OANDA Review 2024

Rating 7/10

Max. Leverage

1:30

for Forex

Minimum Deposit

£0

EUR/USD Spread

1 pip

Benchmark

Visit OANDA

OANDA is a CFD broker that offers trading services for spread betting and CFDs (Contract for Differences) on forex (foreign exchange), indices, bonds, metals, oil, and agricultural commodities.

Onda was established in 1996 in the United States of America, and the broker is regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and by other top-tier financial regulators.

In our review of OANDA, we assess the trading conditions of the broker, fees, deposit/withdrawal options, available tradable instruments, supported trading platforms and customer support.

OANDA is a trading name of OANDA Corporation, which is incorporated in Delaware, USA. OANDA Corporation is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and National Futures Association in the USA.

The broker is regulated by Tier-1 and Tier-2 financial regulators around the world under different names. Find some of the regulations of OANDA in various jurisdictions below:

1) Financial Conduct Authority (FCA): OANDA is regulated in UK by the FCA and authorised to offer financial services under the name ‘OANDA Europe Limited’ with reference number 542574, issued in 2011.

2) Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC): OANDA is regulated in Australia by ASIC as OANDA Australia Pty Ltd and licensed to offer financial services with Australian Company Number (ACN) 152 088 349, issued in 2011.

3) Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA): OANDA is licensed in Europe as ‘OANDA Europe Markets Ltd’ by the FSA in Malta with registration C 95813, issued in 2020. OANDA serves residents of the EEA (European Economic Area) with this license.

4) Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS): OANDA is regulated in Asia by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as ‘OANDA Asia Pacific Pte Ltd’ and licensed to deal in capital market products.

5) Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO): Oanda is regulated with the CIRO in Canada as Oanda (Canada) Corporation ULC. They are authorized to offer CFD trading in Canadian districts. Clients under this regulation are also protected by the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF).

6) Financial Services Commission (FSC), British Virgin Islands: OANDA is registered in the British Virgins Islands as OANDA Global Markets Ltd and Regulated by the FSC with license number SIBA/L/20/1130 issued in 2022. Traders in Malaysia are registered under this regulation.

Negative balance protection is available for UK clients.

Leverage on OANDA depends on the instrument you are trading and whether you are a retail or professional client. The maximum leverage on OANDA for retail clients is 1:30, which means that you can open a trade position worth up to 30 times the value of your deposit.

For example, with a deposit of £100, you can open a trade of £3,000 to increase your profit potential. Note that it also exposes you to more risk.

The maximum leverage of 1:30 is for forex majors, other instruments have maximum leverage of 1:25 for forex minors; 1:20 for exotic forex, gold, and major indices; 1:10 for minor indices, metals, oil, and agriculture commodities; and 1:5 for bonds.

Professional traders on OANDA have access to higher leverage of up to 1:100 for major forex pairs. The leverage is also lower for some instruments.

OANDA offers 3 main account types for retail clients and you can also request a professional account status and be treated as a professional client with access to higher leverage.

OANDA offers Islamic Accounts to traders under the OANDA Global Markets regulation in the British Virgin Islands, UK traders currently cannot apply for Swap-free Accounts under the regulation by the FCA. You can open a demo account on OANDA and practice trading with virtual money before putting in your real money.

Find an overview of the account types on OANDA UK below:

1) Personal Account: The OANDA Personal Account is designed for retail traders and can be accessed on the MetaTrader and OANDA trading platforms. With this account, you can trade Forex pairs, indices, bonds, agriculture commodities, oil, and metals.

Spreads for Personal Account on OANDA start from 1 pip for major pairs like EURUSD. You pay zero commission fees, but incur swap fees whenever you keep a trade position open past the closing time of the market.

There is no mandatory minimum deposit with this account type, a minimum lot size of 0.01, and you have a maximum leverage of 1:30. You also have negative balance protection as a retail client which means you cannot lose more than the money in your account.

2) Corporate Account: OANDA allows corporate bodies to sign up as traders. This means that your business can sign up with the broker as a separate entity and carry out trades. The OANDA Corporate Account is by default a retail clients account, and you can trade forex pairs, indices, bonds, agriculture commodities, oil and metals.

