Best Regulated Forex Brokers of 2023

When choosing a broker, a trader’s first and biggest concern should be finding a trustworthy, well-regulated, and safe partner. But what does that mean exactly? How does one evaluate how well a broker is regulated or how safe is it to trade with?

Broadly speaking, there are two types of regulatory bodies – big, reputable entities and smaller offshore ones. The former, such as ASIC in Australia, FCA in the UK, and CySEC in Cyprus, mandate brokers adhere to stricter policy requirements. Those include segregating client funds, ensuring negative balance protection, capping the maximum leverage allowed, and often but not always having a compensation scheme.

Conversely, offshore regulators have more relaxed requirements, which may not necessarily ensure the same level of protection. However, even big, reputable brokers often seek offshore regulation because it allows them to serve traders globally.

I understand that selecting the right broker may be overwhelming, especially for beginners. However, there’s no need to worry. To assist you in making an informed decision, we have compiled a list of the top regulated forex brokers, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each. Considering the different goals and needs of traders, we have categorized our list to highlight the areas in which these brokers excel. Our guide aims to help you find a trustworthy partner that aligns perfectly with your aspirations and requirements.

List of Top Regulated Forex Brokers

Best brokers for US traders

• IG (US) – Best Overall in the US
  Member of the London Stock Exchange (LSE). One of the biggest brands in the industry. Multilayered protections. Below-average spreads. Choice of versatile trading platforms. Ultra-fast order execution.
• Plus500 – Best Futures Trading Platform in the US
  Listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market for Listed Companies. Included in the FTSE 250. Global Market Access. 2800 instruments.

Best brokers for international traders

• FxPro – Best Overall
  Tight regulation. Very transparent website. Lightning-fast order execution under 13 milliseconds. More than 2100 instruments. Range of platforms.
• Exness – Best for Beginners
  Excellent execution standards. 80% of all trades are executed under 25 milliseconds. Access to deep liquidity. Competitive prices.
• FXCM – Best Forex Trading Platform
  Excellent execution standards. Range of platforms and tools. 3000+ instruments. Good for scalping and hedging. Offers social and copy trading.
• Swissquote – Best for Professional Traders
  Lightning-fast execution under 9 milliseconds. Multiple top-tier licenses. Listed on the Swiss stock exchange. Possibility to invest and trade with over 3 million products.
• Errante – Best MT4
  Range of account types. Reliable customer support. Choice of platforms. Low minimum deposit requirements.
• FP Markets – Best for Tradable Instruments
  Excellent execution standards. Diverse tradable instruments. Range of platforms, including iRESS for stock traders.
• IronFX – Best for Cryptocurrency Trading
  Accessible accounts. Range of cryptocurrencies. A few top-tier licenses. Reliable customer support.
• IC Markets – Best Low Spreads
  Low floating spreads and commission-free trading. Over 2000 instruments. Average execution in under 66 milliseconds.
• AvaTrade – Best Forex Trading App
  Several top-tier regulations. Offers options trading. Competitive pricing. Good choice for trading with tight risk management.

How Did FX Empire Choose the Best Regulated Forex Brokers?

• Regulations and protection. We examined the licenses and regulations of each entity operated by a broker. We only considered brokers that provide multilayered protection, ensuring their clients with negative balance protection, segregation of client funds, and compensation scheme.
• Transparency. We meticulously analyzed brokers’ client agreements and legal documents to identify the most reliable and trustworthy options in the market.
• Order execution standards. Using our unique methodology to assess the risk of price manipulation, we verified whether brokers have a ‘best execution policy’ and checked their average execution speeds.
• Competitive pricing. We checked the spreads, swaps, and commissions charged by a broker to determine the competitiveness of its fees. Generally, round-turn commissions of $6 per traded lot and floating spreads from 1.0 pips are considered average for the industry.
• Diverse account types. We assessed brokers’ minimum deposit requirements, maximum leverage, and maximum traded volume per account type and chose those that offer the greatest variety of account features for the lowest possible cost.
• Range of markets. We estimated how many instruments and from which asset classes brokers offered considering the flexibility afforded to its clients.
• Trading platforms and tools. We selected brokers offering user-friendly platforms and feature-rich that can cater both to beginners and experienced traders.
• Supporting content. We preferred brokers with an extensive variety of third-party and in-house research tools as well as with the scope and applicability of the available educational materials.

Our team of experts has identified each broker’s strengths and weaknesses using FX Empire’s comprehensive methodology. Here’s how we test.

Now let’s dive into the selected brokers.

Our Methodology

Here at FX Empire, we have pioneered a unique methodology for evaluating Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives brokers worldwide. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of a broker’s pros and cons so that our readers can make informed decisions. We understand their need to choose the best partner for their particular goals and needs.

