Our team dedicated a lot of time analyzing different features of Pepperstone to present this honest Pepperstone review. We have checked the reputation, reliability, and all the approaches adopted by Pepperstone. Our team has also tested a wide range of services that Pepperstone is ready to offer to its customers. Now we are ready to share with you the honest feedback on a lot of the broker’s features. After reading, try all the amazing tools for yourself, learn and trade with Pepperstone.
Contents
- 1 Pepperstone Top Takeaways For 2022
- 2 Is Pepperstone Safe?
- 3 Criteria Chosen For The Pepperstone Review
- 4 Pepperstone Account Opening
- 5 Investment Products Available
- 6 Broker Commissions And Fees
- 7 Trading Platform Options
- 8 Social Copy-trading Platforms And Research Tools
- 9 Education Provided By The Pepperstone
- 10 Pepperstone Deposit & Withdrawal Review
- 11 Mobile Trading
- 12 Customer Service
- 13 Pros And Cons Of The Broker
- 14 Final Thoughts
- 15 Risk Warning
- 16 FAQ
Pepperstone Top Takeaways For 2022
Pepperstone is a CFD and Forex broker that has been on the market since 2010. With the regulation by three top-tier regulating administrative bodies and the segregation of the users’ accounts from company funds we can talk about the highest protection and security the broker provides to its clients. Pepperstone creates great conditions both for beginners and experienced traders. There are superb educational tools available on the website that are constantly updated.
Is Pepperstone Safe?
There is an approved method of checking whether a CFD broker is a trustworthy one. Find out the administrative unit behind the broker and its regulatory status. A trustworthy and reputable broker should be authorized and get the license from at least one of the tier-1 regulators (the jurisdiction with the highest trust). Such a high level of regulation means that a broker does not manipulate market prices. What is more, your investments will be insured up to a certain level of deposit in case a broker becomes insolvent.
Pepperstone is a highly regulated broker supervised by a range of administrative bodies. Let’s have a closer look at the regulatory units of the broker and their levels of trust:
Tier | Regulator | Trust |
Tier-1 regulator | Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) | High |
Tier-1 regulator | Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). | High |
Tier-1 regulator | The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority ( BaFin ) | High |
Tier-2 regulator | Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) | Average |
Tier-2 regulator | Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) | Average |
Tier-3 regulator | Capital Markets Authority of Kenya (CMA) | Low |
Tier-3 regulator | Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB) | Low |
One more thing to consider when you check the safety and security of a CFD broker is what kind of bank it uses for backing up the customers’ investments. Pepperstone does not operate its bank. It refers to the services of a tier 1 bank. The term “tier 1” in this case means that the bank is financially strong and can guarantee the security of its clients’ funds, meaning that if a broker goes out of business for any reason, you will get your financial compensation anyway. With the factors being considered, we can claim that Pepperstone is a regulated and well-established CFD trading broker.
Criteria Chosen For The Pepperstone Review
To provide you with the best quality Pepperstone review, we took into consideration the following criteria:
- Trading platforms the broker deals with
- The types of accounts you can open with the broker
- Commissions and fees
- Portfolio, fee reports, and notifications
- Banking options
- Quality of Customer Support Service
Pepperstone Account Opening
To register an account of Pepperstone you will need to follow a couple of simple steps:
- Create your login and password and enter a valid e-mail address
- Fill in the application form.
- Confirm your ID.
- Deposit money to your account and start trading.
Depending on the country you are from the verification process may require more time. The broker can ask for additional documents to confirm your identity. The ID types which are accepted: passport, national ID card, driving license with a photo. Address documents: tax statement, driver’s license with an address stated, utility bill, any other document issued by a government or financial establishment. Make sure that your name and residential address on the provided documents match the information you stated in the application form.
That being said, there are two types of accounts you can open with Pepperstone. Let’s check Pepperstone CFD margin for different accounts and other crucial details.
Razor Account | Standard Account | |
Operations executive speed | Faster | Smaller |
MT 4 or 5 | Yes | Yes |
cTrader | Yes | No |
TradingView | Yes | Yes |
Minimum deposits | $200 | $200 |
Minimum lots trading size | 0.01 | 0.01 |
Maximum lots trading size | 100 | 100 |
Leverage (Australia, Europe, UK) | 30:1 | 30:1 |
Leverage (offshore) | 400:1 | 400:1 |
Mobile trading | Yes | Yes |
EU/USD Average Spread | 0.09 | 0.60 |
Commission | $3.50 | $0 |
Works best for | Scalpers | Beginners |
Razor Account
With a Razor account, you can get access to raw (market-based) spreads, the fee for which begins from 0.0 pips. The broker charges the commission for the type of Pepperstone CFD spread. An interesting fact worth mentioning is that the sizes of commissions Pepperstone applies are usually smaller on a lot of currency pairs than the commission fees charged by other brokers. For instance, if the commission for EUR/GBP taken by brokers starts at 0.40 pips, Pepperstone takes 0.27 pips. Pepperstone doesn’t influence the buy and sell price in the case of the Razor account because the spread price is regulated externally by Electronic Communication Network technology (ECN). Pepperstone doesn’t add any extra pips to the price set by ECN.
