Risk scorecard
Each area is scored 0 (clean) to 10 (worst). Higher means more risk.
Regulation
7/10 · HighA genuine VFSC Vanuatu dealer licence, active and held by the correct entity at the matching address, but tier-4 offshore with no deposit protection, and it was advertised for about two years before it was granted.
Identity & transparency
5/10 · ModerateThe entity, number and registered address are real and match the Vanuatu registry, and the current site discloses them with full legal documents, but the original site named no entity at all and no owners, managers or operating office are disclosed anywhere.
Withdrawals & conduct
5/10 · ModerateFund-integrity reports exist, including profits refused as excessive after platform chart errors, but the pattern is unconfirmed: one substantive account without amounts or dates and no verified second platform.
Reputation
6/10 · HighIndependent coverage is consistently negative and includes a negative field survey, yet no regulator warning could be verified and there is no Trustpilot profile at all for either domain.
Website claims
8/10 · CriticalThe site stated it was regulated by the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission from December 2020, two years before the licence existed, and claimed over 200 staff and clients in 20 countries while disclosing no legal entity.
Operational history
4/10 · ModerateSix years of history verified from the registry and domain records rather than marketing copy, but the trading brand collapsed in early 2024 and the operation restarted on a domain with no public track record.
Who they are
A quick desk file on the company behind the brand.
- Brand: VANEXFX, now presented simply as VANEX
- Legal entity: VANEX LIMITED, a Vanuatu International Company, number 41695
- Registered: Govant Building, Kumul Highway, 1st Floor, Port Vila, Vanuatu, confirmed on the Vanuatu registry
- Website: vanexfx.com is a parked domain today; the licence holder operates vanex.site
- Only licence: VFSC Vanuatu Financial Dealers Licence, classes A, B and C, dated 23 December 2022, status Active
- Offers: retail forex and CFDs on currencies, metals, indices, energies and shares through MetaTrader 5, with leverage advertised up to 1:1000
- Not accepted: the United States, Japan, Brazil and the European Union, according to its own restricted-countries clause
- Age claim: no founding year was advertised. The company was registered in May 2019 and the first domain in July 2020, so the verified track record is about six years
Regulation
Who really oversees this broker, and what each licence is worth to you.
Proof of regulation on an official register: Yes
We confirmed this broker on a genuine regulator’s register.
Licences the broker publishes
Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC)
Why we reached this verdict
How the evidence adds up.
We rate this operation high risk rather than a confirmed scam. The regulation is genuine, but the way it was presented was not, and the trading brand has since disappeared.
- The licence checks out, and we say so plainly. The VFSC Financial Dealers Licensee List names VANEX LIMITED with company number 41695, licence dated 23 December 2022, classes A, B and C, status Active. The Vanuatu company registry shows VANEX LIMITED registered on 22 May 2019 and still Registered, at the same Port Vila address the site publishes. The name and the address both match, so this is not a firm wearing someone else's credentials.
- But the regulation claim predates the licence by about two years. The earliest archived copy of vanexfx.com, from 3 December 2020, already carried the footer line 'Regulated by Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VSFC)', and it was still there on 26 October 2021. The regulator's own record puts the licence at 23 December 2022. During that period the site was running a live client portal and cashier at crm.vanexfx.com and fund.vanexfx.com and offering a 100 percent deposit bonus. Telling clients you are supervised when you are not is the single most serious thing we found here.
- The claim was quietly dropped. By the archived copy of 25 March 2022 the regulation line had been removed from the homepage altogether, still months before the licence was actually granted.
- The brand then shut down. The last complete broker homepage in the archive is 31 May 2023. By 3 March 2024 the page had been reduced to a bare stub, and today the domain serves a GoDaddy parking page. An independent Thai-language review of this broker, which correctly cites licence 41695, states that VANEX announced its closure in early 2024. Two separate lines of evidence agree on the timing.
- Client complaints point at the money, not the service. The same review reports unfair deposit and withdrawal conditions, and describes traders who made large gains after platform chart errors being told they would not be paid because the profit was too big. Cancelling a client's profit is a fund-integrity failure, not a service gripe. We treat this as moderate rather than strong: it is one substantive account without amounts, dates or ticket numbers, and we could not confirm a repeating pattern across two independent platforms.
