XM

XM is a forex and CFD broker that has operated since 2009 under the Trading Point group. Its EU company, Trading Point of Financial Instruments Ltd, is registered in Limassol, Cyprus, and licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) under licence 120/10. “XM” is a brand rather than a single legal company. Six regulated entities trade under it, in Cyprus, the UK, Dubai, South Africa and Belize. The entity that opens your account sets your leverage, your instruments, your client protections and whether copy trading or a cash-share account is available.

On costs, XM is a spread-first broker. The commission-free Ultra Low accounts quote EUR/USD from 0.8 pips. The Zero account quotes from 0.0 pips and charges a separate commission. A $5 minimum deposit applies to every account except the Shares account, which requires $10,000. Platforms include MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, a proprietary web platform and a mobile app. XM is strong in research integration and live education. It is weaker in forex pair count, advanced order types and choice of execution venue.

Key takeaways

• XM is a brand of Trading Point, with entities supervised by CySEC, the UK FCA, the Dubai DFSA and South Africa’s FSCA, plus two offshore licences in Belize held by XM Global Limited.
• XM’s 1:1000 maximum leverage applies only at the offshore XM Global entity. EU retail clients are capped far lower by regulation.
• Every product in the main lineup is a CFD. The only route to owning underlying shares is the Shares account, which is offered from the offshore entities.
• The Ultra Low accounts are commission-free from 0.8 pips on EUR/USD. The Zero account adds $3.50 per side per lot on top of raw spreads from 0.0 pips.
• XM does not accept US clients.
• None of XM’s six licences comes from an Indian regulator, which matters for anyone asking whether XM is legal in India.

Who operates XM

The XM brand is owned by Trading Point Group, a privately held company that does not operate a bank. The group runs XM through several legal entities. Each holds its own licence and contracts with clients in its own jurisdiction:

• Trading Point of Financial Instruments Ltd (Cyprus), authorised by CySEC. This is the EU entity.
• Trading.com Markets UK Limited (formerly Trading Point of Financial Instruments UK Limited), authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority under FRN 705428.
• Trading Point MENA Limited, regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority.
• XM ZA (Pty) Ltd, authorised by South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority.
• XM Global Limited, licensed in Belize by both the FSC and the IFSC.

The official website is xm.com. Two other names come up often in connection with the broker, XM Global and XMTrading. Both are offshore-facing brands of the group regulated outside the EU, and their offering differs from the Cyprus entity’s. Clients who arrive through XMGlobal.com or XMTrading.com are not clients of the CySEC entity. They do not get the EU’s investor protection framework, even though the logo and platform look the same.

The group also runs a separate brand, Trading.com, through which it holds authorisations in other jurisdictions, including the United States. Trading.com is not XM. A US resident who opens an account there is dealing with a different brand, product set and regulatory regime.

Cloned and look-alike sites exist for many well-known brokers, and XM is a frequent target because of its size. The client portal sits on the official xm.com domain. If a site, messaging account or social media profile offers “XM” accounts through any other channel, treat it as unverified until you can match it to xm.com and to the regulator’s register. Offers to buy “verified XM accounts” deserve particular caution. An account opened in someone else’s name breaks the identity checks every regulated entity must perform. It also leaves the buyer with no legal claim to the funds in it.

Regulation and licences: is XM safe?

The FCA licence (705428) is Tier-1, the CySEC (120/10), DFSA (F003484) and FSCA (49976) licences are Tier-2, and the two Belize licences (FSC 8557558 and IFSC/60/354/TS/18) are offshore. The tiers describe the regulator, not the entity’s conduct. What they signal in practice is how much statutory protection sits behind a retail account:

