Review the list of top Copy Trading Platforms including features, comparison, and other details to help you select the best copy trading app:
Copy trading is a method of social trading where a user can follow profiles of other traders and even copy their trading strategies to increase their trade profits, either for free or for money.
Modern copy trading platforms let users subscribe to other traders, buy and sell trading signals, and connect to broker platforms on which they can automate copy trading.
This tutorial trains on copy trading, how it works and provides a list of top copy trading platforms to use.
Let us begin!!
What You Will Learn:
Copy Trading Platforms Review
Pro Tips:
- Professional traders can use platforms that let them devise and sell their trading signals to newbies.
- Newbies are much better with platforms that allow them to copy trades free of risk and these are recommended before starting professional trading.
- Leveraged auto copy trading is recommended for professional traders. It is also recommended to combine auto with manual copy trading.
Fact-Check:
- Social trading is verified by research as a better trading strategy than any other. However, better methods of ranking expert traders whose trades to follow are needed on the platforms. These include combining performance, risk, and consistency-based ranking methods.
- Do not expect excessively huge returns from copy trading. The realistic expectation is between 5% to 20% in annual ROI.
- Modern copy trading platforms utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as other technologies, to optimize trader discovery and other things.
What Is Social And Copy Trading
Social trading is a form of financial market trading where people trade financial assets with the capability of observing the trading moves of other traders. Best known as an entry-level trading strategy, it is not supported in all broker trading platforms.
Those that support it may allow users to:
- Follow other traders’ profiles on the copy trading platform.
- See how many followers or copy traders other traders have on their profiles, including total invested amount and invested amounts per each copying trader.
- See how many winning trades and profits the other traders have on their profiles.
- See how long other traders have been trading a given financial asset.
- See returns on investment made by traders following a given trader.
- Chat with other traders. They can also post on social channels, respond to posts, etc.
- Get market financial analyses from professionals on a particular asset.
- Access, buy and sell trading signals for a given financial asset on the copy trade software.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q #1) Is social trading legal?
Answer: Yes, it is actually allowed on many regulated brokers and trading platforms that are also very professional. It is being continually practiced by beginner, professional, and even institutional traders. Almost every country in the world allows copy and social trading.
Q #2) Is copy trading a good idea?
Answer: Yes, it lets inexperienced and experienced traders benefit from each other when trading forex, stocks, CFDs, and many other financial assets. It provides beginners a chance to learn as they trade.
It is, however, necessary to ensure you can identify which trades and traders to follow. Make sure the copy trading software ranks users based on performance, consistency, and risk metrics.
Q #3) Is copy trading really profitable?
Answer: Yes, depending on how it is done. In fact, in 2021, it is ranked as one of the most profitable ways of investing and trading. The profitability range to expect is between 5-20%. The best apps support features that allow for transparency, including returns on investment, investment risk, and consistency of professional traders selling trading signals.
Q #4) Is copy trading good for beginners?
Answer: It is ideal for beginners. It allows beginners to mimic the investment strategies of professional traders with little effort. It makes sense for busy professional traders too who cannot commit their time to devise their own trading strategies or don’t want to.
Since the best copy trading platforms allow for automated copy trading, the strategy works well for passive income without tying up much of your time.
Q #5) What is copy trading and how does it work?
Answer: Copy-trading works on platforms that allow professional traders to design trading strategies or signals that can either be sold to or shared with other traders to duplicate trading.
A trading signal is a trading method either in code or done manually, which is devised using market knowledge and data such as trading volume, earning reports, and other trading indicators. The copier trader can follow professional traders to replicate all or just some of their trades. The trades can also be automated.
