XTB Review and Insights

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X-Trade Brokers (XTB) is a multi-asset broker focused on Forex and CFDs. They provide outstanding customer service and an excellent experience for traders of all levels. XTB’s main proprietary trading platform is the rated xStation 5.

Founded in 2002, XTB is a low-risk trader with a high trust score. Their stock trades on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Trading experts prefer businesses that disclose financial information. They are safer and easier to trust. XTB is regulated by several global entities.

Review Summary

Our top findings for XTB

1. More than 230,000 Forex traders globally use XTB. They provide full client money segregation.

2. The XTB xStation5 trading platform provides easy use by traders and a broad selection of trading tools, research and advanced features. It is an option for rapid cryptocurrency trading.
3. Their telephone customer service is excellent providing instant access and response.

XTB has several global offices. Traders experience a limited assortment of trades. In some countries investors trade stocks. This ability depends on the account opening country. XTB trades CFDs, commodities, indices, cryptocurrencies, forex pairs and cash equities including ETFs.

XTB offers easy deposits and quick withdrawals. They offer rated advanced research solutions.

XTB’s trading and non-trading fees are a concern. While telephone customer service is good, the rest is spotty.

Investment Offerings

XTB gives traders access to:

• 2020 CFDs on stocks
• 27 CFDs on commodities
• 33 CFDs on indices
• 167 CFDs on ETFs
• 40 CFDs on cryptocurrencies
• 70 forex pairs
• stocks from 17 markets
• 360 ETFs

XTB clients trade cryptocurrency CFDs and underlying assets like Bitcoin. Note: Crypto CFDs are not available in or sold to UK residents.

Commissions and Fees

XTB trading fees are minimal. The amount paid varies according to account type. PRO accounts pay commissions above market spreads. Standard accounts only pay for ranges. A crucial feature to consider using a CFD brokerage: is it easy to use and withdraw money? With XTB, investors grab payments via credit and debit cards.

Trading fees are costs investors pay to trade. These include commission or financing rates. Non-trading charges include inactivity and withdrawal fees. We compared XTB to alternatives eToro and IG.

XTB uses several base currencies. The account base currency is critical. If investors choose the same currency as in their bank account, there are no conversion fees.

Withdrawal Fees

XTB withdrawals are free if more than 100 ($, £, €). Investors are limited to bank transfer access. They must wait up to 2 working days for payments to arrive. Monies withdrawn before 1 pm arrive the same day.

Deposit Fees

XTB deposits are free. The only exception occurs using electronic wallets. eWallets pay 2% of the amount deposited. Additional transfer options include PayPal, credit and debit card, bank transfers and more.

Account Types

XTB offers two accounts:

• Standard (fees are spread-only) and
• Pro (fees are commission-based)

They offer a demo account for investors to trial their platform.

Average Spreads: XTB lists target spreads on the EUR/USD for comparing various account types. Their standard account is 0.949 pips. The Pro-Account is 0.349 pips. XTB average spreads (Q2 2020) were 0.086. The Pro account spread averaged 0.03 (or 1.1 pip after including the commission-equivalent of $8 per round turn standard lot or $4 per side). Using MetaTrader 4, account spreads were higher than on their flagship xStation 5 platform.

Standard vs. Pro accounts: The XTB deposit minimum is 250 dollars, pound or euros. Investors trading higher volumes in Pro accounts have similar priced options. Trading smaller amounts, the standard account seems to be the cheaper option.

Active trader discounts: XTB rebates a portion of the spread (from 5% to 30%) to active traders. Similar rebates are given to those considered to be EU ‘elective professional’ traders. The starting point for rebates is 20 lots per month. To achieve a 30% discount, traders must trade 1000 lots. Their program’s name is XTB’s ‘Lower Spread Group.’ It helps XTB compete with FXCM, FOREX.com, and CMC Markets.

XTB pricing is in line with industry averages.

Account Opening: Opening an XTB account is quick and easy.

XTB’s sales team is eager to get an investor trading. It is a completely digital setup system. Traders must fill out their forms and submit verification documents. XTB’s sales team will try to push through the process. The experience is straightforward. They will ask about a trader’s previous investing experience. After XTB verifies the account, many European account holders use Experian. Some may be asked to submit a picture of their passport or ID.

XTB accounts are not available in the USA, Canada, India, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, and other critical countries. It’s best to check if a trader in their location can open an XTB account.

Platforms & Tools

XTB clients trade from their desktop or browser.

Desktop trading: XTB’s xStation 5 trading platform offers state-of-the-art functionality and speedy processing. It has minimalist design and packs powerful, feature rich tools. xStation 5 is the hands-down winner compared to platform titans CMC Markets, IG, and FXCM. xStation 5 delivers an excellent experience for web, mobile, tablet and iOS and Android smartwatches. Trading tools include

• excellent heat mapping (to view top movers by color)
• versatile stock screener and
• sentiment analysis

These show the percentage of live XTB clients who are long or short per instrument.

Web Browser trading: XTB offers two platforms: xStation 5 and MetaTrader 4 (MT4). The platforms may seem overwhelming. They have superb customization options available. The search function is excellent, making it easier to find all of the tools investors need. The same applies to asset searches using Market Watch.

MetaTrader: Because xStation 5 does not support automated trading, MT4 is the only alternative (MT5 is not offered). Beyond automated trading, MT4 charges higher spreads and costs more. xStation 5 is the preferred XTB choice.

xStation 5 innovation: An innovative xStation 5 feature, is the “investment basket” tool. This lets traders create a thematic basket of symbols and place a single order to execute them all with one click. These custom baskets contain both long and short positions. This makes it useful for sophisticated investment strategies.

Security: Theirs is good – but not perfect. XTB has a transparent and credible platform. It doesn’t offer 2-factor verification. While this lets one easily log onto the service and start trading, it’s up to the trader to decide if it’s worth the safety compromise.