Spreads on this account start from 1 pip for major forex pairs, you pay no commission fees whenever you open and close trade positions, but you will incur swap fees for keeping a trade position open past the closing time of the market.

There is also no mandatory deposit for the Corporate Account on OANDA, the minimum trade volume is 0.01, with maximum leverage of 1:30. This account also has negative balance protection.

3) Joint Account: If you and a partner or spouse want to co-own a trading account, you can do this with the OANDA Joint Account. With this account, 2 or more people can own one trading account and each of the owners can log in to the same account to perform trades.

You can trade forex pairs, indices, bonds, agriculture commodities, oil, and metals, with spreads starting from 1 pip for major pairs like EURUSD, you pay swap fees with this account too and no commission fees are charged.

There is no mandatory minimum deposit amount for this account type, although the bank account or cards you use to make payment on the platform must bear the name of the partners who wish to operate a joint account with OANDA.

For retail Joint Accounts, the maximum leverage is 1:30 for forex majors and you have negative balance protection so you do not lose more than the money in your trading account.

4) Professional Account: Professional Account on OANDA is designed for experienced traders who want to trade with higher leverage and access more sophisticated trading tools.

To get a Professional Account, first create a Personal, Joint, or Corporate Retail Account, then contact the customer support team to upgrade your account to professional status. Note that you will have to meet at least 2 of the following requirements before your application will be approved.

1. You must have worked for at least 1 year in the financial services sector
2. You must have placed a minimum of 40 significant transactions during the past year with notional value of at 50,000
3. You must have an investment portfolio of more than €500,000

The OANDA Professional Account does not have a mandatorily required minimum deposit and you do not have negative balance protection, which means that you can lose more than the money in your account and will be required to deposit more money to clear any negative balance that accrues from an unsuccessful trade position.

The leverage for professional clients on OANDA is 1:100 for major forex pairs, indices and gold; 1:50 for minor indices, oil, bond, and forex pairs; 1:40 for silver; 1:30 for sugar; 1:20 for some indices and forex pairs, and 1:10 for other metals and agriculture commodities.

As a professional trader, you do not pay commissions for opening or closing trade positions, you pay spreads starting from 1 pip for major forex pairs like EURUSD and you pay swap fees for keeping a trading position open past the marketing closing time.

OANDA Base Account Currency

Account base currencies available on OANDA are British Pound sterling – GBP, Euros – EUR, United States Dollars – USD, Swiss Franc -CHF, Japanese Yen – JPY, Canadian Dollar – CAD, Australian Dollar – AUD, Honk Kong Dollar – HKD, and Singapore Dollar -SGD.

Your deposits, trades, withdrawals, and fees are measured in your OANDA account currency.

OANDA charges different fees depending on the instrument you trade size and whether you are a retail or professional client. Here’s an overview of the broker’s trading and non-trading fees.

Trading fees

1) Spreads: When you trade a financial instrument on OANDA, the price you pay includes a markup that goes to your broker. The spread is the difference between the bid and asks prices for a trade. The size of the spread depends on the instrument you are trading.

OANDA operates a variable spreads system, which means that the spreads will fluctuate during the day to reflect market movements. Average spreads during peak trading hours for majors like EURUSD is 1 pip, but this changes as well.

2) Commission fees: OANDA offers commission-free trading in the UK for all account types. This means that you do not pay any fees when you enter or exit a trade position. This applies to all instruments on the platform.

3) Swap fees: If you enter a trade position and you do not exit it before the market closes, which is 5 PM ET, it will roll over to the next trading day, and you will be charged a rollover fee or overnight funding cost also called swap fees.

The fees will be added to your profit or loss when you eventually close the position. The fee is calculated based on the volume of your trade, the instrument you were trading, the leverage, and whether it was a long swap (buy) or a short swap (sell).

If your position was a long swap and the trade is successful, you gain swap interest, which is added to your profit.

4) Currency conversion fees: Whenever you trade a financial instrument that is not paired with the currency of your account, you incur currency conversion fees when you close the trade position.

