Every broker review on auBrokers.com follows the same process. We open an account, deposit real money, test the platform, check the fees against what's advertised, and write up what we find. No shortcuts, no guesswork, no copy-pasting from the broker's marketing page.
We think that's the only way to do it properly. Reading a broker's website tells you what they want you to believe. Actually using the platform tells you what it's really like.
This page explains exactly how we evaluate and score every broker we review, what criteria we look at, how much weight each one carries, and why. If you've ever wondered what's behind our ratings, this is where you'll find the answer.
Before we write a single word, we go through the same process for every broker.
First, we open a real account. Not a demo, not a press account provided by the broker's marketing team. A regular retail account, the same one you'd get if you signed up today. We go through the full verification process, upload the documents, and wait for approval just like anyone else would.
Then we deposit funds and start trading. We test the platform across different devices and browsers. We place orders, try out different order types, check execution speed, and see how the interface actually feels when you're using it under real conditions. We also contact customer support with a few test questions to see how responsive and helpful they actually are.
We record everything. Screenshots, fee calculations, response times, the lot. When we say a broker charges a particular fee or that their platform has a specific limitation, it's because we've verified it ourselves.
The whole process usually takes a few weeks per broker. Some take longer, especially if we need to test specific features like copy trading, managed portfolios, or CHESS sponsorship for ASX shares.
Every broker receives an overall score out of 5.0. That score is made up of five individual categories, each with a specific weight that reflects how much it matters to the average Australian trader or investor.
We didn't pick these weights randomly. They're based on what we've learned from years of testing brokers, reading user feedback, and understanding what actually makes or breaks the experience for most people. Fees and platform quality carry the heaviest weight because those are the two things that affect your daily experience the most.
| Category | Weight | What we assess |
|---|---|---|
| Fees & Costs | 30% | Trading commissions, spreads, overnight fees, currency conversion, withdrawal charges, inactivity fees, and any other costs that eat into your returns |
| Platform & Tools | 25% | Web platform, mobile app, charting tools, order types, execution speed, stability, and overall usability |
| Asset Range | 20% | Number and variety of tradeable instruments: shares, ETFs, forex, CFDs, crypto, commodities, indices, bonds, and options |
| Safety & Regulation | 15% | ASIC regulation, client fund segregation, insurance coverage, company track record, and investor protection measures |
| Customer Support | 10% | Available channels (phone, live chat, email), response times, quality of answers, and availability of self-help resources |
The overall score is a weighted average of these five categories. A broker that scores 4.0 in Fees (30% weight) and 5.0 in Customer Support (10% weight) will see the fee score influence the final number three times as much as the support score. That's deliberate. Saving money on fees affects every single trade you make. A slightly slow email response from support is annoying, but it doesn't cost you money every day.
This is the category we spend the most time on, and for good reason. Fees are the single biggest factor in your long-term returns, especially if you trade frequently or hold positions over longer periods.
We don't just look at the headline trading commission. We dig into everything: spreads on CFDs and forex pairs, overnight funding rates, currency conversion fees (a big one for Australians using brokers that operate in USD), withdrawal fees, account maintenance fees, and inactivity charges. Some brokers look cheap on the surface but quietly take money from you through half a dozen other fee types.
I remember testing one broker that advertised "commission-free trading" in big letters on their homepage. And technically, that was true. But the spreads were so wide that you were effectively paying more per trade than you would with a broker that charged a flat commission. That kind of thing is exactly why we calculate the total cost of a trade, not just the obvious fee.
We also compare like-for-like. A forex broker's fee structure looks very different from a share trading platform's, so we benchmark against competitors in the same category.
A trading platform is something you use regularly, sometimes daily. If it's slow, buggy, confusing, or missing basic features, that's a problem. This category covers the full experience of actually using the platform.
We test on desktop (web browser), mobile (iOS and Android where available), and any standalone applications the broker offers. We look at how intuitive the interface is, how quickly pages load, how easy it is to find what you need, and whether the charting tools are genuinely useful or just there for show.
Order types matter too. Can you set a stop-loss and take-profit at the same time? Are trailing stops available? Can you set price alerts? These seem like small things until you actually need them and they're not there.
We also check whether the broker supports MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5, since a lot of forex and CFD traders specifically want those platforms. If a broker offers their own proprietary platform, we compare it against MT4/5 in terms of functionality.
