Tickmill vs Pepperstone 2023

Is Tickmill better than Pepperstone? Who offers lower spread, better trading conditions, and is a safe broker to trade?

We provide answers to all questions in this Tickmill vs Pepperstone Comparison Review. For this Review, we opened real accounts and deposited over US$ 14,000 in total to compare both offerings, account opening processes at Tickmill and Pepperstone. In this review, we will also compare the fees, trading conditions, platform selection, and withdrawal process.

What is Tickmill and Pepperstone?

Tickmill is a global Forex and CFDs broker licensed by top-tier regulators.

Pepperstone is an Australian Forex and CFDs broker offering tradable instruments like forex pairs, indices, stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and a currency index.

Some of the highlights of Tickmill vs Pepperstone are:

	Tickmill	Pepperstone
💻 Website	www.tickmill.com	www.pepperstone.com
🛡️Founded year	2014	2010
🏦 Headquarter	London, UK	Australia
🗺️ Authorized & Regulated in	UK, Cyprus, South Africa, Seychelles, Labuan	Australia, UK, Cyprus, Bahamas, UAE, Kenya
🔒 Is Broker safe	Yes	Yes
💰 EUR/USD Spread	1.63	1.15
💳 Minimum deposit	US$100	AUD$200
💰 Withdrawal fee	US$0	US$0
🖥️ Trading Platform	MetaTrader4	MT4, MT5, cTrader
📈 Markets offered	Forex, Commodity, Indices & Bonds	Forex, Indices, Stocks, Commodities, Cryptocurrencies, Currency index
📉 Number of Products	85	158
🔎 Our Detailed Review	Tickmill Review	Pepperstone Review

Licenses and Regulation

According to regulations, both brokers are safe and are entitled to the compensation scheme.

Tickmill is licensed by 5 global regulators including the top-tier UK’s FCA, the CySEC, FSCA, Labuan FSA & South Africa’s FSA.

Pepperstone is regulated by the top-tier UK’s FCA and Australia’s ASIC, which have stringent rules and enforcement processes.

For this Tickmill vs Pepperstone review, we opened a standard account under Tickmill UK Ltd regulated by FCA; and an account under Pepperstone Limited, the UK entity regulated by the FCA as well. Read more about FCA

We recommend that traders open their Tickmill accounts with the UK entity, or a Pepperstone account under the UK entity since it offers the highest deposit protection compensation of up to £85,000 guaranteed by the UK’s FCA, which is the best in the industry.

	Tickmill	Pepperstone
🔒 Licenses	FCA, CySEC, FSCA, FSA, Labuan FSA	ASIC, CySEC, SCB, FCA, FSA Kenya
Top Tier License	✔️	✔️
Publically Traded	❌	❌
Compensation Scheme	✔️ (depending on the entity)	✔️ (depending on the entity)

Tickmill vs Pepperstone Fees

The fees on Tickmill and Pepperstone are similar and mostly built into spreads with no commission accounts. Tickmill charges low fees for stock indices, however, spreads charged on Forex and commodities are in line with the industry average or higher. Pepperstone, in its turn, offers low spreads on almost all market instruments except for cryptocurrency.

Tickmill does not charge non-trading fees like deposit, withdrawal, or account inactivity fees.

As for Pepperstone, it does not charge non-trading fees as well, however, Pepperstone might be not friendly for cryptocurrency traders since the spreads charged on cryptocurrency are too high from the industry average.

	Tickmill Fees	Pepperstone Fees
Fees based on the spread	✔️	✔️
Floating Spread	✔️	✔️
Fixed Spread	❌	❌
Commission-based fees	✔️	✔️
Inactivity Fee	$0	$0
Deposit fee	$0	$0
Withdrawal fee	$0	$0
Active trader/ VIP Programs	✔️	❌

Spreads Charged in Our Trades

For our test trades on Tickmill vs Pepperstone accounts, we chose popular instruments in each market. We placed 3 trades for each instrument to get the average spread and reveal both negative and positive sides for each broker spreads.

