Reviews

Pepperstone Review 2023 - The Good and the Bad

By Stefano Treviso, Updated on: Apr 07 2023.

Pepperstone in a Nutshell

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Pepperstone in 60 seconds

• 7 financial licenses by several global financial regulators from which 4 of them belong to the highest reputation ones (BaFin, FCA, ASIC, DFSA)
• Comprehensive asset offering accompanied by a multi-platform environment with MetaTrader, cTrader and TradingView
• Competitive spreads in their Razor account with low commissions (starting from $7 per lot round turn) and the ability to trade via APIs

Pepperstone is an Australian broker founded in 2010 with the aim of providing a professional trading experience with low fees and tight spreads. Currently Pepperstone counts with 7 financial licenses and operates in almost every country around the world.

Pepperstone Full Review

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

• Is Pepperstone Safe?
• Pepperstone’s Minimum Deposit and Withdrawal
• Pepperstone’s Account Types
• Pepperstone’s Trading Fees
• Pepperstone’s Available Assets
• Pepperstone’s Trading Platforms
• Pepperstone Research and Analysis Tools
• Pepperstone Educational Tools
• Verdict

Is Pepperstone safe?

Pepperstone is a well regulated and safe broker that counts on several global licenses from many regulators. Below you’ll find a list of Pepperstone’s financial regulators:

• BaFin (German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority)
• FCA (Financial Conduct Authority UK)
• ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission)
• DFSA (Dubai Financial Services Authority - United Arab Emirates)
• CySec (Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission)
• SCB (Securities Commission of the Bahamas)
• CMA (Capital Markets Authority of Kenya)

As you can see from the above list, Pepperstone holds 7 financial licenses.

Four of these licenses are from outstanding financial regulators (BaFin, FCA, ASIC, DFSA) which leans the positive points balance well in favour of Pepperstone.

Pepperstone’s Minimum Deposit and Withdrawal

Pepperstone has a minimum deposit threshold of $200 and charges no fees for it. Here are their deposit and withdrawal methods:

• Credit and Debit Cards (Visa or Mastercard)
• Bank Transfer
• Paypal
• Skrill
• Neteller
• POLi
• BPay
• Unionpay
• Mpesa

Bear in mind that each payment method is not always available on all locations as they depend on what each financial regulator allows.

Base Currencies

Pepperstone supports the following base currencies:

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

A very positive point is that for the majority of clients Pepperstone does not charge any withdrawal fees with the exception of Skrill and Neteller where there is a $1 fee and bank transfer outside the EU or Australia with a fee of $20.

Deposit and Withdrawal Process

Pepperstone is a multi whitelabel platform broker, meaning that all their trading platforms offered are built by independent companies such as MetaTrader (MetaQuotes) or cTrader. This results in them not having an integrated in-built funding experience inside their platforms but rather having a separate client area to perform account management transactions.

We believe that Pepperstone’s account management area is well built and self-sufficient. Any regular user is able to perform deposits, withdrawals, funds transfers between accounts or requesting new trading accounts without requiring any interaction with customer support.

Pepperstone’s Account Types

Asides from the traditional distinction between Standard and professional accounts offered to European traders due to ESMA’s legislation, Pepperstone also has their own internal account types:

In simple terms, Pepperstone’s standard account is for any regular trader regardless of its volume whereas the Razor account is best designed for high volume traders or professionals that will take advantage of the low spreads.

Pepperstone’s Trading Fees

Pepperstone charges spread and overnight fees in all their accounts and also commissions depending on the account type or asset.

Spreads

Pepperstone offers one of the most competitive spreads in the Forex industry, let's compare them against other similar brokers using their standard account:

In our opinion, Pepperstone is a great broker for Currency traders but not at all for stock trading.

Commissions & Fees

Comparing Pepperstone’s razor account where a commission is charged against other similar brokers, we see that Pepperstone is very competitive.

The reason for this is that despite them charging a commission on their Razor account of $7 per lot roundturn, it gets compensated with the extremely low spreads from 0.3 Pips which of course pays-off well for high volume traders.