Razor accounts are more popular among experienced traders because of the broader choice of trading platforms. The forex platforms you can choose from are the Meta Trader (MT4 or MT5) with the fee of $3.50 for a lot and cTrader that charges 0.0035% of the forex pair. The type of account works best for applying an algorithmic trading strategy.
Standard Account
In comparison to the Razor account, the Standard account offers a wider spread and is a great starting point for beginner traders. This type of account is based on straight-through processing (STP) technology. It implies that an STP forex broker sends your position to financial merchants who analyze it and set the price for online forex. Then Pepperstone adds 0.6 pips to the spread which is basically a fee for the broker’s service. The pricing costs are clear and transparent, you don’t need to calculate the commission and this makes the account manageable for beginners.
Investment Products Available
The investment products available to Pepperstone customers include the following options:
- Index CFDs – you can trade on the movement of 14 stock markets with the leverage up to 20:1
- Share CFDs – you can trade on shares like Apple, Boeing, Tesla and Alibaba with commissions starting from USD$0.02 per share.
- Commodity CFDs – you can trade different commodities like coffee, cotton, orange juice, precious metals etc.
- Currency Index CFDs – trade on fluctuation in the value of a currency.
Broker Commissions And Fees
In this Pepperstone broker review, we would like to emphasize that Pepperstone fees are lower in general compared to the charges taken by other brokers. This fact makes the broker extremely popular among traders who prefer trading rather frequently. The Pepperstone fee and Pepperstone CFD commission can be divided into the following two types:
1) Trading fees – the price imposed on an investor for performing trading operations like buying stocks. It can be charged in the three forms:
- A commission – fixed fee or the fee that is based on the traded volume
- A spread – the difference between buying and selling cost
- Financial rate – the fee charged when an investor holds the leverage position for more than a day
2) Non-trading fees – those are the costs of any operations performed in your account like depositing and cashing out money, or not trading for a period of time. Let’s have a closer look at the non-trading fees. The good news is that Pepperstone does not charge any deposit and withdrawal fees. The same refers to the inactivity fee – no money would be withdrawn from your account if you happen not to trade for a longer period of time. The absence of all these extra fees that are not related to purchasing and selling assets is truly a marvelous opportunity, as it allows you to save money and invest more in actual trading.
Trading Platform Options
In this Pepperstone review, we would like to analyze a couple of the portal’s features. First of all, the login features and the security of your account. We also tried out the search functions and placing orders on Pepperstone. Setting alerts and notifications may seem a bit confusing at first because there are plenty of setup options. But with the detailed instructions, we found out that it is actually easier than it may seem at first.
Login And Security
Pepperstone offers only one-factor authentication that means that to log in you will need to provide only a password. Also, there are no biometric authentication functions like recognizing fingerprints or the face-recognition option.
The security of your account is taken seriously by Pepperstone. How about the security of your funds? Not all brokers take care of their clients that much to ensure the safety measures when it comes to eliminating negative balances. Pepperstone is one of the brokers that does so. To help its clients not to go negative, the broker has adopted an automatic stop-out system. The function is controlled by ESMA rules and protects UK and EU clients. Non-UK/EU traders can’t be provided with such protection, thus they should keep an eye on the amount of money on their accounts and trade wisely not allowing the losses to exceed their deposit amount.
Search Functions
All Pepperstone trading reviews agree upon the fact that the broker has amazing search functions. Our review is not an exception. You won’t encounter any issues when looking for assets. The greatest thing about searching for them is that they are grouped into different categories. The search algorithm provides fast and efficient search results. For example, if you would like to find “Emerging markets” and start typing it, you will get in the search results all Emerging markets ETFs even if they don’t have the word “emerging” in their names. You will get what you are looking for.
Placing Orders
To place an order, go to the toolbar section and find the New Order button. Or, you can just right-click at any place in the limits of the Trade Tab and select New Order in the list of options that appears. Then you will need to fill in the information of the trade and choose between red and blue Sell by Market buttons. The red button will open you to a short position and the blue one will provide you with access to a long position. All the process refers to Meta Trader.
