cTrader brokers in the UK

[p] Spotware Systems Ltd develops the cTrader platform. Andrey Pavlov founded the company in 2010 in Limassol, Cyprus. Its team has spent the past 16 years developing cTrader.

The software comes from Spotware, which isn't a financial firm. [p] Spotware doesn't hold your cash, set your spreads or carry out your trades.

[p] Each cTrader broker UK traders use holds client accounts within its own FCA-authorised firm. [p] If you fund an account through FxPro, IC Markets or Pepperstone, the regulated company holds your deposit. [p] Your chosen broker sets the trading commission and publishes its own retail client loss rate. You can practise on a forex demo account offered by every firm before risking real money.

[p] To place a trade in cTrader, you send your broker an instruction known as an order. [p] A market order opens your position immediately at the price available at that moment. [p] Stop, limit and stop-limit orders remain pending until the market reaches your chosen price.

[p] In fast markets, prices can change during the brief interval before your broker fills the trade after you click. [p] If the price you receive differs slightly from the price you saw, the difference is called slippage. [p] Pending orders let you choose the price movement you'll accept.

[p] You can attach automatic exit rules to any order, so you don't need to watch the screen all day. [p] A stop loss closes your trade if the market moves against you. [p] A trailing stop loss adjusts your exit level by itself as your trade moves in your favour. [p] When your trade reaches the target gain, the take profit closes that trade. [p] Advanced take profit makes cTrader close parts of a trade at several targets without closing all of it.

[p] You can set each exit at an exact price or as a distance in pips. In this example, you buy 0.5 lots of EURUSD at 1.16530, then place a 50-pip stop loss at 1.16030. [p] If the price falls to that level, cTrader closes your trade. [p] Your total estimated loss is around 215 EUR. [p] Our pip calculator displays pip values for various trade sizes.

[p] cTrader doesn't check your available margin when you submit a pending order. [p] Once prices trigger the order, your available free margin is checked. The system cancels the order if your funds aren't enough. [p] Before trading, use our margin calculator to calculate the deposit required for a trade.

[p] Using the live depth of market counter, you can see how many buy and sell orders wait at each price level right now. When more orders are queued at each price step, your trade is less likely to move the price against you.

In cTrader, you get 3 depth of market tabs: price DOM, VWAP DOM and standard DOM. [p] On this tab, VWAP means volume-weighted average price. It's the average reached when a large order fills across several price levels.

The Price DOM table gives full prices for only the current bid and current ask. Each other row displays only the last 3 digits of the price, with the final digit equal to 0.1 of a pip. When you point to the volume in lots before clicking, a popup shows the pip value, trade value and commission.

The automated trading programs on cTrader are called cBots. They open and close trades for you according to preset rules, so you don't need to click manually. cTrader Algo runs custom indicators that highlight chart patterns while you trade manually, along with cBots.

On Windows or Mac, coders have a built-in editor for building and testing their own C# or Python tools. Once you start a cBot, it can continue running 24/7 on the cTrader cloud. [p] There's no need to pay for a separate server or keep your computer switched on.

You can download free and paid tools from the cTrader Store, while cTrader Copy lets you copy other traders. Spotware warns that Copy trading carries significant risk, and each broker decides whether its licence permits live copy trading. [p] At some regulated firms, retail clients are allowed to use copy trading only on a demo account.

Download the app in 23 languages for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, or open cTrader in a web browser. Both manual trading and cTrader Algo are included with the Web, Windows and Mac versions. The mobile apps for Android and iOS focus on manual trading, charts and price alerts.

Downloading the app alone doesn't give you access to live trading. Live cTrader accounts are provided through a client portal operated by an FCA-authorised firm, such as FxPro, IC Markets or Pepperstone. You then sign in to the app with your cTrader ID, keeping your charts and watchlists synced across your devices.

If you're comparing software before choosing, read our cTrader vs MT5 breakdown. It also covers which UK firms operate as MT5 brokers or TradingView brokers.