List of Top Copy Trading Platforms
Enlisted below are some notable copy trading apps:
- 3Commas
- NAGA
- eToro
- FX2
- OKX
- TradingFunds
- AvaTrade
- B2Broker
- ZuluTrade
- Forex Copier
- Duplitrade
- FBS
- FXTM
- Duplikium
Comparison of Some Popular Copy Trading Apps
Copy trading app | Minimum deposit | Leveraged? | Fees/ charges | Our rating | Website |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
3Commas | $1 | Yes | $22 to $74 per month | 5/5 | Visit |
NAGA | $50 | Up to 1,000x | 0.1 pips spreads. | 5/5 | Visit |
FX2 | No | Yes | Starting at a one-time fee of $125 for a $10000 funded account. | 4.5/5 | Visit |
OKX | No minimum | Up to 100x for BTC; others 50x | 0.080%/0.060% (taker/maker) to 0.1%/0.08% (taker/maker). | 4.7/5 | Visit |
TradingFunds | -- | -- | Starts at $199 refundable registration fee | 4.5/5 | Visit |
AvaTrade | $100 | Yes | •$100 account opening. •$50 fee for inactivity. •$100 administration fee after 1 year of inactivity. | 5/5 | Visit |
B2Broker | $20,000 | Yes | •$2,000 monthly. | 5/5 | Visit |
ZuluTrade | $1 to $300. | No. | •Fees $21 per investor per month. •Spreads from 0.6 pips. | 4.5/5 | Visit |
Forex Copier | Not available. | Yes. | •Software licensing from $149 to $349. | 4.5/5 | Visit |
Detailed review:
#1) 3Commas
Best for Traders who want highly capable professional tools usable by beginners.
3Commas is a platform that provides users with basic to advanced bot trading. Users can select from 21 highly customizable bots and deploy them across 16 crypto exchanges. It allows one to run multiple instances of trading bots, and they can copy trades of professional traders and integrate the strategies into the bots they are running.
With 3Commas, users can monitor their crypto portfolios, set them to rebalance automatically or via a bot, rebalance them manually, and monetize them as they want. They can, for instance, connect all the wallets they have on various exchanges and monitor the performance of the portfolios while deciding how they want to invest in each coin.
You can also create a portfolio of your favorite coins from the dashboard. You can name the portfolio the way you want, connect a preferred exchange that you want to use, add or remove tokens from the portfolio, and determine the ratio of each of the coins making up the portfolio.
Features:
- Over 330,000 DCA bots running monthly
- 10,583 new users turned a profit their first month over the past year
- 3commas DCA bots have ready-to-use strategies, so you don’t have to wait long to get started.
- You can access the analytics of your portfolio wherever you are and even start new trades with our mobile app on iOS and Android.
Minimum investment: $1
Fees/Charges: No fees or charges for trades. $22 to $74 per month for three levels of paid subscription plans.
#2) NAGA
Best for social trading with public social media.
This platform allows users, especially beginners, to copy trades of over 9,000 advanced users or strategy providers who are carefully and strictly selected through multiple selection stages. From the Most Traded tab, one can see the most traded financial instruments on the platform and by clicking a star beside them, add them to their favorite instruments.
As far as copy trading is concerned, the platform lets you study statistics of trades and traders so you can determine who to copy.
The parameters include profitability, whether the trader is buying or selling, the number of pips, take profit orders, stop-loss orders, etc. you can see how many people are following them, their win rate, who they follow, profile and loss profile, their profile visitors, and who they are copying.
Features:
- Education and research tools. Video courses before you start copying trades.
- Withdraw methods include bank transfers, bank cards, Sofort, Neteller, Skrill, and cryptocurrencies.
- Allows users to trade over 1000 financial instruments.
- Strategy providers can earn income.
- As you copy the trade, you can adjust the investment amount and other details.
- You can also follow industry news, find information published by broker’s public channels, and message or chat with other traders, hence, it works much like a social network too.
Minimum investment: $250.
Fees/charges: 0% commission. CFD on shares is charged 0.2% per lot to copy trade while those on ETFs 0.1% per lot.
Spreads: Starts at 1.0 pips but the average spread is 2.5 pips.
#3) eToro
Best for social and copy trading.
eToro supports trading and investing in crypto in addition to sending and managing. With it, you can trade 20+ cryptocurrencies for fiat and use multiple payment methods to buy, sell, or withdraw. These include debit and credit cards, bank accounts, PayPal, Sofort, Rapid Transfer, Skrill, Wire Transfer, Neteller, WebMoney, etc.
