Best GBPUSD Trading Platforms (Cable)

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GBPUSD trading platforms let you speculate on the strength of GBP versus the US Dollar through spot FX, CFDs, financial spread betting or futures & options. We have compared and reviewed what we think are the best GBPUSD trading platforms. You can use our GBPUSD comparison table to rank brokers by how much commission they charge and what it costs to hold a GBPUSD position overnight. You can also see which GBPUSD trading platforms let you trade via CFDs, spread betting, have DMA access through futures and options and what the minimum deposit is for each account.

Best GBPUSD Brokers 2023

GBPUSD BrokerGBPUSD Trading CostsMinimum DepositGMG RatingMore InfoRisk Warning
City Index GBPUSD Trading0.9£100
(4.3)
See Platform70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Pepperstone GBPUSD Trading0.4£1
(4.1)
See Platform75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Spreadex GBPUSD Trading 0.9£1
(4.4)
See Platform72% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
IG GBPUSD Trading0.6£250
(4.7)
See Platform69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs and spread bets with this provider.
Saxo Markets GBPUSD Trading0.7£1
(4.6)
See Platform61% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
eToro GBPUSD Trading2$50
(3.9)
See Platform76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money
CMC Markets GBPUSD Trading0.9£1
(4.6)
See Platform74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Tickmill GBPUSD Trading0.3$100
(4.1)
See Platform75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs and spread bets with this provider
Interactive Brokers GBPUSD Trading0.0008%$2,000
(4.6)
See Platform60% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Forex.com GBPUSD Trading0.9£100
(4.2)
See Platform68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.
XTB GBPUSD Trading1.4£1
(4)
See Platform81% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
ThinkMarkets1.3£10
(4)
See Platform66.95% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider

❓Methodology: We have chosen what we think are the best GBPUSD trading platforms based on:

  • over 17,000 votes in our annual awards
  • our own experiences testing the GPBUSD accounts with real money
  • an in-depth comparison of the features that make them stand out compared to alternatives.
  • interviews with the GBPUSD broker’s CEOs and senior management

City Index: Best broker for GBPUSD CFD trading

  • Costs & spreads: 0.9
  • Minimum deposit: £100
  • Overnight financing: 2.5% +/- SOFR
  • Account types: CFDs & spread betting

69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider

Pepperstone: Automated GBPUSD trading on MT4

  • Costs & spreads: 0.4
  • Minimum deposit: £1
  • Overnight financing: (1/FX Rate) * (Trade Size*Tom Next )
  • Account types: CFDs & spread betting

75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider

Spreadex: GBPUSD trading with personal service

  • Costs & spreads: 0.9
  • Minimum deposit: £1
  • Overnight financing: Tom/Next +0.8%
  • Account types: CFDs & spread betting

72% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider

Interactive Brokers: Discount GBPUSD trading & conversions

  • Costs & spreads: 0.0008%
  • Minimum deposit: $2,000
  • Overnight financing: -3.188% / -1.188% (BM -/+ 1%)
  • Account types: CFDs, DMA, futures & options

60% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider

IG: Best broker for spread betting on GBPUSD

  • Costs & spreads: 0.6
  • Minimum deposit: £250
  • Overnight financing: Tom Next +0.8%
  • Account types: CFDs & spread betting

69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs and spread bets with this provider.

CMC Markets: High-tech GBPUSD trading platform

  • Costs & spreads: 0.9
  • Minimum deposit: £1
  • Overnight financing: Tom Next +0.98%
  • Account types: CFDs & spread betting

74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider

XTB: Good GBPUSD trading educational material

  • Costs & spreads: 1.4
  • Minimum deposit: £1
  • Equity overnight financing: -0.02341% / -0.00159% DAILY
  • Account types: CFDs

81% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider

Saxo Markets: Best broker for GBPUSD ETFs & investing

  • Costs & spreads: 0.7
  • Minimum deposit: £500
  • Overnight financing: Tom/Next Swap +/-0.60%
  • Account types: CFDs, futures & options

