#1
AxiTrader LLC
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2007DFSA
Regulation
License
Spread
61.1Score
Twenty-three of the market-maker forex firms WIKILIX tracks are headquartered in Australia, and 22 of them hold a licence from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Every firm on this list currently carries a clean regulatory status on our records. One point matters before you read further: this is a list by registered address, not by which brokers accept Australian clients. A firm sits here because its head office is in Australia, and plenty of brokers that market to Australians are headquartered somewhere else entirely.
What "based in Australia" includes, and what it leaves out
Domicile is where a company is registered and run from. It is not the same as where it is licensed to take clients, and it is not a promise that the firm accepts traders from your country. Two brokers on the list, Bank of Queensland and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, are old Australian institutions that opened in 1874 and 1911. Others, such as IC Markets and Axi, both dating from 2007, are dedicated contracts-for-difference houses built for retail forex. They share one thing: an Australian registered address and the ASIC oversight that comes with it.
The list deliberately excludes a broker you might expect to find. A large market maker that runs its Australian business through a local ASIC entity but keeps its head office in London or Cyprus belongs on a different country page, because its domicile is not Australian. It also excludes Australian brokers that run on an agency or ECN model rather than acting as the counterparty to your trade, since the market-maker execution model is the second boundary here.
How the 23 break down
Scores run from 61.1 at the top, held by Axi, down to 16.9 for Jarden, with a median of 48.6. Age is the more striking split. Three firms predate the year 2000, led by Bank of Queensland at 1874, while 14 of the 23 opened before 2010. Licensing is layered: 17 of the 23 hold two or more separate regulators, and 6 pair their Australian ASIC entity with an offshore licence from the Comoros authority MISA. easyMarkets records the highest maximum leverage on the list at 1:2000, while the money-transfer and banking names such as Travelex and CurrencyFair sit at the opposite end.
| Broker | Score | Opened | Regulators on record | Max leverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axi | 61.1 | 2007 | ASIC, FCA, CySEC, DFSA, FMA | 1:500 |
| AUS Global | 56.9 | 2023 | ASIC, CySEC, FSCA | 1:500 |
| STARTRADER | 54.9 | 2012 | ASIC, FCA, SCA, FSCA, FSC, FSA | 1:500 |
| VT Markets | 52.7 | 2015 | ASIC, FSCA, SCA, FSC | 1:1000 |
| IC Markets | 50.7 | 2007 | ASIC, CySEC, FSA | 1:500 |
| easyMarkets | 50.7 | 2003 | ASIC, CySEC, FSA, BVI FSC | 1:2000 |
What ASIC oversight actually buys, and what it does not
An ASIC licence means the Australian entity answers to a tier-1 regulator that caps retail leverage and holds client money apart from the firm's own. It says nothing about the offshore arm many of these groups also run. When a broker holds both an ASIC licence and a MISA licence from the Comoros, the account you open decides which set of rules protects you, and the offshore entity is usually the one offering the higher leverage. Read the client agreement to see which company you are actually contracting with before you deposit.
Before you open an account
- Confirm which legal entity your account sits under. An Australian firm can onboard you through an offshore subsidiary that ASIC does not supervise.
- Check the AFSL number against the ASIC register yourself rather than trusting a badge on the website.
- As a market maker, the firm is the counterparty to your trades, so ask how it manages that position and whether it offers guaranteed stops.
- If leverage above the Australian retail cap is on offer, that usually means you are trading under the offshore entity, not the ASIC one.
23brokers on this list
Researched & ranked by the Wikilix team
- #2
Bank of Queensland Limited
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 1874ASIC
RegulationLicenseSpread59.1Score - #3
Travelex Limited
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 1976ASICRegulationLicenseSpread59.1Score - #4
STARTRADER Limited
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2012FSA
RegulationLicenseSpread57.9Score - #5
VT Markets Pty Ltd
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2015ASIC
RegulationLicenseSpread57.0Score - #6
AUS Global MU Limited
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2023FSCARegulationLicenseSpread56.9Score - #7
Mitrade Global Pty Ltd
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2011CySECRegulationLicenseSpread53.9Score - #8
EF Worldwide Ltd
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2003ASIC
RegulationLicenseSpread53.4Score - #9
Gleneagle Asset Management Pty Limited
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2002ASICRegulationLicenseSpread52.4Score - #10
IC Markets Global
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2007CySEC
RegulationLicenseSpread51.4Score - #11
GO Markets Pty Ltd (MU)
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2006CySECRegulationLicenseSpread51.1Score - #12
BACERA CO PTY LTD
RegulatedAustraliaEst. 2008ASICRegulationLicenseSpread49.3Score
This page updates itself as our records change. When a firm gains or loses a licence, moves its head office, or has its status revised, it appears or drops off without anyone rewriting the page by hand. The figures above reflect what WIKILIX has on record today, so treat any single licence as a prompt to check the source rather than the last word.
The register worth checking first is ASIC's own Professional Registers, where you can confirm an Australian financial services licence by number. For the wider picture, the full list of brokers based in Australia adds the firms that run on agency and ECN models, and the complete market maker forex brokers list places these 23 next to market makers domiciled elsewhere. If your concern is the licence rather than the address, the ASIC regulated brokers ranking covers every firm on our records with an ASIC entry, wherever its head office sits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions
Answers from the Wikilix research team about this ranking.
Most Popular Questions
Because they are not headquartered in Australia. Several large brokers that accept Australian clients run a local ASIC entity but keep their head office overseas, so they appear on other WIKILIX country lists rather than this one. The list also leaves out Australian brokers that use an agency or ECN execution model, since it covers only firms recorded as market makers.
Axi holds the top WIKILIX score on this list at 61.1, ahead of Bank of Queensland and Travelex, which tie at 59.1. The lowest is Jarden at 16.9, and the median across the 23 firms is 48.6. The score is our overall rating of a firm and does not measure spreads or execution costs, so read it as a starting point rather than a verdict on price.
No. An ASIC licence applies only to the Australian entity it was issued to. Six of the 23 firms here pair their ASIC entity with an offshore MISA licence from the Comoros, and accounts opened under that offshore arm fall outside ASIC's protections. The higher leverage some of these groups advertise is usually attached to the offshore company, not the Australian one.
This list cannot answer that directly, because it is built from domicile and licence records, not from the countries each firm accepts clients from. Some of these brokers take international clients through offshore entities, while others restrict themselves to Australian residents. Check the sign-up terms of the specific firm, since client eligibility is set by the broker and changes without notice.
It means the firm's registered head office is in Australia. It does not mean the broker only serves Australians, and it does not describe where the company is licensed to take clients. A broker can be Australian by address while onboarding you through an overseas entity, so domicile tells you where the company is run from and little more.
No. Twenty-two of the 23 hold an ASIC licence, and the single exception is Jarden, which records only an offshore MISA entry despite being domiciled in Australia. An Australian head office does not automatically mean an active ASIC authorisation, which is why the licence and the address are worth checking separately before you open an account.
Bank of Queensland, which opened in 1874, is the oldest firm on the list, followed by Commonwealth Bank of Australia from 1911 and Travelex from 1976. These are long-standing Australian institutions rather than retail contracts-for-difference specialists. Among the dedicated forex market makers, Fusion Markets from 2002 and easyMarkets from 2003 are the earliest, and 14 of the 23 firms opened before 2010.
WIKILIX tracks 23 market-maker forex firms headquartered in Australia. Twenty-two of them hold a licence from ASIC, the national regulator, and the whole list currently carries a clean status on our records. The number moves on its own as firms gain or lose licences or change their registered address, so treat 23 as today's count rather than a fixed figure.