For example, if your base account currency is GBP, and you trade USD/JPY, any profit or loss you make will be converted to your base account currency and charged a currency conversion fee because the pair you traded is not in the currency of your account.

The currency conversion fee on OANDA is 0.5% of the mid-point price at the time of conversion, applied to the profit or loss realized from the trade.

Here is the trading fess of some popular CFDs that OANDA provides.

Swaps are subjected to change.

Non-trading fees

1) Deposit and Withdrawal fees: OANDA charges zero fees for deposits for all payment methods, which means you don’t pay any fees for depositing funds to your trading account on OANDA, although your payment processor may charge you independent fees.

OANDA charges withdrawal fees for bank transfers of £10 for your first transfer in a month and subsequent transfers incur a cost of £20 per transaction. OANDA offers one free withdrawal via cards and PayPal, provided the PayPal account is denominated in GBP, EUR, or USD.

2) Account Inactivity charges: If you do not perform any trading activity on your account for 12 months, your account will be categorized as inactive and any funds in it will be charged £10 each month.

If you do not have any money in your account, you will not accrue a negative balance.

Your first withdrawal in a month is free. However, there is a fee for subsequent withdrawal. The fee depends on your account currency. This applies to credit/debit card and bank transfer transactions.

How to Open OANDA Account in UK?

Follow these steps to open a trading account on OANDA.

Step 1) Visit the OANDA UK website via www.OANDA.com, scroll down and click on the ‘See our CFD markets’ button highlighted in blue. Then click on the ‘Create account’ or ‘Start trading’ buttons on the next page.

Step 2) Confirm that you live in the UK, enter your email address, create a username and password then click ‘Confirm and continue’.

Step 3) Provide your full name, date of birth, phone number, insurance number, and home address then click ‘Confirm and continue’.

Step 4) Answer some questions about your employment and financial status, then some questions about your knowledge of financial instruments and trading experience, then click ‘Confirm and continue’.

Step 5) Upload verification documents to confirm your identity and address.

Step 6) Confirm your email address by clicking the link sent to your inbox, which will log you into the trading account.

After uploading the relevant documents, it takes up to 24 hours for your account to be approved. Until your account is approved, you will be unable to deposit funds, withdraw or trade.

Payment methods supported on OANDA are cards (debit/credit), bank transfers (local/international), and PayPal. The bank account or card used to deposit or withdraw funds must have the same name as the name on your trading account. Find an overview of the deposit and withdrawal on Oando below:

What’s the minimum deposit for OANDA?

There is no mandatory minimum deposit on OANDA, you can deposit any amount that you want with any payment method of your choice.

While PayPal and card deposits are credited immediately, it takes up to 2 business days for funds to reflect in your trading account.

How do I deposit money into OANDA?

Follow these simple steps to deposit funds into your OANDA Account:

Step 1) Log in to your OANDA trading account via www.OANDA.com/account/login.

Step 2) Once your dashboard loads, click on the ‘Manage Funds’ tab.

Step 3) Select ‘Deposit’ and follow the on-screen instructions to add funds to your account.

What is the OANDA Minimum withdrawal?

There is also no compulsory minimum withdrawal on OANDA and you can withdraw any amount, this applies to all payment methods. All withdrawal requests are processed within one business day by OANDA, and it may take up to 3 business days to receive funds for cards and up to 5 business days for bank transfers.

How to Withdraw Funds from OANDA

Follow these simple steps to withdraw money from your OANDA Account:

Step 1) Log in to your OANDA dashboard via www.OANDA.com/account/login.

Step 2) Once your dashboard loads, click on the ‘Manage Funds’ tab.

Step 3) Select ‘Withdraw’ and follow the on-screen instructions to withdraw funds from your account.

You can trade the following financial instruments on OANDA:

Trading platforms supported by OANDA are:

1) MetaTrader 4 OANDA supports the MT4 trading application which is available on the web, desktop, and mobile devices (Android & iOS).

2) OANDA Trader: OANDA offers trading via a proprietary trading platform developed by OANDA and can be accessed via the web, or desktop or downloaded from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

OANDA UK strives to achieve the best execution and prices for traders. In order of importance, OANDA’s execution factors are price, costs, speed, and likelihood of execution.