- We checked the negative claims too, and one did not hold up. Several review sites state that Italy's CONSOB ordered vanexfx.com to be blocked, one of them citing Resolution 22233. That resolution is an authorisation granted to an unrelated British firm, and we could not confirm any CONSOB measure against this domain on CONSOB's own records. We are not counting it as evidence. We also found no entry naming VANEX or vanexfx.com in FCA, ASIC, CFTC, MAS, SFC or BaFin material.
- What worries us most is what happens next. A brand that closed with unresolved complaints about unpaid profits has been replaced by a minimal site at vanex.site, registered in April 2022, carrying client agreements dated April 2026 and an open registration form. The licence continues, the counterparty is the same company, and the new domain carries no public review history at all. There is no Trustpilot profile for vanexfx.com, vanex.site or login.vanex.site.
- The licence is also worth very little in practice. Vanuatu is a tier-4 offshore jurisdiction. It confirms a company exists and paid for a dealer licence. It does not provide a compensation scheme, and it will not get your deposit back.
Evidence ledger
Every finding, with its source and how strongly it points.
E1The regulator's own Financial Dealers Licensee List names VANEX LIMITED, company number 41695, date of licence 23 December 2022, classes A, B and C, licence status Active. The licensed name matches the entity on the broker's site, so this licence is not borrowed from another firm.
E2The Vanuatu company register records VANEX LIMITED, number 41695, on the International Companies register, registered 22 May 2019, status Registered, address Govant Building, Kumul Highway, 1st Floor, Port Vila. This is the address the broker publishes, so the corporate details check out. The entry is reached by searching the register and has no fixed link of its own.
E3The archived vanexfx.com homepage of 26 October 2021 carries the footer line 'Regulated by Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VSFC)'. The same line appears in the earliest archived copy, dated 3 December 2020. The regulator's own record puts the licence at 23 December 2022, so the claim ran for roughly two years before there was a licence behind it.
E4By the archived copy of 25 March 2022 the regulation line had been removed from the homepage entirely, still nine months before the licence was actually granted. The claim was dropped rather than corrected.
E5The domain vanexfx.com was created on 15 July 2020 through GoDaddy, and its registration record was last changed on 16 July 2026. The creation date sits well before the licence date, which rules out a lapsed domain being caught and reused by a third party.
E6Certificate records for vanexfx.com begin on 1 September 2020 and include the subdomains crm.vanexfx.com and fund.vanexfx.com. A client portal and a funding subdomain from 2020 show this was a real deposit-taking operation during the period it claimed regulation it did not hold.
E7The archive holds a working VANEXFX broker site from December 2020 to 31 May 2023. By 3 March 2024 the homepage had been reduced to a bare stub containing only the word VANEXFX, and later copies are redirects. The trading site stopped working between mid-2023 and early 2024.
E8The domain vanexfx.com now serves a GoDaddy parking page reading that the domain is parked free. The website recorded on the broker profile no longer belongs to a working brokerage.
ModerateLive check of vanexfx.comE9An independent Thai-language review of this broker, which cites licence number 41695, reports unfair deposit and withdrawal conditions and describes traders who profited after abnormal chart errors being told the broker would not pay because the gains were too large. It also states that VANEX announced its closure in early 2024, matching the archive record.
ModerateForexduck review of VANEXFXE10The live site at vanex.site publishes the full entity disclosure: VANEX LIMITED, Vanuatu company number 41695, the Port Vila registered address, and a VFSC licence to act as a Dealer in Securities. Its risk, terms, AML and privacy documents are all dated April 2026, so the operation is current and maintained.
StrongVANEX websiteE11The domain vanex.site was created on 1 April 2022 through the same registrar as vanexfx.com and its record was last changed on 18 March 2026. It is a newer domain than the abandoned one, carrying the same licensed entity.
ModerateRadix RDAP record for vanex.siteE12The client portal at login.vanex.site serves a working account registration form asking for name, email, phone, country, currency and a referral code. The licence holder is actively onboarding new clients right now, on a domain with no public review history.
E13The archived About page describes the firm as a prominent financial services company with over 200 staff globally and clients from over 20 countries, and refers to enhancements over the past three years, while the site disclosed no legal entity, address or telephone number anywhere. None of the scale claims could be evidenced.
