Pepperstone's Australian costs page carries a MetaTrader 5 tab, and at 06:54 UTC on 11 September 2026 it listed ten commission figures for the Razor account, one per account currency: USD 3.50 a side, EUR 2.60, GBP 2.25, CHF 3.30, AUD 3.50, JPY 303, NZD 4.75, SGD 4.55, HKD 28.17, CAD 3.5. Each is meant to be the same charge, the firm's advertised "USD$3.50 per lot, per side", written in a different money. Divide each figure by 3.50 and you get the exchange rate somebody used to write it down. The Australian dollar and the Canadian dollar come out at exact parity with the US dollar. The yen comes out at 86.6 to the dollar. Sterling comes out at $1.56 and the euro at $1.35. None of those rates has been seen for years; the Australian dollar stood at 71.85 US cents in the ECB's 10 September reference fixing.
We fitted all eight non-dollar rates in the grid (excluding the Hong Kong dollar, for reasons below) against every European Central Bank reference fixing since January 2008, 4,787 of them. The closest match is 17 December 2010, where the grid sits within 1.5% of the market on average; the same fit against IC Markets' comparable grid lands in July 2024, and only within about 5%. Pepperstone's own about page says the business "was founded in Melbourne in 2010." Whatever the history, the consequence is live today: on the ECB rates of 10 September, one Razor lot costs $5.03 on an Australian-dollar account, $7.00 on a US-dollar account and $7.19 on a Singapore or Hong Kong dollar account. Same broker, same lot, a 43% gap, decided by which currency box a client ticked at sign-up.
Key facts, verified 11 September 2026
- Razor MT4/MT5 commission is a fixed nominal amount per account currency, not a converted dollar charge: AUD 7.00, EUR 5.20, GBP 4.50, USD 7.00, SGD 9.10, HKD 56.34 round turn per standard lot — pepperstone.com/en-au costs and fees, 11 September 2026.
- At ECB reference rates for 10 September 2026 that is $5.03 to $7.19 for the same lot, with the Australian-dollar account 28% cheaper than the US-dollar headline — our arithmetic, api.frankfurter.dev.
- cTrader is billed as USD 6.00 round trip "fixed per unit" and converted at spot, so it is cheaper than MetaTrader for a dollar account and 19% dearer for an Australian-dollar one — pepperstone.com, 11 September 2026.
- The Australian and global account pages offer six base currencies (AUD, USD, EUR, GBP, SGD, HKD); the MT5 grid prices four more (CHF, JPY, NZD, CAD) that those pages do not list — pepperstone.com/en-au/trading/trading-accounts.
- Retail loss disclosures: 72.9% at the UK and Cyprus entities, 79.6% at the Bahamian entity behind the global site, 88% at the Kenyan entity — each entity's own website footer, 11 September 2026.
- No inactivity fee, no deposit or withdrawal fee on most methods, and a $10 card minimum; the Cyprus entity deducts USD 20 for an international bank-wire withdrawal — Pepperstone AU and EU pricing pages.
- Index and share CFD financing carries a 2.5% house charge over or under the overnight reference rate, divided by 360 — pepperstone.com/en-au costs and fees.
A price list written in 2010 money
A raw-spread broker can handle non-dollar clients two ways. One is to quote a dollar amount and convert it at spot on every trade, so every client pays the same real price. Tickmill does that ("$3 (or the equivalent amount in the currency of your account)"), FP Markets' Cypriot entity does it ("US$3 or equivalent per side"), and Pepperstone itself does it on cTrader, TradingView and its in-house platform. The other is to publish a fixed number per currency and leave it. On MetaTrader, Pepperstone does the second.
A fixed grid is not a defect in itself. It is predictable, and a client can see the exact charge before trading. The problem is drift. Most of the figures read as translations of $3.50 at some past exchange rate, and every move in the currency since has moved the real price. The grid below sets out what Pepperstone publishes against what $7.00 round turn would be at the 10 September fixing.
