Last updated on January 2nd, 2023 at 12:22 pm
What are the most popular forex brokers?
In summary, this article shares a clever way to determine the most popular forex brokers through the number of MT4 servers it has (you can check through Metatrader 4 mobile app), instead of searching for updated trading volume data, which is hard to find.
You will also find list of the most popular MT4 brokers below, based on the number of servers they have.
Most popular Forex brokers ranked by number of MT4 servers
| Rank | Broker | Servers | Server names |
| 1 | XM | 69 | XM.COM-Real 1 to 3, 5 to 6, 8 to 10, 13 to 20, 23, 30 – Trading Point of Financial Instruments Limited (Cyprus) XMAU-Real 1 to 3, 5 to 6, 9 to 10, 13 to 20, 23 – Trading Point of Financial Instruments Pty Ltd (Australia) XMGlobal-Real 1 to 3, 5 to 6, 8 to 10, 13 to 24. 26 to 30, 32 to 33, 35 to 36, 38 to 39, 41 to 44, 46 – XM Global Limited (Belize) |
| 2 | IC Markets | 51 | ICMarkets-Live01 to 24 – International Capital Markets Pty Ltd (Australia) ICMarketsEU-Live17 to 18 – IC Markets EU Ltd (Cyprus) ICMarketsSC-Live01 to 25 – Raw Trading Ltd (Seychelles) |
| 3 | HotForex | 19 | HFMarketsEurope-Live Server2 – HF Markets (Europe) Ltd (Cyprus) HFMarketsMENA-Live Server2 – HF Markets (DIFC) Limited (Dubai) HFMarketsSA-Live Server, 3 to 6 – HF Markets SA (Pty) Ltd (South Africa) HFMarketsSC-Live Server, 3 to 6 – HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd. (Seychelles) HFMarketsSV-Live Server, 3 to 6 – HF Markets (SV) Ltd. (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) HFMarketsUK-Live Server2 – HF Markets (UK) Ltd. (United Kingdom) HFXIntlBerjangka-Primary – PT. HFX Internasional Berjangka |
| 4 | IronFX | 17 | IronFX-Real1 to 10 – Notesco Financial Services Limited (Cyprus) IronFXBM-Real1 to 4, 8 to 10 – Notesco Limited (Bermuda) |
| 5 | Pepperstone | 13 | Pepperstone-Edge01 to 09, 11 to 12, 14 – Pepperstone Group Limited (Australia) PepperstoneUK-Edge10 – Pepperstone Limited (UK) |
| 6 | Tickmill | 10 | Tickmill-Live, 02, 04 to 05, 08 to 09 – Tickmill Ltd. (Seychelles) Tickmill02-Live – Tickmill Ltd. (Seychelles) TickmillAsia-Live06 – Tickmill Asia Ltd (Labuan) TickmillEU-Live – Tickmill Europe Ltd (Cyprus) TickmillUK-Live03 – Tickmill UK Ltd (United Kingdom) |
| 7 | Axitrader | 8 | Axi-US02 to 03, 05 to 07, 09 to 10, 888 – AxiCorp Financial Services Pty Ltd (Australia) |
| 8 | FxPro | 7 | FxPro.com-Real01 to 07 – FXPRO Financial Services Ltd (Cyprus) |
| 9 | Global Prime | 1 | GlobalPrime-Live – Global Prime Pty Ltd (Australia) |
| 10 | FP Markets | 1 | FPMarkets-Live – First Prudential Markets Pty Ltd. (Australia) |
Source: MT4 Mobile app iOS
Why is finding the popularity of MT4 brokers important?
- To cut through the marketing clutter. Brokers may claim they are the ‘best broker’ in Asia/ Europe, etc, due to the awards they’ve won, but what really shows finally is the amount of clients you have.
- Riding on other’s due dilligence. Experienced traders may know a popular broker offers extremely low spreads (for eg. IC Markets), which is why it is popular. Traders new to Forex may not know this and trade with brokers that charge high spreads. Therefore, when you seek out the most popular brokers you are able to take advantage of that knowledge by riding on the wisdom of the experienced.
Finding out the popularity of your broker in MT4 mobile
Step 1
Tap 'login to existing account'
Step 2
Search for your broker's servers to determine their popularity
Step 3
Search for your broker's servers to determine their popularity
Rationale to use MT4 servers to determine popularity of Forex Broker
Each MT4 server has a limit to the number of orders it can handle from its active traders. Consequently, the more popular a broker becomes, new trading accounts need to be assigned to new servers and the broker will have to purchase more server licenses from Metaquotes. (I remember in 2013 it was around USD$100,000.00)
In the above table, this relationship is evident as XM and IC Markets, whom are widely popular Forex brokers and also one of the biggest Forex brokers by volume from two sources. (source 1, source 2)
Admittedly, the sources might not be very reliable (they were the only ones I could find) as they only state that the source of the numbers is from their own research. Nonetheless, based on my experience providing commission discounts for IC Markets since 2013, I have seen exponential growth in the number of traders taking up such commission discounts, confirming for me that IC Markets does rank very highly as one of the top brokers by volume.
Conclusion
To conclude, IC Markets and XM.com are one of the most popular brokers globally as evidenced by the number of trading servers they have above and their trading volume (albeit outdated).
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