Plus500 Review: Expert Opinion & Customer Reviews (2024)

Plus500 Customer Reviews

80% 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.

Plus500UK Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 509909)

Plus500 Expert Review

If you’re looking to trade Contracts for Difference (CFDs), you may want to check out Plus500’s trading platform. It allows you to trade CFDs on stocks, currencies (forex), indices, and a range of other assets. In this review, we look at the key features of Plus500 and highlight its pros and cons. We also answer some questions you might have in relation to the trading platform.

Plus we give our ratings based on their nearest peers and tell you what we think of them after testing them thoroughly.

Ratings Explained

• Pricing: It’s dynamic so hard to nail down for minimum spreads.
• Market Access: Very good, they are always first to try new asset classes.
• Platform & Apps: Basic execution, but it does the job well.
• Customer Service: No phone, but live chat is sufficient.
• Research & Analysis: Some sentiment, but limited education and analysis.

I should say that I have massive respect for Plus500 from a marketing point of view. They obviously looked at the online trading industry and thought to themselves, “this is ripe for disruption” and to be fair they did disrupt the CFD trading (not the financial spread betting) industry.

Before Plus500 came along, most CFD platforms asked you to deposit a minimum of £5,000 to open an account. You had to prove that you had the relevant experience to trade high-risk derivative products, pass credit checks and wait at least a week before compliance, accounts and sales had checked your account and allocated you an account number. And in some cases, you didn’t even get an account number until you’d BACS’d money over to fund your account.

But, that was about 10 years ago and Plus500 asked me during their compliance checks of my review to point out that “the information regarding the account opening gives the impression that the process is simple and fast, which could be misleading. Due to the document approval procedure and the questionnaire, the creation of the account can take some time. Also, if the approval requirements are not met, some users are unable to create a real trading account”.

Which, of course, is true because, now for AML, you have to submit some personal documents, there are several term documents to read and you have to answer (and pass) a suitability questionnaire.

It’s not now harder to open an account because a. CFDs have become more appealing to the mass market and b. CFDs are definitely not a mass-market product.

Innovation

What Plus500 did was create a basic trading platform that offered the major instruments that people wanted to trade. After all, the majority of revenue generated for CFD trading platforms is from the top ten traded instruments like FTSE, Wall Street, EURUSD, Gold and Oil.

Then they made the account opening process the most simple it could possibly be. Instead of having to get a notarised copy of your passport and post in bank statements, Plus500 clients could open an account online and start trading with real money relatively quickly (in less than a few minutes for a demo account). For other brokers, it was still taking a week. They could do it because normally new clients have to provide ID when opening an account to prevent money laundering. Because the rules at the time were generally geared towards withdrawals, not deposits, you didn’t have to provide ID until you wanted to take money out. Plus500 eventually got ticked off for it and had to start front-loading ID checks. But it completely turned the industry on its head making it very simple for anyone to open a trading account. Cough cough the mega marketing machine that is eToro.

Soon after that, all the other trading platforms tried to catch up but legacy technology still makes them a lot slower than Plus500 to this day.

Disruption

But, whilst Plus500 have disrupted the CFD industry, it’s not necessarily for the good. Trading is a high risk, most people lose money. Just because you can do something, should you?

I know that things that are bad for you are often enjoyable, this isn’t a debate about whether or not CFDs are good or bad. I have been in the CFD industry for 20 years and I think they are good, but then I have always dealt with professional clients, hedge funds, and traders who understand the risk. CFDs can be used to hedge portfolios, increase diversification, build a stake in a company without declaring it, making money when the markets fall by shorting stocks.

The debate is more about who they are appropriate for, and CFDs are not appropriate for everyone.

Should you trade CFDs with Plus500? If you are just getting started, yes they are a good enough choice. But if you are a sophisticated or experienced trader, I’m afraid not, in my mind, it is a basic platform for basic traders, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, or is it…

What assets can you trade with Plus500?

With Plus500, you can trade CFDs on a range of assets and instruments including:

• Shares (e.g. Lloyds Bank, Tesla, Apple)
• Currencies/forex (e.g. GBP/USD)
• Commodities (e.g. gold, oil)
• Options (exchange-traded options)
• Exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
• Indices (e.g. FTSE 100, S&P 500, ESG indices)

Overall, there are more than 2,800 different assets you can trade with CFDs.

