IG Spread Betting Review

Does IG offer spread betting on the most markets?

Yes, IG by far has the most comprehensive market access for any spread betting broker. You can trade around 17,000 markets, which is significantly more than the 12,000 or so offered by City Index and CMC Markets. The majority of the extra markets are made up fo smaller cap shares and exotic fx pairs, commodities and indices meaning that there are more opportunities vailable.

However, one downside is that even through IG charges competitive commission (included in the spread) for for spread betting, in some markets brokers like Pepperstone or Spreadex can be cheaper.

IG won “best spread betting broker” in our 2023 and 2022 awards as it continues to be the best spread betting platform. As well as inventing the concept of financial spread betting in 1974, IG also offers access to the most markets, with the most liquidity and are, (by market cap as of April ’22) the biggest spread betting broker valued at over £3.5bn.

Overall, IG is the best spread betting broker is suitable for beginners through to professional high volume and high-frequency traders.

• Spread betting markets available: 17,000
• Minimum deposit: £250
• Account types: CFDs, spread betting, DMA, investing
• Equity overnight financing: 2.5% +/- SONIA
• Pricing: Shares 0.1%, FTSE 1, GBPUSD 0.6

With IG you can spread bet on over 17,000 markets (an industry-leading amount) including 51 forex pairs, 38 commodities, 34 indices and over 10,000 UK and international stocks.

A few key features that make IG’s spread betting platform stand out are the ability to bet on smaller-cap shares, trade IPOs pre-market via their “grey market” and their liquidity. IG’s liquidity can actually be better than the underlying exchange, so you can place and get filled in large orders using IG’s internal liquidity when there might not be the volume on the exchange order book.

Even though IG internalises order flow they do not profit from client losses instead hedging or matching order flow and operating symmetrical tolerance levels. This means that you also benefit from positive slippage, so if you place a spread bet limit order and the market moves in your favour before it is executed you get a better fill.

When I compared pricing against other spread betting brokers IG spreads are always competitive and often market-leading, especially in the major instruments, but where IG wins business is its ability to continually innovate and add value to its spread betting platform. There are trading signals from Autochartist and PIAfirst, but IG takes it a step further by making executing these signals easier and integrating dealing tickets. IG has a good post-trade analytics feature that can show you where you are profitable or not and they create a huge amount of analysis and research around what their clients are trading based on platform analytics.

• Expert opinion: IG reviewed & rated