Plus 500 Review 2024

Key Takeaways

•  A Contract for differences (CFD) broker, Plus500 operates from Israel and is recommended for traders seeking a great user experience and an easy-to-use platform. Plus500 does not accept US traders, as is the case for many FOREX brokers.
• Plus500 offers clients in more than 50 countries access to a wide-ranging product line, which includes stock indices, FOREX, commodities, individual shares, options, Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) and cryptocurrencies. It was also the first broker, in 2013, to introduce a Bitcoin CFD.
• Plus500’s product suite numbers 2,000+ trading instruments and is offered on its proprietary WebTrader with no commissions and competitive spreads. That should entice experienced investors who prefer manual transactions and finding the lowered costs worth the lack of added functionality offered by competitors.
• Plus500 is authorized by three high-trust (tier-1) regulators and four average-trust (tier-2) regulators.
• Plus500 offers only one account type, often called a “Retail Account,” although you can apply for a “Professional Account” by meeting two of three criteria.
•  Plus500’s deposit and withdrawal services are both well structured, with many options. The processes are both simple and at no charge.
• Plus500’s options for customer services are restricted to email support and online chat, and both are available 24/7. A glaring omission is the lack of a telephone number, even to be used for sales inquiries, and it no longer is available through WhatsApp.
•  Plus500’s pricing, overall, is in line with the industry average, but it trails the best FOREX brokers in active trader pricing.
• WebTrader, Plus500’s trading platform, is a great choice for investors. It provides just the necessary, essential tools required for trading. Unlike many of its competitors, Plus500 does not offer the extremely popular MetaTrader4 (MT4) platform. This is an alternative that provides more customization and functionality options for clients.
• Plus500 also does not offer such basic research features as daily market commentary, FOREX news or weekly Webinars.
• Plus500 does not provide videos, courses, e-books, or quizzes to assist clients in learning about the markets in which they are investing. Plus500 offers none of these services.
• Plus500’s mobile trading offers a seamless transition from WebTrader browsing platform, a great sight. However, as with WebTrader, Plus500’s mobile trading app does not offer advanced tools and wide-ranging functionality to provide a challenge to industry leaders.

Overall Summary

A CFD broker operating from Israel, Plus500 is recommended for traders seeking an easy-to-use platform and offering a great experience. A major accomplishment for Plus500 is that it is a FTSE 250-listed brokerage, which provides international prestige and respect not earned by smaller brokers.
Established in 2008, Plus500 operates with several subsidiaries through the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. It is registered with the relevant regulatory authorities there. As with many FOREX brokers, Plus500 does not accept US traders. As of September 2020, Plus500 has a market capitalization of £1.6 billion.

Plus500 is considered secure because it discloses its financial, is listed on a stock exchange and is regulated by several top-tier financial authorities, including regulation in the UK by the all-important Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), under registration #509909.

It offers clients in more than 50 counties access to a product line that includes stock indices, FOREX, commodities, individual shares, options, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies. Plus500 also was the first broker to offer a Bitcoin CFD, in 2013. It advertises that all trading costs are contained within each instrument’s spread. Further, Plus500 offers access to options trading on many markets. Although not standardized, these are very similar to plain “call” and “put” options traded on exchanges, meaning that the option premium is able to be customized for your strategy objectives and risk tolerance.

Plus500’s Web-based trading platform is extremely user-friendly, making it excellent for beginner traders. That aside, the Plus500 platform only offers basic features, rendering it far less attractive for active traders.

Considering pricing, Plus500 appears to offer spreads close to the industry average on most major FOREX pairs. However, discounts are not available to active traders or VIP clients. Further on the negative side, the broker does not provide research or education. It does, however, attempt to compensate by offering an extremely easy-to-use trading platform.

Who Plus500 Is Good For

Is Plus 500 Safe?

Plus500 is considered to be low-risk. Although publicly traded, it does not operate a bank. That aside, Plus500 is authorized by three high-trust (tier 1) regulators and four average-trust (tier-2) regulators. 