It is the largest and most popular copy trading platform in the world.
Features:
- Mobile iOS and Android, as well as web and PC platforms.
- Copy investment and trading strategies from other users.
- 100k virtual portfolio when you sign up.
- “Limited time offer: Deposit $100 and get a $10 bonus”
Disclaimer: eToro USA LLC; Investments are subject to market risk, including the possible loss of principal.
#4) FX2
Best for Live Trading Capital.
FX2 is a platform that arms traders with the tool and data they need to trade in whatever they want in their preferred trading method. What really makes FX2 appealing to traders is the fact that they offer real/live capital for traders to start with. Most prop trading firms arm their traders with demo accounts but not FX2.
You’ll be able to trade on a live account with a real track record upon passing a brief evaluation test. You’ll be able to seek more funding as well. We also like how relaxed the trading rules are on FX2. There is limitation on time duration. The platform allows weekend holding as well news trading, thus making it easier for you to pass and secure funding.
Features:
- 85% profit split
- No stop losses needed
- One stage evaluation
- Funded accounts up to $200,000
- Quick Payouts
Minimum Investment: NA
Fees/Charges: You’ll need to pay a onetime fee of $125 to start a minimum $10000 funded account. The intermediate $25000 funded account will cost you a onetime fee of $315. The professional $50000 funded account will cost you a onetime fee of $500.
The professional $100000 funded account will cost you a onetime fee of $900 while the master $200000 Master funded account will cost you a onetime fee of $1800.
#5) OKX
Best for active spot and futures crypto traders.
OKX hosts several expert traders on its copy trading social platform who share their trading skills with others to earn an income. Beginner traders leverage the feature to earn from trading easily, quickly, and without advanced trading expertise.
This is not as easy as said since a beginner trader must spend some time to discover whose skills and strategies to cope even as crypto trading strategies themselves are not guaranteed in terms of returns. There will be days of profiteering and losing from copied trades. Nevertheless, it is a good place to start if you are unfamiliar with the skills to craft your trading strategies.
Besides, those who want (or are out to have) their trades copied do their best because it multiplies their earnings if as many people can profiteer from the copied trades.
Traders can view each other’s portfolio breakdown, transaction history, risk levels, profit, and losses and can – using such knowledge and metrics – copy their strategies. Expert traders can sign up as a lead traders and earn 12% in profit share from anyone who copies your trades.
Features:
- Trader leaderboards.
- Track, manage, and cancel copied trades.
- Real-time trader statistics and trade actions. This includes the trader’s win rate, as well as profit and loss charts.
- Information and knowledge base on copy trading and how to do it.
- No extra fees are charged beyond the regular fees for your trading tier (up to 0.1% taker and 0.08% maker).
- Contracts available for copy trading are BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT, ETCUSDT, XRPUSDT, SOLUSDT, ADAUSDT, DOGEUSDT, LTCUSDT, DOTUSDT, and EOSUSDT.
- There is a maximum number of traders who can copy a lead trader. A lead trader can provide 50 trades to copy each day. After this, it is not possible to copy trades anymore from the trader.
- Lead trader status can be revoked.
- Up to 100× leverage for BTC and 50% for others (ETH, XRP, SOL, ADA, DOGE, LTC, DOT, EOS, ETC). This is the same as regular trading.
- Spread protection of 0.5% when opening a position. Trade is not copied when and if the copy trader’s opening price exceeds 0.5% of the lead trader’s opening price.
- As a copy trader, you can set a limit on the amount per order to copy and a maximum amount for the trader to copy.
Minimum investment: No minimums.
Fees/charges: Active trading fee starts at 0.10% (taker) and 0.080% (maker) and decreases to 0.080% (taker) and 0.060% (maker) depending on the trading volume and amount of OKB held. VIP users enjoy a taker fee of between 0.080% and 0.020% (taker) and between 0.060% and 0.005% (maker).
