Forex Minimum Deposit

There is no minimum deposit per broker. There is one per account and per entity, and inside a single broker the published figures run from zero to 100,000 dollars. The number worth finding is the minimum on the account you intend to open, at the company that will actually hold it.

The published range inside each broker

Each row shows the lowest and the highest minimum deposit one broker publishes across its own live accounts, for the entity named. The two figures belong to different accounts at the same company. That distance is the answer to the question this page is about, and it is the thing a one-number list removes. Where the deposit sits among the other checks worth making is set out in the steps for choosing a broker.

Figures verified against each broker’s own published terms on 2026-07-26. Entities are named because the same brand publishes different minimums for different companies. Where a broker publishes no fixed figure, the cell says so rather than carrying an estimate.

Why one number per broker is the wrong unit

Because the number belongs to an account, and one broker sells several. At IC Markets the same company publishes zero and 100,000 dollars.

A list that gives one minimum per broker has to pick which of that broker’s accounts to describe, and it never says which one it picked. The usual choice is the lowest, because a low number reads better in a ranking. A reader who takes that number, opens the account the rest of the page recommends, and finds a different figure at the deposit screen has not been misled by a wrong fact so much as by a missing one.

Our own earlier version of this page did exactly that. It carried a five-row table giving one minimum per broker, and three of those five did not match the broker’s published terms once the account was named. That table has been replaced by the one above, which is why the ranges are shown rather than a single figure per row.

The second half of the unit is the entity. Equiti publishes 100 dollars on the Standard account at its UAE company and 30 dollars on the Standard account at its Seychelles company, and FBS publishes 5 dollars at its offshore entity against 100 euro on Standard at its EU entity.

Nothing in the brand name tells you which one your application reaches. The entity also governs your protections, which is set out in how licensing differs between entities.

MetaTrader 4 and 5 do not set a minimum deposit – the broker does

The platform is software, and software has no deposit policy. MetaQuotes licenses MetaTrader to brokerage firms, the terminal downloads free, and every figure a reader meets belongs to the company whose trading server that terminal connects to.

MetaQuotes describes MetaTrader 5 to brokers as the machinery for running a brokerage. The firm buys the platform, runs it on hardware it owns, and the vendor keeps no route into those servers or into what clients did on them. Read on 6 September 2026, that material covers account administration, trade processing and the gateways behind them, and carries no deposit rule of any kind. There is nothing in the product for a minimum to live in.

What that leaves is visible in the table above. Raw Trading Ltd publishes zero on Standard, Raw Spread and cTrader Raw Spread, 5,000 dollars on Raw Pro and 100,000 dollars on Raw Pro Plus. One platform, one company, one regulator, and a hundred-thousand-dollar gap between the cheapest and the dearest way in. No platform-level answer can exist inside a range that wide.

The entity moves the figure again, and the terminal enters that decision nowhere. Equiti publishes 100 dollars on the Standard account at its UAE company and 30 dollars on the same account at its Seychelles company. What separates those two numbers is which company would hold the money, which is settled by opening the account itself rather than by the software.

The platform does decide one thing, and it is not the number. It decides which account variants a broker can offer at all: Equiti markets its Swap Free Mini, carrying no swap or admin fee on balances up to 25,000 dollars, on the Standard and Premier accounts running MetaTrader 5. The terminal gates that feature. The deposit attached to the account still comes from the entity.

MetaTrader 4 sits differently. MetaQuotes states that licences for it are no longer sold and that development has moved to the newer platform, so a broker still offering MT4 is running a licence bought before that door closed. Whether a firm lists MT4, MT5 or both is a fact about its inventory, and a deposit figure read off that column tells a reader nothing.

This page stops at the deposit. The other settings a broker controls on the same terminal – execution model, swap calculation, leverage bands and which symbols appear at all – are set out in what an MT5 broker sets rather than MetaQuotes, which covers that half in full.

What still moves the figure after you pick the account

Payment method, account currency, and whether the broker treats a first deposit differently from later ones.

Payment method is the one that surprises people, because it is not part of the account choice at all. The deposit and withdrawal methods a broker supports move the figure again. FBS publishes a floor of 5 dollars that becomes 10 through Neteller and 12 through Skrill, and Tickmill publishes 100 across all three of its account types and then sets UnionPay at 700 yuan, or the equivalent of 100 in euro, dollar or sterling.

Exness does not publish a fixed figure for its Standard accounts at all, stating instead that the amount depends on payment method and location.

Account currency does the same quietly. A minimum quoted as 100 in the account currency is 100 dollars, 100 euro or 100 pounds depending on what you opened, and the FXTM Micro account is quoted as 3,000 in a cent currency rather than in dollars, which is a different quantity in the same sentence.

Then there is the first deposit. FXTM publishes a first-deposit minimum of 100 dollars for any account on one page and 50 dollars for the Edge account on another. Both are the company’s own pages, re-read on 2026-09-14. Until support settles it in writing, the honest position is that the Edge opening figure is unresolved rather than 50.

Minimum Deposits at the Brokers Readers Actually Ask About

Seven broker names bring readers here without appearing in the table above. Each was checked on its own website: two publish a figure, two publish none, and three could not be read, so those stay unread rather than filled in from review sites.

Figures verified against each broker’s own published terms on 2026-09-16.

What a Broker That Publishes No Figure Is Telling You

A missing number is not a low number. When the minimum appears only inside the client area, it is set after the broker knows your country and payment route, so two readers can be quoted two amounts for one account, as iFOREX says of its own minimum.

