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Requirements

This section contains general information about Brokers and Account Types.

Financial Requirements​

Not every Expert Advisor requires the same amount of money to start trading.

Some Expert Advisor might be able to start trading with $100, other might need $10000, it all depends on the way the Expert Advisor is configured and what trading strategy it is using.

In fact, most of the time, it's more the number of units that matter, more than the actual money value. This is because many Expert Advisor are using mathematical formula to size their positions, and they need a minimum amount of units so the position sizing is working correctly.

If that's the case, that means that an Expert Advisor that requires $1000 to start (meaning 1000 units of US dollar), would also probably work fine on a cent account, using 1000 units of cents ($10).

If you were to use a 1000 cents ($10) account, the profit would simply be 10 times less than if the deposit was $1000, but the behavior of the Expert Advisor should more or less remain the same.

Let's imagine that an Expert Advisor require a starting balance of at least 1000 units.

This means that technically you could start the Expert Advisor with:

  • 1000 EUR (or USD) on a regular EUR/USD account
  • 1000 cents EUR/USD (= 10 EUR/USD, if you find a broker that offer such account)

Based on my research, PUPrime is the only broker I found that is offering a pretty good cent account with a low spread. The name of that account type is PrimeCent. The only drawback of this account is that the minimum deposit is $1000 (= 100 000 USD Cents), so that means that this is the minimum amount thatyou will have to deposit if you want to start trading on a PUPrime PrimeCent account.

Accounts Requirements​

There are some technical differences between the different brokers and accounts types.

Some brokers only offer accounts with a leverage of 30:1, some offer 100:1, some 500:1, etc.

The spread, which is the price difference between buyers and seller is also something that can greatly differs between brokers and account types, and some Expert Advisor requires small spreads to work correctly, so you will have to keep that in mind too.

You can find a broker that offers accounts without commissions, but in that case the broker will increase the size of the spread to include some sort of commission inside it.

On my side I prefer to use a broker and account type that offers the smallest spread as possible, and pay a commission.

Below are an example of the broker/account requirements I find the best for me:

  • Software: MetaTrader version 5
  • Leverage: 500:1 or more
  • Spread: As small as possible (ECN account type, or similar)
  • Commission: Present, but as small as possible (usually not more than 6 EUR/USD per lot)
  • Execution Type: Market (ECN)
  • Minimum Lot Size: 0.01
  • Maximum Lot Size: 100 or more
  • Account Currency: EUR, USD, USD cents
  • Historical Data (for backtests): 99% of quality since 2016

Those are my requirements. They might not be the same for you, it depends what you are looking for.

Brokers​

Based on my experience and on the list of requirements above, my favorite Brokers and Account Type are:

  • PUPrime (Account type: ECN, Prime or PrimeCent)
  • FusionMarkets (Account type: Zero)
  • MonetaMarkets (Account type: Prime or Ultra)
  • VantageMarkets (Account type: Raw or Pro)

Chosing the right broker for you​

The choice of the broker will depend on:

  • What type of account you want to use
  • How many trading bots (and therefore how many trading accounts) you want to run simultaneously
  • How much money you want to invest on each trading bot, and in total