Is IC Markets An ECN Broker?

IC Markets Execution By Account

There’s also a commission discount program called ‘Raw Trader Plus’. This is an active trader rebate program that pays back $1.50 to $2.50 per lot, bringing effective commissions down to $4.50 – $5.50 roundtrip.

What Is True ECN Execution?

An electronic communication network (ECN) digitally matches or transmits orders between market participants, with the broker normally acting as an intermediary rather than becoming the sole principal and contractual counterparty to every client trade. But this isn’t quite what happens at IC Markets.

The spread reflects external pricing providers, not a broker-inflated markup, with up to 25 providers used at IC Markets. Spreads usually start from 0.0 pips at the majority of ECN brokers we’ve tested, including at IC Markets.

Commission is charged separately, rather than embedded in the spread. Commissions charged in ECN accounts are most commonly $3.50 per side ($7 per roundtrip), which is the same at IC Markets, though its rebate program can reduce these.

ECN execution can reduce conflicts of interest. Even though IC Markets’ Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) notes that orders are dealt on a “principal basis alone”, its raw pricing model helps reduce the traditional market-maker conflict. This is because clients’ trades are matched against raw interbank feeds without manual dealing desk intervention, so IC Markets should not profit directly from its clients’ losses.

There should also be no requotes – orders are filled at the best available price in the liquidity pool at the time of execution, making them popular with active traders.

ECN Execution In Practice – What Our Tests Showed

Two of our team at BrokerListings.com have live accounts at IC Markets, so we’re well positioned to put its ECN accounts through their paces. Order execution on the Raw Spread MT5 account averaged under 40 milliseconds during our testing session (European market hours, EUR/USD, 0.10 lot positions). We placed 15 market orders and experienced zero requotes. Slippage was minimal – one order filled 0.2 pips better than requested (positive slippage), none filled worse.

IC Markets achieves these speeds by routing orders through the NY4 Equinix data centre in New York, aggregating raw streams from up to 25 pricing providers. As IC Markets clarifies in its official Help Centre, it uses ‘ECN’ to describe this raw pricing mechanism rather than an exchange network. For scalpers and high-frequency strategies, the combination of sub-40ms execution and 0.0-pip raw spreads is genuinely competitive.

Who ECN Execution At IC Markets Is Right For

• Scalpers — The raw spread + commission model is cheaper than wide spread + no commission.
• Algorithmic traders / EA users — No trade restrictions, no intervention.
• High-volume traders — Raw Spread is cheaper than Standard from trade #1 ($7.00 vs $8.00/lot), but reaching 100+ lots/month unlocks Raw Trader Plus cash rebates ($1.50–$2.50 back/lot), cutting roundtrip costs further to $4.50–$5.50/lot.
• Traders who need transparency — ECN pricing makes costs explicit and auditable.

IC Markets’ ECN account is less well-suited to casual, infrequent traders.

How Does The ECN Account Affect Pricing?

Here’s a simple cost comparison to bring the difference to life:

• EUR/USD, 1 standard lot. Standard account: 0.8 pip spread = $8.00 total cost.
• Raw Spread MT5: 0.0 pip spread + $7.00 commission ($3.50 each way) = $7.00 total.

Basically, Raw Spread is cheaper and execution quality improves for active traders.