RaiseFX shows 100 EUR on one page and 0 EUR on another. The figure that binds sits in the client agreement on the day money is sent, and support can confirm it in writing.

Read the licence line as closely as the deposit. CIF Markets names an FSCA-licensed company that calls itself an intermediary, not the product issuer, so the licence holder is not the other side of the trade.

What each deposit tier actually buys

A tier buys access to an account type and the cost structure attached to it. It does not buy protection, better execution or a different risk profile. The alternative route, where a fee replaces the deposit entirely, is priced in the funded account alternative.

At the bottom, a zero or five dollar minimum buys a live account with real money and real leverage. Cent accounts exist at this tier so that a losing trade costs cents, which makes them useful for learning the platform. What they do not do is change the mechanics: the same leverage arithmetic applies, and a small balance can still be lost in full.

In the middle, a figure in the hundreds usually buys a raw-pricing account, where the spread is replaced by a commission. That is a cost structure, not a privilege, and whether it is cheaper depends on the arithmetic set out in the comparison of lowest spread forex brokers. Paying a higher minimum to reach it is only worth doing if the arithmetic comes out in your favour at the size you actually trade.

At the top, the five-figure tiers buy a lower commission. IC Markets publishes 5,000 dollars for Raw Pro and 100,000 for Raw Pro Plus, and the thing purchased is a reduced per-lot commission rather than any change in the market you are trading. For most readers those tiers are a fact about the broker rather than a decision to make. The account labels themselves are compared in types of forex trading accounts.

The smallest deposit that survives a normal losing run

The advertised floor and the working floor are different numbers. The working one is margin on the smallest position the broker allows, plus enough behind it to absorb a run of losing trades at the size the method actually needs.

Start from the position rather than the balance. The smallest trade most brokers accept is 0.01 lots. On a currency pair that comes to a thousand of the base unit, which is what a 0.01 lot actually is in every calculation below. On a major pair quoted in dollars, one pip at that size moves the balance by 10 cents, so a 30-pip stop puts 3 dollars at risk and nothing smaller is on offer.

Margin comes next, and the rulebook the entity trades under sets it. ESMA capped retail leverage on major currency pairs at 30 to 1 and requires a position to be closed once account equity falls to half the margin that position required, both read on 6 September 2026. At 30 to 1 a 1,000-unit euro position ties up about 33 euro, and the level that closes your position arrives near 17.

Set those two figures beside the advertised floors and one line stops making sense. A 5 dollar balance cannot open the smallest available trade under a 30 to 1 cap, because roughly 33 euro of margin has to be there before the order is accepted. The same trade at an offshore 1 to 500 needs about 2 euro, which is why the lowest floors and the strictest leverage rules almost never sit on the same account.

Margin is what lets a trade open. It is not what lets an account survive. Holding that 3 dollar loss to 2 percent of the balance takes 150 dollars, and to 1 percent takes 300. Eight losses in a row at 2 percent cost about 15 percent of the account; the same eight at 20 percent per trade take 83 percent of it, and no deposit size repairs that arithmetic.

So the table above answers which account a reader can open, not which one will still be open in three months. Work out the loss the intended stop produces at 0.01 lots, decide what percentage of the balance that loss may be, and the deposit follows from those two numbers. The published minimum is a threshold to clear, not a target to meet.

When a low minimum is the wrong thing to optimise

Three readers are served badly by sorting brokers on this number, and in each case something else decides the outcome first.

The first is anyone whose deposit is small enough that the position sizes it supports are below what the strategy needs. A 5 dollar account cannot carry a stop wide enough for most daily-chart methods without the position being a fraction of a micro lot, so the account is not a smaller version of the intended plan, it is a different plan. Choosing the broker on its floor rather than on whether the floor supports the method inverts the decision.

The second is anyone choosing between entities. A 30 dollar minimum at an offshore company and a 100 dollar minimum at an onshore one is a 70 dollar difference set against a difference in what happens if the company fails. Sorting on the deposit puts the smaller number first and the larger question nowhere.

The third is anyone who will withdraw as often as they deposit. The opening minimum is charged once; withdrawal terms, inactivity terms by entity and the fee that replaces swap on a swap-free account recur.

What those terms look like when the money will not move is set out in getting the money back out again. A broker chosen for a 5 dollar entry can cost more in the first year than one chosen for a 100 dollar entry, and none of that is visible in the number this page is named after.

Disclosure: EasyTradeWeb may be compensated if you open an account through a link on this page. It costs you nothing and does not change what is written above.

Frequently asked questions

Which of these applies to you

If the plan is to learn the platform and the size of the position does not matter yet, the floor is the right thing to look at, and the cent and standard tiers at the bottom of the table are where it lives. Verify the figure on the account page rather than a comparison list, and check what the payment method you will use does to it.

If the plan is to trade a defined method at a defined size, the floor is close to irrelevant. Work out the deposit that method needs, then read the account whose cost structure suits it, and treat the minimum as a threshold to clear rather than a feature to optimise.

And if the choice is between two entities of the same brand, the deposit difference is the smallest of the differences in front of you. Settle which company would hold the account first; the minimum follows from that answer rather than leading to it.

Risk warning

A small opening deposit limits what you can lose in that account and changes nothing else. Leverage applies at every tier, a margin close can empty a balance of any size, and the accounts described here are all live trading accounts rather than a trial. Decide the amount you can lose before deciding which broker will hold it.

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