Which Low Cost Broker Is The Best For You?
Don’t have a lot of money to invest? Or maybe you are just playing it safe and you want to test the Binary Options waters with a very low deposit? Fine, we’ve got you covered and we will find the best broker for you; in fact, we’ve lined up several low cost brokers who are going to fight for the right to call themselves King Of The Low Cost Street. Low cost doesn’t mean bad, or untrustworthy, it just means that you need a lower first deposit than with other brokers. Also, our contestants are not yet in good enough shape to have a fighting match with the big dogs of the industry, so we’ve chosen a softer type of battle: a Dance Off!
Battle Of The “Low Cost” – Let’s Meet The Contestants
Ayrex
The undisputed kingpin of the back alleys, with impressive swagger and flexibility. They are the current King, young and brash, known to bust a move since 2014, owned by Advanced Binary Technologies Ltd., located at Office 590, Suites 5 Horsfords Business Centre, Long Point Road, Charlestown, Nevis, St. Kitts and Nevis. Ayrex is also featured on our Recommended Brokers shortlist but all the others are trying to snatch that spot. Can they do it?
IQ Option
Bring out the bling bling. This brokerage has the highest exposure, with millions of traders visiting them every month. They are the rich kid of the bunch, their daddy – IQOption Europe LTD, located in Cyprus and regulated by CySEC – sent them to the most exclusive dance classes so they are a fearsome foe and a threat to our current King Of The Low Cost Street.
Binary.com
This contestant is regulated in the Isle of Man by a Gambling authority and in Malta by the Malta Financial Services Authority. They like to take a risk and sometimes that pays off, other times, they fall flat on their face, but hey you cannot become great if you don’t risk it to win it!
Binomo
They are “trained” by the owning company Tiburon Corporation Limited, hailing out of Suite 1, Second Floor, Sound & Vision House, Francis Rachel Str., Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles. Their payment processor is Stagord Resources Ltd, located at Vasileos Pavlou, 60 Agios Dometios, 2360, Nicosia, Cyprus. Yeah, two addresses, because why not!
Worth Mentioning – Highlow
They are not really a side to this competition as this broker has a minimum of $50, but still worth mentioning in that category!
These guys are the latest addition to our Recommended Brokers shortlist and let me tell you, that’s a high place to reach. Owned and operated by HighLow Markets PTY Ltd, they are regulated by the ASIC and located at Level 14, Macquarie House, 167 Macquarie Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia. They also sport a flashy London Address at 145 – 157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PW, United Kingdom. Physical addresses, not that virtual office shenanigan!
Round One: Minimum Deposit
This is the battle of the Low Cost brokers, so let’s gather them all in a back alley, lay down a dancing mat and see what they’ve got. How low can you go when it comes to first deposits? First to take the center stage is Ayrex – they spin, strike a pose and show their hand: 5 bucks minimum deposit. Wow! Talk about a low cost broker. Next is HighLow: good reputation, but the first deposit is 50 bucks and that is too high for this competition – Fail! Ten times more than Ayrex, but still very, very low compared to other brokers.
The bling bling kid is next: IQOption shows a 10 bucks minimum deposit. Very good, but still higher than Ayrex. And Binomo? What can they offer? 10 bucks, just like IQOption. Nice, nice, but is it enough?
The last one, Binary.com with a smirk on the face, shows a 5 bucks minimum deposit, matching Ayrex… uuhhh, the dance off IS ON! Ayrex cannot be dethroned in this round but the truth is that all participants have very low investment requirements and I don’t think people will actually deposit only 5 bucks. Come on, the transaction fees may be higher than your deposit.
Round Two! Popularity And Brand Power
You cannot be a top dancer without popularity so we head to similarweb.com to see which one of our contestants is the most popular – aka brand power.
Cue the music – Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon starts playing and in steps IQOption, with golden chains, golden grills and a pair of old school Adidas Superstars so white that they light up the dance mat and blind the competition. Their visitors (June 2017): 59 million per month!!! Whaaaat?!? Yup, you’ve read that right. What can Ayrex do now? They only have 444K visits for the same month, so they definitely need to grow.
Binary.com stands at 3.24 million but they are very stable, not growing much in the last period. HighLow has about 980K hits, so they join Ayrex as the second broker below the 1 mil mark. Last but not least we have Binomo, sporting a gold chain that says “30 mil hits last month alone – ka-ching!”
The round ends with IQOption on top, Binomo second and Ayrex knowing they have to push hard to keep their top position.
Round Three! Performance
Time for a head to head battle between Ayrex and IQOption: the former is known to be very liked by clients, although they are pretty new. They hold regular trading contests (Binary Blast) where you can win real money (100 USD) in just one hour by trading on a Demo account – Yea, cool, I know – and over time they’ve constantly improved their services. Overall great performance! IQOption on the other hand, struggled in the past: according to their own website, in 2013 it took them 15 seconds to process a trading order and this figure doubled in 2014. I don’t know how someone can push Call or Put and then wait 30 seconds (that’s a ages in binary options) for the trade to open, and still expect to make money. But anyway, in 2015 they trimmed that time down to one second so apparently things are better now. However, nobody complains about Ayrex’s performance so they take the round with flying colors.
Round Four! Platform Reliability
Binary.com steps up, taking the challenge to dethrone Ayrex. Oh, but unfortunately their dance moves are too complicated for the untrained eye and their platform lacks ease of use. It’s complicated, with unnecessary features, while Ayrex offers a clean platform, built in house, that appeals to both new and experienced traders. As for overall reliability, Ayrex is responsive and likes to get involved in discussions with their clients, even keeping in constant contact through our Forum where an Ayrex representative answers any questions that users may have. I’d say that’s reliable ;)
Round Five! Returns
HighLow have been pretty quiet so far, so it’s time for them to step out of the shadows and take the dance floor: their returns range between 75% and 85%. Massive! That’s like a triple pirouette while doing a backflip (yea, I don’t think that’s even possible…).
But they are no match for the swagger of Ayrex: 75% – 90% return. So close, so close but HighLow has to bow down. Another round won by Ayrex but the thing is that most brokers claim they have huge returns, and when you start using the real version (not demo)… the returns are not that high overall, especially when it comes to major assets during rush hours.
Extra Round! Clients’ Opinion
IQOption came very close to winning the dance off so an extra round is needed to decide who the undisputed King Of The Low Cost Street is. For this round we turn to clients and their opinion about the 2 brokerages: Ayrex is almost spotless and even on ForexPeaceArmy.com they rock a 4.2/5 user rating at the time of writing. That’s huge, believe me. On our website, most of the comments are positive so they are clearly a “likeable” brokerage. Now for IQOption: hmmm, things are not so bright because they have a disappointing score of just 1.5/5 user rating on ForexPeaceArmy (with only 2 user reviews). Thinking that they have 24 million visitors each month, I wonder why only 2 of them bothered to leave a comment. The reason eludes me but what is clear is that Ayrex takes this round as well and emerges victorious overall.
The Dust Settles, The King Holds On To The Crown
The challengers have put up quite a fight, but Ayrex remains on top of the game and retains the “Low Cost” crown. It was a friendly match, without blood or low blows and it’s good to know that traders have the opportunity to choose brokers with very low deposits but still reliable and trustworthy. As I have said above, Ayrex is the only brokerage (out of the four presented here) featured on our Recommended Brokers list and this alone says a lot about them but the real winner is the client because we are finally starting to see healthy competition in the Binary Options industry. Healthy competition means that we will benefit from a more professional and reliable trading environment. That’s what we want, right? Right!
Winner of the Low Cost Competition:
