6 Best Futures Trading Forex Brokers for 2026

Founded in 2007, IC Markets is an Australian-headquartered broker with Tier 1 regulation under Australia’s ASIC. It also holds Tier 1 regulation in Europe (through Cyprus’s CySEC), and another license in the Seychelles (FSA) for other international clients. (The regulation that applies to you will generally depend on your residence. For example, Australian residents will automatically fall under ASIC. This will also affect the maximum leverage you can access.)

Key Features:

• Best Entity for Futures Trading: IC Markets (EU) Ltd
• Regulation: ASIC (Australia) license: 335692; CySEC (Cyprus) license: 362/18
• Maximum Leverage: 1:30 for European and Australian clients, but 1:100 and higher for global clients
• Available Futures Contracts: 5 (Dollar Index, VIX, Brent Crude, WTI Crude, Gold)
• Margin Call: 10%
• Trading Fees (Futures): Average
• Available Platforms: MetaTrader 4 and 5, cTrader, TradingView
• Average Execution Speed: Under 40 milliseconds

By many other brokers’ standards, their futures offering is tiny, with just 5 contracts: Dollar Index, VIX, Brent Crude, WTI Crude, and Gold. If I were serious about futures trading in general, their lack of futures contracts would be a barrier for me.

I tested IC Markets on a live cTrader Raw account. Their futures CFD costs were around the industry average in my test (e.g., the WTI futures CFD had a 0.004-pip spread). For futures CFDs, they build the cost into the spread, whereas they charge a spread and separate commission on spot CFDs.

IC Markets offers Level 2 data for free on MT4, MT5 and cTrader. It aggregates data from all their liquidity providers, which can be useful for all CFD traders. (Level 2 data is available on TradingView, but there’s a fee.

I don’t consider IC Markets a futures broker: I think of them as a broker that has a few popular futures CFDs.

Founded in 2010, IronFX is a Cyprus-headquartered broker with Tier 1 regulation under the UK’s FCA, in Europe (through Cyprus’s CySEC), and in Australia with ASIC. It also has a regulatory license in South Africa (FSCA). 

Key Features:

• Best Entity for Futures Trading: Notesco Financial Services Limited
• Regulation: UK (FCA), Cyprus (CySEC), South Africa (FSCA)
• Maximum Leverage: 1:100 or 1:200 on futures CFDs
• Available Futures Contracts: 26 (indices, energy, agriculture, and Forex)
• Available Platforms: MT4

I used a standard account for the review, and the WTI crude spread was a reasonable 0.04 pips at the time of my test, about the industry average.

I haven’t used MT4 in many years because other platforms have surpassed it, everything from MT5, cTrader, and TradingView. MT4’s architecture was originally designed for spot Forex, and MetaTrader stopped continuing to develop it in any meaningful way many years ago. I say all this because from a futures perspective, MT4 is simply not adequate, even if its Futures CFDs, and not the actual futures contract. I would not use IronFX for futures trading for this reason.  

The only silver lining in terms of futures trading for IronFX is that it offers a decent range of Futures CFDs, more than most of its competitors, and its pricing is reasonable.

Founded in 2006, FxPro has several Tier 1 regulatory licenses, including regulation with the UK’s FCA, in Europe with Cyprus’s CySEC. It holds additional licenses in the Bahamas (SCB license) and Seychelles (FSA license). FxPro goes a step further by naming the banks holding its clients’ funds and its external auditors on its website.

FxPro offers Forex, indices, CFDs on shares, futures (CFDs, not direct futures contracts), metals, energy, and cryptocurrencies. In total, it offers 2,100 instruments, which is larger than average.

Its futures CFDs cover equity indices, agricultural commodities, energy and currency futures. This is more than most brokers offer in futures CFDs, and I think, combined with their spot CFD list, almost all traders will find the markets they want to trade with FXPro.

Key Features

• Best Entity for Futures Trading: FXPro UK Limited
• Regulation: Europe/CySEC license: 078/07; UK FCA registration: 509956; South Africa FSCA license: 45052; Bahamas SCB license: SIA-F184
• Maximum Leverage: 1:50
• Available Futures Contracts: 30
• Available Platforms: FXPro Webtrader, MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView
• Average Execution Speed: >8 ms

FxPro is one of the largest brokers on this list: $120 million dollars in company capital, 17 million client accounts, 300 employees and 12 liquidity providers.

It is a non-dealing desk broker that has some of the fastest execution times in the industry at under 8 milliseconds.

FxPro offers its proprietary FXPro Webtrader, plus  MT4, MT5, cTrader, and TradingView. This list of platforms will cover most traders’ needs: their proprietary platform is clean and easy to use, MT4 and MT5 are great for automated strategies, cTrader has excellent execution speed and depth of market data, and TradingView has some of the best charting features available.

FxPro is a solid choice for most traders. It’s clearly well-established, has plenty of trading instruments, and has fantastic execution speed. After reviewing it, I’m considering using it as my next broker.

