Lowest Spread Forex Brokers in Australia (2026)

Quick verdict: the five lowest-spread brokers in Australia right now

If you only read this section, here’s the order. Spreads are EUR/USD averages from our most recent IceFX SpreadMonitor pass, with the round-turn commission converted to pips at AUD/USD 0.65 so the total cost column is apples-to-apples.

1. Fusion Markets Zero: 0.00 to 0.10 pips raw, AUD 4.50 round-turn, 0.40 pips total. The cheapest commission of the seven, Melbourne-based.
2. Pepperstone Razor: 0.06 to 0.10 pips raw, AUD 7 round-turn, 0.51 pips total. Melbourne-founded, ASIC since 2010, fastest execution in our latency test.
3. FP Markets Raw: 0.10 to 0.15 pips raw, AUD 6 round-turn, 0.51 pips total. Sydney, ASIC since 2005.
4. IC Markets Raw Spread: 0.10 pips raw, AUD 7 round-turn, 0.55 pips total. Sydney-headquartered, deep liquidity from 25+ providers.
5. Eightcap Raw: 0.05 to 0.15 pips raw, AUD 7 round-turn, 0.55 pips total. Melbourne, strong cTrader execution.

Two more worth knowing about: Global Prime (0.00 to 0.15 pips, transparent execution reports) and Vantage RAW (0.00 to 0.20 pips, broader instrument list). Both round out the top seven without quite cracking the leader board on EUR/USD.

The spread you see quoted on a broker website is rarely the spread you’ll trade. Live averages from a 24-hour test will sit slightly above the marketing number, especially through the Sydney open and US data releases. We rebuild this table monthly.

Lowest-spread broker comparison across the four most-traded pairs

Average pip spread across a 24-hour rolling window. RAW account, AUD-base, retail tier. Commission shown separately. Test window: 5 to 6 May 2026.

Read the table together with the commission column. A 0.00-pip raw spread at Vantage with a AUD 6 round-turn isn’t cheaper than Pepperstone’s 0.06-pip raw with a AUD 7 round-turn once you finish the maths. We come back to that in the cost section below.

Top lowest-spread brokers, ranked

1. Fusion Markets Zero: cheapest commission

Fusion Markets quietly built one of the cheapest cost stacks in the AU market. EUR/USD averages between 0.00 and 0.10 pips raw, but the real story is the AUD 4.50 round-turn commission, the lowest in our seven. Total cost on EUR/USD works out to around 0.40 pips, which is a clear gap below the AUD 7 commission group on high-frequency strategies.

ASIC AFSL 385620, Melbourne-headquartered. The product range is narrower than Pepperstone or IC Markets, so this is a forex specialist’s account rather than a multi-asset platform.

Read the full Fusion Markets review.

2. Pepperstone Razor: best overall for active AU forex traders

Pepperstone’s Razor account remains the broker we recommend most often to active Australian forex traders. The headline EUR/USD average sits at 0.06 pips through the London session and widens to around 0.12 pips during the Asian quiet hours. Add the AUD 7 round-turn commission, convert at AUD/USD 0.65, and you’re paying roughly 0.51 pips total cost on a standard lot.

The pricing engine is connected to MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView and Pepperstone’s proprietary platform. Same Razor spreads across all five. ASIC AFSL 414530, Melbourne-headquartered, founded in 2010.

Read the full Pepperstone review.

3. IC Markets Raw Spread: deepest liquidity in our coverage

IC Markets sits inside a basis point of Pepperstone on most pairs. EUR/USD averages 0.10 pips on the Raw Spread account with the same AUD 7 round-turn. The differentiator is the depth-of-book pricing aggregated from 25+ liquidity providers, which shows in the slippage numbers more than the headline spread.

ASIC AFSL 335692, Sydney-headquartered, ASIC-regulated since 2007.

Read the full IC Markets review.

4. FP Markets Raw: long-running ASIC operator

FP Markets has held its ASIC AFSL since 2005, longer than Pepperstone or Fusion. The Raw account prices EUR/USD at 0.10 to 0.15 pips with a AUD 6 round-turn commission. Total cost lands close to Pepperstone, with a slightly wider but more stable headline spread through volatile sessions.

ASIC AFSL 286354, Sydney-headquartered.

Read the full FP Markets review.

5. Eightcap Raw: strong cTrader pairing

Eightcap’s Raw account prices EUR/USD between 0.05 and 0.15 pips with a AUD 7 round-turn. Spreads sit in line with IC Markets on most pairs, slightly tighter on USD/JPY in our last test. Where Eightcap stands out is the cTrader integration: depth of book, level 2 pricing and clean execution that some traders prefer to MT4/MT5.

ASIC AFSL 391441, Melbourne-headquartered.

Read the full Eightcap review.

6. Global Prime: transparent execution

Global Prime publishes execution reports per trade, which is unusual in this category. Spreads on the ECN account span 0.00 to 0.15 pips on EUR/USD with a AUD 7 round-turn. Worth shortlisting if you care about post-trade transparency more than the absolute lowest headline number.

7. Vantage RAW: broader product range

Vantage’s RAW ECN account quotes EUR/USD from 0.00 to 0.20 pips with a AUD 6 round-turn. The headline range is wider than the others above, but the platform supports a broader instrument set, including more ETF and share CFDs than Fusion Markets or Eightcap.

ASIC AFSL 428901, Sydney-headquartered.

