Forex Brokers Based in Seychelles

Eighty-five brokers on our records give a registered address in Seychelles, and this page lists all of them, ordered by overall score. The scores run from 82.4 at the top down to 16.4, and the median sits at just 34, so a Seychelles address on its own tells you very little about quality. Most of these firms are recent: only nine opened before 2010, and the oldest entry, the MERJ Exchange, dates to 1998.

Being based in Seychelles is a question of where a company is registered, and nothing more. It is not where the broker is licensed, and it says nothing about which countries the firm accepts clients from. A company can keep a Seychelles registration and hold its main licence somewhere else, and several here do exactly that.

What a Seychelles registration actually means

Seychelles is an offshore jurisdiction, and the local regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), sits in the third tier of oversight we track. About 72 of the 85 firms here hold an FSA licence; the rest are registered locally but list their supervision elsewhere. That licence permits far higher leverage than a UK or EU regime allows: 34 of these brokers advertise a maximum of 1:1000 or more, INGOT lists 1:5000, and Exclusive Markets 1:4000. Set against that, the three firms here running EU-regulated entities, LMAX International, Alchemy Markets and Afterprime, are each held to 1:30.

The difference matters most when something goes wrong. An FSA licence carries no statutory compensation scheme of the kind the UK's FSCS or Cyprus's ICF provide, so a client relying on local protection has far less to fall back on than the same broker's UK or EU customers. That is the trade for the higher leverage and lighter onboarding these firms are known for.

The Seychelles firms without a Seychelles licence

Thirteen brokers on this list are registered in Seychelles yet hold no FSA licence at all. LMAX International, which posts the highest score here at 82.4, lists FCA and CySEC supervision and carries our suspicious-clone flag. equiti and First Prudential Markets sit in the same position, licensed through the UK, Cyprus or Australia rather than locally. The reverse is just as common: plenty of brokers marketed as "Seychelles regulated" keep their head office in another country and never appear here, because this page is built strictly on the registered address. If a specific FSA-licensed name is missing, its domicile is the likely reason.

Flags worth reading before you deposit

Fifteen of the 85 carry a status beyond ordinary regulation that deserves a first look: one is flagged as a scam, nine as suspicious clones, four as operating without regulation, and one as exceeding its stated authorisation. Forty-two firms hold licences from two or more authorities, which rewards a closer read, because the entity you actually open an account with is often not the most impressive one on that list.

A few checks that matter when the registered address is offshore:

• Confirm the contracting company named in the client agreement. That entity, not the group's best-known brand, is the one an FSA licence covers.
• Look up the licence number on the FSA's own public register before you fund anything.
• Treat any cap above 1:500 as a risk setting rather than a selling point; the high numbers here exist because Seychelles permits them.
• Check whether a tier-1 licence a broker advertises belongs to a sister company you will never actually trade through.