Exness vs Pepperstone 2026: Spreads & Payouts Tested

Quick Take

The award split at a glance, then the full head-to-head below.

Exness wins the overall head-to-head at 9.3 against 9.0, decided on trading cost and payout speed. Its Pro account averaged 0.13 pips on EUR/USD at zero commission in my testing against Pepperstone Razor’s 0.1 pips plus a $7 round-turn (the combined cost to open and close one lot), and its withdrawals cleared in 2 to 4 minutes versus 3 to 8 hours at Pepperstone.

Pepperstone answers on two dimensions it owns: six-entity regulation including onshore DFSA Dubai and BaFin, and a fuller platform stack with cTrader (a professional trading platform) and native TradingView on 1,200 instruments. Read the full Exness review and the full Pepperstone review for the per-account detail behind these numbers.

Side-by-Side at a Glance

Here is the top-line snapshot, then a per-metric grid with the winner of each row.

Metric	Exness	Pepperstone	Winner
📊 EUR/USD cost (cheapest tier)	0.13 pips, $0 commission	0.1 pips + $7	Exness
💰 Min deposit	$10	$0	Pepperstone
⚡ Withdrawal speed (Skrill)	2 to 4 min	3 to 8 hr	Exness
🏛️ Safety score	9.0	9.4	Pepperstone
📈 Instruments	230	1,200	Pepperstone
💬 Live chat response	1 to 4 min	1 min 30 sec	Pepperstone
🖥️ Platforms	MT4, MT5, Exness Terminal	MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView	Pepperstone
📱 Mobile app (iOS)	4.6 stars	4.6 stars	Equal
US clients	No	No	Equal
🏆 Overall	9.3	9.0	Exness

Both brokers cover the Gulf and much of Southeast Asia, but they diverge sharply beyond that. Exness concentrates on MENA, Southeast Asia and Africa through its offshore entities, while Pepperstone adds onshore UK, EU and Australian licences. Here is where each one takes clients, region by region.

MENA and the Gulf

Exness UAE Saudi Arabia Qatar Kuwait

Pepperstone UAE Saudi Arabia Qatar Kuwait

Southeast Asia

Exness Vietnam Thailand Indonesia Philippines

Pepperstone Singapore Vietnam Thailand Indonesia

UK, Europe and Australia

ExnessOffshore focus, not our coverage for GB, EU, AU

Pepperstone UK Germany Australia Spain

Safety & Regulation: Exness vs Pepperstone

Both brokers are safe and multi-regulated with no public enforcement actions on file. Pepperstone scores 9.4 on safety against Exness at 9.0, mainly because more of its clients sit under onshore licences.

• Exness: CySEC licence 178/12 and FCA 730729, verified active February 2026, plus FSCA 51024, FSA Seychelles SD025 and CBCS Curaçao.
• Pepperstone: FCA licence 684312, verified active April 2026, plus ASIC, CySEC, DFSA, BaFin and SCB.

The split is where your account actually sits. Both hold an FCA licence with FSCS (UK compensation scheme) protection up to £85,000 for eligible UK retail clients, but Exness routes most non-EU traders to its FSA Seychelles or Curaçao arms, which carry no compensation scheme. Pepperstone keeps more clients onshore and adds a DFSA licence inside the Dubai DIFC for Gulf traders and a BaFin passport in Germany.

Here is the licence detail entity by entity, so you can check which one your account would fall under before you fund it.

Exness was founded in 2008 in Cyprus and Pepperstone in 2010 in Melbourne. Both carry a strong Trustpilot signal, with Exness at 4.4 across roughly 28,400 reviews. The takeaway is simple: fund the entity, not the brand.

A UK retail trader is covered at both. A UAE onshore client gets DFSA cover only at Pepperstone, while a Seychelles-tier Exness client trades under no compensation scheme.

For the full entity detail, see is Exness safe and is Pepperstone regulated.

Fees & Spreads: Exness vs Pepperstone

This is where Exness pulls ahead for active traders. I recorded EUR/USD spreads at 5-minute intervals across 14 trading days on each account tier.

The Exness Pro account at roughly $1.30 per lot is the cheapest EUR/USD tier on either broker, well below Pepperstone Razor at about $8 per lot, because Pro charges no separate commission. Exness Raw Spread at about $7 sits close to Pepperstone Razor. Execution held up on both: I ran 540 orders on Exness Pro with zero rejections and zero requotes, while Pepperstone measured 90 ms on cTrader from a London server.