Additional charges of up to 4% per transaction may be incurred when using instant payment methods like Visa and Mastercard.
#6) TradingFunds
Best for One-step evaluation to become a funded trader.
TradingFunds is a new prop trading firm in the market. It provides traders with the tech, infrastructure, and capital they need to trade in financial markets. In the very short time it has existed, the company is quickly gaining recognition for their professional development programs, competitive payout structures, and supportive community of traders.
TradingFunds doesn’t burder its traders with time pressure. You don’t have to adhere to strict minimum or maximum trading day rules. You are free to scale up your trading activities as soon as you hit your profit target. You can also easily withdraw the profits you make on a bi-weekly basis. There are absolutely no constraints on daily drawdown limits as well.
Features:
- Dashboard to track trading performance, account balance and easily withdraw profits
- Up to 90% profit split
- Live chat with experienced trader agents
- Withdraw profits on a bi-weekly basisBecome a funded trader with a single evaluation
Minimum Investment: $25000 provided by TradingFunds
Fees: Refundable registration fee of $199 for a minimum capital of $25000.
#7) AvaTrade
Best for professional and entry-level traders.
Founded in 2006, AvaTrade offers research and investor education in addition to the copy trading aspect. It is one of the safest platforms, given that it is highly regulated in tier 1 and 2 jurisdictions. The company offers five proprietary platforms, namely AvaTrade, WebTrader, AvaOptions, and social trading platforms ZuluTrade and DupliTrade.
It allows people to trade cryptocurrency and other assets through CFDs or contracts for differences that let users speculate on future market price movements. A user does not need to buy, hold, and manage crypto or portfolio directly, but just speculates on future price trends and earns profit as the difference.
Features:
- Desktop, web, and AvaTradeGo mobile app.
- Social trading works by letting new users follow, copy, and trade after the market moves of experienced traders. This reduces the learning curve and time-to-market entry. Let’s you trade on new assets and those you are unfamiliar with.
- Ask experts questions, have mentors and trading groups, discover trading strategies, discover expert traders.
- Automate social trading.
- Access to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Bitcoin Gold, EOS, Ripple, Dash, and Litecoin.
- Social trading features made possible through AvaSocial in partnership with Pelican Trading.
Minimum Deposit: $100.
Fees/charges: $100 account opening, $50 fee for 3 months inactivity, $100 administration fee after 1 year of inactivity.
Spreads: EUR/USD at 0.9 pips for entry-level accounts and 0.6 pips for professional traders.
Website: AvaTrade
#8) B2Broker
Best for institutional copy trading.
This copy trading platform lets users trade forex, CFDs, and cryptocurrency. As the name implies, it works mostly for B2B institutional trading and investing operations.
However, it also facilitates individual-based training and investing. The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Russia. It hosts brokers in different trading categories, including cryptocurrencies, forex, crypto exchanges, social trading, wealth management, and bonds/futures/stocks.
In the institutional B2B broker trading categories, there are liquidity providers, trading tools providers, white label solutions, CRMs, regulators, affiliate programs, and websites.
Regarding social trading, there are three categories supported by exchanges and brokerages–trading pools in which an individual can contribute and earn part of the trading profits, multi-account managers, and copy trading.
Further Reading => Most Popular Forex Trading Platforms of the Year
Features:
- MT4, cTrader, and X-Station desktop, mobile, and webtrader.
- Demo accounts.
- Customer support.
Minimum deposit: $20,000
Fees/charges: $2,000 monthly.
Spreads: From 0.00000 pips
Website: B2Broker
#9) ZuluTrade
Best for diversified automated copy trading.
ZuluTrade hosts over one million users from around the world and has a trading volume in excess of $800 billion. It was started in 2014 and is therefore very competitive to eToro with copy trading because there are many users with good proven records. ZuluTrade allows experienced traders to earn from sharing their trades with other users.
Those interested in copy trading on the platform can access the profile of other users, the amount of money they have opened for copy trading by other users following them, the amount of money held by those following them, and the annual ROI.
