Forex is the most scam-dense corner of retail finance. We check regulation against the regulator's own registers, map exactly how each broker makes its money, and put the loss statistics where you can't miss them — because in this market, the risk warning is the product.
That range comes from brokers' own published figures — not ours, not a scare tactic. Leverage multiplies losses as fast as gains, and most "get rich trading forex" content is selling a course, a signal subscription, or a referral link. If you remember one number from this page, make it this one. This is educational content, not financial advice — it is simply the industry's own math.
Six questions. Ninety seconds. You get your risk tier, an honest read on your answers, and broker-structure guidance matched to how you'd actually trade. Built to be shared — send it to one person who's about to open an account.
Everything above ran locally in your browser — nothing you entered left this page. This page carries no broker links that earn us anything; it exists to help you choose safely.
Private by design: your answers never leave this page — no account, no email, no tracking. The score is computed in your browser and forgotten when you close the tab.
Nobody opens a forex account planning to lose. The losses are manufactured by three quiet mechanisms — two of them perfectly legal.
Every trade pays the spread, the per-lot trading fee, the overnight swap. Small per trade, enormous per year. "zero-fee" trading while the spread does the billing — and swaps quietly tax anyone who holds overnight.
Some brokers take the other side of your trades. Legal. Disclosed in the fine print. Still a conflict: your loss can be their revenue line. We flag the execution model in every review — and favor brokers whose incentives align with yours.
Courses, signal subscriptions, "account managers" selling what cannot be sold: returns. If the method printed money, they'd trade it — not sell it to you for $997 with a countdown timer.
Understand the business model and you will never misread a broker review again. Four revenue lines, no jargon — this is the lens every review on this page uses.
The gap between the buy and sell price on every trade. It is the broker's cut on most retail accounts — tighter is cheaper for you. Every review separates raw-spread accounts from marked-up "standard" accounts.
Raw-spread accounts add a fixed fee per lot traded. A low spread plus a per-lot fee usually beats "zero-fee" marketing — we run the per-million-traded math so account types compare fairly.
Holding positions overnight incurs swap fees that compound quietly. Swing and position traders should price these before choosing an account type — they often dwarf the spread.
Some brokers take the other side of your trades. Legal and disclosed — but a conflict of interest all the same. We flag the execution model in every review and favor brokers whose incentives align with yours.
Every review follows the same protocol: regulation verified against the regulator's own register, fee schedules read in full, withdrawal terms checked in the terms of service — never press releases, never sponsored placements.
| Regulator | Covers | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| FCA | United Kingdom | Strictest conduct rules; negative-balance protection; compensation scheme up to £85,000 |
| ASIC | Australia | Strong oversight; retail leverage caps; segregated client funds required |
| CySEC | Cyprus / EU passport | EU-wide MiFID rules; investor compensation fund; retail leverage capped at 30:1 |
Most broker reviews are marketing with a comments section. Ours are audits: every material claim on this page is checked against a primary source — the regulator's register or the broker's own published documents — and every claim names that source. Here is the method, the pledge, and the ledger.
We verify license claims on the regulator's own register — never the broker's homepage. We read the actual fee schedule, not the marketing page. We quote account terms as published, with the check date. And we never claim test results from accounts we never opened: if we did not trade it, we say so.
Every license number below can be re-checked by you in under five minutes on the regulator's register — the walkthrough shows exactly how. If a claim on this page ever stops checking out, we are wrong and the register is right.