When it comes to stocks, that’s where we’re not satisfied with their charges as they have commissions of:

• $0.02 per share for U.S Shares with no minimum
• 0.10% for German shares with a minimum of 7 Euros
• 0.07% for Australian Shares with a minimum of $5 AUD

Their commissions are competitive when compared to other brokers such as IG or CMC Markets which have a $10 minimum charge in-and-out in several shares but of course, compared to brokers like eToro, the offer becomes invalid as there are no commissions at all with tight spreads on stocks.

To finalise, it’s important to note that Pepperstone does not charge any inactivity fee.

In conclusion, Pepperstone’s offer is great for Forex traders but for other asset classes, there are better choices.

Pepperstone’s Available Assets

Pepperstone is clearly a specialised FX broker yet for some time they have also been expanding their reach into other asset classes to increase their competitiveness. Let’s compare them against other brokers:

While Pepperstone’s asset offering may look outnumbered in some areas by major brokers like eToro or Capital.com, it remains very competitive as the spreads and additional features found in Pepperstone are not easily available in their counterparties.

Pepperstone’s Trading Platforms

Pepperstone did a great job when it comes to trading platforms. Instead of investing millions of dollars in R&D to develop their own, they simply partnered with the best Whitelabel providers out there to offer the best possible platforms for their customers. Currently, Pepperstone offers:

• MetaTrader 4 (Web, mobile and desktop)
• MetaTrader 5 (Web, mobile and desktop)
• cTrader (Web, mobile and desktop)
• TradingView

From all these platforms, cTrader is definitely our favourite one as they developed a smooth, fast and responsive experience on mobile and desktop.

Here’s an overview of the home area of cTrader’s Web version:

As you can see, the platform is well designed and provides all the necessary tools at the tip of a finger.

Here’s how Pepperstone’s cTrader mobile version looks like.

Clearly, the cTrader team did a great job on their platforms. For the sake of common sense, we’re not planning to go deep in reviewing any of these platforms or the Pepperstone MT4 or 5 versions as in the end, they’re simply a quick modification of MetaTrader with a Pepperstone banner strapped on top.

What matters is that the platform’s choices are well known, broad and convenient.

Pepperstone Research and Analysis Tools

Pepperstone provides the following research and analysis tools:

• An independent market analysis section on their website with several blog articles and videos on their outlook of certain assets
• An Economic Calendar

Besides from the elements mentioned above, since Pepperstone is a MetaTrader and cTrader Broker, both platforms also offer the possibility to integrate interesting tools such as:

• Expert Advisors like (Alarm Managers, Correlation Matrix, Correlation Trader, Sentiment Trader)
• Custom Indicators such as: Donchian, Chart-in-Chart and many more

All of these tools are very useful and interesting, yet we still lack classic analysis and research tools such as asset filtering based on some conditions, etc.

Pepperstone Educational Tools

Pepperstone provides a section on their website dedicated to education but it’s merely a portal to access a series of blog articles dedicated to learning trading and a few basic tasks accompanied by webinars as well.

When compared to other major brokers that offer integrated online academies, financial glossaries and community forums, Pepperstone’s educational tools leave a lot of room for growth.

Verdict

Pepperstone did an amazing job in crafting a competitive offer and accompanying it by worldwide known platforms like MetaTrader and cTrader along with tight spreads and low commissions such as the ones offered in their Razor account.

We found their account management dashboard very simple and efficient to use as most of the actions any user wants to perform don't require any interaction with customer support.

Pepperstone main highlights are:

• Raw market spreads (from 0 to 0.3 Pips on EUR/USD) on their Razor account accompanied by commissions starting from $7 per lot round turn.
• Multi-platform environment (MetaTrader, cTrader and TradingView)
• Moderate asset offering and a well built client management area
• Many options for advanced traders to work with programming skills and APIs to create automated experiences

On the negative side, Pepperstone’s stock trading commissions are not competitive when compared to other major brokers which offer no-commission stock trading along with proprietary platforms and tradingview integrations.

Pepperstone is definitely an amazing choice for Forex traders of all levels, but amongst these, it is definitely advanced traders who will find the maximum value in Pepperstone by using their Razor account and their APIs.