Tier-1 regulators are the FCA in the UK, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Plus500 also is regulated by the Israel Securities Authority (ISA) and others. 

Plus500 acts as principal and hedges its exposure with its parent company to eliminate market risk and ensure it is not exposed to material loss. While Plus500 does not provide additional deposit insurance, it is registered with relevant regulatory authorities throughout the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. In accordance with the UK FCA’s client money rules, Plus500 must take steps to ensure client funds are not co-mingled with corporate funds, which safeguards client money and assets should the company become insolvent by maintaining those funds in segregated accounts are regulated banks. If Plus500 defaults, any funds’ shortfall may be compensated under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). Plus500 also offers negative-balance protection, which is mandated under ESMA rules in effect from 2018. These ensure that clients cannot lose more than they have put into their accounts. GLSOs orders can be used on some instruments, depending on market conditions. They are, however, subject to a wider spread. 

Plus500 offers important security measures, such as biometric authentication for its mobile app, and a time that will log the user out of either the Web-based or mobile app if they are not being used. 

Offering of Investments

• FOREX.
• Indices: Country and Sector.
• Individual shares.
• Commodities.
• Options.
• ETFs.
• Cryptocurrencies. 

Account Types

Plus500 offers only one account type, often referred to as a Retail Account, but you may apply for a Professional Account if you meet two of the following three criteria: 

1.    Financial instrument portfolio over £500,000.

2.    Sufficient trading activity in the past 12 months.

3.    Relevant experience in the financial services sector.

A Professional Account allows you to trade with a higher leverage, compared to a Retail Account. With the latter, leverage has been reduced to the range of 1:2 to 1:30 as of August 2018. In contrast, the maximum leverage for Professional Accounts ranges from 1:5 for options to 1:300 for FOREX for various instruments, with options at the bottom and FOREX products and indices at the top of the range. 

The Australian entity, which is regulated by ASIC, grants leverage of 1:300 for Standard Accounts and therefore presents the best choice for relevant traders. Qualified traders may request an upgrade to a Professional Account.
Account Opening 

Opening a Plus500 account is seamless, fully digital, and fast. You can open your trading account within a day. 

Plus500 accepts customers from many countries around the world. There are, however, some notable exceptions. For example, residents of Canada and the US cannot open an account. Other excluded countries include Iran, Syria, and Cuba. 

Deposits and Withdrawals

Customer Service

Commissions and Fees

Platforms and Tools

Plus500’s Web trading platform, WebTrader, is an excellent choice for casual investors because of its ease of use and focus on providing only the essential and necessary tools required for trading. The few advanced features available with Plus500’s platform include trailing-stops and GLSO, which can be helpful risk-management tools for novice traders. 

WebTrader has a simple and easy-to-use interface that allows you to create watchlists, analyze charge and place and monitor trades. The technical analysis charges offer more than 100 technical indicators that you can apply to many different time frames, from tick charts to weekly charts. Unlike many of its competitors, however, Plus500 does not offer the immensely popular MT4 platform, an alternative that would provide more functionality and customization options for clients. 

WebTrader’s most appealing feature is that it is easy to use, with layouts that will feel familiar to experienced traders. Clients may choose from 2,000+ instruments, analyze their selection on a customizable technical analysis charge, and then make their trade in just a few clicks – all within the same window. Unfortunately, however, WebTrader is a “closed” system. Advanced traders who rely on incorporating third-party analytical and automation tools in their trading process will be disappointed because none of these tools are able to be integrated directly with WebTrader.
Plus500 WebTrader 

As noted earlier, Plus500 does not offer any of the special features typically available at other online FOREX brokers. Thus, it does not allow for automated trading via Expert Advisors (EA) or other trading algorithms. 

It also does not provide back-testing functionality, nor does it allow clients to manage third-party funds via Percentage Allocation Management Module (PAMM) or Multi-Account Manage trading platforms. Plus500 simply provides a streamlined WebTrader along with similar mobile trading apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, with which clients can place and monitor trades. 

