Market Makers vs ECN's

i understand

sorry my response was unhelpful

what i’m trying to explain (very tactfully and i hope now more helpfully!) is that your question is actually based on a mistaken premise, i.e. you are assuming (as many people do) that they’re two different things

the reality is that they are often not, or at least that it isn’t possible for a retail trader reliably to distinguish between them in any ways other than how and by whom they’re regulated

“ecn” stands for “electronic communications network” and all forex brokers have an electronic communications network, if they’re operating online, whether they are market makers or not, so the term doesn’t actually mean anything real at all

(just like the terms “ndd” and “stp”)

in practice, some brokers (often the not-well-regulated ones) make a big deal out of claiming that they’re “ecn brokers” rather than “market makers”, in the hope and expectation that their customers will thereby assume that the broker doesn’t hold the other side of their trade, i.e isn’t their counterparty, i.e. isn’t wanting them to lose because all trades are passed directly to a liquidity provider

sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t, sometimes the broker owns the LP anyway so it makes no difference

so in reality this often isn’t the case, even when they claim it is

some are truly ecn, others aren’t - you can’t tell which from their claiming to be “ecn” because the term doesn’t really mean anything and is designed to fool you

what you CAN (and should) do is use only a broker regulated as described in the posts linked to above

doing that DOES give you some protection, because the properly regulated ones aren’t allowed to deceive people and their websites are checked regularly by their regulators

the bottom line: don’t let anyone fool you into believing that a broker claiming to be an “ecn broker” isn’t financially involved in the outcome of your trade, whereas a market maker is: that’s wrong (but VERY widely believed by over-optimistic retail traders who have been fooled by the terminology!)