Tickmill offers lower spreads on indices, but the spreads on Forex and commodities are aligned with or higher than the industry average, Pepperstone’s spreads on most of the market instruments are lower.

For the test, we run Tickmill Classic Account which only charges a spread without commissions. We traded through MT4 IOS app and recorded the process for the traders.  

We tested the Standard Account with Pepperstone Limited, which charges a spread on all tradable instruments. Pepperstone stands out for its low fees for most of the instruments on offer, except for cryptocurrencies.

Markets	Instruments	Tickmill Avg. spread	Pepperstone Avg. spread	Industry avg. spread
Indices	FTSE 100	1.00	1	1.65
Forex	EUR/USD	1.63	1.2	1.16
Commodities	Gold	3.80	1.6	3.53
Stocks	AAPL	–	0.9	1.75
Cryptocurrencies	Bitcoin	–	110	72.81

Account Types Compared

Tickmill offers 3 account types: Classic, PRO, and VIP. Pepperstone offers 2 account types with separate fee structures: the Razor and Standard accounts. Unlike Pepperstone, Tickmill offers swap-free forex accounts for its traders.

Tickmill account opening is rather quick and easy. The registration process took about 20 minutes and our account was approved on the next day, as expected.

Account opening with Pepperstone is quite straightforward. The registration process took a total of 20 minutes, and our account was approved on the next day.

	Tickmill Accounts	Pepperston Accounts
Standard Account	✔️	✔️
ECN / Commission-based Account	✔️	✔️
Islamic Account	✔️	❌
PAMM Account	❌	❌

Markets and Products

Tickmill allows clients to trade CFDs on Forex, indices, commodities, and German government bonds. Pepperstone gives you an opportunity to trade CFDs on Forex pairs, stock indices, stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and a currency index.

As you can see below, Pepperstone offers a wider range of instruments and the choice of the market is much bigger, however, Tickmill is a better fit for bonds traders since Pepperstone does not offer this market.

Markets	Tickmill Instruments	Pepperstone Instruments
Indices	13	14
Forex	62	61
Commodities	6	9
Bonds	4	–
Stocks	–	64
Cryptocurrency	–	9
Currency index	–	1

Trading Conditions

Tickmill vs Pepperstone review shows that both brokers offer great trading conditions; they both allow high-risk trading strategies like hedging and scalping, there are no time limits for how long you keep your hedging positions open. Both allow traders to use Expert Advisors (EAs). However, in contrast to Pepperstone, Tickmill does allow change leverage to its clients.

Also, Tickmill offers a no-deposit bonus worth $30 to its new clients.

Trading Method	Tickmill	Pepperstone
Hedging	✔️	✔️
Scalping	✔️	✔️
Change Leverage	✔️	❌

Deposit and Withdrawal

Both deposit and withdrawal processes on Tickmill and Peppoerstone are quick and straightforward. Both Tickmill and Pepperstone charge zero fees on deposit and withdrawal processes, however, Tickmill charges fees for a deposit fee when deposited via bank transfers, so we recommend that you deposit your money using other payment methods than bank transfers.

Tickmill allows depositing and withdrawing funds into their trading accounts via debit/credit cards, bank transfers, and e-wallets like Skrill, Neteller, QIWI. For Pepperstone fundings you can use debit/credit cards, bank transfers, and e-wallets such as Skrill, PayPal, and Neteller.

The deposit methods on Tickmill are instant and free, except for bank transfers that take 1 business day and usually incur a $25 fee charged by the bank

All the deposit methods offered by Pepperstone are instant and free. However, a bank transfer can take a few business days to reflect in your trading account.

	Tickmill	Pepperstone
💰 Deposit Fee	❌	❌
💰 Withdrawal fee	❌	❌
💳 Minimum deposit	US$100	AUD$200
Bank Transfer	✔️	✔️
Debit/ Credit Cards	✔️	✔️
PayPal	❌	✔️
Skrill	✔️	✔️

Trading Platform

Tickmill offers a MetaTrader4 trading platform for its clients, which is quite decent and popular among traders platform; however, the platform interface is getting outdated, and we would like to see the broker offer a newer version – MetaTarder5. Pepperstone, in its turn, offers MT4/MT5, and cTrader platforms for its traders.

