- Richard Berry
- Updated
Oil trading platforms let you buy and sell WTI crude and Brent Oil through derivatives products such as futures, options, CFDs and financial spread betting. You can use our comparison of what we think are the best oil trading platforms in the UK to compare commission, minimum deposits and what market access different brokers offer from CFDs, futures and options to financial spread betting and oil investing products like ETFs.
Compare Oil Trading Platforms
Oil Broker | Oil Trading Costs | Minimum Deposit | GMG Rating | More Info | Risk Warning |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
0.3 | £100 | See Platform | 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | ||
025 | £1 | See Platform | 75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | ||
0.28 | £1 | See Platform | 64% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | ||
0.4 | £100 | See Platform | 80% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. | ||
0.28 | £250 | See Platform | 70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs and spread bets with this provider. | ||
0.28 | £1 | See Platform | 65% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | ||
1.4 | $50 | See Platform | 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 | ||
0.3 | £1 | See Platform | 76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | ||
0.0007% | $2,000 | See Platform | 62.5% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | ||
0.3 | £1 | See Platform | 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider | ||
0.3 | £100 | See Platform | 69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. |
Our picks of the best brokers for trading Oil
❓Methodology: We have chosen what we think are the best oil trading platforms based on:
- over 17,000 votes in our annual awards
- our own experiences testing the oil trading accounts with real money
- an in-depth comparison of the features that make them stand out compared to alternatives.
- interviews with the oil broker’s CEOs and senior management
City Index: Best Oil CFD trading platform
- Costs & spreads: 0.3
- Minimum deposit: £100
- Account types: CFDs & spread betting
69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
City Index Review
Name: City Index
Description: City Index is one of the oldest spread betting and CFD brokers based in the UK. They were founded in 1983 and offer trading in over 13,500 financial markets, to around 126,000 active clients. City Index is currently owned by StoneX, a US brokerage listed on the NASDAQ valued at $1.75bn.
69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Why we like them:
City Index offers some of the best trading tools and analysis to help traders perform better. Their unique post-trade analytics and voice brokerage service make it an excellent choice for large and frequent traders.
Pros
- Excellent trading tools
- Post-trade analytics
- Publically listed (part of StoneX)
Cons
- Trading only, no investment account
- Limited options markets
- No direct market access
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4.3Pepperstone: Automated Oil trading on MT4
- Costs & spreads: 0.25
- Minimum deposit: £1
- Account types: CFDs & spread betting
75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Pepperstone Review
Name: Pepperstone
Description: Pepperstone were founded in 2010 in Australia and have since then grown to be a global brokerage with international offices and around 400,000 active clients. They offer spread betting and CFDs on 1,200 major market instruments, which means they focus on the most heavily traded assets, mainly forex and indices trading. Of those 900 are shares on the major stocks on international exchanges.
75.6% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.
Why we like them
Pepperstone is a good choice for traders that want to automate their trading strategies through MT4. As far as MT4 brokers they are one of the biggest and best and offers so good EA packages.
Pros
- Tight pricing
- Wide range of MT4 markets
- Pre-built MT4 indicator packages
Cons
- Limited market access
- Only third-party platforms
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4.1Spreadex: Oil trading with personal service
- Costs & spreads: 0.28
- Minimum deposit: £1
- Account types: CFDs & spread betting
72% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Spreadex Review
Name: Spreadex
Description: Spreadex is a financial spread betting broker that has been in operation since 1999. It was founded by ex-city trader Jonathan Hufford and unlike many of its peers, it is not based in London, but instead is headquartered in St Albans Hertfordshire. Spreadex offers both financial spread betting and CFD trading from the same account. The company has some 60,000 account holders and offers access to more than 10,000 financial instruments, including UK small-cap shares, where it is something of a specialist.
Is Spreadex a good broker?
Spreadex is one of the most established spread betting brokers. They focus on providing excellent customer service through experienced dealers and a trading platform built from scratch in-house. A good choice for those that like to spread bet.
Pros
- Spread betting & CFDs
- Smaller cap stock trading
- Great customer service
Cons
- Not publically listed
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4.4Interactive Brokers: Discount Oil trading & conversions
- Costs & spreads: 0.0007%
- Minimum deposit: $2,000
- Account types: CFDs, DMA, futures & options
60% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Interactive Brokers Review
Name: Interactive Brokers
Description: Interactive Brokers is a major US online automated electronic broker company. The financial broker is listed on the Nasdaq Exchange with ticker IBKR. The firm operates in 150 electronic exchanges in 33 countries, and offers trading in 23 currencies. Interactive Brokers has more than 1.75 million institutional and retail customers.
