Regarding rates, for your own peace of mind, I think the best is for you to go to the CFD providers' web sites and check out their % margin requirements. You should be able to get from there their products schedule where you will find the % margin requirement for each of the instruments on offer. That would be a practical way to compare.
I have been using CMC's Market Maker trading platform, but it has recently released a new trading platform called Market Tracker which I am not using, so, can't comment on that. With the Market maker trading platform, I am reasonably happy with it.
You will find that most of these CFD providers servers are based in London, and thus the server time is the time over there. When you are looking at the charts of CFD Australian equities, especially the Close and the date/day, because of the time difference between Australia and UK, it can be a big confusing if you trading strategy is on a longer term, such as Daily. I would be interested in hearing from others on how they overcome this. I have tried to use the 4 Hourly chart but it is not quite the same.
I am sure you are aware that as CFD instruments are leveraged, if a trade goes against you, depending on the size of the contract , you can suffer substantial loss.
