We rank currency brokers on five criteria we can verify against a primary source: regulatory authorisation, published fees, minimum transfer size, service model, and Trustpilot score weighted by review volume. We do not rank on exchange rate margin, because no UK currency broker publishes one.

That last sentence is the most important thing on this website, so we have given it a section of its own below.

Last updated 14 July 2026.

Why does no currency broker publish its exchange rate margin?

The exchange rate margin is the difference between the interbank rate a broker buys currency at and the rate it gives you. It is where a currency broker makes almost all of its money, and it is the single number that determines what your transfer actually costs.

We checked the published pricing pages of all seven brokers in our comparison. Not one of them publishes a transfer margin. Wise is the only provider that discloses its rate basis at all, stating that it uses the mid-market rate and charges a separate upfront fee instead.

This matters because margins are quoted per transaction, in a phone call, after the broker knows how much you are moving and how much you know. Two customers can transfer the same amount on the same morning with the same broker and receive different rates. A published figure would remove that flexibility, so no broker publishes one.

You will see margin figures on other comparison sites, often presented as a range such as 0.2% to 1.0%. Those figures are estimates. They are not sourced from the brokers, because the brokers do not provide them. We will not print a number we cannot attribute, so our margin column says Not published seven times.

The practical consequence for you: the only reliable way to know a broker’s margin is to get a live quote from more than one broker on the same day, for the same amount, at the same hour. Rates move. A quote taken on Tuesday tells you nothing about Thursday. Ask two or three brokers to quote the same transfer within the same hour, and the spread between them is the only margin data that has ever been real.

What criteria do we score brokers on?

Criterion	Weight	How we verify it
Regulatory authorisation	Pass / fail	FCA reference number and permission type. A broker without FCA authorisation does not appear on this site at all.
Published fee transparency	25%	The broker’s own published pricing page. A broker that publishes a clear fee schedule scores above one that publishes nothing.
Trustpilot score, weighted by volume	25%	Trustpilot’s own profile page. We show the review count alongside every score, because 4.9 from 300 reviews is not the same claim as 4.9 from 9,000.
Service model	25%	Whether a dedicated dealer is provided, and whether transfers can be completed by phone. This matters more as transfer size rises.
Risk management tools	25%	Whether forward contracts and market orders are offered, verified on the broker’s own site.
Exchange rate margin	0%	Not scored. No broker publishes one. We will not estimate.

What sources do we accept?

Every figure on this site traces to one of four places: the broker’s own website, the Financial Conduct Authority Register, Companies House, or Trustpilot. We do not take figures from other comparison sites, including the ones that rank above us.

Where a broker does not publish something, we write Not published. We do not fill the gap with an estimate, an industry average, or a figure lifted from a rival’s table. An empty cell is more useful than a confident guess, because you can act on the knowledge that a broker will not tell you something.

Does any broker pay to appear higher in the table?

No broker pays us anything at all. We currently have no affiliate agreements and no commercial relationship with any firm in our table. If that changes, we will name the broker on our How We Make Money page and mark its row before you see it in the table.

Even then, ranking would not move, because ranking is set by the scored criteria above and every one of them is publicly checkable. That is deliberate. If our ranking rested on private judgement, you would have to take our word for it. Because it rests on public facts, you can reconstruct our table yourself and catch us if the order stops matching the scores.

How often is this data updated?

Trustpilot scores and review counts drift daily, so we recheck them monthly and date-stamp the table. Regulatory status, fees, minimums and service models change rarely, and we recheck them quarterly. Every page carries a visible last-updated date. If a figure on this site is older than its stated review period, treat it as stale and tell us.

Frequently asked questions

Why do other comparison sites publish margin figures if brokers do not?

Because an estimate fills a column and an empty cell does not. The figures are usually derived from a small sample of quotes, or repeated from another site that derived them the same way. They may well be in the right area. They are not sourced, and they should not be treated as pricing.

Is a broker with a higher Trustpilot score always better?

No, and review count is the reason. A 4.9 score from 355 reviews and a 4.9 from 9,805 reviews describe very different levels of evidence. We publish both numbers together for that reason, and we weight the score by volume rather than taking it at face value.

What does FCA authorisation actually protect?

Authorised payment institutions and electronic money institutions must safeguard client funds, keeping them separate from the firm’s own money. This is not the same as FSCS protection, which does not cover payment institutions. Authorisation means your money is segregated, not that it is government-guaranteed.

Should I use the broker at the top of your table?

Not necessarily. Our table scores brokers on criteria that apply generally. Your transfer has a size, a currency pair, a deadline and a risk tolerance that the table cannot know. Get live quotes from two or three of them within the same hour and compare what you are actually offered.

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Nothing on this website is a personal recommendation. We publish verifiable information about regulated firms so that you can make your own comparison. Exchange rates move, and past rates are not a guide to future rates.