Plus500 review 2026

Hello, fellow investor! We will review Plus500 to help you find out whether it’s the right investment platform for you.

Plus500 is available in over 50 countries, including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, South Africa, and Singapore. The company is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange (ticker: PLUS, FTSE 250 constituent) – meaning it must regularly disclose its financial statements – and is regulated by multiple top-tier authorities including the FCA (UK), CySEC (Cyprus), ASIC (Australia), and MAS (Singapore).

Plus500 Invest and Plus500 CFD are currently not available in the US, so this review does not apply to US residents. US residents can instead explore TradeSniper and Plus500 Futures – two futures-focused platforms launched by Plus500 for the US market.

That’s Plus500 in a nutshell. If you want to find out what our research team has to say after analysing Plus500, keep reading.

Pros and cons

Account opening

To open an account with Plus500, it only takes seconds, literally. You just need to provide your e-mail and a password, and voilà: immediate access to their trading platform to test out its functionality (Demo account).

However, to start trading with real money, you will need to verify your identity and answer a questionnaire to assess your knowledge of financial products. This may take Plus500 up to 48 hours to verify these documents.

Multiple deposit methods are available to clients, including Bank Wire Transfer, Credit/Debit Card, Paypal, Skrill, Trustly, Apple Pay, and other local payment methods available for different countries.

Bank card payments will appear on your account immediately. Deposits made via e-wallets are typically received within 48 hours. The minimum deposit amount is €/£100, but for a wire transfer, it increases to €/£500.

Trading platform

As mentioned earlier, you will use WebTrader, Plus500’s proprietary platform, across both the Plus500 Invest and Plus500 CFD account types.

WebTrader covers the essentials with an intuitive and customisable dashboard, watchlists, alerts, and technical analysis tools. However, Plus500 does not support the popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4) or MetaTrader 5 platforms – a notable absence for experienced forex/CFD traders who prefer those third-party platforms’ algorithmic trading and indicator ecosystems.

You can switch between CFD and Invest accounts via the toggle on the top left side of the interface.

Within WebTrader, you’ll find +Insights, a trend exploration tool that lets users browse predefined measurements – “most bought”, “most sold (shorted)”, “most profit-making positions”, “most loss-making positions”, and more – returning a “Top 10” list of instruments for each metric. It offers a useful glimpse into the “wisdom of the crowd” across Plus500’s user base.

A newer addition, the Instrument +Insights Tab, is an instrument-focused experience that lets users dive deeper into each instrument’s data:

• Plus500 trading data: how many views the instrument has received in the last 24 hours, plus how popular it is (measured by trading activity);
• News and sentiment analysis: an aggregated view of news coverage, what the crowd thinks about the instrument, how subjective that opinion is relative to objective market data, and the volume and source of relevant news items.

The Plus500 trading platform also offers:

• Risk management tools: stop-loss, take-profit, trailing stops, and guaranteed stop orders (where available);
• 110 technical indicators and 13 chart types: with the ability to use multiple indicators simultaneously;
• Real-time trading alerts: a feature unique to Plus500;
• Customisable watchlists: users can manage multiple favourite lists across asset classes.

All features are available across Plus500’s native platforms – desktop, iOS, and Android.

Products and markets

On Plus500 Invest, you can access 3,000+ real stocks across major US and European exchanges – including smaller markets like Portugal and Austria.

On Plus500 CFD, the product offering widens significantly to CFDs on indices, forex, commodities, cryptocurrencies, shares, options, and ETFs – across thousands of underlying instruments globally.

Some categories are unique or exclusive to the Plus500 CFD platform – including the AI Index, ESG and Impact Indices, and an extensive selection of options CFDs not commonly available elsewhere. When placing an order, you’ll see all the relevant information for that instrument (using EUR/USD as an example):

Retail account holders have access to leverage of up to 30:1, depending on the instrument traded – in line with the leverage caps set by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) for retail clients in the EU and UK. Professional account holders (subject to qualification criteria) may access higher leverage levels.

Fees

Plus500 Invest

Plus500 Invest has no deposit, withdrawal, or custody fees. The platform charges trading commissions and a currency conversion fee instead.

For US stocks, the commission is $0.006 per share with no minimum fixed commission. For most European stocks, the trading commission is 0.045% of the trading value with a minimum of €2 per order.

A 0.30% currency conversion fee is also applied to every trade executed and any transaction charged in a currency that differs from your account base currency.

Plus500 CFD

In the CFDs space, Plus500 does not charge dealing commissions. Its primary source of revenue is the spread – the difference between the bid and ask prices.

To clarify what a spread is, let’s use a concrete example. Suppose you’re trading EUR/USD. If the ask price (the price you buy at) is 1.16441 and the bid price (the price you sell at) is 1.16431, Plus500 earns the difference – a market spread of 0.1 pips (see image below).

