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The total fees charged by any brokerage should always be one of the very top considerations of someone looking for the most suitable Forex / CFD broker. It ranks right up there with security / safety of funds deposited. Each cost should be examined rigorously. It can be helpful to divide all fees and costs into two categories: trading fees, such as spreads, commissions, and overnight financing; and miscellaneous fees, such as periodic charges for account inactivity, or fees or commissions charged by the brokerage itself against account deposits or withdrawals. The trading fee element is the much more important side, so it makes sense to begin a fee analysis here.

Looking at trading fees first, we will start with spreads and commissions, which are worth taking together as a comprehensive 'round trip' cost of opening and closing one trade. As FXTM offer a few different account types which charge slightly different fees, we will judge the trading fees of its most common account type, the Standard Account.

The average round trip cost of trading the benchmark EUR/USD Forex currency pair is 2 pips with the company's Standard Account. This is slightly on the high side for the industry. The Cent Account, FXTM's account with the lowest minimum deposit (only $10) averages slightly higher at 2.2 pips. However, this falls to only 0.8 pips with one of the ECN-style accounts, which represents a very competitive rate considering the minimum deposit is only $500 for this account type.

The average round trip fees and costs for other CFD instruments offered such as commodities, individual stocks and equity indices are average for the industry.

Finally, FXTM's offering of real share trading through its accounts based outside the European Union is not only a relatively unique service, its trading costs in this area are competitive and slightly lower than its direct competitors.

These levels of spreads and commissions are broadly competitive on the ECN side, especially for clients with relatively low deposit amounts. The minimum deposit required to open a 'true' ECN account is only $500, so for traders depositing anything close to this sum, these fees are competitive. However, traders with considerably larger sums to deposit such as a few thousand dollars would find the trading fees average, but nothing special, at least for trading Forex and CFD products.

An often-overlooked element of the trading fee structure is overnight financing, which is typically a net charge applied to any trade open at 5 p.m. New York time. These fees are, at least hypothetically, calculated from intrabank tom/next intrabank fees, but retail brokerages usually give considerably less favorable rates. This can make swing or position trading expensive, particularly when a trader wants to be long of a currency with a relatively high interest rate and short of another currency with a relatively low (or even negative) interest rate. FXTM are totally transparent regarding their overnight financing rates, which is a sign of trustworthiness: frequently, brokers don't publicize their existing rates, but they can always be found within the relevant trading platforms if you know where to look for them.

FXTM makes no claims about how their overnight financing / swap rates are derived. Many brokers claim they are based upon interbank tom/next rates, yet the rates offered always seem to be considerably less favorable to the client than the prevailing tom/next rates. Therefore, we are inclined to applaud FXTM for not making any such claims. A comparison of FXTM's rates to the industry average at the time this FXTM review was written shows that FXTM's rates are very competitive and slightly better than the average. Now here's something truly unique about FXTM and their overnight financing / swap rates: some of their account types charge no swaps at all! The Cent Account and the Shares Account are completely swap-free, while swap is not paid in any other account that uses the MetaTrader 4 platform. While many brokers offer a swap-free Islamic Account option, it is usually offered only to Muslims, so this global swap-free option is both very rare and very appreciated. Overall, this means that FXTM is likely to be a good choice for traders planning to keep positions open longer than one or two days at a time.

Another factor which makes us believe that FXTM has a commendable sensitivity towards the problem of traders being 'bled' quietly by certain retail Forex CFD brokerages charging relatively high overnight financing rates, is that in 2013, they ran a limited period promotion where overnight financing would only be charged or paid over weekends, and not on weekday rollovers. This is impressive, and we never heard of another brokerage offering a similar promotion of this type.

Finally, we conclude the topic of fees by checking whether clients are charged any incidental fees by FXTM, regardless of whether a trade is made.

FXTM imposes a dormant account / account inactivity fee of $5 per month but an account must have initiated no trading activity for a period of at least six months before this fee will be imposed. This is good by the standards of the industry. FXTM also charges additional withdrawal fees against withdrawals made by credit cards or bank wire transfer. The exact charge depends upon the country of residence of the client making the withdrawal but is typically approximately $2 for a withdrawal by credit card and approximately €20 for a wire transfer. These fees are justifiable, but many retail Forex / CFD brokerages do not charge them, so it is not a competitive practice.