Costs and charges

Our offices are normally open 24 hours a day between 11pm on Sunday (9pm for forex) and 10.15pm on Friday night (London time).

Dealing hours vary between markets, but standard UK market hours are 08.00-16.30 (London time).

When you spread bet or trade CFDs with us, you trade on margin. This means you only pay a deposit to open a position, and we in effect lend you the rest of the money required. If you close your position on the same day, you won’t pay a funding fee. If you keep it open overnight, you’ll pay small fee to cover the cost of the money you’ve effectively borrowed.

For share and index trades, our funding fee is comprised of our admin fee, plus or minus the interbank rate for the currency in which your trade’s underlying market is denominated (depending on whether your position is long or short).

For forex trades, the funding fee is the tom-next rate plus a small admin fee.

For spot commodity trades, and trades on the Volatility Index and EU Volatility Index, we make an adjustment based on a range of factors like the price of the two nearest futures, and our fee. Take a look at how we price our undated commodities to find out more.

For futures markets there’s no overnight funding fee, because the cost of funding is built into the spread. You also won’t pay a funding fee if you’re buying and selling trades outright on a share dealing account, as you’re not paying margin and therefore not borrowing anything.

Spreads

Our spreads are the same for CFDs and spread betting, apart from shares.

Share CFDs directly reflect the underlying market price, and so you’ll pay a commission on these trades. Share spread bets are commission-free, but you’ll pay a spread on the opening and closing price of the bet.

That said, the overall cost is virtually the same for share spread bets and share CFDs. Trade CFDs, and you’ll find our tightest spreads on our standard contracts, with wider spreads on some mini and micro contracts.

Our forex spreads vary depending on underlying market liquidity. The more liquid the market, the narrower our spread – as low as 0.8 points. As the underlying market spread widens, so does ours – but only to our maximum cap.

Our stock index spreads vary by the time of day. During the underlying market hours we offer our standard and tightest spreads eg 1 point on the FTSE 100. When we offer an out-of-hours market, so you can benefit from 24-hour dealing, we offer a wider spread.

Commission

Our commission varies depending on the host country for your stock, and the account you’re using.

CFDs

You'll pay between 0.1% and 0.35% commission on all UK share trades (0.1% on large caps, 0.25% on midcaps and 0.35% on small caps). See our product details for all our share CFD commissions.

Share dealing

You can buy and sell UK shares on commission from just £3, and US shares commission-free, if you deal three or more times in a month. See our share dealing charges for full shares commissions.

Overnight funding

For share and index trades we calculate our overnight funding fee using the relevant interbank rate, and our fee for forex trades using the tom-next rate. These rates change daily, varying the funding fee each day.

For commodities and the volatility indices, we use the price of the two nearest futures as part of our overnight funding calculation. Since these will vary, the charge can too. You can find out more in the overnight funding section above.

Mini and micro CFD contracts are subject to a higher funding rate.

You won’t pay an overnight funding fee for forward trades, as the funding cost is built into a wider spread. So you may find them more cost effective and transparent for long-term trades, because you know your real cost from the outset.

For fixed-expiry deals on stock indices and commodities we offer futures for spread betting and CFDs. For fixed-expiry shares and forex, we offer forwards for spread betting.

If you trade CFDs in a currency other than your account’s base currency, you may need to pay a currency conversion charge.

Your account is set to ‘instant conversion’ by default. This means that foreign-currency profit is converted to your base currency automatically, and funding, commission and dividend charges are taken into account before your account is credited. You can choose to have your account convert daily, weekly or monthly. Our standard conversion charge is 0.5.

If you’re buying and selling shares on a share dealing account, we will convert currencies at the time of execution based on the best available bid / offer exchange rates, plus our spread of 0.5 points.

Yes, we offer guaranteed stops so that you can put an absolute cap on your risk. You’ll pay a small fee if it's triggered. For shares, for example, this is 0.3% of the underlying transaction value.

The interbank rate is the interest rate charged between banks for short-term loans. It is a key indicator for other interest rate charges, which is why we use it as a basis for calculating our overnight funding fees for your share and stock index trades.

Tom-next is the rate used to calculate the funding adjustment when a forex position is held overnight. It is an industry-standard rate, derived from the interest rate differentials of the pair’s currencies and market expectations of interest rate change.

The costs of trading with us via a spread bet or a CFD are virtually identical, even if the way we charge to trade a market differs. For example, the cost of a 0.10% commission on a share CFD trade works out similarly to a 0.10% spread on a share spread bet.

You won’t pay to use our platform for either CFDs or spread betting, but there is a charge for some live data feeds. This also applies to our DMA-specific platforms which require live data feeds. You’ll get a refund if you trade a certain number of times in a set period.

For both spread bets and CFDs, the spread is the difference between our sell and buy prices. We derive these prices based on the underlying market's value.

No, we won't charge you any fees to maintain your account.