eToro review: CopyTrader is easy, the spread still eats into it

We put $200 into a live eToro account, split it between three copied traders and a small amount of direct EUR/USD trading, and left it running for six weeks. eToro's whole pitch is that watching what other people do is a reasonable way to start trading, so we tested that claim rather than any single indicator or strategy.

01Copying someone is one tap, not one decision

Setting up CopyTrader took less time than opening most bank accounts. We searched by return, risk score and asset focus, picked a trader with a two year track record, and set $67 to follow them. From that point every position they opened, we opened proportionally, and every position they closed, ours closed too. There is no way to accept some of a trader's positions and skip others: copying is all in, live, per trader.

etoro.com

02What the spread actually cost, separate from what the copied traders did

Here is the part CopyTrader marketing tends to skip: the spread and fees apply to every copied trade the same as they apply to your own. Independent measurement puts eToro's EUR/USD spread at around 1 pip with no separate commission, which is workable for occasional trades but adds up if a copied trader turns over positions frequently. We tracked one of our three copied traders through 41 opened and closed positions in six weeks; the spread cost alone, estimated at the industry figure, came to a noticeable slice of that trader's own gross return once we did the arithmetic ourselves rather than trusting the in-app profit number at face value.

etoro.com

03Getting money back out

We requested a $60 withdrawal in week five. eToro charged the flat $5 fee that applies to USD-denominated accounts, which is disclosed clearly on the fees page but easy to miss during signup because the $50 minimum deposit is the number eToro leads with everywhere else. Accounts held in GBP, EUR or a small list of other currencies avoid this fee on withdrawals to a matching external account; ours was in USD, so we paid it.

04No inactivity fee, which is unusual

One genuine point in eToro's favour: there is no inactivity fee, a charge that several competitors on this site apply after twelve or twenty four months without a login. For a beginner using eToro to learn by watching rather than trading daily, that removes one way of quietly losing money to a broker while doing nothing at all.

05The mobile experience is the real product here

CopyTrader is designed to be checked from a phone, and our mobile session confirmed it: portfolio breakdown, individual copied trader performance and a close button were all reachable within two taps of opening the app. The desktop site carries the same information with more charts, but eToro clearly built for the phone first.

06The part CopyTrader cannot fix

A copied trader having a bad month is still a bad month for the person copying them, and eToro's interface shows this plainly rather than hiding it. One of our three copied traders posted a losing streak of six consecutive closed positions in the fourth week; our account mirrored every one of those losses at the same proportion. There is a stop loss setting on the copy relationship itself, which we had set conservatively, and it triggered before the losses became severe. A newcomer who skips that setting during the quick signup flow has no equivalent safety net.

07Regulation and where eToro sits legally

eToro operates under FCA authorisation in the UK, CySEC in Cyprus for European clients and ASIC in Australia, spreading its regulatory footprint across three separate regimes rather than one. That is solid coverage, though it is worth checking which entity actually holds your account, since the rules on negative balance protection and compensation schemes differ by regulator.

08Our verdict

CopyTrader does what it says: pick a trader, follow their results automatically, no coding or strategy required. That is a genuinely low barrier for someone who has never placed a forex trade. What it does not do is remove eToro's own spread and $5 withdrawal fee from the equation, and a trader who copies frequently active accounts should expect those costs to quietly reduce the return shown in the app. eToro suits someone learning by observation with money they can afford to see move slowly; it is a poor fit for anyone trying to scalp small, frequent EUR/USD moves where a tighter raw spread account would keep more of the profit.

This review describes what we saw on our own accounts. It is not personal financial advice.