70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider

eToro: Copy other people’s GBPUSD trading

  • Costs & spreads: 2
  • Minimum deposit: $50
  • Overnight financing: 6.4% +/- SOFR
  • Account types: CFDs

51% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money

Tickmill: GBPUSD futures on CQG or CFDs on MT4

  • Costs & spreads: 0.3
  • Minimum deposit: $100
  • Overnight financing: na
  • Account types: CFDs, futures & options

75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs and spread bets with this provider

⚠️ FCA Regulation

All GBPUSD trading platforms that operate in the UK must be regulated by the FCA. The FCA is the Financial Conduct Authority and is responsible for ensuring that UK GBPUSD brokers are properly capitalised, treat customers fairly and have sufficient compliance systems in place. We only feature GBPUSD trading platforms that are regulated by the FCA, where your funds are protected by the FSCS.

What is GBPUSD Trading?

All sovereign countries issue their own national currency. For the UK, its currency is the Pound Sterling (ticker GBP).

Forex (FX) is the short name for ‘foreign exchange’. It is a market about trading money. Unlike stocks, FX is about measuring one money against another foreign currency. It exists because people want to change money.

Pound Sterling is one of the most traded currencies in the world. The City of London conducts a huge slice of FX trading every day. According to the latest Bank of International Settlements (BIS) Triennial Global FX Turnover Survey (Sept 2019, available here), US$844 billion of GBP are traded every day. So GBP is a liquid, easy to trade currency.

GBPUSD simply represents one particular FX pair – how much US Dollar to convert into one Pound Sterling. Currently the rate is about 1.30, meaning it takes 1.3 US Dollar to change into one pound. Parity means 1:1.

How much is GBPUSD traded?

FXValue Traded (US,Bln)
USD$5,819
EUR$2,129
JPY$1,108
GBP$843
AUD$445
CAD$332
CHF$327
CNY$284
Others$1,892

Source: BIS (Data as of Apr 2019)

How can you trade the GBPUSD?

Forex is a 24-hour, 5-days a week market. Prices never stop blinking. You can trade forex with CFDs futures, forwards, spread bets, or even exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Because of this liquidity, there are forex trends that astute traders can exploit.

You can trade GBPUSD with either spot rates or future prices. Spot rates settle and rollover every session while with currency futures you only need to rollover at expiry time, usually at the end of March, June, September and December.

Read more about the different ways to trade GBPUSD and compare all brokers for Forex trading with our FX comparison tables:

How to learn to trade GBPUSD?

Trading FX markets is easy. Trading FX markets successfully is not. But anyone can succeed – provided they take the right approach.

Watching the exchange rate and learning its day-to-day behaviour is one key success factor. Remember, you do not trade markets. Rather, you trade your beliefs and understanding about the market. Write down any pattern you think is relevant about the rate. Test these patterns against its past movements. Do they work?

Paper trade for a few months. Work out if the currency is suitable to your trading strategy.

Can you make money trading GBPUSD? You certainly can! However, you can also lose money quickly. You need to run the right strategy at the right time.

You need to deal with probability too. Nobody get it right every time. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. To win out in the long run, you have to cap your losses and max your gains.

Position size your trade in a way that even if prices move significantly against you the overall portfolio remains viable.

A practical guide to trading GBP/USD is as simple as:

  1. checking your leverage value, it will normally be represented as two numbers like; 1:50, 1:100 or 1:200
  2. choose a broker to trade forex with
  3. select the currency pair you wish to trade, like EUR/USD.
  4. add a stop loss or automatic close to your order
  5. choose whether to buy or sell on your trade

What are the major risks of trading GBPUSD?

The biggest risk from trading GBPUSD is that you are on the “wrong side” of the trend. When you realise this, abandon the trade as soon as possible. Do not hope that the market will turn in your favour – because it may not.

Many traders use stop losses as a guard to prevent a losing trade from ballooning. You should do so too.

