eToro Vs Plus500

Brokers can act like casinos, wanting you to leave if you win too much. Of course, many of them are ethical and provide great conditions. First-timers are, unfortunately, usually oblivious to fake brokers or the ones who manage to “bend” around regulators. In this case, we compare and lift the veil on two giants – eToro and Plus500.

Are eToro and Plus500 good for you? In this review we scan and compare these brokers.

Intro

Checking if a broker holds a valid license on regulator websites is one good confirmation you are not dealing with a fake dealer. It does not mean it has quality service or if they fit your trading style. As a flavor to the twist, popular brokers do not always enjoy good reviews and they do their best to hide that.

Brokerages evolved and become more of a technology business than financial dealers. The focus is on IT solutions, digital assets, and innovative ways to make trading easier and fun. Essentially they are providing you with access and trading involvement in various capital markets.

Based on all these solutions and business decisions, brokers can just pass your trades to the global market liquidity pools, also called ECN brokers. Or, match your request with an internal pool of traders – these are Dealing Desk or Market Maker brokers. ECN brokers can be further categorized as STP (Straight Through Processing) or ECN+STP. You should know the key difference is ECN should provide more competitive spreads and shorter execution times than Dealing Desk brokers, but charge a commission. We would further label brokers as regulated, crypto brokers, EA-friendly brokers, Copy trading brokers, etc.

Plus500 Vs eToro

Both brokers are CFD Market Makers and offer only one platform developed especially to match their business. Marketing campaigns are very aggressive in scope seemingly like these brokers are in the competition who will spend more on promotion. Many of you who are into sports likely know about these broker brands, but are they as good as they are popular?

Platforms

eToro platform is an organized collection of almost all of eToro’s features. Switching between trading, analysis, learning, or account management is stylish in a way new traders will feel the need to explore and have fun. Discovering and reading about all the products eToro has to offer is immersive, unique, and impressive if we compare it to other brokers. But even though the platform and ProCharts are attractive, it is not powerful enough for advanced traders that went the other way of building custom strategies, automation, and looking for much better trading conditions. Interestingly, the eToro platform can be used for analysis, reads, quick stats, sentiment, even for free on a demo account. Of course, advanced traders will have their special sources, but if you are a beginner to an intermediate trader, the eToro platform has great educational and informative value. The best parts of it are Copy trading, Themed portfolios, social commentary, educational content, and a simplified, beginner-friendly trading environment.

Plus500 is a direct competitor but it is hard to top eToro’s advantage in Copy Trading and social orientation. Instead, the proprietary Plus500 platform is offering CFD Options trading (not vanilla), and has recently included its “market +Insights” tool for interesting, unique information about the selected trading instrument. Using brokerage stats, It provides how “buzzing” is the asset in the news, traders’ subjectivity, impression, popularity, and more. If we compare the two platforms just using technical abilities and tools, we could not pick any winner, they are both well-equipped for an average trader, but inferior when compared to TradingView, for example. Aside from the unique +Insights stats, and the “Guaranteed Stop” (a premium, no-slippage stop order) the Plus500 platform does not have a clear advantage over eToro’s. These features are more like soft touches, not a reason to pick a broker.

Instruments Range

eToro has an impressive range of available assets and combinations of them to create portfolios as a product. This broker pays special attention to the crypto space, not only offering 79 crypto coins but also NFTs through their Delta app. eToro was able to connect with many capital market providers that in turn deliver a great depth in Forex, Stocks, Indicies, Commodities, precious metals, and ETFs. When compared to the industry average, the eToro asset range is among the top offers.

Plus500 is also very rich in the number of available trading instruments. Compared to eToro, it does not feature NFTs, the same crypto range, or interesting and rare crosses with commodities, currencies, or other cryptos. In most of the other market categories, Plus500 has more or less the same depth, but there is also Options CFD on many assets as a specialty of this broker. The combined offer is over 2000 instruments.

Trading Costs

All the expensive marketing, technology, development, and staff have to be financially covered. Both brokers do this by setting high fees in almost every aspect compared to other brokerages. Spreads are medium, and conversion and other fees exist, although both brokers promote no commission trading. But hey, most would agree it does not mean much in these conditions except to promote a seemingly good offer. When compared in general, our brokers have the same degree of trading costs, your decision will likely weigh on the platform and products or services offered.