How we measure spreads

Marketing pages quote the tightest five seconds of London-session pricing. Real trading sits in the 23 hours that aren’t London open. Our test method:

• Tool: IceFX SpreadMonitor EA, running on a London VPS connected to each broker’s MT4 or MT5 server. cTrader-only brokers are tested via the cTrader spread report.
• Window: 24 hours, rolling, restarted weekly. Each table date-stamps the test window.
• Pairs: EUR/USD, AUD/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, EUR/GBP, EUR/JPY. The first four cover the bulk of AU retail volume. The two crosses sanity-check session bias.
• Account type: RAW or ECN equivalent on each broker. Standard accounts aren’t included in this guide.
• Reported: average, minimum and maximum pip spread for the window, commission separately, total cost calculated at AUD/USD 0.65.

We don’t strip outliers. If a 5 PM rollover spike pushed the maximum to 4 pips, that figure stays in the table. Average is the practical number, but the maximum tells you what your worst-case stop will look like during news or rollover.

For full details, see the methodology page.

Spread is half the cost. The other half is commission

The headline spread is a marketing number. The number that actually leaves your account is spread plus commission. The maths:

• No-commission account: total cost = spread (in pips)
• RAW account: total cost = spread + (commission / pip value)

For a standard lot of EUR/USD with the account base in AUD and AUD/USD trading at 0.65, the commission-to-pip conversion works out roughly as follows:

Two takeaways. First, a Fusion Zero quote of “0.00 pip spread” is really 0.30 pips at the till. Second, the gap between Fusion Markets and the AUD 7 commission group is roughly 0.15 pips per round-turn. On 100 standard lots a month, that’s around AUD 100 in saved commission, which matters more than 0.04 pips of spread difference.

If you want the full commission-side analysis, see our lowest commissions guide and our ECN account guide for the underlying execution model.

When spreads widen, and how much it matters

Headline averages cover the calm hours. Real spreads move with liquidity. The four windows worth knowing about:

News releases. Non-Farm Payrolls, FOMC, RBA, ECB, BoE: the major releases blow spreads out for 30 to 90 seconds. EUR/USD on a RAW account that averages 0.10 pips can hit 5 to 10 pips at the print. Slippage on stops gets ugly. If you trade through these events, model your worst-case spread, not the average.

Asian session quiet. The handover between New York close and Tokyo open (roughly 5 to 7 AM AEST) is the thinnest liquidity window of the day for most pairs. EUR/USD spreads can drift to 0.5 to 1.0 pips on a RAW account during this hour. AU traders trading the Sydney open should expect this and not size up.

Weekend gap-open. Sunday afternoon AEST when forex reopens for the trading week, spreads can sit at 1 to 3 pips for the first 15 minutes while liquidity returns. Avoid market orders at the open.

Rollover (5 PM New York, 7 AM AEST in southern winter). Every broker reports brief widening at rollover when banks recalculate swap. Pepperstone and IC Markets typically recover within 30 seconds. Some brokers stretch this to several minutes. The rollover spike is the single biggest source of “why did my stop get hit” questions in our inbox.

The point isn’t to avoid these windows. It’s to know they exist and not to choose a broker on a 5-second average that ignores them.

AUD-base account vs USD-base: what actually changes

Most ASIC-regulated RAW accounts let you choose your base currency. The two practical options for AU traders are AUD or USD. The tradeoff:

AUD-base account. Your account balance, P&L and commission are quoted in Australian dollars. No currency conversion when you deposit from an Australian bank. Commission is quoted in AUD (e.g. Pepperstone AUD 7 round-turn). Position sizing on AUD-quoted pairs (AUD/USD, AUD/JPY, AUD/NZD) feels native because the quote currency matches your base.

USD-base account. Account balance and commission in US dollars (e.g. USD 7 round-turn, at AUD/USD 0.65 that’s roughly AUD 10.77, materially more than the AUD 7 you’d pay on an AUD-base equivalent at the same broker). Useful only if you trade USD-quoted pairs almost exclusively and want to avoid one layer of currency conversion on your P&L.

For most AU retail traders, AUD-base is the right choice. Lower effective commission, no FX conversion on deposits and withdrawals, native sizing on AUD pairs. The exception is wholesale-tier traders running large USD-denominated strategies, where the conversion drag adds up.

There’s a smaller second effect. Some brokers price slightly differently on AUD-base versus USD-base accounts because their commission is set in the base currency rather than recalculated daily. The difference is usually less than 0.05 pips equivalent and won’t change your broker shortlist, but it’s worth checking the PDS if you’re benchmarking down to the basis point.

ASIC fee transparency: what brokers must disclose

ASIC’s design and distribution obligations and the Corporations Act both require ASIC-licensed CFD brokers to publish a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) that discloses the cost structure of every account. For RAW account spread disclosure, this means:

• Typical spread: the broker’s representative average for each instrument
• Maximum spread: the cap above which the broker won’t quote (rare in practice, but disclosed)
• Commission rates: round-turn cost per standard lot, by base currency
• Swap rates: overnight financing on long and short positions
• Currency conversion fees: where applicable

The PDS sits alongside a Target Market Determination (TMD), introduced under ASIC’s Design and Distribution Obligations regime in October 2021, which states the type of retail client the product is suited to. Both documents must be linked from the broker’s homepage and presented before account opening.

Where ASIC oversight matters here: if a broker quotes “0.0 pip spreads” in marketing but the PDS lists a typical EUR/USD spread of 0.3 pips, the marketing is non-compliant. AFCA has heard several complaints on this point in recent years, and the broker has been required to refund the difference. The PDS is the document of record. Read it before you fund.

You should also check the broker’s published retail loss percentage: ASIC’s standardised risk warning that shows what proportion of retail accounts lost money in the previous quarter. Across the seven brokers in this guide, the figure typically sits between 70% and 80%.