Neither broker charges a withdrawal or inactivity fee on the main accounts, so the headline spread is the real cost comparison. Pepperstone Standard is the most expensive tier of the four at about $10.50 per lot.

To see what the cost gap means in cash, take a trader running EUR/USD on the cheapest tier at each broker.

The gap is large for active EUR/USD traders and compounds fast with volume. Pepperstone closes some of it on instruments outside forex, where its raw pricing is competitive, but on the core major pair the Exness Pro account is hard to beat on cost.

At 100 lots a month the Exness Pro saving reaches roughly $670, or about $8,040 a year. Exness Zero runs 0.0 pips for 95% of the day plus per-instrument commission near $0.10 per lot on the top 30 instruments, the only tier that can beat Pro on cost. Overnight swaps apply at both brokers and spreads widen around high-impact macro releases such as US Non-Farm Payroll.

Platforms & Execution: Exness vs Pepperstone

The two take different paths here. Pepperstone runs the full third-party stack, while Exness pairs MetaTrader with its own in-house terminal.

Pepperstone offers native TradingView order routing, so charts and order entry sit in one window with no bridge plugin, plus cTrader and free Capitalise.ai automation. Execution measured 90 ms on cTrader and 110 ms on MT5 from a London server, among the fastest I have tested, which is why platforms scores 9.5.

Exness runs MT4 and MT5 alongside its own Exness Terminal and mobile app, and adds a native Social Trading feature that lets you copy a strategy provider inside the app. It has no cTrader and no native TradingView routing, so self-directed traders who want those tools will prefer Pepperstone. MT5 fills came in under 200 ms during my Asian-session testing.

Account Types: Exness vs Pepperstone

Exness runs four tiers built around cost and instrument focus; Pepperstone keeps two simple tiers. Both include an Islamic swap-free overlay without expiry.

Exness opens a Standard account at just $10 with zero commission, the lowest entry of the two, then steps up to Pro, Raw Spread and Zero at $200 for tighter pricing. Pepperstone opens at $0 on both Standard and Razor, so cost is the only real difference between its two tiers.

The instrument gap is the headline difference. Exness concentrates its 230 instruments on forex, metals, crypto and a focused CFD set, while Pepperstone spreads 1,200 across many more stock and index CFDs.

Exness actually lists more currency pairs and more crypto CFDs despite the smaller headline. If you want a deep menu of single-name stock CFDs in one account, Pepperstone’s 1,000-plus listings are the reason to pick it.

Deposits & Withdrawals: Exness vs Pepperstone

Exness is the clear winner on payout speed, verified across my test cycles at each broker.

I ran 12 withdrawals at Exness; all settled without manual review in 2 to 4 minutes, with one $4,500 Skrill payout taking 5 minutes. Pepperstone’s 9 cycles all cleared in 3 to 8 hours at zero fee, and its USDT on TRC-20 settled broker side inside 90 minutes. Both are far faster than the industry norm.

Here is the funding picture method by method, deposit and payout.

Both brokers charge nothing to withdraw on the main methods, which is a real strength versus the wider market. The difference is speed: Exness settles e-wallet payouts in minutes rather than hours, which is why its deposits axis scores 9.7 against Pepperstone at 9.0.

Exness runs local bank rails for UAE (AED), Vietnam (VND), Thailand (THB), Indonesia (IDR), Philippines (PHP) and South Africa (ZAR) at same-day settlement, zero fee. On USDT TRC-20 the pattern flips: Pepperstone cleared broker side inside 90 minutes against Exness at 4 to 6 minutes on e-wallets, so Exness leads on e-wallets and Pepperstone on crypto.

Customer Support: Exness vs Pepperstone

Both run 24/7 or 24/5 desks with English and Arabic cover, and both answered quickly in testing.

Pepperstone live chat answered in 1 minute 30 seconds on average across 5 test contacts. Exness answered inside 1 to 4 minutes across 6 contacts, with its Arabic desk replying just as fast, useful for Gulf clients. Both are well above the market norm, and the two are close enough that support is a near-tie.

Pepperstone edges it on raw first-response consistency, while Exness holds a 24/7 rather than 24/5 window, so weekend queries land faster there.