Plus500

• No deposit fees (rarely charged anyway)
• No fees for withdrawals

• Generally higher overnight costs than eToro
• Medium spreads from, 0.8pips
• Currency conversion fee of 0.7%
• Inactivity fee, no log after 3 months

eToro

• No deposit fees (rarely charged anyway)

• $5 fixed withdrawal fee
• Average to high financing costs
• Average to high spreads, from 1 pip
• Currency conversion fee of 0.5%
• Inactivity fee, no log after 1 year

Customer Support

eToro support is very busy, it handles most issues through the ticket system. Chat is available but unlike Plus500 eToro features a bot before you can chat with a live agent. Live agents are not available during the weekends and are good at answering questions as long they are not too demanding. For example, we inquired about Moving Average cross alerts, and none of the brokers answered easily. Both proprietary platforms do not have such an option. While chatting with eToro, we have been warned to hurry up to upload documents and our phone number. Note that both brokers are aggressive in marketing and it shows in the support department as well. However, both support departments were quick to answer and provide relevant links for more info.

Education

eToro is very rich when it comes to educational material. It is also nice to see more on the instrument of your choice in the comment sections, news, and stats page. The education section is full of quality, updated, and deep content for those willing to learn more. The level is adequate for beginners and advanced enough for experts. We especially like the style, organization, and wide and deep coverage of any market or asset.

Plus500 has good coverage when it comes to the latest news, but it seems eToro does a better job in every aspect, be it educational videos or reads. Plus500 has still well-developed educational content for the industry. A special weight is put on the relatively new addition, “+Insights”. The new add-on is a unique analysis and info panel for the selected instrument, however, we found it is not educational per se. Is this add-on valuable to the point Plus500 traders are making money more than eToro? No.

Regulation and Reputation

eToro is regulated across the globe among the most strict regulators. These are CySEC # 109/10 for EU cleints, FCA under the license FRN 583263 for UK, ASIC 491139 in Australia, and FSAS in Seychelles for other countries. eToro is present and accepts most US clients for crypto and stock trading, and this fact separates it from Plus500. US eToro does not hold a full broker license but is under a Money Service Business license with FinCEN.

eToro is well-regulated but does not enjoy great ratings on certain review portals. It seems the great-looking service does not live up to expectations.

Plus500 is regulated by multiple regulators, just like eToro but is not available to US citizens. Interestingly, the broker is investing in sponsorship in the NBA.
Both brokers are publicly traded, eToro on NASDAQ while Plus500 is on LSE. Regulators for Plus500 are FCA, ASIC, CySEC, FSA (Seychelles), in Estonia, FMA (New Zealand), FSCA in (South Africa), and in Singapore.

Now, Plus500 will scan your location and IP based on which it will adapt its website, regulation, offers, and other services. Of course, because of this VPNs are forbidden. Take note when you create an account as your rights and funds protection depends on this.

Lastly, this broker does not have below average rating among the community. Traders are reviewing Plus500 as unethical is a surprise to many who might think all the regulations are a guarantee of fair relations. Special attention should be taken for traders that are scalping, this is prohibited by Plus500. What is exactly a scalping activity seems to be a subject of interpretation, even though a definition is stated by Plus500.

Conclusion and Summary

These Market Maker brokers are in direct competition as they compete for almost the same target audience. These are people who like sports betting, sports, and social networking, also familiar with cryptocurrencies. Mobile trading is well-developed, it fits active, young people who want a simple and fun training experience as they climb the learning curve.

We put eToro at advantage over Plus500 for several reasons, however, if you do not into eToro specialty services, we recommend finding a better-rated broker with better trading conditions.

Platforms are both good but we find eToro better at immersing the trader into their special Copy trading, portfolios, and commentary. This added value makes a different trading experience than what other brokers can deliver.

Also, we like that eToro is more transparent about the fees than Plus500. Having your fees calculated every time before you place a trade is simple and cool.
Interestingly, Plus500 has a history of unethical behavior while eToro, according to client reports and official announcements, is recently playing with stop-loss orders and their liquidations. Both brokers receive similar accusations such as stop loss hunting, market closing during strong movements, spread shocks, etc.

When it comes to picking the right broker, pay attention to what clients are saying. Use sources that are objective, unbiased and independent, even though try are hard to find.

Third-party risks with both of these brokers are high in our opinion. Your trading, if very profitable, could be flagged as scalping in the case of Plus500 or your stop loss could be hunted in the case of eToro. We didn’t like pushy Plus500 support and the overall impression about the features is definitely in favor of eToro, despite somewhat higher fees. If you are a beginner trader, eToro does a great job pulling you into the world of trading and investing.