EightCap Editorial Standards

A standard-lot round turn on GBP/USD at EightCap's Raw account costs roughly USD 7.00 in commission, plus the spread you cross on entry and exit. That single number is the reason this page exists. Our editorial standards are built around pricing out a concrete trade before we comment on anything else.

We are an independent editorial team covering forex and CFD brokers for Australian readers. EightCap does not pay us for coverage, and nothing on this site is approved by EightCap before publication. What follows is how we decide what gets written and what gets cut.

How We Price A Trade First

Every review starts with a cost model, not a feature list. We take a standard position size, a realistic holding period, and work out the full cost to you: spread, commission, and any financing or swap charge if the trade runs overnight.

For EightCap specifically, the published structure is straightforward enough to model:

The nuance most traders miss is that a "commission-free" account is not automatically cheaper. On a 1-lot GBP/USD trade, USD 7.00 round turn on Raw equals 0.7 pips of cost. If the Raw spread is 0.1 pips and the Standard spread is 1.0, Raw wins by 0.2 pips. If you trade 0.1 lots, that gap narrows fast, and on small size the Standard account often comes out ahead. That is arithmetic, not opinion.

Where Our Numbers Come From

We use primary sources where they exist. For the Australian entity, that means regulatory filings and the broker's own Financial Services Guide, not third-party review aggregators.

Eightcap Pty Ltd is regulated by ASIC under AFSL 391441, authorised to provide OTC derivatives and foreign exchange products to retail and wholesale clients in Australia. That licence number is checkable on the ASIC register, and we do check it. Where a claim cannot be traced to a primary document, we either drop it or label it clearly as unverified.

If a claim only exists on an aggregator page, it does not make it into a review. That rule costs us lines of copy. It also stops us repeating someone else's error.

A Real Cost Comparison

Account choice aside, the instrument you trade changes the cost more than the account type does. The breakdown for the Australian retail client, using ASIC's leverage caps as the risk frame:

Those caps come from ASIC's product intervention rules and apply to retail clients only. Wholesale clients sit outside them, which is worth knowing if a broker offers you wholesale categorisation - the leverage goes up, and so does the speed at which a bad position hurts.

Standards For What We Skip

Plenty of broker content is not worth your time, and we try not to add to the pile. These are the things we leave out of a review, even when they would pad the word count:

• Bonus and deposit promotion tables, unless a promotion is verifiable and live for the region
• Bonus-hunting angles, since ASIC prohibits trading credits and rebates for retail CFD clients
• Platform screenshots with no pricing context attached
• Copy-trading pitch pages that do not disclose the underlying cost structure
• Anything sourced only from an affiliate-driven comparison site

If a broker's only selling point is a promotion, that tells you something about the product. EightCap's group runs no deposit bonus, which is consistent with the ASIC rules the Australian entity operates under.

What We Get Wrong

We are not a regulator, and our reviews are not audits. Two limitations matter for how you read anything on this site.

First, pricing changes. Spreads widen around news, rollover, and thin liquidity sessions. The 1.0 pip figure on the Standard account is a starting point, not a promise that holds at 3am on a Sunday. Second, third-party review material is mixed by nature: sources describe EightCap's support as responsive but vary on support hours, so we treat those claims cautiously rather than repeating them as fact.

What To Weigh Before Choosing

If you are comparing EightCap against the wider field of international brokers, the criteria that actually separate a good broker from a bad one are not the ones in the ad copy.

• A licence you can verify yourself on a regulator's public register
• Client money held in segregated accounts, stated in the client agreement
• Total cost disclosed per instrument, not just a headline spread
• A track record long enough to cover more than one market cycle
• Support you can actually reach during your trading hours

EightCap scores reasonably on the first, third, and fourth of those for the Australian market: ASIC AFSL 391441 is a real, checkable licence, pricing is spread-based and disclosed, and the firm has operated from its Melbourne base since 2009. The second and fifth are where you should do your own reading, because segregation terms and support coverage vary by entity and are not something we can confirm from a marketing page.

Supervision Has Limits

ASIC oversight is meaningful. It brings leverage caps, margin close-out rules, negative balance protection, and a ban on inducements like trading credits for retail clients. It also means a licensed issuer must hold an AFS licence and follow the product intervention order in force.

The limit is that ASIC does not supervise your trading decisions, your position sizing, or your tax treatment. Forex and CFD gains in Australia are generally assessed under ordinary income tax principles administered by the ATO, and whether your activity sits on revenue or capital account depends on your own facts. No broker, and no review, can tell you which side of that line you are on.

Where EightCap Sits Alongside The Alternatives

Run the same cost model against three or four ASIC-licensed or FCA/CySEC-regulated competitors and you will see the actual differences clearly. Most of the time it is not a case of one broker being correct and the rest being wrong. It is a question of which cost structure matches the way you trade.

EightCap fits traders who trade larger positions, want raw spreads with transparent per-lot commission, and value a checkable ASIC licence they can look up themselves. At 1-lot or larger trades on major pairs, the USD 3.50 per side commission on Raw is a knowable, fixed cost that you can build into a strategy.

It frustrates traders who trade small size in AUD and want commission-free simplicity. At 0.1 lots, the USD 7.00 round turn on Raw is a meaningful drag on returns, and the Standard account's wider spread may cost less overall. That trader wants a broker whose pricing model is built around their trade size, which is a legitimate reason to compare alternatives.

The honest position is that EightCap is a defensible choice for a certain kind of Australian trader, and a less efficient one for another. Read the pricing tables on both accounts, run your own average trade through them, and let the number decide.