Every material claim about Exness, its source, and when it was checked. Re-checked today, 2026-09-17.
| Claim | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Exness (SC) Ltd holds FSA Seychelles license SD025; authorized as an OTC derivatives provider by South Africa's FSCA | Exness (SC) Ltd Client Agreement v38 (24/07/2026), published on exness.com | 2026-09-17 |
| Exness (Cy) Ltd — CySEC 178/12; Exness (UK) Ltd — FCA 730729; Exness ZA (Pty) Ltd — FSCA 51024; Exness B.V. — CBCS 0003LSI0220; Exness (MU) Ltd — FSC Mauritius GB20025294 | Independent register checks at brokerchampion.com/exness-review (FCA/CBCS/FSC-Mauritius checked 2026-05-07; CySEC/FSA-Seychelles/FSCA checked 2026-08-04) | 2026-09-17 |
| FCA license covers professional clients only — no UK retail onboarding since the 2019 restructuring | Exness (UK) Ltd costs-and-charges disclosure (exness.uk, FRN 730729); EINPresswire 2026-08-21 | 2026-09-17 |
| Account types and pricing as published: Standard — spreads from 0.3 pips, no per-lot fee, from $10 · Standard Cent — from $10 · Pro — from 0.1 pip, no per-lot fee, from $200 · Raw Spread — from 0.0 pips + $3.50 per lot per side ($7 round-turn), from $200 · Zero — 0.0 pips on top 30 instruments ~95% of the trading day, per-instrument fee varies, from $200 | Account matrix verified against exness.com official pages 2026-05-20 (exbroker.online); fee breakdown sourced to Exness Help Center, retrieved April 2026 (onforex.co) | 2026-09-17 |
| No fees on deposits or withdrawals; no inactivity fee published | Fee review sourced to Exness Help Center, retrieved April 2026 (onforex.co) | 2026-09-17 |
| Swap-free option published; overnight swaps otherwise charged daily at rollover, tripled on Wednesday | Exness Help Center material (retrieved April 2026); Exness (UK) Ltd costs-and-charges doc (exness.uk) | 2026-09-17 |
| Does not serve US retail traders; most non-EU retail clients onboard under the Seychelles (FSA) entity | EINPresswire 2026-08-21; scribehow Exness review 2026 | 2026-09-17 |
| Negative balance protection and segregated client funds published for retail entities | scribehow Exness review 2026; brokersway regulations page | 2026-09-17 |
Do this for any broker, anywhere, before a dollar moves. It is the single highest-value habit in retail forex.
Not the homepage logo — the legal page: terms, client agreement, or "regulation" page. Copy the legal entity name and the license number. Example: Exness (SC) Ltd — FSA SD025.
Go to the regulator's own site — the FCA Register, the CySEC regulated-entities search, the FSA Seychelles licensee search — never a link the broker hands you.
Search the legal entity name. Brands and entities differ — the entity that would hold your account is the only one that counts.
Entity name matches. License number matches. Status is active/authorized. Fail any one — treat the broker as unregulated for your purposes and walk away.
Courses can teach mechanics. No course can sell you returns. We review trading education with the same audit protocol as brokers — curriculum, refund terms, and verifiable outcomes — because the course industry has its own scam density.
A long-running program teaching private-label selling on Amazon — product selection, sourcing, listing, and launch mechanics. It is education for e-commerce operators, not a trading system, and we cover it because "make money online" funnels are where many trading newcomers arrive from.
Our audit in progress: curriculum depth and currency, refund terms in writing, and whether any student income claims survive verification. We have verified no student income claims to date — and we treat any such claims, anywhere, as marketing until audited.
Independence note: education reviews run the same audit protocol as broker reviews — no review is for sale, and nothing a provider gives us changes a verdict.
Forex is the highest-scam-signal market we cover. Any one of these is reason enough to walk away — and they rarely travel alone.
Returns in leveraged markets cannot be guaranteed by anyone, ever. The word "guaranteed" next to a trading offer is a confession, not a feature.
"Bonus expires tonight." Account managers calling within minutes. Withdrawal buttons that mysteriously break. Legitimate brokers never rush your money.
A license from an offshore registry with no enforcement history is decoration. Check the entity name on the regulator's own register — a homepage logo is a claim, the register is the proof.
Deposits instant, withdrawals "under review" for weeks. Search "[broker name] withdrawal problems" before a single dollar moves — complaint clusters are the earliest warning.
Dozens of five-star reviews posted within days, all praising "my account manager." We cross-check review timing and language patterns before any broker clears our audit.
