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, execution-quality disclosure, 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 execution-quality capture 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 order execution policy; the standardised RTS 28 best-execution report that EU firms used to publish was abolished in the 2024 MiFID II review. The next issue widens the scored inputs as the data pipeline comes online.