It’s worth noting that while Plus500 offers plenty of assets for trading, there are platforms that offer more markets. Some examples here include IG and CMC Markets.

What leverage can you use with Plus500?

The maximum amount of leverage you can use with Plus500 varies depending on the asset class as shown in the table below. If you are trading forex, you can potentially borrow up to 30 times your own money. For shares, however, you can only borrow up to five times your own capital.

What are Plus500’s fees?

Plus500 does not charge any trading commissions when you place a CFD trade. However, there are some fees you need to be aware of including:

• Overnight funding fees – An overnight funding fee is either added to or subtracted from your account when holding a position after a certain time.
• Currency conversion fee – There is a fee (0.7%) for all trades on instruments denominated in a currency different to the currency of your account.
• Guaranteed stop-loss order fees – If you request a guaranteed stop loss on a trade, there will be a small fee.
• Inactivity fees – If you do not log in to your trading account for three months, a fee of up to USD $10 per month will be applied to your account.

Withdrawals are free of charge no matter the number of withdrawals you make per month.

Deposits are also free of charge.

What features does the Plus500 platform offer?

Plus500 offers range of features designed to help traders make money including:

• Charting tools –The platform offers charts with a wide range of indicators and drawing tools to help traders identify and capitalise on patterns and trends (there 13 charting tools and over 100 indicators).
• Market news – On its website, there is a section dedicated to news and market insights.
• Alerts –With Plus500, you can set up real-time email, SMS, and push notifications for trade alerts (e.g. price alerts or % change alerts).
• An economic calendar –The economic calendar is designed to help traders prepare for important economic data (e.g. inflation data, retail sales data, job reports, PMI data).
• +Insights –This is a feature that allows users to learn more about market trends based on the company’s internal data (e.g. most bought stocks, most sold stocks).
• Watchlists –Users can manage multiple watchlists.
• Trading Academy –Plus500’s Trading Academy offers a range of educational products including eBooks, videos, and FAQs.
• Webinars – Plus500 offers regular webinars to its professional clients.
• A free unlimited demo account –With the demo account, novice traders can learn to trade CFDs without risking real money.

What risk management tools are available on Plus500?

Plus500 offers several tools to help traders manage risk including:

• Stop-loss orders –Traders can use these orders to automatically close out a losing position at a specific level.
• Guaranteed stop-loss orders – A guaranteed stop-loss puts an absolute limit on your potential loss from a losing trade.
• Trailing stop-loss orders – This type of stop loss moves upwards as the price of the security being traded rises.
• Take profit orders – Traders can use these orders to automatically close out a winning position at a specific level.

What is Plus500’s customer service like?

Plus500’s customer service options are limited to online chat, email support, and WhatsApp. So, you can’t contact the company by telephone. However, don’t let that put you off. We contacted the company via online chat and were very impressed with the service and support offered. It’s worth noting that support is available 24/7. This is a big plus – some other CFD providers only provide support during the week.

How do you open an account with Plus500?

1. To open an account with Plus500, you need to submit some documents to the company (identification, residence verification, etc.).
2. You also have to read through several documents and complete a questionnaire.
3. To be able to trade, you will need to fund your account.
4. In the UK, the minimum initial deposit is £100.

What is Plus500’s professional account?

The Plus500 professional account is an account designed for professional traders. With this account, you have access to higher levels of leverage (e.g. 1:20 for shares).

To be eligible for a professional account, you must meet two of the following three criteria:

• You’ve performed an average of at least 10 transactions per quarter, of significant size, over the previous four quarters on the relevant market (with Plus500 and/or other providers).
• You have a portfolio worth more than €500,000 (including cash savings and financial instruments).
• You have worked in the financial sector for at least one year in a professional position that requires knowledge of the related transactions or services.

What is Plus 500’s premium service package?

With the premium service package clients get:

• A dedicated premium service client manager.
• Periodic emails containing expert analysis of upcoming trading events.
• External trading webinars.
• A premium service customer support team.

Note that the premium service is invitation only. To become a premium customer, you must have a real money trading account.

