Advertised spread and the spread you actually get

Broker pages quote a spread. Your platform shows a different one. Neither side is lying, and understanding the gap is the difference between comparing brokers properly and comparing marketing copy.

What the advertised number usually is

Three conventions sit behind published spread figures, and pages rarely say which one they used.

A minimum. The tightest spread seen on that instrument, typically during the deepest part of the session. True, and reached for a small fraction of the day.

An average. Better, but an average over what period? A figure averaged across twenty four hours includes the quiet hours when spreads are widest, and one averaged across the London session excludes them.

A typical value. The vaguest of the three, and the one that cannot be checked.

None of these is dishonest on its own. The problem is comparing a minimum from one broker against an average from another and concluding something about which is cheaper.

What actually moves the spread you get

Session. Spreads are tightest when the market is deepest and widen outside those hours. The same pair can cost several times more at the wrong time of day.

News. Spreads widen around scheduled releases and can stay wide for minutes afterwards.

Rollover. Around the daily rollover, spreads on many instruments widen sharply for a short window.

The instrument. Metals, indices and energy behave nothing like major currency pairs, and a broker that is competitive on one may not be on another.

Your account type. This is the largest single factor and it is entirely under your control.

Measure instead of comparing claims

The way out is to stop reading numbers off pages and start reading them off the market.

Our [spread checker](/compare/spread) samples live from broker servers every five minutes across the instruments we track. A reading older than ten minutes is marked stale rather than presented as current, because a cost figure without a timestamp is a claim rather than a measurement.

That lets you do the comparison that actually settles it: the same pair, the same minute, across account types, side by side.

Two habits that make the comparison honest

Look at your hours. If you trade the London open, an overnight figure describes a market you are never in. Compare at the times you actually place orders.

Look at your pair. A broker competitive on major pairs can be ordinary on gold. One ranking across all instruments is a ranking of nothing in particular.

Spreads move continuously. Any figure written into an article is a snapshot, this one included, which is why we have not written one here.

Next

• [What a lot really costs, in three components](/bai-viet/real-cost-of-one-lot)
• [How to read a broker cost table without being misled](/bai-viet/how-to-read-a-cost-table)