Best Copy Trading Forex Brokers in 2023

Winner: eToro

eToro is a winner for its easy-to-use copy-trading platform where traders can duplicate the trades of investors across over 2300 instruments, including exchange-traded securities, forex, CFDs, and popular cryptocurrencies.

• Trust: eToro was founded in 2007 and is regulated in three Tier-1 jurisdictions and one Tier-4 jurisdiction, earning a Highly Trusted rating for trading forex and CFDs within the forexfinviz.com Trust Score rating system.

• Commissions: For trading forex and CFDs, eToro is slightly pricier than most of its competitors, despite recently cutting spreads and introducing zero-dollar commissions for U.S. stock trading.

• Copy trading platforms: eToro's main innovation is merging self-directed trading and copy trading under a unified trading experience. It is a winning combination.

Runner-Up: AvaTrade

AvaTrade is a trusted global brand best known for offering traders an extensive selection of trading platform options. Our testing found AvaTrade to be great for copy trading, competitive for mobile, mostly in line with the industry average for pricing and research, and a good choice for investor education.

• Trust: Founded in 2006, AvaTrade is regulated in four Tier-1 jurisdictions, three Tier-2 jurisdictions, and one Tier-4 jurisdiction. We consider AvaTrade to be Highly Trusted for forex and CFD trading, and AvaTrade's licenses have earned it a Trust Score rating of 94.

• Commissions: Compared to pricing leaders such as IG and Saxo Bank, AvaTrade does not rank among the best brokers for low-cost trading, except for clients designated as Professional traders in the EU.

• Copy trading platforms: Alongside MetaTrader, AvaTrade offers its proprietary platforms, as well as ZuluTrade and DupliTrade, for social copy trading. The variety of platform options makes AvaTrade competitive in this area.

Copy trading history

Many of the early pioneers in social trading technology started out as third-party platform developers, such as Tradency, ZuluTrade, and eToro. While some of these firms are still independent service providers, or (ISPs), others went in a new direction. eToro, for example, became a broker – check out our full-length eToro review (and our review of eToro’s U.S. stock trading offering at our sister site, StockBrokers.com.

Today, thanks to precise legal definitions and ever-evolving trading technology, regulators in nearly every jurisdiction consider copy trading to be self-directed — because the client must decide who to copy, even if the copying happens automatically (for each signal).

It's important to note that not all trading platforms with social features provide copy trading.

Is copy trading legal?

Copy trading is legal in most countries, as long as the broker itself is properly regulated. When investing in financial markets through a regulated broker, there are procedures in place during the account opening process that should ensure it is legal for you to trade (depending on your country of residence).