Tickmill does not have a proprietary trading platform. Traders can trade via the broker’s website, as well as via the mobile and desktop MT4 applications. In fact, the lack of other platforms is one of the broker’s actual drawbacks.

The lack of a proprietary trading platform in Pepperstone may dissuade some traders, but the MT5 and cTrader platforms are great.

	Tickmill Platform	Pepperstone Platform
Web Platform	✔️	✔️
Desktop Platform	✔️	✔️
Mobile App	✔️	✔️
Alternative Platforms	❌	✔️
MetaTrader4	✔️	✔️
Simple to use platform	✔️	✔️
Demo Account Trading	✔️	✔️
Execution Agency Model	❌	❌
Research	✔️	✔️

Education and Support

To help traders improve their trading skills, Tickmill offers wide range of webinars, ebooks, video tutorials, infographics, glossaries, etc. Likewise, Pepperstone also offers a demo account. Moreover, the broker also offers platform tutorial videos, educational videos, and webinars to suit all types of traders. 

Tickmill’s customer support team was helpful and provided direct and relevant answers to most of our questions. Pepperstone’s customer support team was helpful as well and provided direct and relevant answers. 

We found Tickmill’s customer support quite helpful, however, we were dissapointed to find out that the broker does not have a Live Chat function, which is a crucial support channel offered by most brokers.

Pepperstone also has a YouTube channel that offers dozens of educational videos that cover different topics suitable for all levels of traders.

	Tickmill Support	Pepperstone Support
Trading School for Beginners	❌	✔️
Tutorials	✔️	✔️
Trading Videos	✔️	✔️
Webinars	✔️	✔️
Daily News and Analysis	❌	✔️
Economic Calendar	✔️	✔️
Live Chat	❌	✔️
Email Support	✔️	✔️
24/7 availability	❌	❌

Conclusion on Tickmill vs Pepperstone

From this review of Tickmill vs Pepperstone Comparison, we may conclude that both brokers are safe to trade and trustworthy since they are licensed by top-tier regulators.

Our test showed that Tickmill’s spreads charged on indices are quite low, while spreads on Forex and commodities are in line with the industry average. Pepperstone offers low spreads on almost all markets, however, it’s not suitable for cryptocurrency traders, as the spreads charged are high.

Deposit and withdrawal processes with both brokers were quick with no fee charged, however, Tickmill charges a $25 fee when depositing via bank transfers. We recommend that you use other payment methods when depositing.

MT4 traders will be satisfied with both brokers offering this platform; unfortunately, Tickmill does not offer other alternatives, so traders who prefer modern platforms might use Pepperstone instead.

Both brokers provided excellent support, however, the lack of a Live Chat function on Tickmill was a big drawback.

Overall, our experience with Tickmill was smooth from opening our account to the deposit, trading, and withdrawal processes. We recommend that you register your account with the UK entity, if it’s available to you, as we consider FCA regulation the best since it provides compensation of up to £85,000 if the broker goes bankrupt.

Our experience with Pepperstone was favorable from the account opening, to the deposit, trading, and withdrawal processes. We recommend you to open an account with the UK, Australia, or Cyprus entities if any is available to you. 

	Tickmill	Pepperstone
Recommended for	✔️ Beginning Traders ✔️ Experienced Traders ✔️ Scalping trader ✔️ Hedging trader ✔️ EA trading ✔️ MT4 traders	✔️Beginning Traders ✔️ Experienced Traders ✔️ Scalping trader ✔️ Hedging trader ✔️ EA trader ✔️ Trading CFD
Might not be fit for	❌ Trading Futures or Real Stocks ❌ Commission-based trading ❌ Trading on other platforms rather than MT4	❌ Trading Futures or Real Stocks

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