Strangers offering to trade your account for a profit split. Telegram "signal" subscriptions. Copy-trading gurus with rented cars. If they could trade profitably, they would not need your deposit.
Signal #03 deserves its own drill: the 4-minute license check — the exact steps to verify any license number on the regulator's own register before a dollar moves.
Every review runs the same protocol before a word is published. Forex gets the strictest version of it. Our sources are stated on every criterion — what the broker publishes, what the regulator publishes, and nothing we invented.
License claims checked against the regulator's own register, for the entity that would hold your account — not the headline entity. We state the license as the broker publishes it; the register is the proof.
Spreads, per-lot fees, swaps, and inactivity fees read from the broker's published fee schedule and expressed per-million-traded so accounts compare fairly. Never claimed test results — we don't pretend to have traded accounts we haven't.
MT4 / MT5 or proprietary terminal, as the broker lists them. Regional availability noted where the broker states it.
Withdrawal terms read in the terms of service — not the marketing page. Complaint clusters searched independently before any verdict.
Trader Merit is a buyer-advocate: no broker pays for a placement, no ranking is for sale, and the audit protocol runs identically for every broker we cover — no payment, past or future, changes a score, a ranking, or a verdict. Every figure on this page is marked TARGET (a planning goal), PROPOSED (awaiting decision), or OBSERVED (actually happened). This page is educational content, not financial advice, and nothing here promises returns.
We publish audits, not content volume. Each item below clears the full protocol — or it does not publish at all.
CFTC-registered brokers for US readers, who cannot legally use the offshore market. The highest-requested audit.
Per-million-traded cost math across account types, so "zero-fee" marketing can be compared honestly.
Curriculum depth, refund terms in writing, and income-claim verification for Amazing Selling Machine.
Withdrawal processing terms across reviewed brokers, read from the terms of service — not the marketing page.
New audits publish here first. We run no newsletter yet — when we do, it will be monthly, regulation-only, and opt-in.
Yes — materially. Leverage amplifies losses as fast as gains, and between 74% and 89% of retail CFD accounts lose money. Treat any capital you deposit as at risk of total loss, never trade with money you need, and be deeply skeptical of anyone selling certainty.
Go to the regulator's own website — the FCA register, ASIC Connect, or the CySEC register — and search the broker's legal entity name, not its brand name. Confirm the listed entity is the one that would hold your account. A logo on a broker's homepage is a claim; the register is the proof.
Yes — and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. A demo teaches you the platform, the order types, and what the costs feel like, with $0 at risk. Move to real money only when you can explain exactly how the broker makes money off your trades.
The lowest the broker allows — and in the UK/EU, retail leverage is capped at 30:1 by regulation for a reason. High leverage doesn't increase your skill; it shortens the time between your first trade and your account hitting zero.
Standard accounts bundle the broker's cut into a wider spread with "zero-fee" marketing. Raw-spread accounts show near-zero spreads and charge a fixed per-lot fee. For active traders the raw-spread model is usually cheaper — but only the per-million math tells you for sure, which is why we run it in every review.
They can teach mechanics — order types, risk sizing, platform use. What they cannot do is transfer profitability: if the method printed money, the seller would trade it, not sell it. Judge every course by curriculum depth, written refund terms, and independently verifiable outcomes — never by income screenshots.
Yes. No broker pays for a placement and no ranking is for sale — the audit protocol runs identically for every broker, and nothing on this page earns us anything from a broker. The regulation check runs the same either way.
Because we publish nothing until the audit clears: regulation register check, fee-schedule analysis, and complaint-record screening. A missing review means the work is not done — not that we have nothing to say.
Ninety seconds, six questions, zero data leaves your browser. Then read how we review brokers — in that order.
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Trader Merit is the anti-scam forex review: regulation verified against primary sources, costs mapped per-million, risk disclosed first — trust content for the highest-scam-signal niche, buyer-advocate trust content for the highest-scam-signal niche. The 90-second risk quiz is the hook, the lead magnet, and the share engine.