Why we like them
Interactive Brokers is an exceptional trading platform that offers institutional-grade trading capabilities to private clients around the world. IBKR has some of the lowest trading and investing fees and the widest market range in the industry.
Pros
- Very low dealing fees
- Wide market range
- Direct market access
- Complex order types
Cons
- Customer services can be slow
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4.6IG: Best oil spread betting platform
70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs and spread bets with this provider.
IG Review
Name: IG
Description: Founded in 1974 as Investors Gold Index, then IG Index, now just “IG” is one of the world’s largest margin trading brokers. IG offer CFDs, FX and Spread Betting (in the UK) alongside share trading and prime brokerage to over 313,000 active clients and offers 17,000 tradable markets. IG also recently introduced physical share dealing and smart portfolios for longer-term investors.
70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs and spread bets with this provider.
Is IG a good trading platform?
Yes, IG provides an excellent all-round trading and investing brokerage service. IG pioneered online trading and financial spread betting for private clients and remains not only one of the largest online trading platforms, but also one of the best. IG stands out through deep liquidity, high market range and excellent added value such as trading tools and analysis.
Pros
- Vast range of markets
- Excellent liquidity & DMA equities
- Listed on the London Stock Exchange
Cons
- Customer service can be slow
- No DMA futures trading
- Still charges inactivity fee
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4.7CMC Markets: High-tech Oil trading platform
- Costs & spreads: 0.3
- Minimum deposit: £1
- Account types: CFDs & spread betting
74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
CMC Markets Review
Name: CMC Markets
Description: CMC Markets is one of the original spread betting and CFD brokers based in the UK. They have been providing forex trading services since 1989 and are now listed on the London Stock Exchange. The broker has over 300,000 active clients trading online and is operated from 13 global offices, with headquarters in The City of London.
69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Is CMC Markets legit?
Yes, CMC Markets has always offered, and still does one of the best trading platforms for high-frequency and active traders. It’s a good choice for those who want to trade on tight spreads, with a platform built on exceptional tech.
Pros
- Excellent trading platform
- Good liquidity
- Unique sentiment tools
Cons
- Trading only, no investing account
- Limited smaller cap stocks
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4.6Saxo Markets: Best oil futures trading & ETF platform
- Costs & spreads: 0.28
- Minimum deposit: £500
- Account types: CFDs, futures & options
70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Saxo Review
Name: Saxo
Description: Saxo is one of the largest CFD brokers worldwide and provides direct market access to equities, bonds, forex, futures and options as well as being a major liquidity and infrastructure provider to wealth managers, banks and smaller brokers.
65% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Is Saxo Markets a good broker?
Yes, Saxo is a good choice for more sophisticated traders. The platform, analysis, and direct market access may be too complicated for beginners. But, for experienced traders its coverage, commissions and research are unrivalled.
Pros
- Direct market access
- Low commissions
- Robust trading platform
Cons
- Seen as a trading platform for professionals
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4.6XTB: Good Oil trading educational material
- Costs & spreads: 0.3
- 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
XTB Review
Name: XTB
Description: XTB is a CFD and forex broker headquartered in Poland and listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE:XTB) valued at over $1bn. XTB was founded in 2003 and offers forex, indices, commodities, ETF and stock CFD trading. XTB has historically used celebrity endorsements to promote it’s brand including Jose Mourinho, Conor McGregor, Joanna Jędrzejczyk and Jiří Procházka.
76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider
Summary
XTB, are a decent all-round trading platform and a good choice for most small-to-medium sized CFD traders. They are publically listed in Poland and offer, competitive spreads on a fairly wide range of markets.
Pros
- Publically listed
- Mulitple platform choices
- Innovative order types
Cons
- Not UK based
- No DMA
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4eToro: Copy other people’s Oil trading
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
eToro Review
Name: eToro
Description: eToro is a social trading platform that lets their users share new and existing CFD positions and their investment portfolios. eToro was founded in 2007 in Tel Aviv, Isreal and has grown to offer investing and trading on 3,000 global assets (including real cryptocurrencies) to 30 millions users worldwide.
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
Is eToro a good broker?
Yes, eToro does have its flaws for experienced investors, but if you are just getting started eToro is a great introduction to financial markets. eToro is actually a very innovative trading platform offering copy trading, social networking and unleveraged CFDs.
