What is ECN account?

What it means

The practical differences are visible in your trade history rather than in the brochure. ECN routing produces variable spreads that tighten in liquid conditions and widen in thin ones, occasional positive slippage, and no requotes. Dealing-desk execution produces steadier spreads, no positive slippage, and requotes during fast markets.

Why it matters

ECN is generally the better fit for automated trading, mainly because the execution behaviour is consistent. A system tested against variable-but-honest pricing will behave similarly live; a system tested on a feed that is being quoted rather than routed can behave very differently once conditions change.

What this changes in practice

There is one specific quirk worth knowing if you are automating on such an account: many ECN brokers reject orders that arrive with a stop loss and take profit attached, requiring protection to be set as a separate modification after the fill. This is why our engine sends orders with zero protection and immediately modifies — and why a bot written for a dealing-desk broker often fails on its first ECN order.