Broker Review

Plus500 Review: Is Their Free Lifelong Demo Account The Best Thing About Them?

Last Updated: January 19, 2021

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Author

Linda de Beer

Risk Warning: Your Capital is at Risk.

Plus500 is a regulated online broker with a platform for trading contracts-for-difference (CFDs) on commodities, ETFs, forex, indices, options, and shares.

Founded in 2008, Plus500 is now the number one CFD broker in the UK* and listed on the London Stock Exchange. Their free lifelong demo account is one of the features that make them popular among traders.

This review of Plus500 covers the good and bad about the broker and its trading platform. You’ll also find all the information you need to open an account and start trading.

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The Good and Bad About Plus500

Our proprietary trust score is calculated based on regulation, structure, client fund handling, risk management, and length of operation.

Key Facts About Plus500

Here’s a quick overview of some of the important Plus500 facts. More details and in-depth analysis are provided in the remainder of the review.

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What Can You Trade With Plus500?

Plus500 offers clients access to trading over 2,000 CFDs in seven market categories. Whether you want to gain exposure to prices of commodities, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, forex, indices, options, or shares – it’s possible through Plus500’s CFD offering.

Below are detailed lists of instruments available to trade as CFDs in the different asset classes. Note that some instruments may not be available in every country.

IMPORTANT: CFDs are not available in the USA due to local regulation, and regulated brokers do not allow US citizens or US residents to trade CFDs.
However, US traders are welcome to trade other instruments.

Commodity CFDs

More than 20 commodities CFDs are available to trade at Plus500. These include precious metals like gold and platinum, energy commodities like oil and gasoline, and agricultural commodities like wheat and coffee.

Cryptocurrency CFDs

All the popular cryptocurrencies are available to trade as CFDs** on the Plus500 platform. Unlike other instruments that can only be traded from Monday to Friday, crypto CFD trading is possible 24/7.

Please Note: Availability subject to regulations. Cryptocurrency CFDs are not available to UK retail traders.

CFDs On ETFs

Plus500 clients can speculate on the prices of over 90 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including the popular VXX Volatility and SPDRUSA500, through CFDs.

Forex CFDs

Plus500’s forex CFDs cover more than 60 currency pairs, including these three major currency pairs: EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and EUR/GBP.

CFDs On Indices

Index CFDs available to trade on Plus500 cover stock market indices around the world. They include the USA 500, ASX 200, NASDAQ 100, UK 100, and France 40.

Options CFDs

Plus500 offers call and put option CFDs on over 20 popular stocks, indices, and currency pairs.

Shares CFDs

Plus500 lets you trade CFDs on more than 1,000 shares from the UK, USA, Germany, and more. The list below covers some of the most popular ones.

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Countries Where Plus500 Accepts Clients

Trading with Plus500 is possible in over 50 countries and in 31 languages.

IMPORTANT: CFDs are not available in the USA due to local regulation, and regulated brokers do not accept US citizens or US residents as clients.

Customer Support With Plus500

Plus500 has a dedicated FAQ section on their website with answers to their clients’ most commonly asked questions.

If you have a unique problem or question that isn’t answered, there are three ways to contact the broker for support:

• Email
• Live chat
• WhatsApp

Plus500 Account Types & Requirements

Plus500 keeps their account options simple with these three possibilities:

• Demo account
• Basic real money account
• Professional account

Plus500 Demo Account

A Plus500 demo account allows traders to test ideas and familiarize themselves with real market conditions in a risk-free environment. The only difference between the demo and real money account is that you’re trading with $40,000 worth of fictitious money.

Many brokers offer demo accounts, but the one from Plus500 stands out for three reasons:

• You can keep it open for an unlimited time
• You can open one without having to open a real money account
• It’s ready to practice trading within minutes after the sign-up process

How to Open a Demo Account

To open a demo account, you need to visit the Plus500 homepage where you are presented with the following screen:

Click on the ‘Try Free Demo‘ button to be taken to the sign-up form. Then click on ‘Create Account‘, enter your email address and a password. You’re ready to start with a quick tour of the platform before opening your first practice position.

