Forex spreads may be converging toward zero, but the same cannot be said for gold. BestBrokers.com data shows substantially greater differences between brokers when traders move from highly liquid EUR/USD into XAU/USD, providing an indication of where CFD companies still have considerable room to compete on price.

In BestBrokers’ live cTrader testing, Fusion Markets and FP Markets recorded average gold spreads of 9 pips. BlackBull Markets averaged 12 pips, FxPro 17.03 pips, IC Markets 19 pips and Pepperstone 23 pips.

That creates a range of 14 pips between the cheapest and most expensive observed averages. Pepperstone’s 23-pip spread was approximately 2.56 times the 9-pip average recorded at Fusion Markets and FP Markets.

The mean across the six brokers was approximately 14.84 pips. Fusion and FP Markets were therefore roughly 39% below the group average, while Pepperstone stood about 55% above it.

The contrast with EUR/USD is notable. Across the same six brokers, average EUR/USD spreads ranged from 0.03 to 0.48 pips. Gold therefore displays much greater absolute dispersion in quoted trading costs.

This has important consequences for the economics of the CFD brokerage industry.

Major forex pairs benefit from extremely deep underlying liquidity and fierce competition between liquidity providers. That makes it increasingly difficult for brokers to maintain large markups without becoming visibly uncompetitive.

Gold is different. Although XAU/USD is one of the most heavily traded CFD instruments, the spread remains wide enough for pricing differences between brokers to be commercially significant.

This also means that traders cannot assume that a broker with excellent forex pricing will automatically offer the tightest conditions on every other asset class. The broker that wins the EUR/USD comparison may not necessarily lead in gold, indices or other CFDs.

BestBrokers.com monitors this distinction through its live broker spread tracker, which records spreads approximately every five minutes and reports daily averages alongside the tightest and widest individual prints.

The distinction between averages and minimums is particularly relevant for gold because spreads can expand sharply during periods of lower liquidity or elevated market risk. A broker advertising an attractive minimum gold spread may still produce substantially higher trading costs during other parts of the day.

For the brokerage industry, the figures point to a two-speed market. Pricing on major forex pairs has become extremely compressed, while CFDs such as gold continue to give brokers more room to differentiate.

That may make gold spreads a more revealing competitive benchmark than EUR/USD alone.