Pros
- Really simple to use
- Social and copy-trading
- Set your own leverage
- Pre-built sector portfolios
Cons
- Can only trade and invest in USD
- No SIPPs or ISA
- No direct market access
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4.1Different ways to trade oil
In our analysis of the best oil trading platforms, we look at which broker is best for each of the below types of oil trading, plus explain more about each type of product.
Best Oil Trading Platform For Futures
Saxo Markets is our pick as the best oil futures trading platform as they offer direct market access to the major oil exchange, have robust technology and discounted commissions for high volume traders.
Oil is one of the worlds most actively traded commodities, global demand for oil is expected to reach 100 Million Barrels Per Day, or BPD by 2020, up by around +5 million BPD since 2015. That’s despite the increasing use of renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind.
Oil prices can fluctuate significantly, and both producers and consumers of oil wish to protect themselves from large price movements, to fix their costs and plan ahead.
One way for them to achieve this is through the futures markets.
Futures contracts are derivatives that allow traders, producers and end-users to speculate on the future price of a commodity, in this instance, the future price of crude oil.
Futures prices reflect market expectations for the price of oil at a given point in the future.
Oil futures trade on a monthly basis out to or five or even ten years ahead, although in practice there is little if any trade more than two years out.
Oil futures prices vary month to month, and the variation in those prices creates what is known as a futures price curve. There are also many varieties or grades of crude oil. The two most widely traded as futures contracts, are WTI or West Texas Intermediate Crude and Brent Crude.
WTI is a US-centric contract while Brent is associated with Europe and the Middle East.
Oil futures contracts are usually deliverable, and each contract represents 1,000 barrels of oil. Each notional barrel would contain just under 159 litres of oil. So one oil futures contract controls almost 159,000 litres of crude.
Best Oil Trading Platform For CFDs
City Index gets our vote for the best oil CFD trading platform, as they offer free trading signals from multiple providers, post-trade analytics and lots of news and analysis.
Taking and making delivery of physical oil is all well and good for large producers and consumers, perhaps an oil major and a chemical company say. However, for a large number of market participants, that’s not a practical proposition or one they need to be involved in.
After all, if your only interest is the rise and fall in the price of oil, then you will have little use for the end product or means to store it. That distinction was not lost on the oil futures markets, and they introduced the possibility of cash settlement rather than physical delivery.
The definition of a CFD or Contract for Differences is a contract between two counterparties that is settled in cash at the end of the contract lifetime and not the underlying instrument the contract is over.
Cash settled or not, an oil futures contract value is around US$60,000 (at the time of writing), and it has a finite lifespan.
Whereas an OTC or “Over The Counter” CFD, traded with a dedicated CFD broker, offers much more flexibility in terms of contract size and duration. For example, contract sizes of just 100 barrels, that do not expire and that can be held for as long or short a time as the trader requires.
When a CFD contract is closed, the trader either pays or receives a cash sum based on the realised profit and loss of their trade. If they have lost money, they are debited and pay that loss away, if they have made money then they receive a credit for that P&L.
Note though that both oil futures and oil CFDs are traded on a margin or geared basis that magnifies both profits and losses there are also financing charges or rollover costs to consider if you hold open positions in oil CFDs for longer than a business day.
Best Oil Trading Platform For Spread Betting
IG is the biggest and best spread betting platform to offer oil trading.
It’s also possible to bet on the rise and fall of the price of oil, thanks to the ingenuity of the UK’s bookmakers via spread betting. Spread bets are very similar in some ways to CFDs they are settled for cash rather than the underlying instrument, in this case, crude oil.
They allow the user to back an oil price rise or bet on an oil price fall. Spread bets on oil will also allow bettors to deal in contracts that are a fraction of the size of the exchange-traded futures, and over a variety of time frames. The significant difference between the types of contract is their tax treatment.
Under current UK legislation, (at the time of writing) profits made from betting by individual UK taxpayers are not subject to tax whereas any profits made through CFD trading are potentially liable for tax.
However, any losses incurred through spread betting cannot be offset against capital gains made elsewhere whereas losses made in CFD may be offset against other capital gains.
Oil Trading Platform For ETFs
Saxo Markets is the best platform we feature for trading oil ETFs as you can buy them as an investment for long-term capital growth in a GIA or ISA account, or for short-term speculation trade them as a DMA CFD.
ETFs or Exchange Traded Funds are open-ended funds that aim to replicate the performance of a given instrument, sector or investment style.
