The 11 Forex Brokers Based in Malta, Ranked by Score

Eleven forex and CFD brokers on WIKILIX record keep their registered office in Malta. Nine of them hold a licence from the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA). The other two do not, and that gap is the first thing this page exists to make plain: a Malta address is not the same as a Malta licence, and neither one tells you whether a firm will take you on as a client.

What "based in Malta" includes, and what it leaves out

Every broker below is headquartered in Malta. That is a registered address, nothing more. FX-BTG Europe Markets Limited sits here on its Malta registration, yet the licences we hold for it are British and Australian (FCA and ASIC), not Maltese. Market Trade is registered in Malta too and lists no regulator at all. So of the eleven, nine carry an MFSA licence on record and two are Malta companies whose oversight, if any, comes from somewhere else.

How the eleven break down

Five hold a clean regulatory status on our record. The remaining six carry a warning: four are marked as suspicious clones (FXDD, ALB, Deriv and FX-BTG), one lists no regulation (Market Trade), and one carries a scam flag. Scores run from 10 at the bottom, for the unregulated Market Trade, to 72 at the top, with a median of 51.9. Seven of the eleven hold licences from two or more authorities, and six hold at least one tier-1 licence, usually a foreign one such as the FCA, ASIC, BaFin, AMF or NFA rather than the Maltese MFSA, which sits at tier two.

Two separate entries trade under the NSBroker name. One, Alchemy Markets Ltd, carries a clean status; a second company recorded simply as NSBroker carries a scam flag and lists four European licences. That split is the clearest argument on this page for reading the legal entity on your account agreement rather than the brand on the website.

Longevity, and the firms you won't find here

Malta is a young base for most of these firms. Only two opened before 2010: Hogg Capital Investments, trading as tier1fx, has run since 1995, and FXDD since 2002. Three of the newest arrived recently, with Deriv and ALB dating to 2017 and Market Trade to 2023. If you came looking for the large names people associate with Malta, such as eToro or the big MiFID brands, most of them are not registered here at all. They passport into Malta from a Cypriot, British or Australian head office and serve Maltese clients under EU rules without keeping a Maltese registered office, so a domicile list like this one leaves them out.

What a Maltese licence is worth to a retail client

An MFSA authorisation places a broker inside the EU framework. Under MiFID II and the ESMA measures Malta applies, a retail account is capped at 1:30 leverage on major currency pairs and covered by the Investor Compensation Scheme for eligible claims up to €20,000. You can see that cap at work in the table: NSFX, ALB and Deriv all limit retail leverage to 1:30, the mark of a genuine EU retail entity. AKFX showing 1:2000 and three firms at 1:500 is the opposite signal, the leverage of an offshore arm rather than the Maltese one, and worth checking before you assume EU protection reaches your account.

• Read the exact legal entity on the client agreement, then confirm that entity, not just the brand, appears on the MFSA register.
• Match the leverage you are offered against the 1:30 EU retail cap. A far higher figure usually means you are being onboarded to a non-Maltese entity.
• Check the recorded status here against the MFSA register, and against the FCA or ASIC register where a firm also claims those licences.
• For any firm marked as a clone, confirm the website domain against the one listed on the regulator's own record before depositing.

Every licence and status shown reflects what WIKILIX holds as of today. Confirm any authorisation on the MFSA register itself before you send money, since a registered address in Valletta guarantees none of the protection an actual licence carries.