The licence behind the brand
Regulated forex brokers
Almost every broker calls itself regulated, and almost every one is — somewhere. Of the nine we track, three hold UK FCA authorisations and four are licensed in Cyprus, but the same brands also run companies in Belize, the Comoros, Seychelles and St Vincent. Which one holds your account decides whether £85,000 of protection applies or none at all.
Conditions checked against each broker's own pages
Who answers for each broker
Ordered by how much of a broker's licensing sits with regulators that carry a compensation scheme. Every licence number below is published by the broker itself; the protection amounts come from the regulators. Nothing here is a rating of a broker's honesty — it is a description of who answers for it.
| Broker | Licences with a supervisor | Offshore entities | If the firm fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| ForTrade |
|
| FSCS: up to £85,000 per person per firm |
| Tickmill |
| None published | FSCS: up to £85,000 per person per firm |
| FxPro |
|
| FSCS: up to £85,000 per person per firm |
| Deriv |
|
| Malta's investor compensation scheme applies to the EEA entity |
| Libertex |
| None published | Investor Compensation Fund: the lower of 90% of covered claims and €20,000 |
| LiteFinance |
|
| Investor Compensation Fund: the lower of 90% of covered claims and €20,000 |
| RoboForex | None |
| None: every entity is registered offshore |
| Bybit | None |
| None: every entity is registered offshore |
| Alpari | None |
| None: every entity is registered offshore |
Scroll the table sideways →
Entities and licence numbers are as each broker publishes them, read on 24 August 2026; compensation limits come from the FSCS and CySEC directly. A blank licence number means the broker names the regulator without publishing the number — we do not fill those in from elsewhere.
“Regulated” without a regulator's name is not information
Every broker on this page is regulated somewhere, and most are regulated in several places at once through separate companies. Tickmill answers to the FCA in London, to CySEC in Cyprus and to the FSCA in South Africa — and runs the Seychelles company that offers its $30 welcome account, which its own terms close to EU citizens. Fortrade holds six licences across the UK, Cyprus, Australia, Canada, Mauritius and the DIFC. FxPro runs a UK company under the FCA and two more in the Seychelles and the Bahamas.
You do not get the group. You get one company, chosen by where you live, and its name is on the client agreement rather than on the homepage. That is the company whose regulator you would complain to, whose compensation scheme you might claim from, and whose leverage limits and product range you are actually trading under.
The pattern repeats through everything else we have measured on this site: the entity decides the leverage — 1:30 at Tickmill's European company against 1:1000 on its global instruments page — the products, since crypto CFDs are unavailable to retail clients of FxPro's UK entity, and even the promotions.
What each licence actually pays if the broker fails
The UK's FSCS covers up to £85,000 per eligible person per firm for firms that failed after 1 April 2019 — the older £50,000 figure still repeated on many comparison pages applies to failures between 2010 and March 2019. It is the largest scheme any of these brokers sits inside, and it applies only to the UK entity.
Cyprus runs the Investor Compensation Fund, which pays the lower of 90% of a covered client's claims and €20,000. Four of the nine brokers hold CySEC licences, and for most European clients that fund — not the FCA's — is the one behind the account.
Offshore registrations carry no such scheme. A Belize, Comoros, Seychelles or St Vincent licence means a company exists, files with a registry and can have its licence pulled; it does not mean anyone will make you whole. Some brokers close that gap voluntarily: RoboForex publishes membership of the Financial Commission's compensation fund, which covers up to €20,000 per case. A voluntary scheme is better than nothing and is not a statutory one.
How to check a licence in four minutes
Find the entity name and number, which brokers publish in the footer or on a licensing page — every number in the table above came from there. Then look it up on the regulator's own register rather than on the broker's site: the FCA, CySEC, ASIC and the rest all publish searchable registers, and a licence that cannot be found in one does not exist.
Check three things in the register entry: that the company name matches the one on your client agreement exactly, that the permissions cover dealing in investments rather than only advising or introducing, and that the status is current rather than withdrawn.
Then check which entity you are being signed to. It is on the account opening page and in the terms; if the site routes you to an offshore company while displaying a European licence in the footer, that discrepancy is the whole point of this page.
What a licence does not do
It does not make trading safe. The brokers here publish the numbers their regulators require, and they run from 69.54% to 83% of retail accounts losing money — those are figures from the regulated entities, not from the offshore ones.
It does not guarantee execution quality, withdrawal speed or support, none of which regulators police in detail. And it does not survive a change of entity: the protections attached to a European account do not follow you if the same brand later moves you to an offshore company.
What it does buy is a named counterparty, a register you can check, a complaints route that is not the broker's own support desk, and — under the FCA and CySEC — a fund that pays something if the company fails. On a page about who to trust with money, that is the whole of the measurable part.
Looking for one regulator in particular
Queries naming a regulator behave as a separate question, and the results confirm it: search for FCA-regulated brokers and all seven results are pages dedicated to the FCA specifically, with no overlap with the general search. We are building those pages for the FCA, CySEC and ASIC, and they will list the entities rather than the brands, in the same way this page does.
Questions people ask
What does it mean when a forex broker says it is regulated?
That one of its companies holds a licence somewhere. It says nothing about which company will hold your account, and the difference is large: a UK entity sits inside a compensation scheme paying up to £85,000, a Cypriot one inside a fund paying at most €20,000, and a Belize or Comoros registration inside no scheme at all.
Which regulators actually protect your money?
Of those covering the brokers here, the FCA through the FSCS — up to £85,000 per person per firm — and CySEC through the Investor Compensation Fund, which pays the lower of 90% of covered claims and €20,000. ASIC, the FSCA and the DFSA supervise conduct without a comparable payout scheme.
How do I check a broker's licence?
Take the entity name and licence number from the broker's own site, then search the regulator's public register. Confirm that the name matches your client agreement exactly, that the permissions cover dealing rather than only advising, and that the licence is current.
Are offshore brokers safe?
They are legal and they are supervised in a limited way, but no statutory compensation scheme stands behind an account in Belize, the Comoros, the Seychelles or St Vincent. Some brokers join voluntary schemes instead — RoboForex publishes cover of up to €20,000 per case through the Financial Commission.
Why do brokers run so many companies?
Because rules differ by country and each licence permits different things. It is also how a group offers leverage of 1:1000, bonuses or crypto CFDs to some clients while its European company offers 1:30 and none of the above. The structure is normal; what matters is knowing which company you are in.
Does a licence mean I will not lose money?
No. It covers the failure of the firm, not the failure of your trading. The brokers on this page publish the share of their own retail clients who lose money, and the range runs from about 69% to 83%.
The UK licences are unpacked on FCA regulated brokers, the Cyprus ones on CySEC regulated brokers and the Australian one on ASIC regulated brokers. The same entity split decides what you can trade — asset classes and leverage by company — and what a trade costs, which is worked out on spread plus commission.
Country by country: South Africa, Australia, Canada, Kenya and Nigeria.