E14The archived promotion page offered a 100 percent first deposit bonus described as non withdrawable, removed in proportion whenever the client withdraws. Combined with leverage advertised up to 1:1000, this is an aggressive retail funnel that reduces what a client can actually take out.
E15The archived footer states the firm does not accept customers from the United States, Japan, Brazil or the European Union, nor from jurisdictions identified by the FATF as high risk. An offshore broker that excludes the major tier-1 markets is not running the aggressive cross-border solicitation pattern we look for.
E16Trustpilot holds no profile for vanexfx.com, for vanex.site or for login.vanex.site. All three return not found. For an operation that claimed clients in more than 20 countries, the absence of any review presence is itself a signal about how thin the real footprint is.
ModerateTrustpilot domain lookupE17Third-party review coverage identity-matched to vanexfx.com states that Italy's CONSOB ordered the site blocked, citing Resolution 22233. That resolution authorises an unrelated British firm to provide investment services, and no CONSOB measure against this domain could be confirmed on CONSOB's own records. We treated the claim as unverified and excluded it from the ledger.
E18Searches of FCA, ASIC, CFTC, MAS, SFC and BaFin warning material returned no entry naming VANEX, VANEX LIMITED or vanexfx.com as of 2 September 2026. Warning lists lag new cases, so this is not a clean bill of health, only the absence of a recorded warning.
E19The archived site was Thai-first, with a Thai language switch, a dedicated Thai partner page and contact offered only through a LINE messenger link. The social media icons in the footer were placeholder links that led nowhere. Client contact ran through a messenger channel rather than a disclosed office or phone line.
The other side
The strongest case in this broker’s favour.
The fair case for this broker, and it is not empty:
- The company and the licence are both real. We opened the regulator's own list and the Vanuatu company registry. VANEX LIMITED exists, has existed since May 2019, is still registered, and holds an active dealer licence in its own name at its own registered address. Many operations we review cannot survive that test.
- It is not a clone. No other firm's licence number, entity name or address is being used. The credentials on the site belong to the company publishing them.
- It excluded the jurisdictions where its licence means nothing. The archived terms state it does not accept clients from the United States, Japan, Brazil or the European Union. Plenty of offshore brokers do the opposite and chase tier-1 retail clients anyway.
- Disclosure improved, it did not get worse. The old vanexfx.com site named no legal entity at all, gave no address and no phone number, and had no terms page anywhere in its archive. The current site names the entity, the company number, the registered address and the licence, and publishes risk, terms, AML and privacy documents.
- There is no regulator action against it that we could verify. No warning list entry, no enforcement action, and the one specific regulator claim circulating about this domain appears to be a misreading of an unrelated document.
- A six-year track record is real history. Both the company date and the domain date are from primary records, not from an About page.
- Some of what is written about this broker online is about a different company. Searches for VANEX return Trustpilot pages for vanexgroup.com and vanexgroups.pro, including a much-quoted complaint about 13,500 dollars. Those are different domains and a different operation, and we excluded them.
What would change this
What we would need to see to revise the verdict.
This verdict is not fixed. Here is what would move it, in either direction.
- Towards a scam verdict: a warning or blocking order from any regulator naming vanexfx.com or vanex.site, confirmed on that regulator's own site.
- Towards a scam verdict: three or more separate clients, on at least two platforms, describing the same refusal with amounts, dates or ticket numbers. That would turn the current moderate complaint signal into a proven pattern.
- Towards a scam verdict: any credible report that a further payment, such as a tax, fee or insurance, was demanded before funds would be released.
- Towards a scam verdict: the VFSC licence appearing as cancelled, suspended or lapsed while vanex.site keeps taking deposits.
- Towards a lower risk score: a documented run of successful withdrawals from vanex.site clients on an established review platform, with dates and amounts.
- Towards a lower risk score: the company publishing an audited account of what happened to client balances when the VANEXFX brand closed in early 2024, and evidence those balances were returned.
- Towards a lower risk score: a verify link on the broker's own site pointing straight at its VFSC register entry, plus a disclosed office address and named management.
- Would resolve an open gap: access to CONSOB's blocked-sites list and the IOSCO alert database, which we could not reach on the day we checked.
Check it yourself
Official registers and warning lists. Verify every claim first-hand.
