Spreadex review: a family-run bookmaker turned spread betting broker

Spreadex is not a name most forex traders reach for first. It sits in St Albans, was built in 1999 as a sports spread betting shop, and only later grew a financial trading arm sitting next to the football and horse racing markets. We opened a live financial account to see whether that odd pairing still produces a broker worth using, or whether the sports betting roots explain why so few professional traders mention the firm.

01A bookmaker's business model applied to forex

Spreadex's own homepage splits visitors into two paths on arrival: sports betting or financial trading, both under the same "Est. 1999" badge. That split is not cosmetic. The firm holds an FCA authorisation (registration 190941) for the financial side and a separate UK Gambling Commission account for sports, and the two businesses share infrastructure and branding rather than running as fully separate companies. For a trader, the practical effect is that Spreadex's financial trading division is a division, not the whole company, which explains why its financial platform gets fewer updates than dedicated forex-only brokers.

02What EUR/USD actually costs

Spreadex quotes EUR/USD from 0.6 points and GBP/USD from 0.9 points, spread across more than 60 currency pairs, all inside a spread betting or CFD account with no separate commission on forex. Those minimums sit close to what IG and CMC Markets advertise on their own standard accounts, and our own EUR/USD fills during the London session landed within a few tenths of a point of that floor. The catch shows up outside forex: independent spread trackers list several of Spreadex's index markets, including the Dow and the DAX, sitting at or above the industry average, so a trader mixing currency pairs with index CFDs will not get the same relative value across the whole account.

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Stock CFDs carry their own charge on top of the spread: a 0.15% commission on trade value, capped at 3.5 points per trade. That is a normal structure for share dealing, but it means Spreadex's "commission-free" pitch applies to forex and not to the rest of the account.

03One platform, not five

Spreadex's answer to "which platform" is short: its own web terminal and its own app for iPhone, iPad and Android. There is no MetaTrader 4 or 5 support, no TradingView integration and no third party charting package on offer. We placed and closed several EUR/USD trades through the mobile app during testing and found order entry direct, with fills confirmed within a second in both directions. The absence of MT4 will matter to anyone who already runs custom indicators or expert advisors elsewhere, because none of that is portable to Spreadex. For a trader who has never used MetaTrader and does not plan to, one clean platform without a menu of alternatives to evaluate is arguably a strength rather than a gap.

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04The tax pitch, and its small print

The clearest reason to pick Spreadex over a CFD-only broker is tax. UK spread betting profits are exempt from capital gains tax and stamp duty, a status the firm states plainly and one that HMRC treatment currently supports for UK residents trading in a personal capacity. We are not going to tell any individual reader what that means for their own tax bill, because that depends on residency, total income and circumstances a review cannot know. What we can confirm is that the exemption applies to the spread betting product specifically, not to the CFD account Spreadex also offers, so choosing the wrong account type at signup removes the entire advantage.

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Deposits carry no minimum and the account itself has no monthly fee or inactivity charge, which lowers the bar to trying the tax-free structure without committing serious capital first.

05Our verdict

Spreadex earns its FCA licence and its EUR/USD pricing fairly: a 0.6 point floor with no separate commission is a real, competitive number, not a marketing minimum nobody actually gets. Where it loses ground is breadth. One platform, weaker index pricing than its forex numbers suggest and a company still organised around sports betting first mean Spreadex reads as a specialist tool for a specific UK trader rather than an all-round broker.

Someone who lives in the UK, wants to trade forex tax-free and does not need MetaTrader or a wide index selection gets real value here. A trader who splits time across currencies, indices and shares and wants consistent pricing across all three, or who already has an MT4 strategy to bring across, will find a broader multi-asset broker a better fit than Spreadex's narrower financial arm.

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