Once you have opened both a demo and a real money account, you can switch between the two on the main platform menu. The money in the demo account is topped up when the balance sinks to below $200.

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Real Money Account

The Plus500 real money account is almost identical to the demo account, but with real money to win or lose. Therefore, opening a real money account requires additional steps and a verification process.

How to Open a Real Money Account

The first step to opening a real money account with Plus500 is to click on the ‘Start Trading Now‘ button on their homepage. You’ll be prompted to provide an email address and a password before clicking on ‘Create Account‘ and starting the account registration and verification process.

The following information is requested when registering a real money account:

• Full names
• Date of birth
• Country of residence
• Residential address
• CFD trading experience
• Employment status
• Financial details, e.g. annual income and savings
• Trading profile – how often you plan to trade and for what purpose
• Investment knowledge – a few easy multiple-choice questions

Next, you must upload documents to verify your identity, address, and source of funds. The following is required:

Professional Account

Plus500 offers a professional account to high-volume traders who meet certain criteria. This premium account has the following features:

• Higher maximum leverage
• Negative balance and client money protection as enjoyed by basic real money account holders
• Traders can revert back to a basic real money account at any time

Who Qualifies for a Professional Account?

Traders who want to be considered for a professional account must meet at least two of the following criteria:

1. Sufficient Trading Activity – This criterion requires an average of 10 transactions per quarter (of significant size) over the previous four quarters with Plus500 or another CFD broker.
2. Portfolio Size – A financial instrument portfolio of at least €500,000 is required. Cash savings and financial instruments are taken into account but not property portfolios, direct commodity ownership, or notional values of leveraged instruments.
3. Relevant Work Experience – Applicants must have worked in the financial sector for at least a year in a position that requires knowledge of the relevant products and services.

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Leverage and Margin Requirements of Plus500

Leverage is one of the key features of CFD trading. It allows traders to gain exposure to the financial markets by self-funding only a fraction of the total value of a trade. This “deposit” is known as margin.

Leverage Ratios

As a CFD broker, all the instruments available to trade on Plus500 are leveraged. The leverage ratio is your total exposure in relation to your margin.

Different leverage ratios apply to different asset classes, instruments and account types. Below are some of the maximum leverage ratios you can expect.

Margin Requirements

Each CFD trade has specific Plus500 margin requirements:

• Initial margin – The margin required to open a trade.
• Maintenance margin – The minimum amount to keep the position open.

How to Calculate Margin Requirements

Calculating the margin needed to open and complete a CFD trade is not hard if you know what the leverage ratio is.

So, if you want to trade Bitcoin CFDs worth $10,000 at a leverage ratio of 1:2, you need $5,000 as margin. That means you risk losing 50% of the value of the trade instead of 100%.

The leverage and margin requirements for each individual trade are shown in the info link next to each instrument’s name on the Plus500 trading platform’s main screen.

Traders whose account balance falls below these requirements will have their positions closed with no option to keep them open. This is done by way of a margin call.

Plus500 Spreads and Fees

Spreads

Plus500 is a “No Deposit fees/Commissions” broker that receives its compensation primarily through the market bid/ask spread. This is sometimes referred to as the market-maker spread.

Two types of spread are applicable to Plus500 clients:

• Variable spread – Changes constantly while a position is open.
• Fixed spread – Doesn’t change while a position is open.

Spread example: If the buy rate for EUR/USD is 1.18263 and the sell rate is 1.18255, the market spread is 0.00008% (or 0.8 pips).

You can view the current Plus500 spreads for each instrument by clicking on the information icon on the far right next to the instrument’s name.

Other Fees

In addition to the spread, Plus500 clients may incur the following fees:

Fee Type	Description	Cost
Overnight Funding	Charged when a position remains open after a certain time	Differs for each instrument
Inactivity	Charged when an account shows no activity for 3 months	$10 per month
Guaranteed Stop Order	Charged via a wider spread to guarantee a position closes at a certain price	Variable
Currency Conversion	Applies to trades on instruments denominated in a currency that is different to the currency of the trader’s account	Up to 0.5% of a trade’s net profit or loss

All fees applicable to individual trades are shown in the information box next to each open position.

