also: IB programme, introducing broker, affiliate programme, rebate programme
An Introducing Broker programme pays a person or site out of a broker's own revenue for each client it refers — as a one-off per funded account, a recurring share of every lot they trade, or both.
When a website sends you to a broker and you deposit and trade, the broker pays that website a cut of what it earns from your trading. The payment comes out of the broker's revenue, not out of an extra charge added to you — but it does mean the site has a reason to prefer one broker over another.
Almost every comparison site, EA catalogue and review channel in this industry is paid this way. Knowing how the payment works is what lets a reader tell a recommendation from an advertisement wearing its clothes.
Read a broker recommendation as one input and verify it against facts that do not depend on who is paying whom.
| Range | What it means |
|---|---|
| Disclosed, and the broker is checkable on regulator and conditions | Normal and workable. Verify the conditions and use the recommendation as a shortlist. |
| Disclosed, with a rebate offered | Fine if the rebate nets against total cost rather than counting as free money. |
| Not disclosed anywhere | The incentive still exists. Assume it and verify everything independently. |
| Paid on client losses, or requesting account access | The interests are opposed, or the request is not something any programme needs. |
It does not. The introducer takes a share of the broker's own revenue on the account, and the spread and commission you are quoted match a direct account. The problem these programmes create is an incentive for the recommender, not a surcharge on the trader.
Disclosure makes the incentive visible; it does not cancel it. The right response is to verify the recommendation against the broker's published conditions and regulator — which is exactly what disclosure exists to prompt.
There is no such rate. Not one of the six broker records here carries a payout figure marked as confirmed with the broker, and the recorded ceilings differ by nearly threefold. A page quoting a single tidy number for the industry invented it.
Ranking bias is the one everybody looks for. The cheaper bias is omission: a broker the site cannot be paid for never enters the comparison, and nothing on the page says so. Check whether the brokers you already know appear at all before you read the order they sit in.
Every one of these six brokers carries its commercial terms in the same structured fields as its trading conditions. Those fields went into the schema in June 2026, to describe brokers rather than to make a point about referral programmes, so laying them side by side is a reading rather than a claim.
| Broker record | One-off per referred client | Recurring per traded lot | Confirmed with the broker |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exness | up to $1,850 | ~$0.87 | no |
| FXGT | ~$1,600 | ~$1.43 | no |
| HFM | $150–650 | a percentage, not a per-lot rate | no |
| TitanFX | none standing | ~$0.80–1.25 | no |
| AXIORY | up to $1,000 | ~$1.20–1.50 | no |
| XM | up to $1,000 | $90 (lifetime VIP tier) | no |
Read the right-hand column first. Each record carries a confirmation flag for its payout figure, and it reads false on all six — the party that would be paid cannot state its own rate, which is the best reason to distrust any article quoting one tidy figure for the industry. The left column says it differently: for the identical act of introducing one client, the recorded ceiling spans $650 to $1,850, and one broker of the six offers no standing one-off at all.
The two shapes look interchangeable and are not. A one-off settles as soon as the account funds and qualifies — on one record that means a $10 first deposit plus a single trade, on another two lots plus sixty days. After that the recommender has been paid in full and holds no stake in whether the broker suited you. A per-lot share pays nothing at signup and then pays for years, aligning the site with your retention and against your restraint.
Three records state both rates as per-client and per-lot figures. Divide one by the other and the crossover comes out in lots:
The other three do not divide cleanly: HFM records a percentage rather than a per-lot rate, TitanFX no standing one-off at all, and XM’s $1,000 against a lifetime VIP $90 a lot would cross in eleven — a differently denominated tier.
At twenty lots a month those crossovers land roughly three to nine years out. The same account returns about $209 a year at $0.87 a lot, against a one-off of up to $1,850 that can settle in its first month. Neither deal is dishonest, but they buy the recommender’s attention for very different lengths of time.
Set the per-lot figure against what the trade costs you. Exness’s own published terms put a Raw round-turn at about $8 all in — sub-pip raw spread plus $3.5 a side — against a recorded share of about $0.87, roughly a ninth of it. The referral divides that $8 rather than adding to it.
To place yourself on that crossover you need your own volume, and MetaTrader 5
gives it two ways. Toolbox → History carries a Volume column, and totalling it
over the period the tab covers gives lots traded — provided the tab is grouped by
positions, since the deals view lists the entry and the exit separately and
doubles the figure. For an EA you have not run live yet, the Strategy Tester
report states Total Trades: and Total Deals: as separate lines.
Those two lines are where “per lot” quietly turns ambiguous. A round turn is two
deals in MT5 — one in, one out — so a report showing Total Trades: 50 shows
Total Deals: 100 beside it, and partial closes add deals without adding trades
(the backtest report guide works
through the rest of that block). A programme quoting “$0.87 per lot” is quoting a
rate whose denominator neither the broker’s own terms nor the terminal settles: one
round turn, or each side of one. On the figures above, the same $1,850 is either
2,126 round turns away or 1,063 — years apart on a retail account, and not one of
the six records says which it means.
The same terminal settles the other question. Market Watch → right-click the symbol → Specification carries Contract size, Spread and Swap long/short for the account you will actually trade, which is the version of the conditions no recommendation can talk you out of.
On a site paid by referrals, the ordering is rarely where the bias sits. A comparison sorted on a hand-set display field can look neutral while another list on the same site — the one a reader is nudged from — runs revenue first. The table you compare in is not always the list you are nudged from.
The more interesting bias sits upstream of both. A listing that drops any broker without a working referral link changes the candidate set, not the ranking: nobody tilts anything, and the shortlist simply moves.
Two things here survive checking from outside the page, and they are the two worth checking on any site that recommends a broker. First, whether the disclosure says which surface the payment moves — a page admitting it is paid but not where it steers has told you half. Second, whether the brokers you already know appear in the comparison at all, because omission leaves no trace on the page that omitted them.
Cost is what a recommendation should be checked against, so start with spread and the total round-trip cost it feeds, then execution model for how orders fill and through whom. Negative balance protection and restricted jurisdiction cover the two account facts that decide whether a broker is usable at all, whoever introduced you, and an expert advisor supplies the per-lot volume the whole arrangement is denominated in.