Different people trade different things. Some want ASX shares and Australian ETFs. Others are after US stocks, forex pairs, crypto, or CFDs on commodities. The wider the range of instruments a broker offers, the more flexibility you have.
We look at the total number of tradeable instruments, but also at how well each asset class is covered. Having 10,000 CFDs doesn't help much if you can't trade ASX shares directly. Similarly, a broker that only offers Australian equities won't suit someone who wants global market access.
We also check for specific features like fractional shares, CHESS sponsorship for Australian stocks, and whether crypto trading is available as real assets or CFDs only. These details can be deal-breakers depending on what you're looking for.
We only review brokers that hold an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) issued by ASIC, or that are otherwise authorised to offer financial services in Australia. That's our baseline. If a broker isn't properly regulated for Australian clients, it doesn't make it onto the site.
Beyond the licence itself, we look at how the broker handles client funds. Are they held in segregated accounts? Which banks hold the money? Is there additional insurance coverage in case of insolvency? What's the company's track record? Have they been subject to regulatory action in the past?
We also check whether the broker is publicly listed, since that means additional financial reporting and transparency obligations. And we look at parent company strength for brokers that are subsidiaries of larger financial groups.
A 15% weight might seem low for safety, but that's because every broker on our site already meets a minimum regulatory standard. The score in this category reflects how far above that baseline they go.
We test support by actually contacting them. We send questions via live chat, email, and phone (where available) and record how long it takes to get a response and how useful the answer is.
We're not looking for perfection here. A 24-hour email response time is fine for general questions. But if a broker claims to offer live chat and it turns out to be an AI chatbot that redirects you to FAQ pages, that's a minus. And if there's no phone support at all, that's worth knowing about, especially for traders who might need help during volatile market sessions.
We also look at the quality of self-help resources: knowledge base, FAQ section, educational content, and whether the help documentation is actually up to date.
Our broker comparison pages follow a similar structure to the reviews, but the focus is on direct, side-by-side evaluation. We take two brokers and compare them across the same five categories, highlighting where each one is stronger and where it falls short.
We try to be practical about it. Instead of just listing features in a table and leaving you to figure it out, we explain what the differences actually mean for you. A broker with lower spreads but higher withdrawal fees might still be cheaper overall if you trade often but withdraw rarely. That kind of context matters.
Every comparison includes a clear verdict at the end. Not a cop-out "it depends" answer (although sometimes it genuinely does), but our honest view on which broker is the better choice for different types of traders.
We know that not everyone wants to read through dozens of reviews to find the right broker. That's exactly why we built our Find Me a Broker tool.
It works like a filter. You tell us what matters to you, and we show you the brokers that match. You can set your preferences across a range of parameters:
The tool cross-references your selections against our full database of reviewed brokers and returns a filtered list, ranked by how well each broker matches your specific criteria. Every result links through to our full review, so you can dig deeper before making a decision.
We built this because we kept getting emails from people asking "which broker is best for X?" The answer always depends on the person, their goals and their budget. This tool gives you a personalised answer based on what actually matters to you, rather than a generic top-five list.
Broker reviews aren't a "write it once and forget it" job. Brokers change their fee structures, launch new features, update their platforms, and sometimes get acquired by other companies. A review from six months ago might already be out of date.
We revisit every review on a regular basis. At a minimum, we check the key data points (fees, minimum deposits, available assets, regulatory status) monthly and update anything that's changed. Bigger updates, like a full re-test of the platform or a revised score, happen whenever there's a significant change that warrants it.
Every review shows a "Last updated" date at the top so you can see exactly how current the information is. If you spot something that's out of date before we do, let us know through our contact page and we'll look into it.
Some of the brokers we review are also affiliate partners. We earn a commission when someone opens an account through one of our links. We're upfront about that, and you can read the full details on our Terms of Service page.
But affiliate relationships never influence our scores, rankings or editorial content. Every broker goes through exactly the same review process regardless of whether they're a partner or not. We've given low scores to affiliate partners and high scores to brokers we don't have a commercial relationship with. The review is the review.
If we ever feel that a partnership could compromise our objectivity, we'd rather drop the partnership than compromise the content. That's not a difficult decision for us.