Features:
- $1 to $300. Crypto auto trading is possible with AutoTrade.
- Trade crypto, CFDs, forex, commodities, stocks, and over 40 other financial assets.
- UK-based retail clients cant trade crypto. Others can trade Bitcoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and XRP.
- The minimum trade is $1.
- Check profits made by each follower trader on any given followed trader.
- Supports MetaTrader 4 and 5.
- No leverage trading.
- iOS and Android apps in addition to the web platform.
- Automated social trading of crypto through ZuluTrade, scripts, and APIs.
Minimum deposit: $1 to $300 depending on the broker used.
Fees/charges: $21 per investor per month.
Spreads: From 0.6 pips.
Website: ZuluTrade
Further Reading => BEST Proprietary Trading Firms in the Market
#10) Forex Copier
Best for trading market signals.
Forex Copier lets you do remote and local copy trading. Both allow users to buy and sell signals from and to other users. Sellers of signals can also automate passive incomes.
It is a great tool if you want to organize a signal-providing community. In that case, you can have subscribers to your signals, and manage them such as deleting and setting their subscription expiry. You can use a lot multiplier in copy trading to multiply the trading volume of the copied trade.
According to the website, the platform is being used by 4,972 traders in 122 countries.
Further Reading => Most Popular Futures Trading Platforms of the Year
Features:
- Send signals from MT4 to MT5 terminals and vice versa.
- Use reverse copy trading mode to profit from a trader’s mistakes and limit loss exposure using reverse stop loss and take profit.
- Adjust opening and closing prices of copied trades.
- Filter to-be-copied orders in terms of size, pair, and number of orders.
- Demo trading.
- Copy time management.
- Leverage trading.
Minimum deposit: Not available.
Fees/charges: Software licensing: local copier $149, remote copier $349.
Spreads: Not available.
Website: Forex Copier
#11) Duplitrade
Best for dedicated signal trading.
Duplitrade connects people who are providing trading strategies or signals, with clients signed by their partner brokers. Hence, it allows these clients to trade assets with advanced and professional trading knowledge.
There are 12 brokers listed on the platform with which clients sign up to trade, including AvaTrade and Pepperstone. It supports auto copy trading of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum, EOS, Dash, and Ripple.
Regarding copy trading, a user can follow and duplicate actions of expert traders, adjust trade, set the proportion of a copied trade e.g. only 25%. The company makes money by charging an Introducing Broker (IB) fee on the brokers. The challenge is the high minimum amount needed to trade on the platform, which is $5,000 to be deposited into the user’s brokerage account.
Features:
- Automate copy trading.
- No monthly fees.
- No mobile apps are offered.
- Copy trade forex and CFDs in stocks, cryptocurrency, commodities, and indices.
- See other users you might want to follow, their profits, total trade amounts, weeks of trading, percentage wins, and the number of followers each of the users has.
Minimum investment: $5,000.
Fees/charges: No charges.
Spreads: Standard retail industry spreads are dependent on brokers.
Website: Duplitrade
Further Reading => Most Popular Options Trading Platforms to Look for
#12) FBS
Best for risk-free automated copy trading.
Although FBS has a web platform on which you can trade, copy trading is only available for mobile iOS and Android users. The copy trading platform is different from the other. The platform hosts 600 strategy providers from who you can copy trades.
It is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). The app has won many awards for broker, social, and copy trading. Clients can also use a VPS to automate their trades with the software.
Cryptos to be auto-copy traded on the platform include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Dash, and 5 others. The company also provides guides and trading information on trading strategies, short selling, scalping, risk management, leveraging, and other issues.
Features:
- The minimum investment for copying is 1 USD. Minimum deposit 1 USD.
- MT5 terminal support. MT4, MT5, FBS trader, and CopyTrade.
- Deposits and withdrawals through bank cards, Neteller, Skrill, and Sticpay.
- Auto copy trade forex, CFDs on stocks, indices, metals, and crypto.
- Copy trades are risk-free with an automatic stop loss of 10%. This feature is limited to one risk-free stop-loss order per trade for only three trades.
