The gap between buying and selling prices on major currency pairs has narrowed to just fractions of a pip, as online brokers compete to attract traders with increasingly aggressive pricing. Some platforms are now regularly displaying identical bid and ask prices during active trading hours, effectively reducing the spread to zero.
New data from BestBrokers.com highlights how competitive the forex market has become. Its live spread report, covering April 1 to September 30, 2026, analysed price quotes from eight brokers collected approximately every five minutes. The six-month dataset reveals substantial differences in pricing between providers, even as spreads on major currency pairs approach zero.
The spread represents the difference between the price at which traders can buy a currency pair and the price at which they can sell it. It is one of the main costs of forex trading, alongside commissions and potential overnight financing charges. A narrower spread generally means lower transaction costs, particularly for active traders who frequently open and close positions.
BestBrokers’ findings show that Fusion Markets recorded an average EUR/USD spread of just 0.03 pips, making it one of the cheapest brokers in the comparison. IC Markets followed with an average of 0.06 pips, while Pepperstone averaged 0.10 pips.
These figures illustrate how little room remains for spreads to fall on the world’s most actively traded currency pair. A pip represents a small movement in a currency’s exchange rate, and spreads of just a few hundredths of a pip indicate exceptionally tight pricing.
However, the most striking finding was not the low averages themselves, but the frequency of zero-spread observations.
Fusion Markets repeatedly displayed identical buying and selling prices during weekday trading sessions. This means traders could, at those specific moments, enter positions without paying a bid-ask spread, although commissions and other charges could still apply.
Zero-spread readings were also observed at FxPro, but BestBrokers identified an important distinction. Many of FxPro’s zero readings occurred around weekends, when the underlying forex markets were closed. Fusion Markets, by contrast, continued to show zero spreads when the analysis was restricted to weekdays.
The difference matters because a zero spread recorded during an active trading session is not equivalent to a zero quote displayed while a market is closed. The former reflects pricing available at a particular moment during market hours, although actual execution prices may still vary.
The findings also demonstrate why traders should look beyond advertised minimum spreads when comparing brokers. A platform may promote spreads starting from 0.0 pips, but that figure provides little information about how frequently such prices appear or how long they remain available.
Average spreads collected over an extended period provide a more useful picture of typical pricing conditions. Even then, the total cost of trading depends on the account type, commission structure and execution conditions.
For example, brokers offering raw-spread accounts frequently charge a separate commission per trade. Consequently, a trader using an account with an average spread of 0.03 pips could face higher overall transaction costs than someone using a commission-free account with a wider spread, depending on the applicable fees.
This is becoming increasingly important as the differences between headline spreads shrink.
Historically, forex brokers relied heavily on low spreads as a competitive advantage. Offering noticeably cheaper prices on EUR/USD or other popular currency pairs was an effective way to differentiate one trading platform from another.
Today, that advantage is becoming harder to maintain. When several brokers consistently quote spreads measured in hundredths of a pip, pricing differences become less obvious to customers, especially those trading smaller volumes.
That could push competition towards other aspects of the trading experience, including execution speed, platform reliability, commission rates, available instruments and customer support.
For retail traders, the development creates both opportunities and challenges. Extremely narrow spreads can reduce transaction costs, particularly for strategies involving frequent trades. However, comparing brokers based solely on their lowest advertised spreads may lead to misleading conclusions about their overall pricing.
The six months of pricing data collected by BestBrokers suggests that zero spreads are no longer confined to occasional promotional offers or exceptional market conditions. At some brokers, they have become a recurring feature of weekday forex trading.
As competition continues to narrow the difference between buying and selling prices, the question for traders is shifting from which broker advertises the lowest spread to which provider delivers the lowest total trading cost under real market conditions.