Tier-2 Regulated Market Maker Brokers

Twenty-eight of the market makers WIKILIX tracks hold at least one licence from a tier-2 regulator, and this page ranks them by overall score. Interactive Brokers leads on 72.5, ahead of IG on 69.5 and FOREX.com on 68.3, and the list runs down to the tier1fx brand on 43.8. The median score across the twenty-eight is 56.6.

A market maker prices its own book and can stand as the counterparty to your trade, so the authority behind it matters more here than in most corners of this market. Every firm below clears a tier-2 bar, which means it holds a licence from a supervisor such as CySEC in Cyprus, the FSCA in South Africa or the DFSA in Dubai. Twenty-seven of the twenty-eight go further and also answer to a tier-1 authority, most often ASIC, which twenty-one of them hold, or the FCA, held by thirteen. The single exception, tier1fx, holds one MFSA licence out of Malta and nothing above it.

What clears the tier-2 bar, and what it does not

Inclusion turns on one rule: a market maker must hold at least one licence issued by a tier-2 regulator. That group covers the mid-ranking supervisors, among them CySEC, the FSCA, the DFSA, Malta's MFSA and the UAE's SCA. Sixteen of the twenty-eight hold a CySEC licence, which carries an EU passport, and eleven hold an FSCA licence from South Africa. Because most of these firms are large multi-entity groups, a tier-2 licence rarely sits on its own. IG records eight separate regulators on its file and Interactive Brokers eleven, while only tier1fx appears with a single authority.

The market makers left off this list

WIKILIX tracks forty-nine market makers in total. The twenty-one that do not appear here hold no tier-2 licence: some carry only an offshore registration, others record no regulator at all. That gap is the reason the page exists. A dealing desk running on nothing but a Saint Vincent registration is a very different proposition from one answering to CySEC and the FCA, even when both use the same execution model. One firm that did clear the bar, FXTRADING.com, still carries an offshore status label despite holding an Israeli ISA licence, and it sits mid-table on 53.5.

Why the counterparty question weighs heavier here

When a market maker takes the other side of your position, its incentives and yours can pull in opposite directions, and the check on that conflict is the regulator holding its licence. Age is part of the reassurance too. Sixteen of these firms opened before 2010; IG dates to 1974, Saxo to 1992 and Interactive Brokers to 1996, so the top of the list pairs decades of operating history with tier-1 oversight. Leverage tells a different story. Caps run from 1:30 at quadcode markets to 1:3000 at FBS, and the highest figures tend to belong to the offshore arms of these groups rather than their European or Australian entities.

Before you open an account with a market maker

• Find out which entity of the group would actually onboard you. A firm can hold FCA and CySEC licences yet place clients outside the EU under an offshore arm with weaker protection.
• Match the licence number on the named regulator's own register, not on the broker's own site.
• Read the leverage cap against that entity, since the 1:1000 and higher figures on this list usually apply to an offshore branch, not the tier-1 one.
• Ask whether your orders are internalised or hedged out, because a dealing desk can hold the opposite side of your trade.

This page does not measure spreads, execution speed or which clients each firm accepts, and it will not tell you which country you can open an account from. It records the licences and status labels WIKILIX holds today. Confirm any licence on the regulator's own register before you deposit.