eToro is one of the world’s leading Forex and CFD brokers, and they have over 9 million clients worldwide. This broker is mostly renowned for its social trading feature, CopyTrader, which allows anyone to copy the trades of another trader. Meanwhile, Kraken is also a standout exchange that primarily provides cryptocurrency. It is one of the oldest exchanges in the world and is currently ranked 34th in the world by trade volume. Both of these are excellent in what they do, by comparing eToro vs Kraken we’ll find out which one is the best broker for you?
Based on our research we feel that eToro has more to offer and is the winner of all the tested metrics. eToro is also way more user-friendly with a neat and easy navigated UI.
| Etoro vs Kraken | Winner |
|---|---|
| Regulation | eToro |
| Deposit methods | eToro |
| Assets available | eToro for general & Kraken for cryptocurrency |
| Fees | eToro |
| Trading Platforms | eToro |
78% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
eToro USA LLC does not offer CFDs, only real Crypto assets available.
Regulation
eToro is licensed and regulated by 3 separate regulators under different names. eToro Europe is licensed by CySEC under license number 109/10, while the FCA and ASIC, respectively, license eToro UK and eToro AUS. Because of these licenses, eToro is free to operate in most countries around the world except the US and Japan.
Kraken is not licensed by any regulator whatsoever, as it is common among cryptocurrency exchanges. In New York, the company denied a request by the New York AG that would have granted then a BitLicense to operate. Add to that; they do not have offices in Japan where the FSA would have granted them a license.
? Winner: eToro
Deposit methods
There are many deposit options on eToro ranging from wire transfer to credit/debit card, China Union Pay, Giropay, Neteller, Skrill, Paypal, Webmoney, Yandex, Wire, and Local Onlne Banking. To make a deposit on Kraken, one can either use cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ripple, Litecoin, etc. or fiat currency by wire transfer in either euro, US Dollar, Japanese yen, or Canadian dollar.
? Winner: eToro
Assets available
Although eToro was created to provide Forex and CFDs trading, it has since expanded to include more financial instruments. Some of the additional markets accessible through eToro include cryptocurrencies (15), ETFs (145), stocks (600), indices (13), and commodities (6). When one buys either stocks, ETFs, or cryptocurrency without leverage, they are purchasing the actual asset. Therefore, they are entitled to all the benefits of owning an asset such as dividends, etc. However, buying any of the assets mentioned above offered on eToro using leverage automatically means the trader is dealing in CFDs. On the other hand, Kraken is only a cryptocurrency exchange, of which there are 74 coins.
? Winner: eToro for general investors vs Kraken for crypto only investors.
Fees
Fees charged by eToro are quite reasonable, although not the least in the industry. Trading non-leveraged positions where the trader buys the real asset incurs no commission from the broker, but a fee will be applied when making sell orders. On trading CFDs, eToro uses spreads to make money, but eToro is not the best broker in this regard. Other than trading fees, eToro charges a fixed withdrawal fee of $5 USD and the minimum withdrawal amount is $30 USD.
To trade on Kraken, though, fees are incurred for every transaction on a sliding scale. Trade volume under 50,000 will incur maker fees of 0.16% and taker fees of 0.26%. These fees drop to 0.14% and 0.24% when more than 50,000 is traded all the way up to 0% and 0.10% for trade volume above 10 million. The trade volume is calculated over a 30-day period. There are charges on both deposits and withdrawals.
? Winner: eToro
Trading platforms
eToro has multiple trading platforms that can be downloaded on desktop (PC and Mac) and mobile (Android and iOS). Kraken currently doesn’t have any downloadable apps for either desktop or mobile after their mobile apps were delisted from the App Store.
? Winner: eToro
Now that you’re ready to deep buy your assets on a broker that favors you, you might want to learn about different strategies to use while trading.