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Deposits and Withdrawals

Deposits

Plus500 clients can choose between the following methods of depositing money:

• Visa or MasterCard debit/credit cards
• Electronic wallets (PayPal, Skrill, iDeal, BPAY, Klarna, Giropay, Trustly)
• Bank transfer

Minimum Deposit

The minimum deposit varies according to the payment method and country of residence.

As a general rule, the minimum amount you can deposit via online bank transfer, electronic wallet, and credit/debit card is 100 units of the base currency ($/€/£). For ordinary bank transfers, it’s 500 units.

How to Deposit Money

Click on the Funds Management tab on the main platform screen and select Deposit.

The different payment options and minimum deposit amounts for your country are displayed. Select the deposit method of your choice, fill in the required information, and click Submit.

Note: Deposits by wire transfer can take up to five days to show in your Plus500 account. Those made via electronic wallet or credit or debit card typically show within minutes.

Withdrawals

Plus500 fund withdrawal requests are subject to a minimum withdrawal amount:

• Electronic wallet – 50 units of the base currency
• Bank transfers and credit cards – 100 units of the base currency

Withdrawal Methods and Processing Times

Note: The above processing times only start after authorization of the withdrawal by Plus500, which can add an additional one to three business days to the process. The broker uses this time “to complete various security checks before initiating payment”. 

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Review of Plus500’s Trading Platform

Plus500’s WebTrader is an independent, proprietary platform developed for the exclusive use of their clients. It’s simple and easy to use but offers no integration with the popular MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 platforms.

Traders have the following three possibilities to access the Plus500 trading platform:

• iOS and Android mobile trading apps
• Web-based version to be opened in any browser
• Windows 10 desktop app

Plus500 WebTrader Pros and Cons

Mobile Trading

The Plus500 mobile app is highly rated by traders in both the App Store and Google Play.

The mobile applications have the same functionality as the desktop platform, including price alerts and real-time quotes on currency pairs and stocks. Traders can also track their finances and link directly to their bank accounts.

After downloading the mobile app, it’s simple to log in to your account with your email address and password. The app home screen looks like this:

To access more instruments and your account status, you must click on the menu icon in the top left. This will open the user-friendly menu from where you can jump to the instrument categories, your open and closed positions, future orders, and alerts with the tap of a finger.

From the menu screen, you can also easily switch between your demo and real money accounts. At the bottom, there’s an overview of your account balance with a link to a more detailed account snapshot.

Desktop Trading

Like the mobile app, the Plus500 WebTrader’s desktop version is organized logically and intuitively. It gives traders access to trade execution, pricing information, charting, positions, and fund and balance information on a single screen.

The best way to find your way around the trading platform and learn how it works is to use your demo account to practice trades and apply risk management and analysis tools.

To help you get started, we explain and illustrate some common actions to familiarize yourself with the platform:

How to Open and Close a Trade

Mobile

Go to Instruments Categories in the menu of your mobile screen, pick a category and an instrument, and choose buy or sell. Tick the appropriate boxes and click buy/sell at the bottom of the screen to confirm the trade.

Desktop

Click on the trade icon (top left) if your screen isn’t already open on trading. Now pick a category from the list next to it and an instrument next to that.

Each instrument row displays the buy and sell information. To the far right, an info icon takes you to a pop-up box with the position screen. More details including leverage, margin requirements, and stop order choices are shown in this box.

An analytics chart for the instrument fills the bottom half of the screen.

If you’re happy that your homework is done, click on buy or sell and confirm the transaction. There is also an option to cancel if you want to opt out before confirming.

How to Close a Position

Both the mobile and desktop versions of the Plus500 trading platform requires the same steps to close a position. Go to the Open Positions tab in the menu and click on close next to the relevant position.

