The 10 Longest-Established NFA Regulated Brokers

Ten firms sit at the top of this ranking, drawn from the 33 brokers we have on record that carry a National Futures Association registration and have traded for at least ten years. The order is set by one thing: how long each has operated. That places century-old institutions above the retail names most American traders would name first, which is the honest outcome of ranking by age instead of by reputation.

The oldest entries are not trading apps. Standard Bank traces to 1862, Societe Generale to 1864, StoneX One to 1866 and Commerzbank to 1870. Each holds an NFA registration alongside other licences, and each has outlasted every retail broker in the group. The highest WIKILIX score here belongs to Marex, at 91.3, a London futures broker that opened in 2005 and holds FCA and SFC licences next to its NFA registration.

What 'longest-established' means here

Every firm is placed by its recorded opening date, oldest first. We counted only the 24 firms with a clean 'regulation' status and set aside eight names that carry a warning: seven marked as a suspicious clone and one as a scam. A duplicated Standard Bank record was collapsed to a single entry. Scores appear in the table for context, but they play no part in the order. Sixteen of the 24 clean firms opened before 2010 and seven were trading before 2000, so this is a genuinely old group by the standards of retail forex.

What an NFA registration buys a trader

The National Futures Association is the self-regulatory body for the United States derivatives industry, working alongside the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. A member firm must keep client money segregated, meet minimum capital rules, submit to audits and answer to a formal disciplinary process. Retail forex leverage at NFA members is capped at 1:50 on major currency pairs, far below the 1:500 some offshore venues advertise. Fourteen of the 24 firms here also hold at least one licence from another authority, from the FCA in London to the SFC in Hong Kong, which is why several read as global institutions rather than single-country brokers.

The names you expected, and why they rank lower

FOREX.com opened in 2006 and OANDA in 2011. Both are NFA members and both are missing from the top of this list for the same plain reason: they are younger than the institutions above them. A few familiar names sit outside the ranking altogether. FXDD, tastytrade, AMP Global Clearing and Tradovate each carry a suspicious-clone flag on our records, so none was eligible for a list that promises clean status only.

Before you open an account with any of them

• Look up the firm's NFA identification number on BASIC, the association's public register, and confirm the registration is current.
• Check which legal entity holds the NFA membership. A large group can register one arm while the account you open sits with another.
• Read whether the registration covers retail forex, futures, or only institutional business, because the three are not the same permission.
• Note the status flag we record against the firm, and treat any clone or scam marker as a reason to stop.
• Confirm the firm will accept a client resident where you live before you send documents or money.