Why Forex Spreads No Longer Define Broker Value in the UK and Australia

According to TradingView's recent market note, retail forex spreads in Australia and the UK have compressed so far that they're no longer a useful differentiator between brokers — the real competition has migrated to commission structures and execution quality. For retail traders running tight stops or any cost-sensitive strategy, this shift reframes where the actual savings sit. EUR/USD, as the most liquid major, remains the cleanest benchmark for exposing a broker's true pricing posture.

Spreads are now the floor, not the feature

In ASIC- and FCA-regulated environments, headline spreads on pairs like EUR/USD have been pushed so low that further undercutting eats directly into broker margin. TradingView describes this as commoditisation: brokers can't compete meaningfully on spread anymore because most have already taken it as low as it goes. The pair still works as a benchmark — liquidity is deep, and any widening shows up immediately — but treating the spread tick as the deciding factor between brokers is the kind of mistake the analysis flags explicitly. I see the same trap in my own broker reviews: traders fixate on the displayed spread and never run the full cost calculation.

Commission and raw-spread accounts carry the new edge

Differentiation has moved into two areas brokers can still adjust: commission per lot, and execution quality. Raw spread accounts formalise this — they separate the interbank spread from the broker's commission line, so both costs appear explicitly. Transparency win, but also a new trap: a tight headline spread paired with an inflated commission can end up costing more than a slightly wider spread on a zero-commission setup. The math has to run on total trade cost, not on either line in isolation.

Execution quality is the harder variable. Slippage on stops, requote frequency, and fill speed during volatility windows don't appear in any broker's marketing deck. They show up in your own execution log — particularly around the London open and US data releases, where infrastructure gets stress-tested in real time.

What to verify before changing brokers

Pull three brokers' pricing for the same pair at the same hour, and watch how the spread behaves during session opens rather than at random points in the day. Calculate total cost on your typical position size and frequency, commission included. If you trade through news, look for a documented execution policy rather than an advertised average. And treat any EUR/USD spread noticeably wider than peers as a signal worth investigating, not a rounding error.