For the price, OANDA Europe Limited obtains the price for CFDs from companies within the OANDA Group. These companies get their prices from several external market participants. The final price displayed on trading platforms is an average of the pricing received from these third parties. This is OANDA’s way of having an objective view of bid and offer prices to ensure you get the best execution. In addition, OANDA adds their spread
to the final price displayed as mark up.

Costs are more straightforward. OANDA UK operates a spread pricing model. No extra commissions. If there are any extra fees to pay, they will be disclosed in your transaction history report, disclosures, and the trading platform.

We didn’t find much information on the speed. OANDA’s legal documents only state that trades can be executed poorly if your internet service, mobile apps, and trading platforms are not working well. However, all trades are executed on an automated basis. This means the likelihood of execution is high.

Finally, OANDA does not aggregate your trade/order with any other customer during execution. They are one of the few brokers that do not aggregate.

Here is a breakdown of OANDA’s education section.

Getting Started: This section is a basic introduction to trading. You are first introduced to OANDA as a company, then the main learning begins. There are three sub-sections you will be exposed to — trading essentials, order types, and price patterns.

Trading essentials cover basic definitions like currency pairs, bid/ask prices, spreads, pips, opening/closing your orders, and partial closing of orders. Beyond definitions, these trading concepts are explained with examples. A video is also added to help you learn visually. It is about 5 minutes long.

The second sub-section is order types explain the market order, limit orders, take profit, stop loss, and trailing stop loss. These are key foundations to trading successfully.

Price and chart patterns is the most detailed sub-section. The section opens by explaining the different chart styles that you will see on a forex trading platform and how to identify them. You also get to learn about candlesticks, candlestick formation, and how to interpret them. What makes this section interesting is the combination of texts and images.

Finally, the section covers how to combine candlestick formations with indicators to create a trading strategy A brief explanation of support and resistance is also added.

Webinars: Oanda’s webinars and free and you can build up your knowledge with them. They have archived webinars that you can watch on-demand at your own pace. There are also scheduled live market analyses. All you need to do is register and pick your preferred time slot. Finally, there are the premium webinars. They are available for traders with an OANDA live account only.

OANDA UK offers 24/5 online customer support to traders via the following channels:

1) Live chat support: OANDA offers live chat support to clients that can be accessed through the support page of their website and is available 24/7 to chat with the Virtual Assistant, while live agents are available from 04:00 PM on Sunday to 06:00 PM on Friday,

When our team tested the OANDA live chat, there was no wait time as the agent was connected immediately. When you start the live chat, the chatbot will suggest some quick answers to you based on what you type.

To transfer to a live agent, type ‘Live chat agent’, then it will request your email and connect you to a live agent that is online. Although it will request for a code sent to the email, we didn’t get any, so we clicked resend code, then ‘I didn’t get email’ and were connected to an agent.

The answers we received to our questions were relevant and we were directed sometimes to some articles that answered our questions.

2) Email support: OANDA also offers email support for traders and is available 24/5 as well. When our team tested the OANDA email support, we got a response 20 minutes later and the answers were relevant.

The OANDA email address for customer support is [email protected].

3) Phone support: OANDA has a phone line for customers to call and make inquiries and is available 24/5. The OANDA phone number is +44 20 3151 2050 and + 44 20 7101 1600.

Do we Recommend OANDA UK?

We recommend that you try out OANDA because they are regulated in the UK, by the FCA, and the broker is considered safe as they are obliged to take measures to protect client funds based on the various regulations.

OANDA offers several account types to traders, including professional and retail clients. You can also use the demo account option to learn more about the platform and trading in general.

Fees on OANDA are a bit high, although they offer spread-only trading with zero commission for opening and closing trade positions, the spreads are also competitive, they charge withdrawal fees for bank transfers, while all deposits are free of charge, and they charge currency conversion fees and dormant account fee after 1 year.

Customer support is responsive and available 24/5. The website is also informative and the registration process is easy. Although OANDA offers few tradable instruments, you can check out the broker’s website and probably chat with the live support to help decide if you want to trade on the platform.

OANDA UK FAQs