Top 10 Market Maker Forex Brokers by WIKILIX Score

Ten brokers lead this ranking of market-maker forex brokers, chosen from the 32 that WIKILIX tracks with a recorded market-making (dealing desk) model and a score of 50 or higher. Interactive Brokers sits at the top on 72.5, and every firm in the ten holds a tier-1 licence from the FCA, ASIC, or both.

The order is the WIKILIX score, highest first. That score reflects how a broker is regulated, how long it has traded and how many authorities oversee it, so it is a measure of standing rather than of the spread you will pay or the speed of any single fill.

What separates the top ten from the rest

The 32 brokers in the pool span a score of 50.3 to 72.5, with a midpoint of 58.3, so the ten shown here all sit in the upper half. Only firms carrying a clean regulation status made the cut. Two names in the wider pool carry a warning flag, one marked a suspicious clone and one offshore, and both were left out well below the line. Record does much of the work in the ordering: nineteen of the 32 opened before 2010, and 29 of them answer to two or more authorities at once.

What a market-making broker actually does

A market maker, often called a dealing desk broker, quotes its own bid and offer and takes the other side of your trade instead of passing it to an outside venue. That model is how a broker can offer fixed spreads and fill small orders instantly, and it is also where the awkward part lives: when you lose, the desk on the other side can gain. Regulation is the counterweight. It forces client-money segregation and capital buffers, which is why the licence a market maker holds matters more than it would for a pure agency broker. Interactive Brokers alone answers to eleven separate authorities including the FCA, ASIC and Hong Kong's SFC.

Age tells part of the same story. IG has traded since 1974 and Saxo Bank since 1992, both through repeated tightening of the rules that govern how a dealing desk may price and hedge. FXCM and Spreadex show the other lesson here: the same brand can run very different accounts. Spreadex offers a single FCA-regulated account capped at 1:30, while FXCM's group stretches to 1:1000 on an offshore entity, and the protection changes with that number.

What this list does not tell you

These ten are ranked on standing, not on trading costs. WIKILIX holds no spread, commission or slippage figures, so nothing here says who is cheapest or whose fills are fastest. It also does not record which countries each broker accepts clients from. A firm can hold an FCA licence and still turn away residents of your country, so read the licences below as proof the company is supervised somewhere, not as a promise it will open your account.

Before you open a dealing desk account

• Confirm which company entity you are actually signing with. Brokers like IG and FXCM are licensed across several jurisdictions, and the leverage on offer here runs from 1:30 to 1:1000 depending on which one you open.
• Ask whether spreads are fixed or variable, since a market maker sets its own prices rather than passing through an outside feed.
• Look up the licence number on the regulator's own register, for example the FCA register, rather than trusting a logo on the broker's site.
• Look for negative balance protection. Tier-1 retail rules require it, but an offshore arm of the same brand often does not.