GSLOs are available with some markets, but come with an increased spread and cannot be added to previous trades.

WebTrader has three basis order types (noted below) with the option of attaching “take-profit” and/or “stop-loss” orders to them. Further, the trader may choose both guaranteed and/or trailing stop options when filling out the order ticket prior to execution. 

1.    Market – the simplest order, where a trader signals that their trade request should be executed at the prevailing market rate.

2.    Limit – A pending order where the entry is at a predetermined point below or above the prevailing market rate, depending on whether it is a buy or sell. The trader also has the option of choosing the expiration time of this order.

3.    Stop – A pending order where the entry is at a predetermined point above or below the prevailing market rate, depending on whether it is a buy or sell. The trader also has the option of selecting the expiration time of this order. 

Mobile Trading

Research and Development

As far as investment research goes, Plus500 leaves much to be desired, particularly when compared to such research leaders as CMC Markets, Saxo Bank and IG, to name a few. Plus500 does not offer such basic research features as daily market commentary, FOREX news or weekly Webinars. That type of research is nowhere to be found within the Plus500 trading platform beyond sentiment data, a link to Yahoo! Finance for exchange rates and an economic calendar from Dow Jones. Lacking is technical or fundamental analysis content. That aside, Plus500 allows you to place alerts on a percentage change in client sentiment data. We found this to be creative and something above basic price alerts. Further, the broker provides a “Live Statistics” indicator that shows the instrument’s performance for five-minute, 60-minute and one-day time frames. At the same time, the broker’s charting tool is good quality, with 119 technical indicators and great editor tools. You also can save the charts. We also liked the feature to use multiple charts simultaneously. 

Although many brokers provide videos, courses, quizzes, e-books and more – all to help clients learn about the markets in which they are investing – Plus 500 provides none of these services. No doubt, Plus500 should expand its offering of educational content to improve its score in this category; while Plus500 began to roll out educational video content under its “Trader’s Guide” series more than a year ago, only six videos are currently available, and each is barely a few minutes long. 

That said, Plus500 does provide one legally required “Key Information Document” (KID) that outlines the basics of what each available instrument is and the risks associated with trading that instrument. The KID has summary information on cryptocurrencies, commodities, FOREX, ETFs, options, indexes and equities. Plus500 expects its clients to know what they are doing or, at the very least, to seek out educational material elsewhere. 

Plus500 provides a demo account that could be seen as a useful learning tool. As noted, however, Webinars are not available and the equation section is not well structured. In short, at Plus500, you can learn in the following manner: 

• Demo Account.

• Educational articles about the different asset classes, risk management tools and FAQs.

• Basic educational and trading platform videos.

• eBook about using the trading platform (eBook can be downloaded from the trading platform). 

Final Thoughts

Conclusion

Plus500 in Brief

Review Methodology

The team at Arincen collected more than 120 pieces of data covering in excess of 100 licensed FOREX companies. Data collection was done in three ways:

1. Companies’ Websites.

2. Other Websites that have ranked FOREX companies.

3. A survey questionnaire (referred to here as Survey “1”) we had sent to the companies invited to participate in the exercise. 

We have identified 12 criteria for our assessment, each containing several aspects and carrying its own relative weight. These include licensing, deposits and withdrawals, number of assets etc.  

Afterward we validated the data by:

1. Registering with FOREX companies as a secret shopper and/or as Arincen.

2. Survey number “2,” in which we asked these companies’ customers for important feedback and past experience. 

The next step saw us evaluate and rank each company, relying on the hard work of 15 Arincen employees. We were very careful in ensuring the most accurate assessment possible, including taking into account different languages, as well as the various mobile-app operating systems, e.g., Apple, Samsung etc.

To add credibility to our research project, we sent a final and third survey (referred to here as Survey “3”) to enable participating FOREX companies evaluate our own research and whether it accurately reflects the realities on the ground. We were fortunate enough to receive a mark of 9.9 out of 10! We have kept to a minimum the margin of error, which stood at a measly 1%. To learn more on how we came up with the evaluation, please click here.