Account Types and What They Change

Brokers offer several account types with names that tell you nothing — Standard, Raw, ECN, Pro, Zero, Cent. Underneath, only a few things actually differ, and one question decides between them.

Spread-only versus raw plus commission

This is the real split. Everything else is naming.

A spread-only account charges nothing separately and widens the quote instead. A raw account passes on something close to the underlying spread and charges a commission per lot.

The raw account is usually cheaper once you add it up, and it is always easier to audit: a commission is a line you can see, while a widened spread is invisible unless you compare quotes side by side.

Cent accounts and what they are good for

A cent account denominates your balance in cents rather than dollars. Deposit $100 and the platform shows 10,000. Lot sizes work the same way, so one lot moves in cents instead of dollars.

The point is not the display. It is that a cent account lets you hold a position a hundred times smaller than the usual floor — real money, real fills, real swap, at a size where a mistake costs the price of a coffee.

That fills a genuine gap. A demo account teaches you the platform but nothing about how you behave when the money is yours; a live account at 0.01 lots can still risk more per trade than a beginner should on a small balance.

Swap-free accounts and the catch

Swap-free accounts, often offered as Islamic accounts, do not charge or pay the overnight interest adjustment. They exist to accommodate traders for whom interest is not permitted.

The catch is that brokers rarely give the charge up. It usually returns in another form, and it is worth knowing which before assuming a position costs nothing to hold:

• A wider spread on the account as a whole.
• A fixed administration fee per lot per night after a grace period of a few days.
• Restrictions on which pairs or instruments are available, often excluding the ones with the largest interest differentials.

Swap-free is worth the trade for someone who needs it. As a way of holding a carry position for free, it does not work — that is the exact case the fees are designed around.

Doing the comparison with your own numbers

The comparison takes two minutes and cannot be done from a marketing page, because the answer depends on how you trade rather than on which account is better.

• Your usual lot size. 0.05? 0.5? The gap between account types scales with it.
• Trades per month. Cost per round turn multiplied by frequency is the only number that matters.
• Whether you hold overnight. If you do, swap belongs in the comparison and may outweigh the spread difference entirely.
• Your typical target. A cost of $9 against a 15-pip target is a different proposition from $9 against a 150-pip one.

Then open both accounts' live spread windows at the same moment — during the hours you actually trade, not at the London open — and compare what is quoted, not what is advertised.