Using the Platform

Using the XTB platform to place orders is easy. Traders set up stop-losses and take note of their profits. There’s the option to set-up a trailing stop. One useful feature is the trading calculator, which investors use to get an idea of the commission, margin and other important parameters of their trade.

There is a handy alert and notification function built in. Traders use this service to set up everything from SMS and email, to push notifications for things like deposits, margin calls, withdrawals, closed and open positions and more.

They see all the information a trader would want about their trading performance on the “history” tab. They check profit and loss in positions and get daily email reports sent to their account if necessary.

Research

XTB offers the top research tool selections on the market. It is user-friendly with many ways to select tradable instruments. It ranks among the best in the industry because of quality analysis from in-house staff and third-party providers.

Their menu of research tools includes:

• Market sentiments track the percentage of XTB clients with short and long market positions
• Heatmaps visualize winners and losers in the system
• Stock screeners use 14 factors to filter stocks to consider trading
• ETF scanners – like the stock screeners

Premium content: XTB does not use Trading Central or Autochartist. They provide exclusive Premium Research strategies, articles and YouTube video content from their analysts. This goes beyond streaming top-tier news headlines, economic calendars, market sentiments and other platform tools.

Research tools: XTB provides a stock screener that lets investors filter and sort more than 1,700 tradable single-stock CFDs and cash equities. The screener is a useful for scanning symbols to trade. Traders find these in the news panel analyses from Thomson Reuters, Barclays, Citi Group and others. Traders access research tools and the language options are mixed. Flash news is in English and there is no obvious way to change that content. Other reports are available in multiple languages. Fundamentals are limited. There are some facts investors have access to: debt to equity and P/E ratios. Traders cannot access operational metrics and financial statements.

Daily videos: XTB’s variety of daily market English language YouTube video updates is lacking. They do support many languages including Polish, German and Italian.

News filtering: In the news headlines section, identifying articles written by XTB’s in-house staff versus third parties is not seamless. In comparison, Saxo Bank separates these on its web platform. As traders, we appreciate XTB’s staff’s analysis. Being able to filter and identify in-house content would be a welcome enhancement.

Charting: XTB’s xStation 5 charting tools are excellent. They provide multiple indicators that give a similar experience to other brokers on the market. Traders cannot save charts but are able to share them with other investors. XTB charts have a modern and responsive design. An excellent feature is the countdown timer showing the time remaining in each candlestick. Economic news releases appear along the bottom axis within charts. This gives investors insights during important economic news events. XTB has 29 drawing tools and 37 technical indicators available.

Education

XTB offers an impressive educational program under the “Learn to Trade” section. This includes a library of extensive written content and video materials. The content is viewed by topic within the traders’ experience level. Their chief drawback is a lack of live webinars. Although archived recordings of past events are available.

Written content: Alongside platform tutorials in the beginner course, there are lessons on forex and CFD. They have quizzes at the bottom of each category. The intermediate course has multiple platform tutorials and lessons. XTB has dozens of articles covering broad subjects. These include topics like: “What are macroeconomic indicators?”

Video content: XTB provides videos under its YouTube Trading Academy playlist. They have a Masterclass video series. Many of the videos are integrated into the Premium section on xStation 5 and the mobile app.

Customer Service

XTB is lauded for great telephone service. The rest is a mixture of bad and good. Their live chat gets high marks. They answers phone quickly and live chat is speedy. Live chat is unavailable in the UK. Traders are asked to leave a message. The company replies at their leisure.

Email support is sub-optimal. Traders receive answers to questions in the language of their choice. The quality of the solution will depend on the knowledge level of the team. While slow, they provide accurate information.

Mobile Trading

XTB’s proprietary xStation 5 mobile app keeps up with the best forex brokers. Traders have MetaTrader 4 available for use.

The xStation 5 mobile app features:

• streaming news
• pre-defined watch lists
• an economic calendar
• top movers
• client sentiment data

Integrated mobile app features include videos and webinar-style educational content. Many videos that are more than one hour in length.

xStation charting: On the downside, the mobile watch list does not sync with the web version. It has half the number of indicators. And xStation 5 mobile charts are still good. Trend lines and drawings save automatically. It is a smooth process to add or remove indicators while zooming in on various time frames.

About XTB

XTB was founded in Poland in 2002. It is a rapidly growing broker known for trading forex and CFD instruments. They have a market cap of $546M (September 2020) and are traded on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE: XTB.PL).

XTB serves 200,000 global clients and maintains offices in more than a dozen countries across Europe. They regulated by: FCA (UK), KNF (Poland), BaFIN (Germany), CNMV (Spain), AMF (France), CySEC (Cyprus),FSC (FSC).

XTB does not own a bank or offer banking services.

Conclusion

XTB is an excellent broker and trusted brand. Their unique proprietary trading platform suite xStation 5, is filled with best-in-class innovative features. They provide excellent customer service. They are regulated by top-tier global authorities, including the FCA.

The account opening, deposit and withdrawal experiences are fast and easy. Their pricing is average. They have some of the best research tools available. The product range is minimal. They stick to CFDs and FX. Stocks are available to trade in a few account originating countries. XTB holds indemnity insurance of up to $1M per client claim and up to $5M total through its Belize entity.

They are an impressive firm worthy of consideration by traders.

Stefan Grasic

Stefan Grasic (Dipl.-Jur) is the owner of Business24-7 and has considerable experience in the financial and investment niche, but also enjoys writing articles for the general readership. Stefan is an active stock, CFD, crypto and general investment researcher, advising blockchain companies such as Blockbird, GoCrypto, Hive Terminal at their start up level. Stefan began trading in 2010 as a college student. Money was tight,…

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