Our team of dedicated professionals is working continuously to improve our system and keep it up-to-date with current market trends. We test each broker systematically by employing over 250 variables across nine categories:

• Trust
• Fees
• Account Types
• Tradable Instruments
• Platforms and Tools
• Deposits and Withdrawals
• Customer Support
• Research
• Education

We strive to be as objective as possible, which is why our rigorous examinations are devoid of any personal bias as much as possible. We review the licenses of all the subsidiaries of a broker and check the fine print in the Client Agreement. The reliability of a broker is further determined based on the regulation, fees, and general transparency of the website.

We collect essential information by opening a live account with a broker entity and testing its services in real time. We measure the spreads, swaps, and commissions on its most popular account type and compare our findings to the industry average.

We also test the functionality of the available platforms, the number and types of tradable instruments, the reliability of customer support, and the quality of the research and educational materials.

For this guide, we only considered brokers with an overall score of 4+ that are regulated globally and obtain a couple of top-tier licenses. We made sure the brokers comply with most safety requirements, such as ensuring negative balance protection, segregation of client funds, capping the maximum allowed leverage, and providing a compensation scheme. Additionally, we preferred brokers that maintain good execution standards.

We abide by our strict guidelines for editorial integrity based on the objective standards we have set for our reviews. You can read more about our review process here.

Meet Our Writers

The team of forex and CFD analysts and editors at FXEmpire is composed of trading industry professionals and seasoned financial journalists. Our experts have been published on leading financial websites such as Investopedia and Forbes. In addition, they all have extensive trading experience.

How to Choose a Well-Regulated Broker?

In this part, I will outline what traders need to consider when looking for a trustworthy broker.

How to Verify if a Broker is Regulated?

There are several things you can do to verify if a broker is regulated and by which regulatory body. When you open a broker’s website, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the entity’s legal name. This is where it is stated who the regulator is. You need to look for a reference/licensing number, which you can then use to verify the entity by going to the regulator’s own website and checking its registry of authorized entities.

You also need to assess a broker’s transparency in relation to order execution and whether it can be trusted not to manipulate price action. You need to check whether the broker has a ‘best execution policy’, publishes regular quality execution statements, and states its average execution speed.

How to Check Broker’s Protection Level?

To find a trustworthy partner, make sure that the broker’s entity you choose is tightly regulated and complies with all industry safety requirements.

I have broken down the most important safety mechanisms to look for in a broker below:

• Segregation of client funds. Brokers must keep their clients’ funds in separate bank accounts from the ones used for their corporate capital. This is crucial for mitigating the risk of accounting errors.
• Negative balance protection. Negative balance protection means that a trader’s losses cannot exceed their account balance. This protection is indispensable when trading high-risk instruments, such as Contracts for Difference (CFDs).
• Limited market exposure. Limiting market exposure protects traders against adverse price fluctuations. That is why most top-tier regulators cap the maximum leverage allowed at 1:30, whereas less strict regulators can allow leverage as high as 1:2000.
• Compensation scheme. Depending on the jurisdiction where a broker is situated, a compensation scheme may also protect its clients against the company’s credit risk and liabilities. For instance, brokers regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) participate in the Investor Compensation Fund (ICF). In the unlikely event of the company becoming insolvent, traders can be compensated by up to 20,000 EUR. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) – under The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom – protects traders by up to 85,000 GBP.

Check out our dedicated guides on best CySEC-regulated brokers and best FCA-regulated brokers.

What Protections do Regulators Mandate?

I have broken down all the essential safety requirements you can expect with a broker that is licensed and regulated by either of the following entities:

Why do Execution Standards Matter?

A broker may have many top-tier licenses, but that does not necessarily guarantee the fast and precise order execution performance that you may require or expect. There is also the risk of price manipulation with less reputable companies where the broker might engage in fraudulent activities, such as driving the price down to hit your stop-loss orders. To protect yourself, you need to look for several things:

• Best execution policy. Found in a broker’s legal documents, the best execution policy is a legal mandate that the broker will provide its clients with the most favorable price quotes under prevailing market conditions.
• Quality execution statements. Also found in the legal documents, these statements underscore a broker’s execution performance on a yearly basis. You can find information pertaining to a broker’s execution venues, the number of trades that were executed with positive or negative slippage, and so forth.
• Average execution speed reports. More reputable brokers would also state what their average execution speed is, as recorded in the execution statement for the previous year. This is important, especially if you are a high-frequency trader because it will inform you what kinds of strategies can be used with a given broker.

Precision and speed of order execution are also likely to be enhanced when a broker provides Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. As a rule of thumb, look for brokers that can accommodate ultra-fast order execution speeds of no more than 100 milliseconds.

Read more about best brokers with VPS.

Based on my experience as a high-frequency trader, I know how important quick and precise order execution is for implementing intraday strategies, such as scalping. I’ve also experienced price manipulation by less reputable brokers, so I can appreciate just how important to adhere to rigorous execution standards.

If a broker maintains a ‘best execution policy’, regularly publishes execution quality statements, and demonstrates an average execution speed below 50 milliseconds, it can be praised for its ‘excellent execution standards’.

How to Assess if Broker’s Trading Fees Are Competitive?

