50 bonus, so you can withdraw anything in your account above £550 from the current account balance, before the release criteria have been met without affecting the bonus amount.
3. If you do not meet the release criteria within 90 calendar days of the bonus being applied to your account, InterTrader reserves the right to retract the bonus funds.
4. To qualify for the bonus, you must have staked at least double the amount of the eligble bonus. For example if your initial deposit is £9k, your maximum bonus is £750, so you will need to have staked a combination of trades totalling over £1.5k.
5. Trades on Equity shares do not count towards this stake.
6. The bonus is only available to new customers or customers that have yet to make a deposit (note - only customers on the English language version).
7. Offer runs from 1st February 2012 until 31st December 2012
8. This offer is available for a maximum number of participants; therefore it will be on a first come first
served basis.
9. In order to qualify for the bonus, once you have completed your initial deposit you need to contact their Customer Support team via email on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to get the appropriate bonus applied to your account.
10. The offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer, unless explicitly stated in the terms and conditions of that particular offer.
11. The usual terms apply regarding the offer not being available to employees of the London Capital Group and associated households etc.
Football: £100 Supremacy bet on any live* match
Horse racing: £10 National Hunt or Flat Match Bet
Cricket: £10 'First 15 Overs Runs' bet on any live one day game
Rugby League/Union: £10 Total Points bet on any live match
Golf: £10 Finishing Positions bet on any US or Euro Tour event
* A live game is deemed as one on which Spreadex is offering ‘in-play’ betting
The main differences between spread betting companies article gives you an overview of some of the most well-known areas to consider when comparing spread betting companies. However, there are a number of more subtle differences that are very very useful to know if you really are to pick the best spread betting companies to suit your investing needs.
Platform performance in many ways is more important to technical traders than fundamental traders, however it is still an important consideration when assessing how good a spread betting company is. You will soon realise though if you're trading with someone with a poor platform, as you'll be complaining about the speed, and shutdowns.
The dreaded margin calls. This really can differentiate spread betting companies depending on your investment style. Margin calls are explained in our glossary, but essentially if your trade moves into a loss making position, you may be required to add more funds into your account on top of your initial deposit.
Where spread betting companies differ is in their process for automatically closing positions given certain movements in a trade. Some spread betting companies have stricter and tighter risk management processes, meaning that your position will be closed after certain movements in the product price if you do not make the relevant margin calls in time. During times of significant volatility, this can have implications on your trading portfolio that you may not have been aware of, therefore it is important to understand before you start trading.
An overly simplistic example here helps illustrate the essence of the key point to understand here:
You have a position on the FTSE 100 index, £1 per point, bought at 6000, no stops, and you deposited £50.
Overnight, some bad news in the US pushes the afterhours FTSE 100 index down to 5500.
Company A makes 3 margin calls during the slide, which you don’t act on, and closes your position at 5700 (because this, meaning you lose £300 in total.
Company B also makes margin calls that you don’t act on, but doesn’t close your position, meaning you wake up an you position is £500 down.
In the morning, the FTSE bounces back to 5900.
Company A, you no longer have a position with.
Company B, your position is now only £100 down.
So you can see, that depending on the spread betting company you use, there can be different outcomes during times of adverse movements on your trading positions.
We’re not trying to promote one company over the other here, nor are we suggesting that you should trade without stops; the point is that depending on your risk tolerance and investment style there are different outcomes for the same scenario depending on the margin call process for the spread betting provider you use. There is a reasonably well-publicised campaign against IG Index for their approach to margin calls and closing positions costing an individual large losses, however it shows that it pays to read the terms and conditions and understand the process before you get too involved in spread betting.
So how do you know which company has stricter margin calls than others? The key things to look out for in the terms and conditions are maxiumum computer generate stop levels and stop loss policy wordings.
Spread betting comes with all sorts of warnings about the fact that you can lose more than your initial deposit, which is true; however an easy way to manage this is through the use of stop losses. However, stop losses come at a price, and that price differs across the different spread betting companies.
If you are intending on using stop losses a lot therefore, it is very important to compare the combined cost of the spread offered by the spread betting company AND the stop loss costs, in order to determine which spread betting company has the best price for the product you are trading.
As you’ll be aware by now, spread betting is leveraged. However, this leverage is not free. In general, when you trade futures positions, the cost of the leverage is implicit within the spread offered, and therefore comparing the spreads between companies sufficiently takes this into consideration. However, on rolling daily (or daily funded) positions, the leverage or financing charge is not typically included in the spread, therefore depending on the length of time you intend to hold the position, it may be useful to compare the costs of financing charges across the spread betting companies, as well as the spreads.
An example of how the financing charge is calculated by Word Spreads is shown below:
Vodafone’s share price spread is 124-125
Buying shares example:
You buy 125 at £10 per point.
Your underlying shareholding value is therefore £1,250.
Interest charge is 3%pa +2.5% pa margin to the spread bettor, totalling 5.5% or 0.015% per day.
The daily interest charge is therefore 0.015% x £1250, giving 19p financing charge.
Selling shares example:
You sell 124 at £10 per point.
Your underlying value is calculated as £1,240
The interest charge is 3% less 2.5% margin to the spread bettor, totalling 0.5% or 0.0013% per day.
The daily interest charge is therefore 0.0012% x £1240, giving a 1.6p interest charge.
Investing in stocks that offer a high dividend yield has long been a common strategy within the investment industry for years, and the fact you don't physically own the stock doesn't restrict spread bettors from receiving dividend payments. In general, if you are trading quarterly individual share prices, then the dividends are factored into the quoted price, and therefore you are not entitled to receive a dividend payout. However, if you are trading rolling daily or daily funded bets, the terms are generally very different. With these types of bets if you have a long position, you tend to receive 80% of the gross payout, but if you have a short position, you tend to have to pay 100% of the gross dividend.
