Pros at a glance
- Copy-trading from 30M+ verified investors
- Commission-free stock & ETF trading
- Wide crypto selection
- Regulated in EU, UK, US, AU
Cons at a glance
- $5 USD withdrawal fee
- CFDs are higher risk for beginners
What you'd actually pay on eToro
Annualised cost on three typical retail trader profiles, based on verified spreads and commissions.
Estimates assume average market conditions. Actual cost depends on instruments traded and time held.
Quick verdict
eToro is the broker we recommend most often to people who want to invest but have no interest in becoming traders. The combination of zero stock commissions, the largest community of verifiable copy traders anywhere, and a platform that does not look like a Bloomberg terminal is genuinely hard to beat for beginners.
It is not the cheapest place to trade if you are an active US stock trader (Interactive Brokers wins on that), and the $5 withdrawal fee plus the conversion to USD on every deposit will annoy anyone moving money in and out frequently. But for a buy-and-hold investor, or anyone who wants to learn by following more experienced traders, eToro is still the strongest all-rounder we have tested.
Who eToro is best for
Three groups of people get genuine value out of eToro:
- First-time investors who want a clean app, fractional shares from $10, and a way to ask questions in public without sounding stupid. The social feed under every asset is more useful than most beginners realise.
- Copy traders who would rather allocate $500 to follow three Popular Investors than pick stocks themselves. There is nothing else on the regulated market with this depth.
- Crypto investors who want a single regulated account for BTC, ETH, and 90+ other coins without juggling Coinbase and Kraken passwords.
You probably should not pick eToro if you are a high-frequency US stock trader (the spreads cost more than IBKR's commissions over volume), or if you trade options (eToro does not offer them at all).
Account opening: what it actually looks like
We opened a new account from the UK in March 2026 to re-test the flow. From the homepage to a funded account took 14 minutes, including the standard ID upload and a one-page suitability quiz. The verification was fully automated and approved in under an hour, which is faster than most brokers we have tested this year.
The minimum first deposit is $50 in most countries, which is sensible. Funding methods include card, bank transfer, PayPal, Skrill, and a handful of local options. Card deposits land instantly. Bank transfers took two business days from a UK account.
One thing worth flagging: eToro converts every deposit to USD at the time of funding. The conversion fee starts at 50 pips on EUR/USD, which is fine, but compounds if you deposit and withdraw frequently in the same currency. If you are funding in EUR and plan to withdraw in EUR, expect to lose around 1% to FX over a full round-trip.
Fees: the honest breakdown
eToro's marketing leads with "0% commission on stocks", which is true and worth taking seriously, but the full picture has more moving parts.
What you actually pay
- Stocks and ETFs: 0% commission. There is no per-trade fee. The cost is built into the spread on the underlying asset, which is generally tight on liquid US stocks (a few cents on AAPL, MSFT, etc.).
- Crypto: 1% spread on every buy and every sell. So a $1,000 BTC purchase costs you around $10 in spread on entry and $10 on exit. That is more expensive than Kraken Pro but cheaper than buying via PayPal.
- CFDs: spreads vary by instrument. EUR/USD is around 1 pip in normal conditions. Indices like the S&P 500 are 75 cents. Overnight financing applies to held positions.
- Withdrawals: $5 flat per withdrawal. This is the fee everyone complains about. There is no way around it short of withdrawing rarely in larger amounts.
- Inactivity: $10 a month after 12 months with no logins. Easy to avoid. Just log in.
- FX conversion: 50 pips on conversions on the eToro Money tier, going down on the higher tiers. This is the one most people miss.
The platform and the mobile app
The web platform and mobile app share the same design language and most features port between them cleanly. Charting is powered by ProRealTime under the hood, with around 100 indicators available, which is more than enough for the audience eToro targets.
The killer feature is the social layer. Every asset page has a live feed of posts from other investors holding it, plus the option to filter by Popular Investors only. We find this genuinely useful for sentiment-checking before adding to a position, even if a lot of the comments are noise.
Order entry is simple. Stop loss and take profit can be set in dollars, percent, or price, and you can edit them on a held position with one tap on mobile. The one thing that still feels dated is the absence of conditional or bracket orders beyond simple SL/TP.
Copy trading: still the reason most people are here
Copy trading on eToro lets you allocate a portion of your portfolio to mirror the trades of another user automatically. Find a Popular Investor whose risk profile and history you like, click Copy, and choose how much to allocate. From that point every trade they open is opened in your account proportionally.
This is the feature that nothing else on the regulated market matches at this scale. There are around 30 million eToro users with public trading histories, filterable by return, risk score, country, and asset focus. The Popular Investor program incentivises consistent, transparent traders, and the top tier earn a share of fees from copiers, so there is real selection pressure on the leaderboard.
Two warnings. First, past performance of a copied trader is not predictive. Second, eToro shows historical returns prominently and risk scores less prominently. We always recommend filtering by Risk Score 4 or under and looking at the maximum drawdown chart, not the headline return.
Customer support: what we found
We tested support twice in the past 90 days. Both times we used the in-app ticket system. The first ticket (a question about CFD overnight rates) was answered in 4 hours with a useful link to the relevant page. The second (a withdrawal status query) took just under 24 hours and got a generic templated reply that did not really answer the question, though the underlying issue resolved itself.
Live chat is available to verified users. We have not tested phone support, which is reserved for the higher account tiers (Silver and above, which require holding $5,000+ in equity).
Withdrawal test
We always withdraw funds before publishing a review. We submitted a $200 withdrawal back to the original card on a Wednesday afternoon. The funds posted to the card 36 hours later, with the $5 fee deducted as expected and no surprises. Bank transfer withdrawals are slower (3 to 5 business days in our previous tests).
Regulation and safety
eToro is regulated by CySEC in Cyprus (which covers EU clients), the FCA in the UK, ASIC in Australia, and FinCEN in the US. US clients are served by a separate entity (eToro USA LLC) that offers a more limited product set focused on stocks, ETFs, and crypto.
Client funds are held in segregated accounts at tier-1 banks. EU and UK clients benefit from compensation schemes (€20,000 per client under ICF in Cyprus, £85,000 under FSCS in the UK) in the unlikely event the firm fails.
Bottom line
If you are starting out, want to copy more experienced traders, or want a single regulated home for stocks and crypto, eToro is the easiest choice on the market in 2026. Active US-stock-only traders should look at Interactive Brokers. Active crypto traders will get tighter spreads on Kraken Pro. For everyone else, the eToro app is what we would put on a friend's phone.