Are withdrawals from broker X processed instantly, or is there a certain delay?

If a broker is properly regulated, then it normally has to be able to prove to the regulator (if so requested by the regulator) that the funds left the broker’s account within 1 business day of the customer’s withdrawal instruction (but that could mean Monday afternoon, if the client made the withdrawal request on a Friday afternoon, broker‘s local time).

A broker that can’t do that, for any reason, will be in serious trouble, especially if it has any history of that, involving other customers).

Of course, the customer’s bank may have their own processing delays in addition, but those vary and nobody can blame the broker for them. What’s relevant is that the broker has to show a transfer from its side within 24 hours of the request.

Be aware that many so-called “regulators” aren’t real regulators at all, have no power or influence over brokers, and can’t actually protect customers or their funds at all .

This is why it’s such a big and important issue, and can’t be stressed often enough (as in the Babypips School pages), and why so many other things depend on it.

The ones recommended in forums - also on broker review sites (another name for “affiliate link-farms”) and in Youtube - are often the ones that pay people by the post for favourable web comments.

As long as you use any broker where your account is regulated by a proper, orthodox, mainstream regulator, that actually IS a regulator, everything else is less important, but if you started off without making that your top priority, you’d be making a big mistake.

My choice of broker - and anyone else’s - probably isn’t relevant to you, anyway.

Which one will be best for you will depend on your location, by which regulator your account will be regulated, and other issues like the range of instruments, trading hours, your trade durations, the spread variability and so on. Nobody can advise you well without knowing all that. Beware of people who try to, because that way you may be dealing with an “incentivized recommendation” and many of those involve brokers who - often for good reasons - have some difficulty getting new customers without them.

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