Another risk factor comes from the pattern of the rate. In other words, the rate is not ‘trending’ either up or down enough. It becomes harder to exploit price movements because there is insufficient distance between the entry and exit points.

The next risk factor relates to extreme price moves. These days in the FX market, there is a tendency for a rate, in some quiet time zones, to move violently. It happened to Pound Sterling a while back and Japanese Yen earlier in Jan ’19. The proliferation of algorithmic trading and temporary structural mishaps may gave lead to volatile trading. During these periods, transaction costs are likely to go up simply because brokers may exit the market temporarily.

On Sterling pairs, Brexit is another to watch for. Just recently, Sterling jumped when the Conservatives won the election.

The last risk factors concerns leverage. Many retail FX accounts lose capital over time because of the overly high leverage. Minute, random price movements decimate accounts equity quickly if traders are caught on the wrong side. Small losses piled up. This can lead to an early termination of the account.

Where to find GBPUSD news and forecasts?

The first step to find out more about a foreign exchange rate is to read daily news about it. In particular, you need to pay attention to three things that will impact the Sterling-USD exchange rate:

  • Regular data releases.
  • Central bank meetings and monetary policies
  • Ad-hoc international financial meetings, eg G7 Ministerial or Eurogroup meetings.

Google ‘FX News’ and there will be a list of good websites detailing FX trading. Read recent news about GBPUSD will tell you what is impacting the rate. Look for major news agencies such as Reuters.

Also remember to look at data releases for the week ahead. This will give you some ideas about the forthcoming things that traders will be looking at. In most tables there will be a row of ‘expected value’ of the data. Note them.

What moves the GBPUSD price?

Once you have a basic knowledge of the GBPUSD, you then progress to understand the following:

  1. Investor expectations
  2. Market psychology
  3. Dealing with unexpected events.

Data flow by itself seldom move markets significantly. It is the prior expectations that cause sharp moves. Pay attention to the market reaction (to any data) since it will tell you a lot about market expectations. Sometime prices can drift in the direction of the initial reaction for days, creating opportunities.

On market psychology, you will have to read lots of positioning reports, sentiment data, and price trends – and draw your own conclusion. Does it make sense? The longer the price trend, the more extreme market psychology becomes.  In markets generally, there is this concept called self-fulfilling loop, which reinforces the prevailing trend.

Lastly, you will have to guard against surprising events, such as verbal interventions by important policymakers. In the UK, such interventions are rare but it does happen. In April 2018 for example, Sterling was recovering until the governor said that a rate hike in May is not a ‘foregone conclusion’ (FT Paywall). Sterling peaked and went into a downtrend for the next six months. To deal with unexpected events, you will have to incorporate risk management into your strategies including mandatory stops, risk sizing, and diversification.

What are the cost of trading GBPUSD?

Given that FX trading are mainly financial trading – without any underlying currencies changing hands, there are a few trading costs you need to be aware of:

  • Commission (if any)
  • Bid-ask spread (the difference between buying and selling at any time)
  • Rollover costs – this is the cost of rolling over current positions

Alternative Forex Pairs For Trading

You can read about the the most liquid forex pairs in our guide to the best forex pairs for trading.

Rank.SymbolFX Pair
1EUR/USDEuro vs US Dollar
2GBP/USDBritish pound vs US dollar
3USD/JPYUS Dollar vs Japanese Yen
4EUR/GBPEuro vs British Pound
5AUD/USDAustralian Dollar vs US Dollar
6USD/CADUS Dollar vs Canadian Dollar
7USD/CHFUS Dollar vs Swiss Franc
8NZD/USDNZ Dollar vs US Dollar
9EUR/JPYEuro vs Japanese Yen
10EUR/AUDEuro vs Australian Dollar

This article contains affiliate links which may earn us some form of income if you go on to open an account. However, if you would rather visit the GBPUSD brokers via a non-affiliate link, you can view their GBPUSD trading platform pages directly here:

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