Founded in 2006, AvaTrade has Tier 1 regulation in multiple jurisdictions: Australia (ASIC), Europe (through Cyprus’s CySEC), Ireland (CBI), and Japan (JFSA). It also has further licenses in South Africa (FSCA), Israel (ISA), Abu Dhabi (FSRA), and the British Virgin Islands (FSC). 

Key Features:

• Best Entity for Futures Trading: AvaFutures
• Regulation: CBI (Ireland), ASIC (Australia), JFSA (Japan), FSCA (South Africa), ADGM (UAE), ISA (Israel), FSC (British Virgin Islands)
• Maximum Leverage: 1:400 (FSC)
• Available Futures Contracts: 100’s
• Trading Fees (Futures):  1.75 USD per standard/mini contract and 0.75 USD per micro contract. 
• Available Platforms: MT5, TradingView, CQG, ATAS

AvaTrade surprised me in my research because all their non-futures business uses a market-maker/dealing desk model, so I expected them to do the same with futures CFDs. Instead, they have set up a dedicated futures division, imaginatively called AvaFutures. This is a true futures broker that directly routes orders to the CME with access to hundreds of futures contracts.

As with all futures trading through an exchange, the exchange controls the spreads and fills.

Of all the brokers reviewed in this category, AvaFutures is the most professional choice with access to futures contracts traded directly on exchanges.

The CQG and ATAS trading platforms, which most retail traders don’t know exist, are geared towards professional traders. They offer much more advanced technical features, such as real-time data corrections, volume data based on actual exchange data (not the estimated data TradingView uses), custom timeframes, and holding orders on the server-side in case of internet interruptions.

For these reasons, AvaTrade is near the top of my list to recommend to others as a futures broker.

If I were giving the award for the strongest brand identity, then it would go to IG. It has become one of the most recognized names in the industry, one of the longest standing, having operated for more than 50 years, and is a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange. There are not many other brokers that can come anywhere close to this level of presence.

As you can imagine, given its bearing, it offers access to every market imaginable: over 17,000 instruments across Forex, commodities, indices, share CFDs, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and more. 

Key Features:

• Best Entity for Futures Trading: IG Index Ltd, IG Markets, Ltd, IG Markets Ltd Australia, and IG Bank S.A.
• Regulation: FCA (UK), ASIC (Australia), and FINMA (Switzerland)
• Maximum Leverage: 1:30
• Available Futures Contracts: 15 (Commodities, Indices and Bonds)
• Margin Call: Not Specified
• Trading Fees (Futures): Below Average
• Available Platforms: IG’s proprietary, ProRealTime, L2 Dealer, MetaTrader 4
• Average Execution Speed: 14 milliseconds in my test

I opened an IG CFD Trading account, which supports commission-free trading (except for share CFDs). It had floating spreads from 0.6 pips in my test, which is better than the industry average.

For futures CFDs, IG builds all its costs into the spread (as per their claim and as confirmed in my test).

I measured their average execution speed at an impressive 14 milliseconds. This performance is the result of IG’s DMA (Direct Market Access) execution model and technology infrastructure, which provides access to deep liquidity.

IG offers a broad range of platforms, and it’s best known for its L2 Dealer DMA platform, which I chose to test. I was impressed with its versatility, for example, offering multiple volume metrics for technical analysis, along with plenty of other analytical tools and order types.

Founded in 2008, Plus500’s US entity is regulated by the CFTC and NFA. Its US entity’s offering is focused on futures contracts and prediction markets.

Key Features:

• Best Entity for Futures Trading: Plus500US Financial Services LLC (NFA ID number 0001398)
• Regulation & Max. Leverage: CFTC/NFA, leverage varies per futures contract
• Tradable Instruments: Equity Indices, Energy, Cryptocurrencies, Metals, Forex (15 contracts), Agriculture, Interest Rates
• Trading Platforms: T4 suite (not MT4!), TradeSniper (mobile app), TradingView integration
• Speed of Execution: 23 ms

Plus500 in the US is a true futures broker (not a CFD provider on futures pricing), which means it routes client orders directly to exchanges, and Plus500’s US clients trade the actual futures contracts on the exchange. Plus00 connects directly to the following exchanges: CME, CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX, Kansas City Board of Trade (KCBT), Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGEX), Eurex, ICE Futures Europe, NYBOT, Canada’s WCE, and NYSE Liffe (London, Paris and US).

Because Plus500 in the US is a pure futures broker, it means that for Forex, it has only 15 contracts.

Their execution speed is a respectable 23 ms. Given that it routes orders to an exchange, being a futures broker routing orders to exchanges, it’s the exchanges that will determine the fills when they receive the orders from the broker.

Its standard contract commission is 0.89 USD per side, or 0.49 USD per side for micro contracts. This is competitive amongst futures traders.

Plus500 sticks to using its proprietary platforms for clients (T4 for desktop and TradeSniper for mobile). But it does allow for TradingView integration.

I like that Plus500 is a true futures broker, and that’s often what many traders want when trading futures, rather than CFDs on futures. I would like to see it offer more platforms, but it does not charge fees on the platforms it does offer, unlike many other futures brokers.