As to the cTrader, the New Order button is situated in the “Positions and Orders” window. Or, choose the green “New Order” button at the top of the platform. Fill in the details of the position and to finally open the position click on “Place Order” in the “Create Order” window.
Alerts And Notifications
Setting up alerts and notifications with the sophisticated Alarm Manager offered by Pepperstone is not a problem at all. With these features, you can receive notifications about events right to your account and set up automatic actions to be taken when events occur. What is more, the Alarm Manager can send automatic notifications to your followers on social media, via e-mail or SMS informing them that you trade. A very useful thing is to adjust the warning notifications. These will be the smart safety measures that can never be redundant when talking about trading. The examples of the cases you can set up the warning notifications for:
- If your margin usage exceeds 20%
- If you have losing positions
- If you place an order without a stop-loss feature
- If you have more than four consecutive losing trades
Of course, you can adjust the Alarm Manager for many more options than just safety. When the price on the market goes up and down you can get price alerts. Or, you can get congratulation for having more than three consecutive winning trades, etc. It is very convenient to operate the tool: you can organize your alarms in groups and move your alarm into any group you wish. Plus, each alarm can perform a couple of actions like send a message and place a trade.
Portfolio And Fee Reports
You can have access to a really useful tool via the cTrader interface – Active Market Panel that is a “window” to all the trading information you will find necessary when selling and buying assets and follow the market changes that happen in real-time. You will see trade and pip value, different fees, and access to a very important tool for analyzing your trading activity. It is an amazing opportunity that will come in especially handy for new traders. You will be able to perform an in-depth analysis of your overall trading experience, assess all your strong and weak sides. That will provide you with the opportunity to base your future decisions on taking into account all the data from the portfolio. You can apply different filters to analyze your performance beyond the basic metrics on the Pepperstone website but keep in mind that there are no tax accounting tools.
Social Copy-trading Platforms And Research Tools
Pepperstone is famous for offering a wide range of social copy-trading platforms and research tools for its customers. The solutions add up to the useful educational content developed in-house. In this Pepperstone review, we would like to state that the special distinctive feature of the broker is the balance between the video content and written content.
- Third-party social copy-trading platforms:
- Auto chart list – the tool aimed at recognizing patterns and trading signals
- Sentiment indicators – the tool that helps with the prediction of market behavior by analyzing where the current beliefs may lead in the future
- Risk management tools – like a stop-loss tool when you get a signal to sell or buy stocks when they reach a certain rice
As to the in-house research amenities, Pepperstone releases a couple of articles and videos per week. There are several useful sections aimed at keeping a trader in touch with the latest news like Market Analysis, Market News, and Market Calendar to make trading an easier and more enjoyable experience. Market Analysis covers a wide range of topics like politics and other news that can influence the market. There is one more useful section, Daily Fix, that helps the trader to follow market-moving events. Forex Reports are sent to the traders on a daily basis. It is enormously helpful to start your trading session with them.
Pepperstone Research:
Feature | Pepperstone |
Forex News | + |
Webinars | + |
Autochartlist | + |
Trading Central | – |
Delcos Research | – |
Economic Calendar | + |
Education Provided By The Pepperstone
All the research tools mentioned above are a part of the overall constant educational process of traders. Beyond that, Pepperstone offers many more sources for both new and experienced traders to improve their knowledge of trading. First of all, you can use the specially developed section “Learn to Trade Forex” with plenty of webinars. Pepperstone constantly releases new webinars to expand the library of these useful videos. There are a lot of trading guides where different topics like discussions on hedging and margin are covered in every detail. There are also guides on how to use the platform, for example, how to perform deposits and withdrawals. And don’t forget about the market glossary on Pepperstone.
The most helpful educational tool Pepperstone can offer is a Demo Account. We have tried it for the Pepperstone review. You can get hands-on experience in trading risk-free with the possibility to trade with virtual funds on this type of account. The features are the same as of the live account. You can choose the trading platform you’d like to trade on, you will get access to leverage capability, all the indicators, and the professional market analysis.
With the free access to all the educational resources, we recommend investing your time in learning a lot before starting your trading career if you are a beginner. We understand that with such an attractive interface and a lot of useful tools available on Pepperstone the temptation to start investing and earning money is really big. However, if you have the possibility it is always better to get to know markets and the factors that influence their moves. A good way to approach trading is to imply the analytical approach when trading and learn how to manage your risks.
Pepperstone Deposit & Withdrawal Review
In this part of the Pepperstone CFD review we would like to stop on the deposit and withdrawal details. The same banking options are available for both online banking transactions. It appears to be quite easy to deposit and withdraw money on Pepperstone website.
