Editorial policy

Sources, in order of weight

• Regulator registers: who is licensed, by whom, under which number.
• Each broker entity's legal documents and pricing pages: spreads, commissions, account types, minimum deposits, leverage for retail clients.
• The retail loss figure each entity publishes with its risk warning, with the date we read it.
• Regulators' own publications for country rules such as leverage limits and compensation schemes.

We do not use forum posts, user reviews or figures supplied by affiliate managers as sources. A headline on a broker's marketing page, such as "spreads from 0.0 pips", is recorded as a "from" figure for the account it names, not as a typical spread, and is shown as the broker's own figure.

What is checked, and what is not yet

The current records for 20 brokers were collected on 19 October 2026. On 20 October 2026 we checked 83 of their 152 regulated entities by hand on the regulators' own registers (FCA, ASIC, CySEC, DFSA, MAS, BaFin, the Central Bank of Ireland, CIRO and the Seychelles FSA). A checked entity is marked "checked on the register" with the date; MAS, CIRO and the Seychelles FSA list the company but not a licence number, so for those we confirm the company and its licence type only. The other entities, including every South African one (the FSCA provider search was not responding on the day), still show the number as published by the broker. Where the register disagreed with the broker, we followed the register: AFSL 410681, which Admirals lists for Australia, belongs to PU Prime Trading Pty Ltd, so Admirals is not presented as licensed in Australia.

Country rules on our country pages still carry a "not yet verified" note, and each links to the regulator as the primary source. Ratings are preliminary desk scores, since we have not opened live accounts; the How we rank page explains what that leaves out.

Editorial flags

A flag is a dated note added when a fact changes what we can recommend. Flags are shown next to the broker, and a flag tied to a country removes the broker from that country's list whatever its score. Two examples from the current data: FXCM's UK entity announced on 6 October 2026 that it is selling its client book to Trade Nation, so FXCM is not listed as open to new UK clients; Exness takes retail clients from the UK and the EEA only through entities outside those regions, so it does not appear on lists for UK residents.

Writing rules

• No bonuses, promo codes, deposit offers or promises of profit.
• No "best broker for everyone": every ranked list states its own filter and sort rule above the list.
• No claims of tests we have not run. Until we test live accounts, ratings are labelled preliminary.
• Every number about a broker is stored with its source and the date it was collected; a number we cannot source is not published.
• An offshore licence is never presented as an advantage because of the leverage it allows.
• The CFD risk warning appears on every page, and each broker button shows the retail loss figure of the relevant entity where one is published.

Who writes the pages, and what brokers cannot do

Pages are written and checked by the Low Spread Brokers team; we do not sign them with individual names. Before a page is published, each broker figure on it is compared with its stored source. Ranked lists show the date of the data under the list heading.

• Brokers do not see our pages before publication.
• Brokers do not write or edit our texts. They can report a wrong figure like any reader, with a link to the source.
• A change that moves a broker's score or its place in a list is noted on the page itself, with the date and what changed.

Corrections

Send corrections to [email protected] with a link to the source, such as the broker's pricing page or its entry on the FCA or ASIC register. A corrected figure gets a new collection date in the broker record and changes on every page that uses it. If the correction moves a broker's score or its place in a list, the page notes the date and what changed. Requests to change a score without a change in the underlying facts are declined, whoever sends them.