Risk Management Tools

Plus500 offers three types of risk management tools to help you minimize your risk:

Close at Profit/Close at Loss – After clicking on buy or sell, the position screen shows a Close at profit and a Close at loss box below the trade amount.

These orders allow you to set a rate at which your position will close with the purpose of protecting your profit or minimizing your loss.

The service is free, but Plus500 warns that it doesn’t guarantee your position will close at the exact specified price.

The reason is something called slippage – where there are sudden big price movements beyond your stop level. The position then closes at the next available level.

Guaranteed Stop Order – Slippage can be avoided by adding a guaranteed stop order to your position. This option is found directly under the close at loss or close at profit boxes.

A guaranteed stop order comes at the price of a wider spread. However, it’s not available on all trades. The checkbox will only appear if an instrument supports this order.

Trailing Stop Order – Open positions or pending orders with trailing stop orders attached to them stay open as long as the price moves in the trader’s favor and close when the price changes direction by a certain amount of pips.

How to Read and Customize Charts

A technical analysis chart fills the bottom of both the mobile and desktop screen of the Plus500 WebTrader. The chart displayed is of the instrument highlighted in the instrument panel above.

The charts toolbar feature indicators and drawing tools to help with trend analysis and anticipating potential market movements. They are customizable to show the following views:

• Chart type
• Price type
• Time intervals

Further customization is possible by clicking on the options in the dropdown menus.

Limited analysis tools and charting features have been some of the main points of criticism against the Plus500 trading platform in the past. However, the broker introduced some improvements as part of WebTrader’s September 2020 update.

Traders now have the option to open and compare multiple charts simultaneously. It is done by going to the button with four quadrants on the chart’s toolbar and choosing up to 12 charts to open on the screen.

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How Is Plus500 Regulated?

Plus500 clients can rest assured that the broker is authorized and regulated by top financial regulators around the world.

Among the benefits of trading with a regulated broker are negative balance protection and the keeping of client money in segregated bank accounts.

Here is an overview of the different Plus500 subsidiaries and the regulators they fall under:

Plus500’s international head office is in Haifa, Israel. David Zruia, who joined the company in 2010, is both the Group Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer since July 2020.

FAQs

Here are some frequently asked questions from prospective and existing traders.

Is Plus500 any good?

Plus500 was the number one CFD broker in the UK, Spain, and Germany in 2019. This is according to figures on the total number of client relationships published by Investment Trends, a key research provider to CFD brokers.

In the same year, Plus500’s app was named the best mobile CFD platform in Australia. In 2018, the broker’s WebTrader platform was the number one CFD trading platform in Europe by number of new traders, according to Investment Trends.

Is Plus500 reliable?

Plus500 is a legitimate brokerage firm with subsidiaries in the UK, Australia, Cyprus, Singapore, and Seychelles. The company is regulated and authorized by top financial regulators, including the Financial Conduct Authority, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, and the Cyprus Securities Exchange.

Among the benefits of trading with a regulated broker such as Plus500, are the assurance that client money is kept in a segregated bank account and negative balance protection is offered.

What is the minimum deposit for Plus500?

The minimum deposit to start trading CFDs with Plus500 is 100 units of the base currency ($, € or £) if you’re making a deposit via credit/debit card or electronic wallet. For ordinary bank transfers, it’s 500 units.

Money deposited via credit/debit card or electronic wallet typically shows up in a trader’s Plus500 account almost instantaneously. However, bank transfers can take up to five days.

How do I withdraw money from Plus500?

Plus500 withdrawal requests are easily done online via their trading platform, but approval is subject to minimum amounts. These are 50 units of the base currency for electronic wallets and 100 units for bank transfers and credit cards.

The authorization process by Plus500 can take up to three days while the processing time by financial institutions can take a further three to seven days. It’s Plus500’s policy to return funds only to the same source from where they were deposited.

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*By total number of relationships with UK CFD traders. Investment Trends 2020 UK Leverage Trading Report.^

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Credits: Original review written by Lawrence Pines. Major updates in November 2020 by Linda de Beer with contributions from the Commodity.com editorial team.