Deposit Fees And Options
We would like to remind you that the broker does not charge any deposit fees. Thus, you do not need to take into account any deposit charge from Pepperstone when funding your account. However, keep in mind that your bank or any other third-party banking services provider may take fees for online money transfer transactions.
Pepperstone offers a wide range of deposit methods. Let’s have a look at some of the options:
- Bank transfers
- Banking cards (Visa, MasterCard)
- e-wallets (PayPal, Skrill, Neteller)
- POLi (for Australian citizens)
- PayID (for Australian citizens)
- BPay
- UnionPay
As to the time required for your funds to appear on your account with wire transfers it may require up to three days. With credit cards and other payment methods, the procedure is instant. You can easily figure out how to fund your account, it is quite simple and you can do it in several steps. Just select the Funds option in the list in the Toolbar on your left, choose your account, then the payment option you prefer, and the amount of money you’d like to deposit. Here you go, you are ready now to apply all your skills and talents to earn income from trading. Be sure that we have checked the different payment options for this Pepperstone financial review and can assure you that we had just the best experience with all of them.
Withdrawal Fees And Options
With such a user-friendly interface of the Pepperstone website, a withdrawal is just as simple as a deposit. And, what’s even more attractive for traders is that the process also is not charged by the broker.
An important thing we would like to turn your attention to in this Pepperstone CFD review is that your account should have a base currency you can select for yourself. If you are interested in keeping your money in more than one currency then there is the possibility to open several accounts and choose the base currency for each one. This will give you the chance to omit the currency conversion fee that can be charged, for example, by your bank if you withdraw money to your bank account. Pepperstone offers 9 base currencies among which there are USD, GBP, and EUR.
The same methods that you can use for making deposits, you can apply to cash out your funds. Debit and credit cards, bank transfers, e-wallets, etc., are how you can withdraw money from your Pepperstone account.
Mobile Trading
Pepperstone made mobile trading very convenient for its customers. There are several mobile apps available for both Android and iOS-based systems. You can choose one depending on what kind of trading platform you prefer to use. You can download MT4, MT5, or cTrader app.
iOS-based system | Android-based system | |
MT4 Platform | + | + |
MT5 Platform | + | + |
cTrader Platform | + | + |
Indicators | + | + |
Watch List | + | + |
Charting Options | + | + |
Forex Calendar | + | + |
Alerts | + | + |
Customer Service
In this Pepperstone CFD review, we would also like to focus a bit on the customer support service as it is also an important thing to be considered when choosing a broker. Pepperstone provides one of the best customer support experiences out there. The multi-language team will be able to answer all your questions regarding the features of the Pepperstone 24/7. Speed and effectiveness are the key principles the customer support agents follow when providing their services to traders. There are several ways you can contact CSS on Pepperstone:
- Live chat – works either through the desktop version or a mobile app. You can expect the answer within 3 min.
- E-mail – works best if you’d like to take time to describe your situation in more detail. You can expect the answer in between 2 minutes and 3 hours.
- Phone calls – if it’s a burning issue you need help with, you can always reach Pepperstone experts via phone. Usually, your call will be answered in 1 minute.
If you check Pepperstone customer reviews you will notice the satisfied feedback on the customer support service.
Pros And Cons Of The Broker
Pros | Cons |
There is the possibility of social trading | Works only with Forex and CFD |
Spreads are lower than average | If you are not an EU or Australian resident, you can be charged extra banking fees for transfering money to and from your account |
Different payment options are available | Traders from the USA are not allowed |
Excellent quality of customer service support | |
Access to many educational resources | |
Wonderful notification tools |
Final Thoughts
If your choice for trading is Forex or CFD markets, Pepperstone is one of the best brokers that will enable you with more than 200 tools to become a successful trader. Pepperstone made it as easy as possible to trade on the platform. The user-friendly interface that is perfectly adjustable to any gadget is at your service. The access to social trading that the broker allows is priceless as you can copy successful trades of experienced traders using DupliTrade, MetaTrader Signals, and other tools. It is regulated and licensed and provides plenty of risk-management features. We hope that this Pepperstone review was helpful for you.
Risk Warning
CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Between 74-89 % of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money
FAQ
Yes, Pepperstone is a reliable broker. It is officially licensed and offers a plethora of trading features to make the trading experience as easy and resultative for its users as possible.
Yes, Pepperstone is a CFD broker.
To trade on Pepperstone, create an account on the website, choose between available trading platforms (MT4/MT5/cTrader/TradingView), set up the notifications and alerts, learn the market if you are new to the topic, and start trading. For more information read our whole Pepperstone review.
The minimum deposit for Pepperstone is $200.
You can withdraw up to 90% of your free margin on Pepperstone.