Eightcap, Forex.com and Pepperstone tie for the top of the inaugural index at 66.0 / 100

Eightcap, Forex.com and Pepperstone tie for the top of the inaugural EU Broker Execution Index at 66.0 out of 100. This first issue scores two live inputs only: each broker's published EUR/USD spread and the number of tier-1 regulator licences (FCA, BaFin, CySEC, ASIC and peers) directly held by the entity serving EU retail clients. The brokers at the top pair a raw/ECN-account advertised spread at or near 0.0 pips with three or more tier-1 licences. Where scores are level, the licence count is the separator, not the advertised spread — several brokers advertise the same near-zero raw spread, so regulatory completeness does the ranking work below the top tie.

Five of the seven methodology categories — uptime, MiFID II RTS 28 slippage, audited capital adequacy, compensation-scheme membership and public regulatory actions — are held at a documented neutral value for every broker this issue, because the capture pipeline behind them is not yet live. That is stated plainly rather than filled with estimates: no live spread snapshots and no uptime probes were taken for this window, so those observation counts are zero. The index therefore ranks on regulatory standing and advertised pricing until RTS 28 ingestion and live spread capture begin. Readers weighing execution quality should treat this issue as a regulatory-completeness and advertised-cost baseline, not a slippage measurement.

For a trader deciding now, the practical read is narrow: a top-quartile EBEI position here means the broker advertises a tight EUR/USD spread and holds multiple tier-1 licences — for EU clients, a CySEC or BaFin licence carries ICF/EdW investor-compensation cover that an offshore-only book does not. It does not yet certify real-world fill quality; for that, check each broker's own RTS 28 best-execution report, which regulated EU entities must publish. The next issue widens the scored inputs as the data pipeline comes online.