Each spread is the difference between the current buy and sell price (ask minus bid) on a single live account per broker, converted to the instrument's standard unit (pips, points, or price).
We sample quotes roughly once per second and update the board in real time during market hours.
The values are representative of recent pricing and are not a guaranteed or executable quote.
Spreads shown exclude commission and swap, so on commission-based accounts your total trading cost is higher than the spread alone.
Brokers are ranked strictly by their current live spread, lowest first. A broker's commercial relationship with us never affects its position in the ranking.
When a feed is delayed or unavailable, that broker is marked and excluded from the ranking rather than shown with a stale value.
Prop firm spreads are streamed the same way, from a live evaluation account at each firm, which is the pricing a challenge trader actually sees.
The platform a firm runs on (Match-Trader, cTrader, DXtrade, TradeLocker or MT4/MT5) does not set the spread. Pricing comes from the firm's own liquidity provider, so we compare firms, not platforms.
As with brokers, prop firm figures are indicative and can differ from your own account, which depends on the program, the time of day and market conditions.
Some prop firms run on the pricing of a parent broker. For those we stream both the firm and the broker from live accounts and lay their spreads over each other, instrument by instrument.
The headline number is the markup: how much wider the firm quotes than the broker on the same instrument, at the same time. A firm sitting on top of the broker keeps its standard; a firm running consistently wider is charging for the badge.
A markup is real, recurring cost. It varies by instrument and can change at any time, so it is measured continuously, never guessed.