Alternatives to Plus500

If you are looking for alternatives to Plus500, you may want to consider:

• IG –With IG, you can trade CFDs on over 17,000 instruments.
• CMC Markets –With CMC, you can trade CFDs on over 12,000 instruments.
• eToro –eToro offers a user-friendly platform that is popular with beginners.

Why doesn’t Plus 500 offer spread betting?

CFD broker Plus500 does not offer spread betting. It only offers CFDs (contracts for difference). So why does the nation’s financial media get it wrong all the time?

There are some fairly significant differences between financial spread betting and CFDs. I’m not going to go into them here, but you can watch our video discussion on CFDs Vs Spread betting or, read one of the many articles we discuss the pros and cons of each type of online trading.

I don’t know why Plus500 don’t offer spread betting; it’s one question that I’d like to ask the CEO when we get to interview them. After all, we’ve interviewed the CEOs of most of the major CFD brokers, but for some reason, Plus500 never want to talk to us about anything. Maybe that says all you need to know. If you want to see what actual spread betting brokers think, you can read our interviews here:

• IG – June Felix Interview
• CMC – Peter Cruddas Interview
• Pepperstone – Tamas Szabo Interview
• Spreadex – Jonathan Hufford Interview
• ETX Capital – Phil Adler Interview

We have a comparison table of UK-regulated spread betting brokers here.

But the reasons Plus500 don’t offer spread betting is probably because the spread betting market in the UK is utterly saturated and has been for some time. There are around 100,000 to 120,000 spread betting traders in the UK that would generate revenue for spread betting brokers. Which is not a lot.

There are of course millions of traders, but many are so small that to a broker that doesn’t profit entirely from the B-book, probably not worth going after.

Spread betting is unique to the UK because there is no tax on profits(see why spread betting is tax-free here – it’s quite a funny story).

CFDs can be offered globally. So it makes sense that Plus 500, which is a pretty basic broker doesn’t complicate their offered by segregating spread betting and CFD traders.

Also, I would say that as a basic broker Plus 500 won’t attract serious traders or large accounts, so the tax breaks that spread betting offers probably wouldn’t be a big enough draw to make it worth their while.

You can read our Plus500 review here and see what their customers have to say about trading with Plus500.

Even way back in 2017 when Plus500’s market cap first topped £1bn, the national press were getting it wrong.

Yes that’s right, back then little old Plus500 who was for years nipping at the heals of the industry became worth over £1bn.

The statement, which is somewhat representative of their brokerage services, offered nothing other than the bare essentials, read:

Plus500, a leading online service provider for retail customers to trade CFDs internationally, is pleased to announce that its business continues to trade strongly. Accordingly,the Board anticipates that revenues and profitsfor the year ending 31 December 2017 will be ahead ofmarket expectations.

Further details will be announced in the Company’s scheduled third quarter trading update which will be issued on 31 October 2017.

You can see the RNS announcement released by the London Stock Exchange here.

Obviously this got a lot of press with most of the national paper saying that spread betting broker Plus 500 blah blah blah. It really gets my goat, Plus 500 are not a spread betting broker, never have been.

Especially as it’s from big news agencies such as Reuters&City AM, who for some reason are unable to tell the difference between a CFD broker and a spread betting broker. Shame…

Examples of Plus 500 being called a spread betting broker

The list goes on endlessly if you look back through the archives, but as Plus500 released a trading update today, they have been in the press. here are some examples of Plus500 being called a spread betting broker when they are not:

• The FT: https://www.ft.com/content/11aa8695-8cef-497d-9485-7e1dffa44476
• The Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/plus-500-attracts-new-customers-vj28nx5rl
• Daily Mail: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8398005/BUSINESS-LIVE-Car-dealer-Lookers-warns-suspected-fraud-Tesco-accounting-probe-ends.html
• Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-07/virus-driven-spread-bet-boom-drives-500-revenue-gain-at-plus500
• The Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/shares/investors-have-turned-spread-betting-works-risks/

You could potentially argue that Plus500 could be called a spread betting broker because they make money on the spread between the bid/offer, but they don’t really do that as pricing is so narrow these days. Plus500 make money taking the other side of clients’ trades (or not hedging them) and also charging a very high rate of interest on overnight positions.

80% 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.

Plus500UK Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 509909)

Plus500 Facts & Figures

80% 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.

Plus500UK Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 509909)