Start with the entity, not the brand
Most large brokers are several companies wearing one name. The website you are reading may be operated by a UK firm authorised by the FCA, while the account you are actually offered is with a subsidiary registered somewhere with far lighter obligations. The brand is identical. The protections are not.
Before anything else, find out which legal entity you would be contracting with and what it is licensed to do. It is usually in the footer, in small type, and it is the single most useful thing on the site.
- Which company name appears on the client agreement?
- Which regulator licenses that company, and under what number?
- Does that number appear on the regulator's own public register?
Add the costs together
Brokers advertise whichever half of the cost looks better. A raw-spread account showing "from 0.0 pips" charges a commission per lot; a commission-free account builds the same money into a wider spread. Neither is dishonest, and neither is comparable until you add both halves.
For a rough comparison on EUR/USD, take the average spread in pips and add the round-turn commission converted into pips - on a standard lot, roughly $10 per pip. A $7 round turn is about 0.7 pips. A 0.1 pip spread with $7 commission and a 0.9 pip spread with no commission cost almost exactly the same.
Check what happens when you want to leave
Deposit terms are advertised; withdrawal terms are documented. They are frequently not the same. Look for the minimum withdrawal, the fee per method, how long processing takes, and whether funds must return to the source they came from.
Inactivity fees belong in this check too. A dormant account charged monthly can quietly empty itself over a couple of years.
- Minimum withdrawal, and the fee for your method
- Processing time stated by the broker, separate from bank settlement
- Inactivity fee, and how many months trigger it
Read the loss disclosure
Every regulated CFD broker must publish the percentage of retail accounts that lose money. It is usually between 65% and 85%. It is not a disclaimer to scroll past - it is the most honest number on the entire website, and it is measured on that broker's own clients.
Try the platform before you fund it
A demo account tells you in twenty minutes what a week of reading reviews will not: whether the platform makes sense to you, whether the charts are usable, whether placing and closing an order is obvious under mild pressure. If the demo is awkward, the live account will be worse, because real money is involved.