A broker may have several account types, each with different pricing mechanisms. The question is, how to know which one is best fitted for your particular style of trading? I will answer this question by providing an example with two distinct accounts, one STP and the other ECN:

The biggest difference between STP and ECN accounts, apart from the execution model, is the pricing mechanism. Usually, STP accounts afford commission-free trading and floating spreads, whereas ECN accounts have fixed commissions and raw spreads (typically starting from 0.1 pips). At first glance, the former sounds more favorable because you only have to pay one cost – the spread – rather than two.

Read more about Best STP forex brokers and Best ECN forex brokers.

Many brokers recognize the psychological significance of this sort of thinking and seek to exploit it by raising the spreads on their STP accounts to the point where they are no longer the more competitive option. I will now demonstrate how to do a quick test for yourself to evaluate the competitiveness of a broker’s ECN and STP accounts.

Pick an instrument, say, the EURUSD. Suppose also that the spread on the pair is 0.9 pips on a broker’s STP account and 0.1 pips on its ECN account. There is also a $6 commission for trading 1 lot (100,000 units) contract. If the EURUSD pip value is $10, you can do a simple calculation to determine the value of a hypothetical position on the EURUSD executed on both account types. The formula is the value of a trade = spread x pip value + commission. When we pop in the above values, this is what we discover about our hypothetical broker:

This is just a hypothetical example, but hopefully, it illustrates how more can be less in trading. So it’s worthwhile evaluating the costs of a broker you consider opening an account with for yourself before doing so. And if you are still uncertain, you can always check out our database of reviews to sort out the most competitive brokers.

Check out our list of best lowest spread forex brokers.

How to Choose a Trading Platform?

A trading platform is your window into the market. It allows you to observe price action behavior and study potential opportunities for placing orders. Technical traders use a platform’s array of indicators, drawing tools, and other features to examine various price patterns, changes in volatility, liquidity, and so on in order to gauge the most favorable times to enter or exit the market.

The best platforms are also the most versatile ones. They include a wide spectrum of technical indicators, such as Fibonacci retracement levels, oscillators, trend-based and range-based indicators, and others, as well as drawing tools, such as trend lines, channels, wedges, etc. They are also the ones that allow you to easily scale price action up and down.

The retail industry’s most popular platforms, MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, have established themselves as benchmarks for simplicity and reliability over the years. While they offer a decent range of technical indicators and drawing tools for multi-timeframe analysis, their rugged design becomes evident when compared to newer and sleeker platforms. Although MetaTrader is suitable for beginners, those seeking more advanced trading capabilities may require a sophisticated platform.

Read more about best MT4 brokers and best MT5 brokers.

In response, some brokers have developed their own proprietary platforms, which offer convenience and additional features not found in MetaTrader. These platforms allow for instrument search by asset class, easy scaling of price action, and execution of complex box orders. Ultimately, the choice of the best platform for you boils down to a trade-off between simplicity and practicality.

Check out our dedicated guide on best forex trading platforms.

What to Avoid When Choosing a Broker?

Here is a quick rundown of some of the most important things to avoid:

• Unregulated brokers. Trading with an unregulated broker exposes you to a higher risk of fraud or unethical business practices, as they are not bound by any regulatory standards or rules. Additionally, in case of any disputes or if the broker goes bankrupt, there might be no legal recourse or compensation schemes available to recover your funds.
• Lack of client protection. Avoid brokers that cannot ensure more than two of the following: segregated funds, negative balance protection, compensation scheme, and maximum leverage for retail traders no bigger than 1:100
• Low execution quality. Try to avoid brokers that cannot ensure more than two of the following: best execution policy, regular quality execution statements, and average execution speed under 100 milliseconds.
• High spreads and commissions. Sidestep brokers with floating spreads from 1.8 pips or above on STP accounts and with round-turn commissions above $7 on ECN accounts.

How to Avoid Forex and CFD Scams?

Scammers rely on the gullibility of traders. A common tactic fraudsters employ is to promise quick and easy profits at no risk to the trader. Often scammers would use labels that closely resemble the brands of real and legitimate companies. That is why regulators like the FCA have registers where traders can read about such fraudulent companies pretending to be others.

The best and easiest way to protect yourself is to make sure you work with a trustworthy and transparent broker. You can find a comprehensive list of reliable brokers by jurisdiction here.

Another important consideration is online safety. Be cautious about where you leave your personal information. Registering your details on suspicious pop-ups that promise enormous profits could lead to your contact information landing on a scammer’s dialing list. Remember, no licensed broker would make unsolicited cold calls.

The next time you get contacted out of the blue with promises of becoming the next Warren Buffet, you must remember that you are most likely speaking to a scammer. I am of the opinion that nowhere is the “if something sounds too good to be true…” saying more accurate than in the world of trading. That is why you should do your due diligence before opening an account with any broker.

Related Broker Guides

• Best Forex Brokers
• Best CFD Brokers
• Best ASIC-Regulated Forex Brokers
• Best European Regulated Forex Brokers
• Best Forex Brokers for Beginners
• Best Forex Brokers for Scalping

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