When it comes to long-term forex trading, the factor that often matters most isn’t spreads—it’s swap rates.

Of course, spreads should never be ignored. A broker with consistently wide spreads will eat into your profits over time. But for traders who hold positions overnight, or even for weeks and months, the cost of swaps (rollover fees) can have a far greater impact on your results than a fraction of a pip on the spread.

What you really want is a broker that offers favorable swaps: ideally, higher positive swaps when you’re on the right side of a currency pair, and lower negative swaps when you’re not. In other words, a broker whose overall swap structure works in your favor, rather than against you.

In this study, I’ll explain the role of swaps in long-term trading, the different types you’ll encounter, and highlight the best forex brokers for long-term trading based on their swap conditions and reliability.

Top Forex Brokers for Long-Term Trading (Based on Swap Scores)

After analyzing dozens of brokers, I narrowed the list down to three that stand out for long-term traders. What sets them apart is their overall swap conditions — a factor that can make or break your profitability if you’re a swing trader and hold positions overnight.
Here are the top three forex brokers for long-term trading, ranked by their swap scores:

What Is Swap in Forex?

A swap (sometimes called a rollover fee) is the interest adjustment that occurs when you hold a forex position overnight. In simple terms, if you keep a trade open past the daily rollover time, your broker either credits or charges you depending on the interest rate difference between the two currencies in the pair.

• If you earn interest, it’s called a positive swap.
• If you pay interest, it’s a negative swap.

Day traders rarely notice swaps because they close positions before the end of the trading day. But for long-term traders — swing traders, position traders, and especially those who hold trades for weeks or months — swaps can make a huge difference to profitability.

The reason swaps exist comes down to central bank interest rates. Every currency is tied to a country’s monetary policy. When you buy or sell a currency pair and hold it overnight, you’re effectively exposed to the interest rate gap between those two currencies.

For example:

• The U.S. Federal Reserve might set interest rates at 1.70% for the USD.
• The Bank of Japan could have rates as low as 0.10% for the JPY.

If you buy USD/JPY, you’re buying the higher-yielding currency (USD) against the lower-yielding one (JPY). As a result, you collect a positive swap, earning interest each day you hold the trade.

If you sell USD/JPY, the situation reverses — you owe the difference, and your account is charged a negative swap.

In short: every day that you keep a position open, you either earn or pay swap depending on the pair you’re trading and the direction of your position. For long-term forex trading, these costs (or benefits) accumulate and can outweigh even spreads and commissions.

What Is Rollover in Forex and When Does it Happen?

Rollover is the process where your broker closes and reopens open positions at the end of the trading day to apply swap charges or credits. This usually takes just a few minutes, during which the market may appear closed on your platform.

On most platforms (such as MT4/MT5), rollover happens at:

• 23:55 – 00:10 server time, or
• 5:00 PM – 5:15 PM EST, Monday through Friday.

You’ll notice this as the moment when a new daily candle appears on your chart in the standard time setting.

🔄 Triple Swap Wednesdays

One key detail many traders overlook is that Wednesdays carry a triple swap charge/credit on forex pairs. This is because weekends are included, so Wednesday’s rollover accounts for three days instead of one.

For long-term traders, this can add up:

• If your trade earns a positive swap, Wednesday is highly favorable.
• If your trade incurs a negative swap, Wednesday can be particularly costly.

Why Is Swap Important for Long-term Trading?

When traders talk about costs, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the spread. Scalpers and day traders in particular focus on paying as few pips as possible, since even small spreads can eat into short-term gains.

But for long-term forex trading, spreads aren’t the main issue. Swaps are.

📊 A Simple Example

Let’s say you’re a position trader, and your average trade lasts around 10 days. Your broker offers:

• EUR/USD spread: 0.2 pips
• Commission: $7 round turn = 0.7 pips
• Total cost at entry: about 0.9 pips (spread + commission)

Now, assume your broker charges a negative swap of –0.6 pips per day on EUR/USD.

If you open 1 standard lot (100,000 units):

• Spread + commission: $9 (paid once at entry)
• Swap: 0.6 pips × $10 per pip × 10 days = $60

🧮 What This Means for Long-Term Traders

At first glance, spreads and commissions seem larger. But as the days add up, swaps become the dominant cost:

• $9 once for spread + commission
• $60 over ten days in swap charges

In this case, the swap is nearly seven times more expensive than the spread.

📌 Takeaway

• For scalping or day trading, spreads and commissions are critical, since trades close the same day.
• For long-term trading — whether swing or position — swap rates can make or break your profitability.

That’s why, when choosing the best forex brokers for long-term trading, swap conditions deserve more attention than spreads.

How Can I Avoid or Reduce Swap Costs?

The truth is, the only way to completely avoid swap charges is to close your trades before the daily rollover. That’s why day traders and scalpers rarely worry about swaps.

But for long-term traders, avoiding swaps entirely isn’t realistic. Instead, there are ways to reduce their impact:

1. Choose Brokers With Favorable Swaps

Some brokers are simply more competitive than others when it comes to swap rates. If you want to hold trades overnight, the best strategy is to pick a broker that charges lower negative swaps and offers better positive swaps.

You could dig through every broker’s website and compare them yourself — but that’s time-consuming and often unclear. That’s why I analyzed over 100 forex brokers to find which ones actually offer the best swap conditions for long-term traders. You can see my shortlisted brokers in the table below.