- Leverage 1:3000 for highest-level accounts. Leverage comes with negative balance protection to prevent blowing the account.
Minimum deposit: $1.
Fees/charges: 5% commission. Spreads 1.1. Bitcoin USD spreads are 30 pips. Overnight fees for swing and hold positions lasting longer than a day. Inactivity fees.
Spreads: From 1 pip
Website: FBS
#13) FXTM
Best for copy trading with investor education for starters.
FXTM is a leading forex and CFD copy trading platform. Having been founded in 2011, it is a dominant platform for copy and social trading. It hosts clients who are verified on broker platforms with which other people can social trade. Social trading lets you leverage trading signals and strategies and pay the sources. You pay the strategy providers if the trade makes any profits.
You can use FXTM Invest to search, view, and select traders that match your goals to copy trade them. You can select these traders based on the profitability, risk level, amount of funds they manage, and their returns.
You can also search based on a combination of these features. You then decide what amount you want to invest through them, then how to share the invested amount among different traders you want to copy.
Features:
- Demo trading.
- Support for MT4, Metatrader 5, and FTXM Trader platforms.
- iOS, Android, and Windows platforms.
- Auto copy trade through FXTM Invest or EAs.
- Social trade forex, indices, shares, spot metals gold and silver, shares CFDs.
- Tight spreads can be as low as zero pips.
- Leverage trading ratio ranging from 1:5 up to 1:1000 depending on asset category. 1:30 for forex pairs. Opening an account under an entity that supports leverages can boost these ratios to 1:400, 1:500, or even 1:1000.
- 50% referral bonus and loyalty program.
- User education on trading different assets.
- Bitcoin spreads are 20 pips.
- Trade up to 4 crypto pairs.
- Demo trading account.
- User or investor research and education tools, including analyses, videos, podcasts, market commentaries, written content, and analyses.
- Customer support on a 24/5 basis.
Minimum investment: $50 for entry-level Micro account, and $500 for Advantage and Advantage Plus.
Fees/charges: Micro starter account has zero commission; Advantage level has $0.40 – $2 average commission depending on volumes; zero fees for Advantage Plus. Withdrawal fees $50. Inactivity fees apply.
Spreads: Tight spreads of 1.5 pips on a starter account. Advantage level has zero spreads, while Advantage Plus has 1.5 spreads.
Website: FXTM
#14) Duplikium
Best for cross-platform and multiple account copy trading.
Duplikium is a cloud-hosted tool that lets you copy trades even with multiple accounts created with different trading platforms like CTrader and MetaTrader4.
You can also copy trades with multiple broker accounts. Being the best for cross-platform copy trading, it allows retail and corporate platforms to best serve their clients who or when they request specific accounts like LMAX accounts.
However, it also supports MT4 accounts, cTrader accounts, and FXCM accounts, in addition to LMAX accounts.
Features:
- Partial closures and other risk management tools.
- Alerts – SMS and email.
- Reverse trading automatically such that if the main broker account you are copying takes a risky buy, you can take the other side of that position.
- Regulated brokers.
- Split your investments into different brokers.
- Trade your capital and that of multiple prop firms such as MyForexFunds to get the most out of your trades.
Minimum investment: Not available.
Fees/charges: Pay per account, for instance, 10 accounts for £120 per month. The prepaid option has no monthly commitment. Host your cloud trade copier on an Equinox Data Centre Server for an additional £49.
Spreads: Not available.
Website: Duplikium
Conclusion
This tutorial dwelt on copy trading apps. The best apps are those that allow you to leverage trades, trade risk-free, sell signals, and have the least commission and tightest spreads.
AvaTrade has huge benefits as a low deposit and low fees copy trading app, unlike B2Broker. eToro and ZuluTrade are tried and tested options with low minimum deposits and allow users to invest in a wide range of financial assets.
Research Process:
- Tools previously shortlisted for review: 11.
- Tools actually reviewed: 10.
- Time taken to research and write this tutorial: 15 hours