• EU (CySEC). Retail CFD clients fall under the product intervention measures ESMA introduced in 2018 and Cyprus later adopted permanently. These include leverage caps of 30:1 on major currency pairs and lower caps on other asset classes, margin close-out at 50% of required margin per account, negative balance protection, a ban on bonuses and other trading incentives, and a standardized risk warning showing the percentage of retail accounts that lose money with the provider. Cyprus investment firms also belong to the Investor Compensation Fund, which covers eligible claims up to €20,000 if a firm cannot return client assets.
• UK (FCA). The FCA applies equivalent retail CFD restrictions: leverage caps, margin close-out, negative balance protection and an incentive ban. Eligible claims against FCA-authorised investment firms can fall under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Whether your account qualifies depends on the entity and your client category.
• Dubai (DFSA) and South Africa (FSCA). Both are recognized national regulators, each with its own conduct and client money rules, which differ from the EU and UK framework.
• Belize (FSC and IFSC). These are offshore licences. They let XM Global offer much higher leverage, bonuses and products the EU entity cannot, including the Shares account and crypto CFDs. They do not carry the EU or UK statutory requirements described above.

“Is XM safe?” therefore has two parts. The first is whether the group is a licensed, long-running operation, and its licences and 2009 founding date answer that. The second is what protection your own account carries, and that depends on which entity onboarded you. A trader in Germany and a trader in Southeast Asia can both use “XM” and face very different leverage, compensation coverage and dispute routes.

Which entity you get

You do not choose your entity freely. XM assigns it based on your country of residence. Before funding, confirm three things. First, check the contracting company named in your onboarding documents and client agreement against that regulator’s register. Second, check the agreement for your entity’s margin call and stop-out levels and whether it gives negative balance protection. Third, read the entity’s order execution policy.

What changes by entity:

• Leverage: from 30:1 on major forex pairs for EU retail clients up to 1:1000 at XM Global.
• Account types: XM Global offers the Standard and Ultra Low accounts. The EU entity carries the Ultra Low and Zero accounts.
• Crypto CFDs: offered by the global entities but not by the EU entity, and not available to UK retail clients under the FCA’s ban on crypto derivatives for retail consumers.
• Copy trading: offshore entities only, not the EU entity.
• Shares account: offshore entities only.
• Bonuses: possible under the offshore entities’ bonus terms. Prohibited for EU and UK retail CFD clients.

Execution model

Descriptions of how XM executes orders differ. Some tag XM as STP (straight-through processing) and NDD (no dealing desk). Others classify it as a market maker, meaning the broker is the counterparty to client trades rather than passing every order to an outside liquidity provider. Brokers often use a mix, internalizing some flow and hedging some externally, and labels like these simplify that.

The governing document is the entity’s order execution policy, which XM publishes. It covers how prices are formed, how slippage is handled and what the broker is obliged to do on your behalf. Execution style matters most to scalpers, news traders and anyone sensitive to requotes or slippage. XM also bars latency-driven strategies, which tells you which trading approaches the firm does not want on its book.

Where XM accepts clients

United States

XM does not accept US clients. Off-exchange forex for US retail customers must go through a firm registered with the CFTC as a futures commission merchant or retail foreign exchange dealer and a member of the NFA, and none of the six XM entities holds that status. The group’s US-facing activity runs through the separate Trading.com brand.

India

XM holds no licence from an Indian authority, either SEBI or the RBI. Under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999, Indian residents may trade forex only through authorised persons and on recognized Indian exchanges, in permitted currency pairs, most of them involving the rupee. The RBI has repeatedly stated that overseas online forex platforms are not authorised to deal with Indian residents. It has warned that remitting money abroad, directly or indirectly, to margin forex or CFD platforms is not permitted under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme. The RBI also publishes an Alert List of entities it considers unauthorised.

For an Indian resident, then, the question is less whether XM is a real broker and more whether funding an offshore CFD account is allowed under Indian law. The FEMA framework says it is not, whatever licences the broker holds elsewhere. Check the current RBI Alert List and take local advice before funding any overseas platform.