2. Use Swap-Free (Islamic) Accounts

Another approach is to open a swap-free account. These accounts were originally designed for Muslim traders who cannot receive or pay interest due to Sharia law. In practice, many brokers make them available more widely.

Here’s the trade-off:

• You won’t pay daily swap charges.
• Instead, brokers usually add a fixed fee (sometimes called an “administration” or “maintenance” fee).
• Spreads are often wider compared to standard accounts.

Swap-free accounts can be a good option if:

• You’re a Muslim trader, or
• You’re a position trader holding trades for weeks or months, where daily swaps add up heavily.

For short-term holds (2–3 days), it’s usually better to stick with a broker that already offers competitive swaps, since swap-free account fees may end up costing more.

I’ve also written a separate guide on the best swap-free forex brokers, which you can find here → [link].

Best Forex Brokers for Long-Term Trading: Swap Comparison

Below you’ll find a comparison of the long and short swaps offered by different brokers on some pairs. This raw data is what I used to evaluate each broker’s suitability for long-term trading. You can also see which one offers the most positive swap rates and which one has the meost negative swaps — Click on swap headers to sort the table.

Brokers Positive and Negative Swap Rates

Best Forex Brokers for Long-Term Trading (Swap Scores)

To make the comparison easier, I built a scoring system that weighs both positive and negative swaps. This way, instead of just looking at numbers, you can see which brokers truly offer the most favorable swap conditions on different pairs and also overall.

Broker	eurusd Swap score	gbpjpy Swap Score	Gold swap score	Total Score
AMarkets	48.73	47.70	47.86	48.10
Fibo Group	49.38	45.99	47.85	47.74
StarTrader	49.09	45.90	46.15	47.05
HYCM	48.00	47.45	45.25	46.90
Alpari	48.69	45.47	46.21	46.79
Oanda	48.76	48.15	43.32	46.74
ICMarkets	48.08	46.67	45.31	46.68
Xchief	48.11	45.00	44.82	45.98
FXPro	48.31	43.75	43.84	45.30
LiteFinance	49.03	42.60	39.03	43.55
IFC Markets	46.99	44.65	32.40	41.35

Methodology: How I Identified Brokers With the Best Swaps for Long-Term Trading

With hundreds of forex brokers available, how can you tell which ones are truly suitable for long-term trading — specifically, which ones offer the most favorable swap rates?

Here’s the process I followed:

1. Broker Selection
   I started with a list of over 70 regulated forex brokers, focusing on transparency and reliability.
2. Collecting Swap Data
   Initially, I manually collected long and short swap rates from brokers’ websites or Platforms and entered them into Excel for comparison.
3. Building a Scoring Tool
   To streamline the process, I designed scripts and created a Swap Efficiency Score (SES) — a tool that evaluates both long and short swap rates to generate a single score representing how favorable a broker’s swaps are for long-term traders.

How to Find Brokers’ Swap Rates and Types

There are two main ways to locate swap rates:

1. Broker Websites – Many brokers display swaps in a dedicated section.
2. Trading Platforms – In MT4/MT5, right-click a currency pair in Market Watch → select Specification → view swap rates and type in the Contract Specification window.

Knowing the swap type is important for using the SES tool correctly.

What Types of Swap Rates Do Brokers Use?

Brokers calculate swaps in four formats:

1. Type 0: Pips
2. Type 1: Base currency
3. Type 2: Interest rate (%)
4. Type 3: Margin currency

To compare brokers fairly, I converted all swap types to pips. The SES tool allows you to select the type (0–3) for calculation.

For example, For swaps expressed as interest rates (%), you can use this simple formula:

Swap Rate (in USD) = (Interest Rate (%) × Contract Value) ÷ 360

Where:

• Interest Rate (%) → the swap rate shown by the broker.
• Contract Value → daily close price × contract size.
• 360 → the number of days used in the standard calculation.

Contract Sizes:

Crypto (e.g., BTC): usually 1

Forex: 1 lot = 100,000 units; 0.1 lot = 10,000; 0.01 lot = 1,000

Gold: typically 100

Example:
A broker shows the swap rate of EUR/USD short positions as 1.2%.

• Daily close price = 1.1751
• Contract size = 100,000

Step 1 – Find contract value:
1.1751 × 100,000 = 117,510

Step 2 – Apply formula:
(1.2% × 117,510) ÷ 360 ≈ 3.9 USD

Step 3 – Convert to pips:
Since 1 pip = $10 for a standard lot,
3.9 ÷ 10 ≈ 0.39 pips

👉 This way, you can standardize all brokers’ swap data into pips and compare them fairly.

🔻 Bottom Line

When it comes to long-term forex trading, swap costs matter far more than spreads. A broker with tight spreads but unfavorable swaps can eat away at your profits day after day, while a broker with balanced or positive swaps can significantly boost your returns.

That’s why I compared over 70 regulated brokers, standardized their swap rates, and created the Swap Efficiency Score (SES) to rank them fairly. The tables above highlight the brokers with the most favorable swap conditions, and you can also use the SES tool yourself to evaluate any broker’s swaps.

👉 If you’re planning to hold trades for days or weeks, choosing the right broker is not just a preference — it’s a strategy. Start with the brokers that ranked highest here, and always double-check swaps on the instruments you trade most.