As you can see therefore, it is worth finding out the dividend policy of your chosen provider, and understanding exactly what type of product you are trading. Receiving the dividend on long rolling daily positions can be a significant part of your investment strategy, however bear in mind that these products come with associated financing costs - as discussed below.
Just as in the banking industry, it’s never impossible for a company to fail. So if you come across a spread betting provider that is offering better everything than the competition, it is worth doing a bit of due diligence just to identify whether there are any financial concerns over the company itself, e.g check its credit rating.
| Spread betting company | FTSE 100 daily rolling | Euribor | Brent crude oil rolling | Gold rolling | EUR/USD | UK100 shares |
Apply? Losses may exceed initial deposits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
0.25% (15) | n/a | 1% (120) | 1% (20) | 0.25% (30) | 3% | |
 |
30 | 80 | 80 | 40 | 5% | |
|
 |
30 | 10 | 130 | 100 | 40 | 3% | |
|
30 | 10 | 130 | 100 | 40 | 3% | |
 |
25/200 | 110/350 | 14/30 | 5% | |||
 |
30 | 2% (240) | 1% (20) | 1% (120) | 3% | ||
 |
1% (60) | 0.4% (40) | 2% (240) | 1.5% (50) | 0.75% (100) | 5% | |
|
50 | 25 | 250 | 125 | 100 | 5% | |
|
60 | 30 | 320 | 350 | 140 | 5% | |
|
100 | 30 | 400 | 200 | 200 |
We’ve broken down the key difference between spread betting companies into the following sections:
Our glossary gives a definition of what the spread is, however in terms of what is best for you as a trader, the smaller (often referred to as tighter) the spread offered, the better. This is because you are speculating on the fact that your position will finished either outside of the spread, so the more numbers inside the spread (ie the larger the spread) the more chance that the spread betting provider takes your money.
However, be aware that the spreads offered within a single firm can vary across different products, during differing market conditions, and even depending on the time of day you want to trade! For example, some spread betting firms enable you to trade positions outside of conventional market hours, however normally at the cost of a wider spread.
Key thing to remember: When picking which spread betting company has the best spreads for you, you want to find the company with the tightest spreads, on the products that you want to trade, at the times you want to trade them.
The margin is essentially the amount of money that you need to part with in order to make a trade. This has important consequences as an investor, as a fundamental premise behind measuring the performance of your investments is you return on capital. Spread betting is leveraged, meaning that if you want to have £1000 exposure to a stock, you only need to deposit a percentage of that exposure with the spread betting company. If you need to need to understand more about how this works, read here and here.
Once again, the margin varies across different products, therefore be sure to understand the margin calculation process for your chosen spread betting company if you want to know who is providing you the best leverage. The amount of leverage you require depends on own risk and investment philosophy. If you are more of a casual spread bettor, who just wants to invest in some regular stocks and do anything particularly fancy, you might be better off choosing a provider who can offer you slightly better spreads at the expense of requiring a slightly bigger margin.
Key thing to remember: If you are using spread betting to gain the maximum leverage on your investments, then pick a spread betting company with the lowest margin requirements (or equivalent measure, e.g notional trading requirement). Be aware though that leverage carries a significant risk, and therefore you can lose more than your original investment, and if leverage is not your number 1 priority, you might want to choose a spread betting company with the tightest spreads over one with a bigger margin.
Account opening offers come across as very attractive, particularly when you are new to spread betting, or come from a sports betting or gaming background, as the scale of the bonuses offered are relatively high. However, it is important to stress that there are minimum bet requirements attached to these offers, and if you are a spread betting beginner and don’t fully understand how the spread betting process, you can very quickly loss more than the bonus on offer, so be sure to read up on how it works and how to minimise your risks before you get started.
Key thing to remember: Other than ensuring that, if you are a beginner, before you get sucked in by the size of the bonus on offer you understand what the minimum deposit and bet conditions of the offers and how spread betting works, there isn’t much more to know about sign-up offers.
A significant advantage of spread betting over traditional forms of investment is that you have immediate access to a variety of markets that are conventionally more difficult to get access to. If you are only interested in trading UK stocks, then you don’t need to do much research across the spread betting companies on offer, as they all cater for UK stock trades.
However, if you want to trade things like: commodities, aim listed companies, or average house prices, then you’ll need to do a bit of research into which companies can provide the service you need. This is where having more than one account also comes in handy; because if you know what you’re after, it’s easy to just check on all your accounts whether they have the product. You can also read our summary of the different markets offered by the main spread betting companies, to get an overview.
One thing to be aware with access to markets is that generally the more common markets offer more competitive prices – largely because there is more competition within these markets. So if you are looking for a less conventional market to invest in, keep an eye on the price offered, and it is definitely worth shopping around the different providers.
Lastly, whilst spread betting generally offers access to a variety markets without any complication, there are certain markets that may require one off or monthly administrative fees for you to get access to, such as the Australian stock market. We cover this more in our comparison of the markets offered by spread betting companies.
Key things to remember: No single spread betting company has access to all of the markets, so if you are thinking of spread betting beyond the main exchanges (ie FTSE & Dow), then use our market overview as a guide, but it is worth signing up to more than one provider so that you can shop around.
It is not only the price and markets offered to you that differentiate the various spread betting companies. Other factors can make the difference between 2 similarly priced companies, for example:
These items don’t really require much explanation, they are pretty much what they say they are, however not every company offers them, so it is something to be aware of when choosing your spread betting provider(s). In addition, the quality of the offering on things such as mobile trading can equally make or break your spread betting experience. Our spread betting company comparison gives an overview of which spread betting companies offer these additional services.
Read about the less well-known differences between spread betting companies?
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