Malaysia and other markets

XM holds no licence from Malaysia’s Securities Commission either. The same logic applies there and in any other country: the relevant test is whether your local regulator permits residents to trade leveraged CFDs with a foreign firm, whatever licences the firm holds elsewhere. Several regulators publish investor alert lists of unauthorised firms, and those lists are the place to check before you deposit.

Account types

XM’s live account types are Ultra Low Standard, Ultra Low Micro, Zero and Shares. XM Global also offers a plain Standard account. Which of these you can open depends on your entity. XM has no VIP tier or active-trader programme. The lower-cost accounts fill that role instead. The Standard account’s 1.6-pip EUR/USD floor and the open-position caps on the Zero and Ultra Low Micro accounts come from secondary descriptions of XM, so confirm them in your entity’s account terms.

Ultra Low Standard and Ultra Low Micro

These are the default accounts for most retail traders. Both are commission-free, so the whole trading cost is built into the spread. EUR/USD is quoted from 0.8 pips and maximum leverage is 1:1000 where the entity allows it. Both work on MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, the web platform and the mobile app. Both accept a $5 minimum deposit.

The difference between them is contract size. On a standard-lot account, 1 lot of EUR/USD is 100,000 units of the base currency. A micro account trades in smaller units, so a trader with a very small balance can open positions where each pip is worth cents. That makes the Micro account the practical choice for a $5 to $100 balance. On a standard-lot account, even the minimum trade size can be a large share of a tiny balance.

Standard

The Standard account is also commission-free, but its spreads are wider than the Ultra Low’s: a EUR/USD floor of 1.6 pips against 0.8. Where both are available, a trader opening the Standard account by default pays roughly double the spread floor for the same position. The Standard account has no pricing advantage that would offset this, so check during signup which account is selected.

Zero

The Zero account uses the raw-spread model. Spreads start at 0.0 pips, and XM adds a commission of $3.50 per side per standard lot, or $7 for a round turn. Maximum leverage on this account is 1:500, lower than the 1:1000 for the Ultra Low accounts. The Zero account does not support micro contracts. It caps open positions at 200, which matters only to strategies running many simultaneous orders.

Shares

The Shares account is the one place in XM’s lineup where you own the underlying stock rather than a contract on its price. It requires a $10,000 minimum deposit and runs at 1:1 leverage, meaning full payment and no borrowing. It is offered only through the offshore entities. Because it is unleveraged and you own the shares, it carries different risks from CFD trading: you cannot lose more than the position’s value through leverage, and there is no overnight financing on a held position.

Islamic, professional and demo accounts

XM offers swap-free Islamic accounts, which remove overnight interest charges for traders who cannot pay or receive interest for religious reasons. It also offers professional accounts. Under EU and UK rules, professional status removes retail leverage caps and some protections, including negative balance protection under the retail product intervention measures, and requires meeting trading-experience and portfolio criteria.

Trading costs

Spreads

XM quotes variable spreads only. There is no fixed-spread option. The “from” figures (0.8 pips on EUR/USD for Ultra Low, 0.0 for Zero) are minimums. The spread you actually pay moves with liquidity and widens around the daily rollover, during thin trading hours and around major data releases. Pricing follows the account, not the platform. The same account shows the same quotes on the web platform and on MT5.

What a spread costs in money is straightforward for EUR/USD on a standard lot. One pip is 0.0001, and on 100,000 units that is $10. You pay the spread once per round trip: you buy at the ask and sell at the bid.

Worked example (hypothetical spreads, EUR/USD, 1 standard lot, round trip):

• Ultra Low at an assumed 1.0 pip: 1.0 × $10 = $10 per round trip.
• Standard at an assumed 1.8 pips: 1.8 × $10 = $18 per round trip.
• Zero at an assumed raw spread of 0.2 pips: 0.2 × $10 = $2 spread, plus $7 commission ($3.50 to open, $3.50 to close) = $9 per round trip.

The spread figures are illustrative, not XM’s live quotes. The structure is what matters. On EUR/USD, the Zero account’s $7 round-turn commission equals 0.7 pips. Its all-in cost is therefore the raw spread plus 0.7 pips, which is at least 0.7 pips even when the raw spread is exactly zero. The Zero account comes out cheaper than Ultra Low only when its raw spread is more than 0.7 pips tighter than the Ultra Low spread at the moment you trade.

Two conversions to keep straight:

• Per side vs. round trip. XM’s Zero commission is $3.50 per side. Opening and closing one lot costs $7, and a half-lot costs $3.50 round trip.
• Pip value varies by pair. The $10-per-pip figure holds for pairs quoted in US dollars, such as EUR/USD and GBP/USD, on a standard lot. On USD/JPY or cross pairs the pip value in your account currency changes with the exchange rate, so the same commission converts to a different number of pips. A position size calculator handles the conversion for any pair and account currency.

Overnight financing (swaps)

Holding a leveraged CFD position past the daily rollover usually incurs a swap, a financing charge or credit based on the interest-rate difference between the two currencies (or the financing rate for other CFDs) plus the broker’s markup. Swaps are separate from spreads and commissions. For a position held for weeks they can exceed the entry cost. Islamic accounts replace swaps with other arrangements under their own terms. The swap rate for each symbol appears in the MetaTrader contract specification.

Non-trading fees

• Deposits and withdrawals: XM charges no deposit or withdrawal fees, and international wires are free on its side. Your own bank, card issuer or e-wallet may still charge and apply its own exchange rate, and currency conversion applies if you fund in a currency other than your account currency.
• Inactivity fee: $10 per month once an account has been dormant for more than 90 days. Dormant means no trading, deposits, withdrawals, transfers or new account registrations in that window. Small balances left untouched are the most exposed, since a $5 deposit sitting idle is used up within one month of the fee starting.
• VPS: an optional virtual private server for running MetaTrader Expert Advisors costs $25 per month and is deducted automatically from the trading account.

Leverage and margin

XM’s 1:1000 leverage is a maximum. It applies to the Ultra Low accounts at the XM Global entity. The Zero account tops out at 1:500, the Shares account is 1:1, and EU retail clients face the regulatory caps (30:1 on major forex pairs, lower on other asset classes).

Leverage changes the margin you must post, not the size of your profit or loss per pip. That is set by position size.

Example (hypothetical EUR/USD price of 1.1000, 1 standard lot = €100,000, notional about $110,000):

• At 1:1000, required margin is about $110.
• At 1:500, about $220.
• At 30:1, about $3,667.

In all three cases each pip is still worth about $10. With $500 of equity, a trader at 1:1000 can open that 1-lot position. A 50-pip move against it, which is common for EUR/USD over a day or two, erases the $500. The broker’s margin close-out would usually stop the position out before that point.

Very high leverage lets a small account carry a large position. It does not make the position safer. Offshore accounts also may not offer the statutory negative balance protection that EU and UK retail clients get. In a fast market with gaps, losses beyond the account balance are possible unless the entity’s own terms provide that protection.

Markets and instruments

XM’s core lineup totals around 1,583 symbols, all CFDs. The same list appears on MT5 and on the proprietary web platform. It spans:

• Forex: 54 currency pairs, covering the majors, main crosses and a limited set of exotics.
• Stock CFDs: US and global shares.
• Equity indices and thematic indices.
• ETF CFDs.
• Commodities: energies (including oil), metals (including gold and silver) and agricultural products.
• Futures CFDs: contracts on a selection of futures.
• Crypto CFDs: 12, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, offered by the global entities only.

Absent from the lineup: listed options, exchange-traded futures, spread betting, prediction markets, and trading or holding actual cryptocurrencies. Crypto exposure is CFD-only, so you trade the price, for example BTC/USD, without owning or withdrawing coins. Crypto CFDs do not trade 24/7. Gold is a partial exception: a separate GOLD24-7 contract appears in the symbol list alongside the standard gold CFD.

The 54 forex pairs are enough for traders who stick to majors and the common crosses. Brokers built around forex depth list well over 100 pairs, so traders who specialize in exotics or emerging-market currencies may find gaps. The Shares account adds cash equities for offshore clients, but it is a separate account with its own $10,000 minimum, not a feature of the CFD accounts.

Trading platforms

XM offers four ways to trade: MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, its own web platform and its own mobile app. There is no proprietary desktop platform and no cTrader. TradingView is not available as a connected trading platform, although TradingView’s charting library powers XM’s web and mobile charts. One set of credentials works for both the proprietary platform and MT5, so there is no separate login or portal to manage.

Proprietary web platform

The web platform places the chart, the order ticket and a research pane in one workspace. Some modules open outside the trading tab, which keeps the main screen uncluttered. Customization covers theme, watchlists, one-click trading and saved chart templates.

Charting. The TradingView-based charts include close to 100 indicators, among them Keltner Channels, Donchian Channels, Bollinger Bands and Stochastic RSI, plus a wide set of drawing and measuring tools from Fibonacci retracements to Gann fans and Elliott Wave patterns. You can place a trade and then drag the stop-loss and take-profit lines to the levels you want directly on the chart.

The limit is timeframes. There are ten, from 1-minute to yearly, with few intraday options between them and no sub-minute charts. Traders who work on 15-minute, 30-minute or tick charts will find MetaTrader more flexible here. Trendlines and indicators persist only if you save them as a named layout. Unsaved drawings are lost.

Order ticket. The ticket sits beside the chart and switches between market and pending orders. Size can be set in lots or units (for gold, 0.01 lots equals 1 troy ounce). Stop-loss and take-profit can be set as a price or as a cash amount. The ticket shows required margin in cash and as a percentage. Bulk actions let you close all profitable positions, all losing positions or everything at once.

There is no depth of market and no risk-to-reward readout when you move a stop against a target. The ticket validates input: it flags in red a take-profit on the wrong side of price or an order the margin cannot support.

Discovery. Watchlists include a default list, custom lists, predefined lists by asset class and dynamic top gainers and losers. Trading Central modules sit inside the platform rather than in a separate client area (see Research below).

Mobile app

XM’s proprietary app for iOS and Android uses a bottom navigation bar with Home, Markets, Trade, Portfolio and More. Research, news, education and support sit under More and open inside the app rather than in an external browser. You cannot pin those modules alongside a chart, so following headlines while watching price means switching screens.

The app shares the web platform’s TradingView charting, with about 100 indicators, the same ten timeframes and saved layouts that sync to the web. A layout saved on the phone loads on the desktop browser and the other way round. Watchlists also sync across devices.

The order ticket slides up from an asset’s mini chart. It offers market orders or pending orders (through a “buy when price is” toggle), lots or units, and stops and targets by price or cash amount, with margin shown before you submit. One-click trading can be switched on. Price alerts arrive as push notifications, in-app pop-ups or email. Search is fast and lets you browse every asset by category without typing.

Two practical limits stand out:

1. No trailing stops in the app or the web platform. They exist only in MetaTrader.
2. Drag-to-modify has a gap. When a position already has both a stop-loss and a take-profit, those lines cannot be dragged to new levels. You must cancel one and set a new one. Between the cancel and the replacement, the position is briefly unprotected, which matters in a fast market.

The app also lacks performance analytics beyond balance and trade history. For traders who prefer MetaTrader on their phone, XM publishes branded MT4 and MT5 mobile apps.

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5

MetaTrader is where XM’s more advanced trading lives. The desktop terminals come branded with XM’s logo, use the same credentials as the web platform and carry the same symbol list as the proprietary platforms. XM ships no extra add-ons on top of the default MetaTrader build.

MetaTrader offers what the proprietary platforms lack: trailing stops, more timeframes, custom indicators, Expert Advisors and backtesting. MT5 desktop also shows a depth-of-market style view when the order ticket is expanded. MT4 remains the more common platform for third-party Expert Advisors and indicators. MT5 adds more timeframes, more pending order types and a built-in economic calendar. On XM both connect to the same accounts and pricing, so the choice depends on which tools you need.

Order types

The lack of guaranteed stop-loss orders matters most for traders holding positions through weekends or major events. A standard stop becomes a market order once triggered, so in a gap it fills at the next available price, which can be well beyond the stop level.

Algorithmic trading and copy trading

Automation through MetaTrader

XM supports automated trading through MetaTrader Expert Advisors on MT4 and MT5, with backtesting in both. There is no API, so EAs on the desktop terminal are the only route to automation. The optional VPS costs $25 a month and keeps an EA running when your own computer is off.

The constraints on automated trading:

• Latency-driven strategies are prohibited. Arbitrage that exploits delays in price feeds falls outside XM’s rules, and the terms allow the broker to act against it.
• Position caps. A limit of 200 open orders on the Zero account and 300 on the Ultra Low Micro account. Grid systems and high-frequency EAs can hit these caps.
• No API. Developers who want to connect their own software outside MetaTrader cannot do so.

Copy trading

Copy trading depends on the entity. The EU entity does not offer it, and the MetaTrader Signals marketplace is disabled. The offshore brands, XMGlobal.com and XMTrading.com, run a web-based copy trading app with a large catalog of strategy providers and filters for sorting them (for example by performance or risk profile).

Copying another trader passes their risk on to you: their leverage, their drawdowns and their position sizing, scaled to your account. Past returns on a leaderboard say nothing about future results, and a strategy can perform well for months before a single large loss.

Research

Research is where XM’s platform design pays off. The tools are integrated into the trading workflow, not hidden in a separate portal.

News on the ticket. Reuters headlines appear in a dedicated news section and on the trade ticket itself. Each headline is tagged with icons for the assets it affects. On a USD/JPY chart, the News & Analysis tab lets you pick out stories tagged with that pair, or with Japanese markets more broadly.

Market commentary. XM publishes daily market briefings with embedded charts, a Week Ahead series on central bank decisions and upcoming data, and asset-by-asset analysis articles from in-house analysts. The macro coverage is readable and timely, though it stops short of long-form research reports. Financial statement data for stocks is not provided.

Calendars. An economic calendar in the web and mobile platforms shows past releases and a chart history for each event. A separate corporate events calendar sorts dividends, earnings and company announcements into tabs.

Trading Central. Trading Central is the only third-party research provider, and XM has built it in more fully than many brokers. The modules include:

• Featured Ideas: trade setups published through the day with a suggested stop-loss (not always a take-profit). These are signals you copy into the ticket by hand, not automated trades.
• Screener: stock and forex scans that return ranked results.
• Technical Score: a summary technical reading per instrument, shown beside client sentiment.
• Market Buzz: how often an instrument is mentioned on social media compared with its usual level, which works as a rough attention gauge.
• Strategy Builder, Fundamental Insights and Market Insights (chart pattern recognition).

Client sentiment. The Insights tab in the ticket shows the share of XM clients long versus short in an instrument as a green and red bar. This reflects XM’s own client book, not the wider market.

Autochartist, Acuity Trading and TipRanks are not offered.

Video and audio. XM runs live market streams and webinars across time zones and languages. Recordings are archived on its YouTube channel in playlists such as Trading Tips, Technical Analysis and Weekly Outlook. The Global Market Insights podcast has run since 2020 with a new episode most trading days, each a short recap rather than an extended discussion. The XM on Air series adds media appearances and in-house programmes.

Education

XM’s education is built around live video, and for traders who learn by watching it is one of the strongest offerings among retail brokers.

Live trading rooms. Beginner and advanced rooms run at almost all hours across time zones and languages. More than 70 analysts staff them, from XM’s in-house team and from partners such as Tradepedia. Sessions include polls, quizzes and live Q&A, so they work as interactive classes rather than one-way presentations.

Structured course. The main structured path is a Tradepedia video course of 48 lessons in 9 categories: fundamental analysis, technical analysis, money management, trading strategies, trading psychology and market essentials, among others. It runs several hours in total. Progress tracking resumes where you left off across sessions. The course has no quizzes of its own. The material is largely asset-agnostic and covers forex, shares, CFDs and crypto at a conceptual level.

Written material. Written education is thin. The Basics of Trading guide is a sequence of 14 cards, and there are only a handful of such guides plus about a dozen Quick Start articles. Readers who prefer text to video will exhaust it quickly.

Platform help. Short tutorials cover watchlists, placing and managing trades, price alerts and charting, in separate web and mobile versions. The help center’s walkthroughs answer practical MetaTrader questions, such as how to backtest an Expert Advisor, in a few steps.

Deposits and withdrawals

XM offers four deposit method groups, each with a $5 minimum: credit and debit cards, bank transfers, local transfers and e-wallets. Supported e-wallets include Skrill and Neteller. PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay and crypto deposits are not supported.

What to expect in practice:

• Local transfers depend on your country. The available options appear in the client area after you log in.
• Withdrawals usually return to the original funding method under anti-money-laundering rules. Card deposits are typically refunded to the card up to the deposited amount, with profits sent by another method such as bank transfer. Expect identity and address verification to be complete before the first withdrawal is processed.
• Third-party payments are not accepted at regulated brokers generally. The funding account must be in the same name as the trading account.

The $5 minimum allows a first deposit for testing withdrawals before committing a larger amount. Funding a small amount, placing a trade and running a withdrawal through the same method confirms how the process works for your entity and payment route.

How to open an account with XM

1. Start on xm.com. Use the official domain directly rather than links from ads or messages.
2. Enter your country of residence. This determines which entity you are onboarded to and therefore your leverage, products and protections. The entity’s name appears in the registration documents.
3. Choose the account type. Check which accounts your entity offers. Where both Standard and Ultra Low are available, compare their spreads before accepting the default. Choose the Micro account if you plan to trade with a very small balance.
4. Select the platform and account currency. MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 or the proprietary platform. Choosing your local or funding currency can avoid conversion costs on every deposit and withdrawal.
5. Complete the suitability questions. EU and UK entities must assess whether CFDs are appropriate for you.
6. Verify your identity and address. Upload a government ID and a recent proof of address. Verification has to be complete before trading or withdrawing.
7. Fund the account using a method in your own name.
8. Set leverage deliberately. Where the entity allows high leverage, you can usually choose a lower setting. Lower leverage raises the margin each position needs, which limits how large a position you can open relative to your equity.

A demo account can be opened alongside the live account at any point and used to test the platform, order ticket and EAs without risking money.

Bonuses and promotions

XM’s offshore entities run bonus programmes under published bonus terms and conditions. Bonuses are not available to retail clients of the EU and UK entities, because ESMA and FCA rules ban trading incentives for retail CFD clients.

Where a bonus is offered, the terms decide its value:

• Withdrawability. Trading bonuses typically add credit that can absorb losses or count toward margin but cannot be withdrawn as cash.
• Effect of withdrawals. Withdrawing your own funds can remove some or all of the bonus.
• Volume conditions. Some bonuses convert to cash only after a set trading volume, which encourages more frequent trading than a strategy would otherwise call for.
• Account eligibility. Not every account type qualifies.

Read the bonus terms for your entity before accepting. The promotion that appears on a landing page is a marketing summary. The terms document is what governs your account.

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

• Regulatory footprint. Licences from CySEC, the FCA, the DFSA and the FSCA, plus two Belize licences, under a group operating since 2009.
• Low entry point. A $5 minimum deposit on the Ultra Low and Zero accounts, and micro contracts for very small balances.
• Commission-free Ultra Low pricing from 0.8 pips on EUR/USD, and a raw-spread Zero account for traders who prefer commission pricing.
• No deposit or withdrawal fees on XM’s side.
• Integrated research. Reuters headlines tagged to assets on the ticket, Trading Central inside the platform and client sentiment beside the order form.
• Live education. Near round-the-clock trading rooms and a structured video course with progress tracking.
• One login across web, mobile and MT5, with the same pricing on each.
• Full MetaTrader support, including Expert Advisors and backtesting.

Trade-offs

• Entity lottery. Leverage, products, copy trading, bonuses and investor protection all depend on where you live. Offshore clients get more products and leverage with less statutory protection.
• Standard account pricing. Its spread floor is about double the Ultra Low’s.
• Limited forex depth. 54 pairs, and an all-CFD lineup outside the offshore Shares account.
• Proprietary platform gaps. No trailing stops, OCO, OTO or guaranteed stops, only ten chart timeframes and no depth of market.
• No API, a ban on latency-driven strategies and position caps on some accounts.
• Inactivity fee of $10 a month after 90 days without activity.
• No copy trading from the EU entity, and no MetaTrader Signals.
• Not available to US residents, and not authorised by Indian regulators.

How we checked XM

We visited xm.com on 13 November 2026, connecting from Tallinn, Estonia. The footer names Trading Point of Financial Instruments Limited, registration number HE251334, with an address in Limassol. It also carries the warning that 76.15% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. From there we clicked through to the regulation page. It states that the firm is licensed by CySEC under license number 120/10, keeps client funds segregated and is a member of the Investor Compensation Fund.

The account types page listed a $5 minimum deposit for both the Ultra Low Account and the Zero Account. On the homepage, XM advertised spreads as low as 0.8 pips and withdrawals with no fees. The leverage page said up to 30:1, dependent on instrument. According to the account types page, all accounts include negative balance protection and an Islamic option. We did not open an account or deposit anything. So we cannot say what signup requires before funding.

Registers came next. CySEC’s list of Cypriot investment firms shows Trading Point Of Financial Instruments Ltd under licence 120/10, licensed 05/08/2010. On the FCA register, number 705428 returned TRADING.COM MARKETS UK LIMITED, status Authorised, since 03/05/2016. That fits the renamed UK entity. Our search of Companies House did not return Trading Point of Financial Instruments UK Limited. The old name may simply no longer be in use, but we did not confirm that. The DFSA register lists Trading Point MENA Limited, F003484, as an Authorised Firm since 10-Sep-2019. For XM ZA (Pty) Ltd, number 49976, we could not complete the check because the FSCA site was down for maintenance that day.

When we read Trustpilot on 13 November 2026, XM scored 2/5 from 3,102 reviews, and 58% of them were one-star. The Wayback Machine’s first capture of xm.com dates to 1996-12-27, which may predate the current brand. Some claims remain unconfirmed. The Belize licences sat outside our register checks, and nothing we did tells us what live spreads or execution look like on a funded account.

Who XM may suit

Newer traders who learn by watching and want education in the same place they trade. The live trading rooms, the progress-tracked course and research built into the ticket set XM apart from brokers that only list MetaTrader. The micro account and $5 minimum let these traders trade very small positions while learning.

Cost-aware forex and CFD traders comfortable with the Ultra Low or Zero accounts. Picking the right account matters more at XM than at many brokers, because the gap between the Standard and Ultra Low accounts is large. Traders who pick the cheaper account and compare its actual spread with the Zero account’s raw spread plus 0.7 pips can keep costs competitive.

MetaTrader users running Expert Advisors who want the broker’s research and education alongside. They need to fit within the latency rules and position caps and do not need an API.

XM fits less well for:

• traders who specialize in exotic currency pairs;
• traders who rely on OCO orders or guaranteed stops on the proprietary platform;
• developers who need API access;
• EU clients who want copy trading;
• anyone in a country, such as the US or India, where XM is not authorised to serve them.