For the most part, ETFs offer what is known as passive investing that is they aim to track a particular benchmark or commodity, rather than outperform it. ETFs are tradeable in the same way that individual shares are.
As such ETFs offer a low-cost way for investors to track the rise and fall of major commodities, allowing us to quickly gain exposure to all sorts of global market themes from one account and one product type.
The ETFs, which track oil prices, aim to mirror their performance and they will usually own a basket of oil futures or other derivative contracts on oil and perhaps even physical oil itself to do so.
Investors and traders who are bullish of the oil price would typically buy an ETF while those who are bearish of would usually sell one. It is possible to sell short of an ETF, i.e. sell it in the hopes of repurchasing the position at a lower price for a profit, but it’s best to check the requirements for doing so with your broker before proceeding.
There are more than 20 ETFs and similar products which track Oil prices, though the United States Oil Fund (Ticker USO) is probably the best known and most widely followed among them. USO tracks WTI crude its stablemate the United States Brent Oil Fund (Ticker BNO) tracks Brent crude.
Be aware though that some oil ETFs and ETF type products may be leveraged and or directional in nature.
Oil Trading Platform FAQs:
Oil markets trade around the clock from late on Sunday evening to the close of the markets in New York late on Friday. There are trading breaks; for example, the CME takes a 60-minute break in WTI trading each day at 5 pm US time(EST).
Oil markets are very liquid as a rule and are at their busiest at the points in the day when both European and US markets are open. They can be less liquid in the Asian sessions when traders in London and New York and not active in the markets.
Very. In recent times oil markets have become more volatile, experiencing significant moves in either direction though these moves have been driven more by changes in expectations around supply and demand and less by political tensions, that were once the primary driver of price changes.
Critical economic data out of major economies such as the US and China or changes in trade policies and barriers have replaced middle east tension as the primary influence on oil.
News from the big three producers Saudi Arabia, Russia, the USA and the OPEC cartel still matters to oil markets but OPEC’s influence has been dramatically reduced since the oil shocks of the 1970s.
Brent crude oil is a type of crude oil produced in the North Sea. Light and sweet (low sulfur content), Brent is a popular energy and is used to benchmark other crude products. Trading in Brent rivals that of the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude.
WTI and Brent crude are an internationally important contract and trading is priced in US Dollars.
Major news agencies such as Reuters and Bloomberg are the first port of call to any breaking news of things that will move oil prices such as:
- Supply and demand data (via regular data releases)
- Opec meetings
- Geopolitical events
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.
For example, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports crude storage levels regularly (known as Weekly Petroleum Status Report). Sometimes, these data can impact crude prices significantly, especially when the data deviates from market expectations.
Yes, there are some crude oil-related ETFs such as ETFS Brent Crude attempt to track the price of brent crude futures. A major problem with these ETFs is the rollover cost associated with selling expiring futures contract and buying new ones. This may eat into returns.
Brent Crude is a type of commodity. There is no dividend, earnings or share buybacks. Basically one buys crude oil hoping prices will appreciate. But if supply and demand are in equilibrium, prices may stagnant. Worse, if supply is greater than demand, crude prices can crash and stay low for years.
Yew. You can profit from trading oil if you call the market correctly. However, you can also lose money quickly. Remember, oil trading is based on futures, meaning that margin is low and leverage high. So you need to have the right strategy at the right time.
In the longer term, prices will gravitate around supply and demand. In the short to intermediate-term, investor expectations, market psychology and unexpected events all play a crucial role in determining oil prices.
In 2015-2016, for example, traders took fright from falling demand and oversupply of crude oil. Coupled with strengthening USD, this led to substantial Brent price weakness (see chart one above). Brent plunged from $110 to $30 in about 18 months.
What is interesting about this episode is that prices broke down ‘suddenly’ in 2014 and never recovered. The downtrend then overshot to the downside and recovered sharply.
All of these movements were driven by market psychology. The longer the price trend, the more extreme market psychology becomes. Brent crude was caught in a self-reinforcing loop, which reinforced the downtrend until the trend became very oversold and rebounded sharply in a ‘V’-shaped fashion.
⚠️ FCA Regulation
All oil 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 oil brokers are properly capitalised, treat customers fairly and have sufficient compliance systems in place. We only feature oil trading platforms that are regulated by the FCA, where your funds are protected by the FSCS.
Richard Berry
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 oil brokers via a non-affiliate link, you can view their oil trading pages directly here: