Reviews

Oanda Review 2023 - The Good and the Bad

By Stefano Treviso, Updated on: Mar 24 2023.

Oanda in a Nutshell

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Oanda in 60 seconds

• No minimum deposit and minimum trade size of a single currency unit (eg: 1 Euro, 1 U.S Dollar)
• TradingView integration and internal charts with a robust platform with a compact approach
• 7 Different licenses from the most reputable financial regulators in the world

Oanda is an international Forex broker founded in 1996 with headquarters in the United States. Oanda specialises exclusively in currency trading solutions for all trader levels. Their greatest selling points are their strong regulatory framework and robust proprietary platforms.

Oanda Full Review

Here’s what we’ll talk about during our review: 

• Is Oanda Safe?
• Oanda Minimum Deposit and Withdrawal
• Oanda’s Account Types
• Oanda’s Trading Fees
• Oanda’s Available Assets
• Oanda’s Platforms
• Oanda’s Mobile Trading Platform
• Oanda’s Web Trading Platform
• Oanda’s Desktop Trading Platform
• Oanda’s Research and Analysis Tools
• Oanda’s Educational Tools
• Verdict

Is Oanda safe?

Oanda is a safe and reliable broker thanks to their strong regulatory framework as they’ve managed to acquire 7 licenses from some of the world's most respected financial watchdogs. The below list are each one of Oanda’s regulators:

• CFTC (U.S Commodity Futures Trading Commission)
• FMD NFA (Forex Dealer Member of the National Futures Association U.S)
• FCA (Financial Conduct Authority)
• ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission)
• MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore)
• IIROC (Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada)
• FFAJ (Financial Futures Association of Japan)
• BVI (British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission)

During our Oanda’s investigation process, we found amazing user reviews and overall a very good feeling of their presence.

They definitely have one of the best regulatory frameworks out there.

Oanda’s Minimum Deposit and Withdrawal

Oanda has no minimum deposit requirement and does not charge any deposit fees. Currently, they only accept deposits or withdrawals via the below methods:

• Debit and Credit Cards (Visa or Mastercard)
• Bank Wires
• Paypal

Base Currencies

For the above payment methods, Oanda supports the following account base currencies:

• United States Dollar
• Canadian Dollar
• Australian Dollar
• Euro
• Singapore Dollar
• Great British Pound
• Japanese Yen
• Hong Kong Dollar
• Swiss Franc

It’s very important to note that despite Oanda’s decision to not charge a deposit fee, they do charge withdrawal fees using a particular structure:

• For debit cards and paypal, all withdrawals are free regardless of how many a customer requests.
• For credit card withdrawals, the first one in a calendar month will be free and any other withdrawals will have a fee of $15.
• For bank transfer withdrawals, the first one in a calendar month will have a fee of $25 and any other withdrawals will have a fee of $35.

Please consider that the above example is set in USD, there may be variations in costs according to your account’s base currency. In simple words, avoid using bank transfers for withdrawing funds unless you’re planning to deposit large amounts.

Deposit and Withdrawal Process

Oanda’s platform, while being very tight and integrated for some things, it’s not for others. When launching your web trading platform, you’ll see a funds management option where you’ll be able to create multiple accounts in different currencies and request deposits or withdrawals.

Bear in mind that this section is independent from the platform and opens in a separate tab on your browser, that’s why we emphasize the lack of integration as it’s not an option quickly available inside the platform.

Bonus (only for Eligible countries)

Oanda offers a welcome bonus of up to $5,000 depending on a customer's initial deposit. If a client deposits a minimum of $1,000 then the bonus will be of $500. On the other hand, if you're feeling lucky and you're able to, a $50,000 deposit will get you the incredible amount of $5,000 as a bonus.

The above promotion is not available in the United States, European Countries, the United Kingdom and it's only applicable as long as local laws and regulations allow it.

Oanda’s Account Types

Oanda offers two different types of accounts: Standard and Professional. Here are the main differences:

Oanda’s Trading Fees

Oanda charges spreads (which vary according to each asset) and overnight fees on leveraged positions.

Spreads

Oanda profits through the spread charged (difference between buy and sell prices) when opening trades. Let’s compare their spread against a few similar brokers:

Oanda’s spreads are definitely competitive when compared to the majority of FX brokers, yet they’re still not the lowest ones.

Commissions & Fees

Oanda doesn’t charge commissions such as in-and-out commission of each trade but they do charge currency conversion fees, depending on the traders’ account base currency.

Another very important charge to mention is that Oanda charges an inactivity fee of $10 per month after a user left his account inactive for a 1 year period.

Oanda’s Available Assets

Oanda’s asset offering is mostly dedicated to currency pairs (68 so far). When it comes to stocks, ETFs or other asset classes Oanda is definitely lacking a lot when compared to its competitors. 

Oanda’s total asset offering is merely 107 tradable instruments being most of them currency pairs. Here’s how they compare against other well-known brokers:

Oanda is clearly a great choice for currency (FX) traders as they offer no minimum deposit, a minimum trade size of a single unit of any currency (Eg: 1 Euro, 1 U.S Dollar, etc) and a solid platform. On the other hand, when it comes to other asset classes there are definitely better choices out there.

Oanda’s Platforms

Oanda has a great platform offering, here are the choices they offer:

• Downloadable desktop platform for MAC and Windows devices
• Android and IOS Proprietary FxTrade App
• Oanda Web Trader (accessible from any web browser)
• MT4 & MT5 (Both for desktop and as a mobile app)
• Tradingview platform (in-built in their own system and also accessible as a TradingView partner broker from TradingView’s own system)

Let’s review a few of their highlights.

Oanda’s Mobile Trading Platform

Our favourite of Oanda’s platforms is their mobile trading app. It’s extremely fast, easy to use and simple. Let’s go over the main areas.

Mobile Home

Oanda’s mobile platform home comes packed with basic features such as directly sorting through asset classes from the top while viewing each asset’s chart on the and a classic bottom menu to switch between areas of the platform.

On the first look, we notice the similarities between Plus500 and Oanda when it comes to platforms. Both have the same layout of an asset list and a half-screen chart on the bottom.

Sadly we weren't able to find a notification centre anywhere on the platform. 

Asset View

Oanda’s passion for simplicity is clearly evident as they don’t have a dedicated asset view but rather when you click on each asset, the half-screen chart  changes and allows you to click on details to view some key information on each asset.

Compared to some of their competitors, it definitely would be nicer to have a dedicated asset view with more relevant information on each asset such as custom related news.

Order Placement

Oanda’s mobile platform order placement panel is a one-stop-shop for trading as any user can directly change even the asset they’re wishing to trade straight from the panel.

While still being a very effective tool as it allows a trader to set many values, view their margin exposure and more. We still get the feeling that it’s not an order placement panel designed for an optimal mobile experience but rather a quick replica of the desktop version.

Portfolio

Oanda’s portfolio section allows a user to check for:

• Trade (Active positions with options to: modify, reduce or close a trade)
• Orders (Pending orders)
• Positions (Same view as Trade with only the ability to close trades)
• Activity (A general overview of everything happening in the account such as: deposit, withdrawals, debited commissions, closed trades, etc).

The portfolio section is very simple and effective, a great positive point for Oanda.

News

Oanda’s mobile platform news section is merely an integration of News provided by Dow Jones.

There’s no ability to customise your news or filter them. In the end, it’s not very helpful but rather just an added benefit to get some extra news.

Charting Tools

When rotating your mobile device horizontally, the app will automatically switch to full screen charting mode.

As a positive point we can definitely say that Oanda’s mobile charting experience was fast, smooth and overall perfect. The charts were responsive and allowed us to draw and place indicators without experiencing any lags. 

In conclusion, Oanda’s mobile platform is definitely well built for what it does with the exception of the mobile order placement panel. On the negative side, we would love to see more integration of features instead of having to access extra browser tabs to get news, economic calendars or any other resources.

Oanda’s Web Trading Platform

Oanda’s web trading platform is a very compact experience as pretty much everything a user needs is in one place. Let’s go over its main features:

Web Home

In Oanda’s web platform home, you’ll be able to find pretty much everything you need.

At a glance, any user is able to access the asset view, news, portfolio and charting tools straight from the home. Sadly there is no notification centre for important matters.

Order Placement

The order placement window is definitely well optimised and designed for desktop devices (that’s why we felt the mobile one was exactly like this one with minor changes). 

When compared to the mobile version, there are a few more options as in the mobile one, a user can choose only from “market order” or “entry order” whereas in the web version, a user can choose from “market”, “limit” and “stop” orders.

In the end, it's a more complete version with less simplification.

News

Oanda’s web platform news are the same as the mobile version. They require opening an additional tab external to the platform to view the Dow Jones integrated news.

Here is where we start noticing the polar opposites when it comes to integration. On one hand, the platform has everything you need in one place, on the other hand then whenever you need additional resources, more tabs and external resources need to be loaded as nothing is part of the platform.

In conclusion, the web trading platform is a great tool for executing your trades and getting simple tasks done. There should not be much expectation for research or added value in it.

Oanda’s Desktop Trading Platform

Oanda’s desktop platform is a downloadable version of their web platform with a few options that always require deploying additional tabs on your web browser (which makes no sense at all). Let’s go over its mean features:

Home

In the desktop platform’s home, you’ll be able to find everything you need just like in the web version.

A few very important points to note:

• Most of the options on the left side will simply deploy additional tabs to load the resources from the web.
• Advanced charting is nothing more than an additional window loading TradingView charts
• There’s no notification center

While it is a nice gesture to provide a desktop platform, we do not recommend it at all. Any user is well served with the web and mobile versions. There won’t be any great advantages from using the downloadable desktop version.

Oanda’s Research and Analysis Tools

When it comes to research and analysis, Oanda provides the following tools:

• An economic calendar
• Access to StockTwits without possibility of configuring them
• MarketPulse news
• Economic Analysis
• News feed by DowJones
• Technical Analysis signals provided by AutoChartist

Overall, we get the feeling they decided to simply provide lots of tools regardless of the quality of them but in the end, they’re not very useful.

Oanda is a great FX broker and it should stick to doing what they do great without trying to provide too many additional resources which don’t live up to its expectations.

Oanda’s Educational Tools

Oanda’s website provides a “Learn Section” where they offer some text-based introductory articles for those that don’t know much about brokers or trading accompanied by some Webinars which are pending a potential broadcast date.

Overall, Oanda’s educational department requires much more effort to live up to the standards of some of their competitors.

Verdict

Oanda is a great choice for beginner, intermediate and professional forex traders due to the following reasons:

• No minimum deposit requirement
• Minimum trade size of a single currency unit
• No commissions
• Reputable and strong regulatory framework

On the negative side, Oanda needs to improve its asset offering to cover more markets and also their platform integrations to allow for a smoother experience.

Judging from Oanda’s current standing and being a company founded in 1996, they clearly have a defined path where they want to stay as a leading FX broker instead of taking over other markets.

If you’re a currency trader looking for a safe broker with a strong regulatory framework and competitive offers in currency trading, Oanda is definitely a great choice.