How we rank forex brokers
Every broker receives a TradingForex Score from 0 to 10. The score is calculated by a fixed, public formula from data we verify against regulator registers and broker legal documents. Commercial relationships never change a score.
The six pillars
| Pillar | Weight | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Trust & regulation | 35% | Strongest regulator tier held (tier 1 = 8, tier 2 = 6, tier 3 = 3), +0.5 per additional tier-1 licence (max +1.5), +0.5 if publicly listed, +0.5 for negative balance protection. |
| Trading costs | 25% | Average all-in cost of EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/JPY in pips on the cheapest account (spread + commission converted to pips). Used once all three pairs are sourced for every verified broker, so no broker is scored on a different basis; until then EUR/USD for all. 0.5 pips scores 10; each extra 0.2 pips costs one point. |
| Platforms | 15% | Analyst rating of platform range, stability, charting and order types. |
| Accessibility | 10% | Minimum deposit band, plus demo and swap-free account availability. |
| Support | 10% | Analyst rating of channels, hours, languages and response quality. |
| Education | 5% | Analyst rating of learning material and research. |
Missing data is scored a neutral 5/10 and flagged on the broker page.
Regulator tiers
Tier 1
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), National Futures Association (CFTC) (NFA), Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Financial Services Agency (Japan) (JFSA), Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO), Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), Banca d'Italia (Bank of Italy) (Bank of Italy), Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB), Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (Portugal) (CMVM), Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finanstilsynet) (Danish FSA), Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF), Financial Services and Markets Authority (Belgium) (FSMA), US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Securities and Futures Commission (Hong Kong) (SFC), Finantsinspektsioon (Estonia) (EFSA).
Tier 2
Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), Securities and Commodities Authority (UAE) (SCA), Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), Financial Markets Authority (NZ) (FMA), Financial Services Regulatory Authority (ADGM, Abu Dhabi) (FSRA), Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (Brazil) (CVM), Banco Central do Brasil (BCB), Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (Mexico) (CNBV), Comisión para el Mercado Financiero (Chile) (CMF), Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (Indonesia) (OJK), Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (Indonesia) (BAPPEBTI), Securities Commission Malaysia (SC Malaysia), Securities and Exchange Commission (Nigeria) (SEC Nigeria), Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), Capital Markets Authority (Kenya) (CMA).
Tier 3
Financial Services Commission (Belize) (FSC Belize), Financial Services Authority (St Vincent & the Grenadines) (FSA SVG), Labuan Financial Services Authority (Malaysia) (Labuan FSA), Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), Financial Services Commission (Mauritius) (FSC Mauritius), Financial Services Authority (Seychelles) (FSA Seychelles), Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB), Financial Services Commission (BVI) (FSC BVI), Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC).
Country rankings
A broker appears in a country ranking only if it accepts residents of that country and holds a licence we consider acceptable there. When scores tie, a broker licensed by the local regulator ranks first.
Verification
EU licences are checked automatically every day against ESMA's public register of investment firms, which is fed by national regulators: broker pages show the register status, authorisation date and LEI of each EU entity. Other licences are checked against the regulator's own register or, where that register cannot be accessed, the broker's legal documents (noted next to the source). Fees come from the broker's published fee documents. Each fact stores its source URL and the date we checked it.
How we compare spreads
We compare three major pairs (EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/JPY) so a broker can't look cheap on a single headline pair. Commissions are converted to pips at $10 per pip per standard lot for EUR/USD and GBP/USD, and at 6.67 USD per pip for USD/JPY (reference rate 150 yen per dollar).
Brokers publish EUR/USD spreads in different ways: some give a measured average, others a "typical", minimum or target figure, and some only show a live quote. We record exactly what each broker publishes and label it. Figures that are not averages are marked min, target or snapshot in our tables, because they understate the cost you will usually pay. All-in cost adds the commission on raw-spread accounts: a commission of 7 per round-trip standard lot equals 0.7 pips on EUR/USD.
Verified and draft brokers
A broker is verified when at least one licence has been checked against a regulator register (or the broker's own legal documents when the register cannot be accessed, which we note), its EUR/USD cost and minimum deposit are sourced, and an analyst review is complete. Brokers we could not fully verify are shown as draft: they are labelled, always ranked after verified brokers, and excluded from our open dataset.
Limits of this ranking
- We have not opened funded live accounts; scores reflect published conditions, not execution quality.
- Platform, education and support sub-scores are analyst judgements following a written rubric.
- Conditions differ by entity and country. Each review describes the entity a European client is onboarded to.
Open data
The full dataset behind our rankings is published at /data/brokers.json.