The short answer: the minimum is not the number
Search this question and you will mostly find broker minimums, because they are easy to quote and flattering to publish. Among the five brokers we rank, the minimums are $0 at Base Markets, ActivTrades and Pepperstone, $5 at XM, and $20 at Capital.com.
Those numbers tell you what a broker will *accept*. They do not tell you what will actually survive contact with the market. The honest answer is that a few hundred dollars is a more realistic starting point, and the reason has nothing to do with broker policy — it is arithmetic.
Minimum deposits compared — the floor, not the recommendation
| Broker | Min deposit | Spreads from | Micro lots | Free signals? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base Markets | $0 | 0.0 pips | Yes | Yes — with $400 deposit |
| ActivTrades | $0 | 0.5 pips | Yes | No — paid subscription |
| XM | $5 | 0.6 pips | Yes | No — paid subscription |
| Pepperstone | $0 (≈$200 sensible) | 0.0 pips | Yes | No — paid subscription |
| Capital.com | $20 | 0.6 pips | Yes | No — paid subscription |
Why position sizing decides your real minimum
Serious risk management caps the loss on any single trade at 1–2% of the account. That single rule is what turns a deposit into a usable trading balance, and it is what makes very small accounts impractical.
Run the numbers. On a $100 account, 1–2% risk means risking $1–2 per trade. On a typical gold or major-pair setup with a stop 30–50 points away, the position size required to risk only $1 is below what many instruments will let you trade — and even where it is possible, the profit on a winning trade is measured in cents. On a $500 account, the same rule gives you $5–10 of risk per trade, which is workable at micro-lot sizing. On $1,000, you have genuine flexibility.
This is why the honest answer is a range rather than a number: under about $200 you are constrained by lot sizes; between $200 and $500 you can trade properly but with thin margin for a losing streak; above about $500 the arithmetic stops fighting you. None of that is a promise about returns — it is about whether the mechanics work at all.
Micro lots: the feature that makes small accounts possible
A standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency. A mini lot is 0.10 of that, and a micro lot is 0.01. Micro-lot support is the single most important account feature for anyone starting small, because it is what lets you size a position to a 1–2% risk instead of being forced into an oversized trade.
All five brokers we rank support micro lots, so this is not a differentiator between them — but it is worth verifying on any broker you consider outside this list. A broker that only permits mini or standard lots effectively raises its own minimum by an order of magnitude, regardless of what the deposit page says.