eToro Review

For this eToro review, we opened a real account and deposited over US$ 6,000 in total.

We traded the popular instrument in each market to get the spread and placed a total of 18 trades.

We also reached out to customer support to solve issues that we encountered.

Most importantly is fund withdrawal. We withdrew all our funds at the end to see if there is any issue with the withdrawal process.

What is eToro

eToro is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, and was founded in 2007.

The broker gained popularity as one of the best social trading platforms. It allows trading with multiple markets, including forex, indices, commodities, stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and cryptocurrencies.

eToro carries several licenses from regulators in the UK, USA, Australia, Abu Dhabi, and Cyprus.

Some of the highlighted features of eToro are:

Licenses and Regulations

eToro is licensed by some of the top global regulators, including the UK’s FCA, CySEC, ASIC, ADGM, and FinCEN.

The licenses were awarded to locally formed entities of eToro. The full list of eToro’s licenses is below.

eToro can only offer real cryptocurrency trading in the United States as it does not have licenses from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and National Futures Association (NFA), the two derivatives trading regulators in the USA.

Is eToro Safe

Yes, eToro is safe to trade. FCA and CySEC have deposit compensation schemes of up to £85,000 and €20,000 respectively, meaning each traders’ deposits are insured up to those sums.

Additionally, eToro offers insurance of up to £1 million to all its users. If the broker goes bust, the policy will pay its customers.

Our trading and withdrawal were smooth with eToro.

For this review, we opened an account under eToro (Europe) Limited which is regulated by the CySEC. For our tests which we deposited money, placed trades, and withdrew deposits.

We recommend you register your account with the UK or CySEC entity.

Fees and Charges

eToro offers commission-free trading for real stocks, but for CFDs, its commission is included in spreads. Forex spreads are below industry standard, while the spreads on cryptocurrencies (also crypto CFDs) are on the higher side.

eToro Spreads Charged in Our Trades

For our tests, we have chosen popular instruments in each market. We placed 3 trades for each instrument to get a picture of the average spread. The spreads for all the asset classes did not fluctuate much for our trades.

Details of our trades are shown below the table.

The spreads for indices and forex instruments are below the industry average. For commodities and stock CFDs, spreads are above the industry average.

The spreads on cryptocurrencies in our trades are more than double the industry average.

Other Fees

eToro charges a few non-trading fees.

The broker charges a $10 monthly fee after a year for inactive accounts. Though deposit and account maintenance are free on eToro, it charges $5 for each withdrawal.

Account Types

eToro offers only a single account type to the traders.

Novice traders can also open a demo account before trading on a live account.

Account Opening

Opening a new account on eToro is very simple and easy. We have opened an account ourselves to test the entire process with the broker.

Steps to create an eToro account:

1. Enter username, email, and password (you can also signup with Google or Facebook).
2. Click on ‘Complete profile’ and provide basic information like name, date of birth, address, and Passport number.
3. Answer a few questions: your trading experience, trading plans, occupation, and financial status.
4. Verify your account with phone number verification and submitting other documents.

We have submitted the following documents to verify our eToro account:

1. Copy of passport
2. Copy of national identification
3. Copy of 3 months’ bank statements

The registration process took merely 11 minutes. Our account was verified after 8 days.

We registered our accounts on January 11, 2023, and also submitted all the necessary documents on the same day. Our account was verified on January 19, 2023.

One of the reasons behind the delay was that we had used a VPN for registration. eToro contacted us about the difference in IP address and questioned us back and forth for 8 days.

Deposit and Withdrawal

Both deposit and withdrawal processes on eToro are simple enough. eToro offers a lot of options to fund your account, and deposits are free. The broker, however, charges a flat fee of $5 for every withdrawal.

We have elaborated both the processes in the following section.

Minimum Deposit

eToro has both minimum and maximum deposit limits. The minimum deposit on eToro varies from $50 to $10,000.

• For US users, the minimum deposit amount is $50
• For most of the others countries, the minimum deposit amount is $500

eToro has a maximum daily deposit limit of $10,000.

Unverified eToro accounts have a total deposit limit of $2,250.

Deposit

eToro users can deposit funds with debit/credit cards, bank transfers, and several popular electronic wallets.

The first deposit has to be made using bank transfer, credit/debit cards, or PayPal.

We have tested the deposit process on eToro using multiple payment modes and, in each case, the deposits were received instantly.

We used a debit card for our first deposit.

The below table shows the details of our deposits:

For all our tested deposit methods, the process was completed instantly with zero fees.

Withdrawal Review

Withdrawals from eToro are easy, but the platform charges $5 for each withdrawal request.

eToro has a minimum withdrawal limit of $30.

We withdrew funds in multiple accounts to know the process in detail.

First, we deposited with a credit card. The same amount proceeded back to our credit card before we withdrew with other payment methods.

Overall, the withdrawal process is quick.

Markets and Products

eToro offers trading services with several markets, including forex, stocks, cryptocurrencies, commodities, and indices.

Though eToro is primarily a forex and CFD broker, it also offers trading services with real stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies.

All digital currencies on eToro’s Australian subsidiary are CFDs.

The complete list of eToro’s offerings are:

eToro offers access to 17 stock exchanges.

Non-leveraged buy positions on stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies, on eToro are traded as real assets.

Social Trading

eToro is known for its social trading feature. In fact, it gained popularity because of this feature.

It basically has two features: CopyTrader and CopyPortfolio.

Copy Trader

eToro traders can copy trading strategies of any other experienced traders on the platform.

The broker maintains its experienced traders’ page very well and clearly categorizes their profiles.

The profiles are very transparent, and traders can see every detail of the experienced trades activities, including trades per week, average holding time, and performance on charts.

eToro does not charge for availing CopyTrader services. There is a minimum limit of $200 to copy a trader.

CopyPortfolio

eToro also offers a feature called CopyPortfolio. Traders can copy the trades on markets and traders based on a pre-determined trading strategy.

Similar to CopyTrader, CopyPortfolios are categorized as Top trader portfolios, Market portfolios, and Partner portfolios. Do not consider eToro CopyPortfolios as hedge funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Popular Investor Program

eToro runs a Popular Investor Program to attract experienced traders. It offers attractive incentives to the traders who are active on the platform and whose trading portfolios are being copied.

Traders accepted under eToro’s Popular Investor Program will only receive commissions when their trades are copied.

Trading Conditions

Trading conditions on eToro are fair. eToro says it allows hedging. However, it states that it retains any profits generated by such a strategy in its T&C pdf. eToro does not allow scalping.

Leverage

Traders can change and adjust their leverage levels on eToro.

Trading Platform

eToro uses its own trading platform. It looks modern and is easy to use.

eToro only offers trading services on web-client and mobile trading App. The mobile platform is available for both iOS and Android devices.

For our tests, we placed the orders on eToro’s web-trader.

Research and Tools

eToro offers decent market research tools.

It has some good technical analysis tools. But on the downside, it lacks comprehensive fundamental data and a proper news feed.

The platform also recommends stocks to the traders, has market sentiment indicators, showing both activities by hedge funds and insider trading sentiments.

Education

eToro does not offer good educational resources to traders.

Some of eToro’s educational materials are:

• Few basic video tutorials
• Some podcasts on trading
• A text guide on trading and investment
• Daily news and analysis of major market activities

The broker seems to have developing its learning materials for beginners and is offering the materials via eToro’s Trading School.

Customer Service

eToro offers decent customer support.

Traders can contact the broker on:

• email
• Live chat

To check eToro support, we have raised several tickets.

The live chat is only available on weekdays and in Cyprus working hours. The email support is good with same-day responses.

eToro also has a list of a Q&A page of basic and mostly-faced problems by the traders.

eToro Feedback Conclusion

All in all, our trading experience on the platform was smooth.

eToro is good for beginners and experienced/popular traders. It has some attractive features like social trading.

eToro offers commission-free trading for real stocks and attractive spreads on forex.

We recommend eToro for traders who are

• Beginners in trading to copy Popular Investor’s trades
• Experienced traders who want to join the Popular Investor program
• Trading Currency pairs, Cryptocurrencies or Stocks

eToro might not be a fit if you are

• Scalping trader
• Hedging trader
• EA trader
• Trading through MT4/MT5 platform only
• Commission based trading