| Account currency | Published round turn | In US dollars today | $7.00 at today's rate would be | Implied exchange rate in the grid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AUD | AUD 7.00 | $5.03 | AUD 9.74 | AUD/USD 1.00 |
| EUR | EUR 5.20 | $6.04 | EUR 6.03 | EUR/USD 1.35 |
| GBP | GBP 4.50 | $6.08 | GBP 5.18 | GBP/USD 1.56 |
| USD | USD 7.00 | $7.00 | USD 7.00 | n/a |
| SGD | SGD 9.10 | $7.19 | SGD 8.86 | USD/SGD 1.30 |
| HKD | HKD 56.34 | $7.19 | HKD 54.89 | USD/HKD 8.05 |
Published figures from the MT5 Razor tab at pepperstone.com/en-au/trading/costs-and-fees, read 06:54 UTC 11 September 2026; the same grid appears on the UK, EU and global sites. FX from api.frankfurter.dev, ECB reference set dated 10 September 2026 (AUD 1.3918, EUR 0.86088, GBP 0.73963, SGD 1.2664, HKD 7.8412 per US dollar).
Three currencies are now under-charged against the dollar headline and two over-charged. The Australian-dollar account is the outlier, 28% below the US-dollar price, because it was pinned at parity and the currency has since lost more than a quarter of its value. The euro and sterling accounts sit about 13% below. Singapore and Hong Kong dollar accounts pay 2.7% more than a dollar account, the only two published currencies where drift has worked against the client.
The Hong Kong figure is the odd one out. HKD 28.17 per side implies 8.05 Hong Kong dollars to the US dollar, a rate the currency cannot reach while the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's peg holds it "within a band of HK$7.75-7.85 to one US dollar"; across all 4,787 ECB fixings since 2008 the cross never printed above 7.8501. That figure was not translated from $3.50 at any market rate, which is why it is excluded from the fit.
Four more currencies sit in the MT5 table but not on the Australian or global account pages, which list six base currencies. They widen the range further: JPY 606 round turn is $3.93 at 154.18 yen, CHF 6.60 is $8.13. We could not confirm from any public page whether those accounts can still be opened.
Where the Razor account sits against four rivals
Every peer figure below was read from that broker's own live page on the morning of 11 September 2026, between 06:59 and 07:00 UTC, and converted where needed at the same ECB set. The unit throughout is commission only, round turn, on one standard lot. Spread is excluded: Pepperstone's average-spread table loads client-side and could not be read by our tools, and its Cypriot site dates its spread statistics to December 2025.
| Broker and route | Entity behind the page | Published charge | Round turn, USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fusion Markets, Zero | Global site; Seychelles SD096, Vanuatu and ASIC entities | $2.25 per side | $4.50 |
| Pepperstone, Razor MT5, AUD account | Pepperstone Group Ltd, AFSL 414530 | AUD 3.50 per side | $5.03 |
| Tickmill, Raw | Global site; Tickmill Ltd, Seychelles | $3 per side, or equivalent | $6.00 |
| FP Markets, Raw | First Prudential Markets Ltd, CySEC 371/18 | US$3 or equivalent per side | $6.00 |
| Pepperstone, Razor cTrader | All entities read | USD 6 round trip, converted at spot | $6.00 |
| IC Markets, Raw MT4, AUD account | Raw Trading Ltd, Seychelles | AUD 4.50 per side | $6.47 |
| IC Markets, Raw cTrader, EUR/USD | Raw Trading Ltd, Seychelles | $3 per US$100,000 traded | $6.97 |
| IC Markets, Raw MetaTrader, USD | International Capital Markets Pty Ltd, AFSL 335692 | $3.50 per side | $7.00 |
| Pepperstone, Razor MT5, USD account | Pepperstone Group Ltd, AFSL 414530 | USD 3.50 per side | $7.00 |
| Pepperstone, Razor MT5, SGD account | Pepperstone Group Ltd, AFSL 414530 | SGD 4.55 per side | $7.19 |
Retrieved 11 September 2026 from the linked pages. IC Markets' cTrader charge is per notional, so a EUR/USD lot of €100,000 is $116,160 at the ECB's 1.1616. FP Markets' main domain, fpmarkets.com, returned HTTP 403 to every request, so its Australian entity's AUD pricing could not be read today and is not shown.
On a dollar account, Pepperstone's MetaTrader route is level with IC Markets at the top of this group, and 56% above Fusion Markets. Its own cTrader route, at $6.00, ties Tickmill and FP Markets' European entity. That is the comparison most reviews make: our IC Markets review and Fusion Markets review both priced Pepperstone at $7.00 on MetaTrader and $6.00 on cTrader, correctly, on a US-dollar account.
