CySEC regulated forex brokers

CySEC regulated forex brokers list: 13 companies, 13 brands

Generated from our broker data (up to 19 Oct 2026). The licence number is the one CySEC prints next to the firm in its list of Cypriot investment firms; where the last column shows a date, we found the firm and number there that day.

Leverage and compensation columns repeat the broker’s own wording. Where a broker states no ICF limit, the limit set by the Fund is below.

CySEC firms that do not take retail clients, and other notes

A CySEC licence on a brand’s website does not tell you which company will hold your account:

• Exness: Exness (Cy) Ltd (178/12). B2B/institutional only — does not offer services to retail clients (exness.eu, 19 Oct 2026).
• The XM brand runs on an offshore entity (FSC Belize, leverage up to 1:1000) and a CySEC entity for the EEA; the group’s FCA, ASIC and US licences belong to the sister brand Trading.com, not to XM.
• IC Markets: Outside the EEA and Australia most clients are onboarded by the Seychelles entity (leverage up to 1:5000 on MetaTrader) or the Bahamas entity; these carry no UK/EU-style retail protections.
• FXCM: the CySEC firm is open to retail clients in our data; the UK company is selling its client book and the Australian company is under an ASIC stop order (see the FCA and ASIC pages).

What CySEC rules give a retail client

ESMA agreed temporary CFD measures in March 2018. When they lapsed in August 2019, CySEC wrote them into national law with a policy statement of 27 September 2019, the Cyprus National Product Intervention Measures. They apply to CFDs marketed, distributed or sold to retail clients and include:

• leverage limits on opening a position, from 30:1 to 2:1 by underlying (table below);
• a margin close-out when the client’s funds fall to 50% of the margin needed to keep the open positions;
• negative balance protection per account, so a retail client cannot lose more than the funds in the trading account;
• no cash or other inducements to encourage retail clients to trade;
• a standardised risk warning with the share of the firm’s retail accounts that lose money.

Minimum margin is the leverage limit expressed as a percentage (1 ÷ leverage). Professional clients are outside these limits.

Which rules apply where you live

CySEC applies its measures by the client’s country of residence. For a resident of Cyprus, of an EU state whose regulator has no national CFD measures, or of a non-EU country, the CySEC firm applies the ESMA content. For a resident of an EU state whose regulator adopted its own measures, the firm applies that regulator’s measures. CySEC noted in 2019 that only a few states diverged materially from the ESMA measures.

Investor Compensation Fund: €20,000 limit

The Fund covers non-professional clients of its member firms when a firm fails to repay the funds it owes them or cannot return their financial instruments. It pays the lower of 90% of the client’s cumulative covered claims and €20,000. Payments start only after CySEC finds that the firm appears unable to meet investor claims for financial reasons, or a Cypriot court suspends those claims.

Worked example: a covered claim of €10,000 is paid at €9,000 (90%); a claim of €50,000 is paid at €20,000.

Complaints: the Financial Ombudsman of the Republic of Cyprus

The Financial Ombudsman of the Republic of Cyprus handles consumer complaints against financial companies, investment firms among them. You file a complaint form against the firm and pay an application fee through the Ombudsman’s site; its English pages do not state the amount, so ask the office before filing.

How to check a CySEC licence

CySEC’s list of Cypriot investment firms gives each firm’s name, licence number and date, company registration number, phone and email, and sometimes approved trade names. It does not list websites, so compare the email domain with the site you are on. CySEC also publishes warnings about unregulated entities and a list of domains that are not owned or operated by any CySEC-authorised investment firm.

• Find the firm’s name and CIF licence number in the footer of the broker’s EU website.
• Look the firm up in CySEC’s list of Cypriot investment firms and compare the number and contact details.
• Search the website address in CySEC’s non-approved domains list and its warnings.
• Check that your account application names the same CySEC firm.