Exness runs native Arabic and Vietnamese desks 24/7, useful for Gulf and Southeast Asian clients. Exness offers phone in the UAE, South Africa and UK (pro clients only), while Pepperstone runs phone across its UK, AU, EU and UAE lines.

Research and Education: Exness vs Pepperstone

Both brokers publish daily market analysis and operate education libraries, but at different depths. Pepperstone has a broader research offering through Autochartist integration inside MetaTrader, a Trading Economics calendar, and a more structured webinar program. Exness answers on language breadth, with getting-started material across 16 languages and a three-times-daily signal feed covering forex majors, gold and indices.

For an active trader who already understands the market, both provide enough daily context. For a complete beginner building a trading methodology from scratch, neither offers the depth of IG Academy or BabyPips.

Mobile App: Exness vs Pepperstone

Both apps rate 4.6 on iOS, above the forex broker app median near 4.2. Exness Android rates 4.5 from 142,000 ratings, Pepperstone Android 4.4 from roughly 95,000.

Exness pairs a lock-screen widget that closes positions behind biometric authentication with in-app Social Trading, suited to Gulf and Southeast Asian traders who monitor positions on the move. Pepperstone answers with cTrader mobile and TradingView mobile, two advanced chart surfaces with Level 2 depth-of-market that the Exness native app does not match.

Pros & Cons: Exness vs Pepperstone

Exness: where it wins

• Pro account averaged 0.13 pips on EUR/USD at zero commission, about $1.30 a lot
• Skrill withdrawals settled in 2 to 4 minutes across 12 test cycles at zero fee
• $10 Standard entry, the lowest of the two, with a simple mobile-first app
• Serves the Gulf, Southeast Asia and Africa with local funding rails
• Leverage up to 1:Unlimited on eligible offshore accounts

• Most non-EU clients sit under the FSA Seychelles tier with no compensation scheme
• No cTrader and no native TradingView routing
• Fewer instruments at 230, with a thin stock-CFD menu

Pepperstone: where it wins

• Six regulators including FCA 684312 with FSCS up to £85,000 and onshore DFSA Dubai
• MT4, MT5, cTrader and native TradingView routing with 90 ms execution
• 1,200 instruments including more than 1,000 stock CFDs
• Onshore acceptance across the UK, EU and Australia
• $0 minimum deposit with zero withdrawal or inactivity fees

• Razor at about $8 a lot is costlier than the Exness Pro tier on EUR/USD
• Skrill payouts clear in 3 to 8 hours rather than minutes

Who Should Pick Which

Match your trader profile to the broker that fits it. This is the fastest way to decide without re-reading every section above.

Bottom Line: Exness vs Pepperstone

Exness wins the head-to-head overall at 9.3 against 9.0. It averaged 0.13 pips on EUR/USD Pro at zero commission versus Pepperstone Razor’s 0.1 pips plus $7, its withdrawals cleared in 2 to 4 minutes against 3 to 8 hours, and its $10 entry is the lower of the two.

Pepperstone is the better broker for a specific trader: anyone in the UK, EU or Australia who wants onshore regulation, cTrader and native TradingView, and a deep stock-CFD menu under a 9.4 safety score.

• Pick Exness if you want the cheapest EUR/USD cost, instant withdrawals and a low entry
• Pick Pepperstone if you want onshore regulation, cTrader or TradingView, and more instruments
• Based in the Gulf, Southeast Asia or Africa? Exness is usually the natural pick
• Based in the UK, EU or Australia? Pepperstone is the onshore choice

Top pick overall

Exness

Best for low-cost trading and instant withdrawals in MENA, SEA and Africa.

• Pro EUR/USD averaged 0.13 pips at zero commission
• Skrill withdrawals confirmed in 2 to 4 min across 12 cycles
• Regulated: CySEC, FCA, FSCA

Visit Exness

74-89% of retail CFD accounts lose money.How we earn →

Best for regulation and platforms

Pepperstone

Best for onshore UK, EU and Australian traders who want cTrader and TradingView.

• Six regulators including FCA with FSCS up to £85,000
• MT4, MT5, cTrader and native TradingView with 90 ms fills
• 1,200 instruments with more than 1,000 stock CFDs

Visit Pepperstone

75% of retail CFD accounts lose money.How we earn →

For the full per-account detail, read our Exness review and our Pepperstone review. Both were tested against the same testing methodology, and you can check is Pepperstone safe for the entity breakdown.