Other fees on Plus500 CFD include:

• Overnight funding: another name for a daily interest charge on leveraged positions. When trading CFDs, you’re using leverage – effectively being lent money in addition to your initial deposit – and that comes at a cost charged daily on positions held overnight;
• Currency conversion: as on Plus500 Invest, if you hold EUR and want to invest in a USD-denominated instrument, you’ll need to convert your EUR to USD first. This conversion costs up to 0.70% each time (and yes – when you eventually sell the USD-denominated asset and convert back, you’ll be charged again);
• Inactivity fee: if you don’t log into your account for three consecutive months, a recurring $10 monthly fee will be applied. The charge stops as soon as you log back in.

Plus500 also offers a particular optional fee that comes with a benefit to you and may be useful in volatile markets: the Guaranteed Stop Order (GSLO). It’s an excellent way to protect yourself against extreme market turmoil (more details in the “Regulation” section). The fee for using a GSLO is built into a wider spread on that specific order.

Plus500’s fees are competitive within the brokerage industry, and the company is generally transparent about all involved costs – enabling straightforward comparisons. That said, some fees only appear under “Details” (next to the instrument’s name) within the platform rather than on the public website, so always double-check the specific fees before placing an order.

Regulation

Plus500 is a trademark of Plus500 Ltd (LSE: PLUS, FTSE 250 constituent), which operates through several regulated subsidiaries:

• Plus500UK Ltd: authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), registration #509909, one of the world’s strictest regulators;
• Plus500CY Ltd: authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), registration #250/14;
• Plus500AU Pty Ltd: regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC);
• Additional subsidiaries regulated by the FSA (Japan), MAS (Singapore), DFSA (Dubai), EFSA (Estonia), and ISA (Israel).

Keep in mind that the Investor Protection Scheme does not apply uniformly to all Plus500 clients. For example, a UK investor is protected under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), up to £85,000. A German investor, by contrast, falls under the Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund (ICF), which protects up to €20,000.

As mentioned in the “Fees” section, Plus500 offers risk management features like the Guaranteed Stop Order (GSLO) – a feature not commonly available across the industry.

The GSLO can only be enabled under specific conditions (more info here), but the message is clear: “it will force the position to close at your chosen rate (price) even if the market price surpasses it.” In other words, you have no market gap risk. For example, suppose you buy a CFD of Apple at $100 and set a guaranteed stop loss at $95. The next day, Apple opens 10% down and is now trading at $90 – with a GSLO, you would still sell your position at $95, not at the current market price ($90).

Following the August 2018 restrictions on CFD trading introduced by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), Plus500 provides negative balance protection for CFD trading on a per-account basis (now extended to all retail clients globally, not just in the EU).

What does that mean in practice? Suppose you deposit €1,000 in your account and open a position with 5:1 leverage. This increases your exposure to €5,000. If the market dropped 25%, your loss would be €1,250 (25% × €5,000) – above your initial deposit of €1,000, meaning you’d theoretically owe €250 to your broker. With negative balance protection, your account balance is automatically readjusted to €0, so you only lose your deposit.

Want a deeper analysis? Check out our dedicated article on investment protection for EU investors.

Accepted countries

Plus500 operates mainly in Europe but is now present in over 50 countries:

• Africa: Seychelles, South Africa;
• Asia: Bahrain, Hong Kong, Israel, Kuwait, Macau, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, United Arab Emirates;
• Europe: Andorra, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom;
• North America: Costa Rica, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago;
• Oceania: Australia, New Zealand;
• South America: Chile, Colombia, Uruguay.

Check Plus500’s website regularly for the latest list of accepted countries if yours isn’t included yet.

User reviews

Here’s what current clients of Plus500 think about the trading platform: it’s rated 4.3 on the Apple App Store, 4.3 on the Google Play Store, and holds a Trustpilot rating of 4.1 based on over 13,000 reviews – solid scores across the major review platforms.

Bottom line

Plus500 is a well-established player in the CFD market. The competitive spreads, functional platform, and broad product offering make it a genuine option for various trader profiles – from beginners using the demo account to advanced CFD traders. Combined with its FTSE 250 listing, multi-jurisdictional regulation, and negative balance protection for all clients, Plus500 offers institutional-grade credibility for a retail-focused platform.

The introduction of Plus500 Invest broadened the appeal to longer-term investors, though the lack of real ETFs may still deter some prospective clients (CFDs on ETFs are available, but real ETFs aren’t). Plus500 Invest’s trading commissions are also not as competitive as some specialist equity brokers.

For a comprehensive overview of who Plus500 suits best:

• CFD traders: well-suited – particularly for those who value the WebTrader platform, +Insights tool, and Guaranteed Stop Orders;
• Forex traders: competitive spreads on major pairs make Plus500 a viable option, though the lack of MT4/MT5 support may be limiting for systematic traders;
• Long-term equity investors: Plus500 Invest works but isn’t the most cost-efficient choice – consider Interactive Brokers or XTB for lower-cost real share investing;
• Demo traders: the unlimited free demo account is one of the most accessible ways to learn CFD trading.

Plus500’s track record, rigorous regulatory supervision, and publicly listed corporate transparency give us confidence that you can extract good value from the platform within its target use case.