Change the unit and the order changes. For a client who holds Australian dollars, Pepperstone's MetaTrader grid at $5.03 undercuts every other route on the chart except Fusion, and it undercuts IC Markets' own Australian-dollar grid by 22%. For the same client, Pepperstone's cTrader is the dearer route: it converts the USD 6.00 at spot into AUD 8.35, against AUD 7.00 on MT5. The idea that cTrader is the cheap Pepperstone platform holds for dollar accounts, is roughly neutral for euro and sterling ones, and is backwards for Australian-dollar accounts. Our FP Markets review found the same currency effect at a rival, running 98% from cheapest to dearest, and the Eightcap review noted that Pepperstone's euro leg undercut Eightcap's.
Micro lots add a rounding layer. The global site charges USD 0.04 a side on a 0.01 lot, rounded up from 0.035, the equivalent of $8.00 per full lot round turn, 14% above the headline; sterling rounds down. The costs page warns that "micro lots are rounded up or down."
Seven regulators, and which contract you actually sign
Every licence we checked against a regulator's own record on 11 September held up, bar one number. ASIC's September licensee file lists AFSL 414530 for Pepperstone Group Limited, held since 4 February 2013, and ASIC's company register dates the company to 27 October 2010, seven weeks before the exchange rates its commission grid matches. The FCA register shows Pepperstone Limited, FRN 684312, authorised since 5 August 2015, with three clone-firm warnings attached; Companies House has it active, incorporated 28 March 2014. CySEC lists Pepperstone EU Limited under CIF 388/20 from 3 August 2020, on the live list and absent from the former-firms list, and none of roughly 1,170 board decisions since 2014 names it. BaFin carries Pepperstone GmbH in Düsseldorf, the DFSA licensed the DIFC entity, F004356, on 11 March 2020, and Kenya's CMA lists licence 128.
The weaker links are the ones most clients outside those markets meet. The global site, which the costs page's own hreflang tags assign to Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Oman and Turkey, belongs to Pepperstone Markets Limited of Nassau: 1:200 retail leverage on FX and a 79.6% loss rate. The Securities Commission of The Bahamas lists the firm as a registrant at 31 August 2026 but prints no licence numbers, so SIA-F217 rests on Pepperstone's own footer. The UAE site's footer names a local introducer and the same Bahamian product issuer. South African readers are tagged to the Kenyan site, while the FSCA's own over-the-counter derivative provider register records Pepperstone Group Limited as "Application Withdrawn", with no date.
The small print that does not add up
Pepperstone publishes more pricing detail than several rivals we have reviewed, including a per-currency commission grid, a swap calculator and a minimum spread per instrument. The volume makes the inconsistencies easier to find. Read across its own sites on 11 September, the costs pages slip in five places.
Gold on an Australian-dollar account is the clearest. The Australian site's MT4 tab carries two tables, one above the other. The first says a lot of XAU/USD costs "AUD 7 when position opened". The second, under the same tab, says "AUD 4.50 (AUD 9.00 round turn)", and the MT5 tab agrees with the second. That is a 29% difference on the same instrument, platform and currency, and a client cannot tell from the page which one the platform will charge. The UK site's MT4 tab carries only the first version.
The first table also discloses that on MT4 the entire round-turn commission is taken "when position opened", not half on entry and half on exit. The total is the same; the timing is not.
The global site's MT5 micro-lot row for Canadian dollars reads "CAD 0.04 (CAD 0.8 round turn)", ten times the arithmetic. The forex market page advertises "a 99.32% fill rate" above a footnote saying "99.00% fill rates are based on all trades data between 01/01/2026 and 31/03/2026." The Cypriot site, still stamped "© 2025", dates its spread statistics to "data between 01/12/2025 and 31/12/2025", nine months old on the day we read it. And the costs page's own hreflang tags send Spanish, Kenyan, Nigerian and South African readers to two URLs that return 404.
None of this is material on its own. Taken together it describes a pricing section maintained per-site rather than from one source of truth, which is exactly the process that lets a 2010 exchange rate survive sixteen years.
Financing, funding and the costs nobody advertises
Pepperstone publishes its financing formulas rather than its rates. FX and metals swaps follow the daily tom-next rate, sourced "from tier 1 global investment banks". Index and share CFDs pay or earn the overnight reference rate with a 2.5% house charge on top, divided by 360; commodity CFDs carry 2.5% a year on the mid price, plus or minus the futures basis. The daily figures live inside the platforms and in a client-side calculator: short of a published table, but checkable.
