Forex Brokers Based in the United Arab Emirates

Thirty-two brokers in the WIKILIX records give the United Arab Emirates as their home country, and this page lists all of them, ordered by overall score. Being based in the UAE is a fact about where a company is registered. It is not the same as holding a UAE licence, and it says nothing about which nationalities a broker will actually open an account for.

The oldest firm here, Orient Financial Brokers, opened in 1994. The newest, ADS, arrived in 2025 already carrying FCA and SFC licences. Between them sit local bank arms like Mashreq and Daman, a cluster of recent retail brands, and Amana Capital, which at 67.4 is the highest-scoring broker on the page and the only one holding a Dubai DFSA licence.

Mainland SCA versus the Dubai and Abu Dhabi free zones

The Emirates run two kinds of oversight at once, and it changes what a licence here is worth. The Securities and Commodities Authority, the SCA, supervises firms on the mainland, and thirteen of the brokers on this list hold an SCA registration. The free zones sit outside that system: the Dubai Financial Services Authority regulates inside the DIFC, and Abu Dhabi Global Market does the same in the capital. ADSS and Finior Capital are authorised by ADGM. Four firms here, Amana, ADS, ADSS and GTCFX, also hold a tier-1 licence from abroad such as the FCA or ASIC, which counts for more than a free-zone registration on its own.

A registered address is not a supervision stamp

A UAE address tells you where the paperwork sits, not that the firm is watched. Sixteen of these thirty-two carry a WIKILIX status of regulation. The other sixteen are flagged: thirteen as holding no regulation we can find, two as running on an offshore licence issued elsewhere, and one for exceeding the scope of its permission. The flagged firms lean recent. Thirteen of the 32 opened in 2020 or later, part of a wave of brands that set up a UAE presence without a matching local licence, while only ten of the firms here date from before 2010.

Why the big Dubai-licensed names are missing

Most of the brokers a trader in the Emirates actually compares are not on this list, and that is what the page is for. The large international names that advertise a Dubai licence are headquartered abroad, usually in Australia or the United Kingdom, so their registered address keeps them off a domicile list even when they hold a DFSA authorisation and take UAE clients. The reverse holds too. Several firms below are local securities houses that trade Emirati equities for residents and never offer a leveraged currency account to anyone. Read the licence, not the address.

Before you open an account with a UAE firm

• Check which entity you are contracting with. A group can register a mainland SCA company and a separate free-zone one, and the protection differs between them.
• Match the licence to the product. An SCA permission to trade local shares is not authorisation to sell you leveraged forex.
• Confirm the licence on the regulator's own register before you deposit. Each of the three UAE authorities publishes a public list you can search by name.
• Treat a high leverage cap as a caution rather than a perk. Three firms here advertise leverage as high as 1:1000, a level no tier-1 regulator allows.