RelatedAdmirals Review 2026: $7.00 Per Lot, One Revoked Licence
Funding is cheap: the Australian site lists nine methods, all free both ways, with a $10 minimum on most and none on domestic bank transfer. The Cypriot entity is the exception: "we'll deduct 20 USD from your trading account balance" for a wire to an international bank. None of the four sites we read charges an inactivity fee.
The Standard account removes the commission and marks up the spread instead: "a 1 pip markup on margin FX pairs," and a published EUR/USD minimum of 1.0 against 0.0 on Razor. At the minimum that is $10.00 a lot round turn, above the Razor commission in every currency in the grid, although a Razor client also pays the raw spread on top.
The verdict: 4.0 out of 5
The regulatory case is strong, and it is the reason for the score. Pepperstone's tier-one licences check out at the regulators, its non-trading fees are close to zero, and a dollar-account client pays exactly what the headline says: $7.00 on MetaTrader and $6.00 on cTrader, honestly stated if not the cheapest. It publishes a per-currency commission grid, swap formulas and minimum spreads that several rivals do not.
The grid is also the problem. A fixed commission table that has not been re-based to current exchange rates means the firm's real price depends on the client's account currency by up to 43%. That works in the favour of Australian-dollar, euro and sterling clients today, and against Singapore and Hong Kong dollar clients, and the page gives no hint of it. Add a gold commission quoted two ways on one tab, a Cypriot spread table nine months old, and loss disclosures that run from 72.9% to 88% across entities, and the disclosure is a notch below the licence quality.
Who it suits: clients on an ASIC, FCA or CySEC contract who trade frequently in Australian dollars, euros or sterling on MetaTrader, and dollar-account clients who use cTrader. Who it suits less: Singapore and Hong Kong dollar accounts, which pay the most for the least reason, and clients routed to the Bahamian entity, whose 1:200 leverage comes with a 79.6% loss rate and a thinner regulatory wrapper. What would lift the score: a commission grid re-based to current rates or converted at spot, a single gold figure, current spread statistics on every site. What would lower it: an adverse regulatory finding, or a re-basing that simply raises the Australian-dollar price to AUD 9.74 and calls it transparency.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Pepperstone charge per lot?
On a Razor account via MetaTrader, USD 3.50 a side, $7.00 round turn, on a dollar account. Other account currencies pay a fixed local amount: AUD 7.00, EUR 5.20, GBP 4.50, SGD 9.10 and HKD 56.34 round turn. At ECB rates for 10 September 2026 those are $5.03, $6.04, $6.08, $7.19 and $7.19. cTrader costs USD 6.00 round trip and TradingView USD 7.00, both converted at spot.
Is cTrader cheaper than MetaTrader at Pepperstone?
Only on a US-dollar account, where it saves $1.00 a round turn, or 14%. On euro and sterling accounts the two are within eight cents. On an Australian-dollar account cTrader is dearer: USD 6.00 converts to about AUD 8.35, against a fixed AUD 7.00 on MetaTrader 5. The deciding variable is the account currency, not the platform.
Is Pepperstone regulated, and which entity would I deal with?
Yes. ASIC (AFSL 414530), the FCA (684312), CySEC (388/20), BaFin, the DFSA (F004356) and Kenya's CMA (licence 128) each list a Pepperstone entity on their own registers. Residence decides the contract: Australians get the ASIC company, UK clients the FCA one, EU clients Cyprus, and Hong Kong or Singapore residents the Bahamian entity, whose regulator lists it without a licence number.
How does Pepperstone compare with IC Markets, Tickmill and Fusion Markets?
On a dollar account, Pepperstone's $7.00 MetaTrader price equals IC Markets and sits above Tickmill and FP Markets' Cypriot entity at $6.00 and Fusion Markets at $4.50. Pepperstone's cTrader matches Tickmill at $6.00. On an Australian-dollar account Pepperstone's $5.03 undercuts IC Markets' $6.47. Figures are from each broker's page on 11 September 2026; our Tickmill review and broker comparison hub carry more.
This review is analysis and information, not financial advice, and nothing in it recommends opening, funding or closing an account with any firm named. Every figure was retrieved on 11 September 2026 and is subject to change; currency conversions use ECB reference rates for 10 September 2026. CFDs are leveraged products; Pepperstone discloses that between 72.9% and 88% of retail investor accounts lose money, depending on the entity. Capital is at risk.