VFSC Financial Dealers Licensee List (Vanuatu)
The regulator's own list. Look for VANEX LIMITED, company number 41695, dated 23 December 2022.
VFSC Vanuatu company and entity register search
Search VANEX LIMITED or 41695 to see the incorporation date, status and registered address.
VANEX current website
The site the licence holder operates today, after vanexfx.com was given up.
VANEX client agreement, April 2026
The current terms you would be agreeing to, published by the company itself.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers about this broker’s safety.
Is VANEXFX a scam?
We did not find enough to call it a confirmed scam, and we rate it high risk at 59 percent. The company holds a genuine and currently active Vanuatu dealer licence in its own name. Against that, it advertised Vanuatu regulation for about two years before the licence existed, and the VANEXFX brand shut down in early 2024 with complaints about profits not being paid.
Is VANEXFX a fraud?
No regulator or court has found that. We found no warning list entry, no enforcement action and no fraud-related court record naming VANEX LIMITED or vanexfx.com. What we can document is a false statement about being regulated between December 2020 and 2022, and client reports of cancelled profits. We assess the risk as high, but that is our assessment, not a legal finding.
Is VANEXFX regulated?
Yes, since 23 December 2022. The Vanuatu Financial Services Commission lists VANEX LIMITED, company number 41695, with a Financial Dealers Licence in classes A, B and C, status Active. We opened that register and confirmed it. Vanuatu is a tier-4 offshore regulator, so the licence carries little practical protection.
Why does it matter that the licence came after the claim?
Because clients who deposited in 2021 were told they were dealing with a supervised firm when they were not. The site footer said it was regulated by the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission from at least December 2020, and the licence was only granted on 23 December 2022. Anyone who checked the footer and believed it was misled.
Can I withdraw my money from VANEXFX?
The vanexfx.com website no longer operates, so there is nothing to withdraw from at that address. If you hold a balance from that era, contact the licence holder, VANEX LIMITED, in writing and keep every reply. An independent review of this broker reports that traders with large gains were told their profits would not be paid, so put any request in writing and record the details.
Is my money safe with VANEXFX?
We would not call it safe. A Vanuatu dealer licence has no compensation scheme behind it and no guarantee that client money is held separately from company money. If the firm does not pay, your realistic options are a complaint to the VFSC in Vanuatu and, if you paid by card or bank transfer, a chargeback or recall through your provider.
Is vanexfx.com still working?
No. The domain now shows a GoDaddy parking page. The last complete broker site we found in the web archive is dated 31 May 2023, and by March 2024 the page had been reduced to a blank stub. If someone asks you to deposit through vanexfx.com, they are not the licence holder.
Where is VANEX now?
The same licence holder, VANEX LIMITED, operates a much smaller site at vanex.site, registered in April 2022. It publishes risk, terms, AML and privacy documents dated April 2026 and has an open account registration form, so it is actively taking new clients. That domain has no public review history at all.
Who owns VANEXFX and where is it based?
The contracting company is VANEX LIMITED, a Vanuatu International Company registered on 22 May 2019 at Govant Building, Kumul Highway, Port Vila. No owners or directors are named on the website. Independent review coverage places the day-to-day operation in Thailand, which fits a site that was Thai-first, ran a Thai partner page and offered contact only through the LINE messenger.
How old is VANEXFX really?
About six years. The company dates from 22 May 2019 on the Vanuatu registry and the first domain from 15 July 2020. We use the younger of the two, so the verified track record runs from mid-2020. The site never advertised a founding year, though its About page claimed over 200 staff worldwide and clients in more than 20 countries, which we could not evidence at all.
Is VANEXFX a clone of another broker?
No. We checked the licence number, the entity name and the registered address against the Vanuatu register and registry, and they all belong to VANEX LIMITED itself. No other company's credentials are being used. Note that a similarly named brand, Vaanex, is listed elsewhere as a look-alike, and it is a separate operation.
Did CONSOB in Italy block vanexfx.com?
We could not confirm it. Several review sites say CONSOB ordered the site blocked, and one cites Resolution 22233, but that resolution authorises an unrelated British firm. CONSOB's blocked-sites list was not reachable when we checked, so we treated the claim as unverified and did not count it as evidence.
What is a VFSC licence actually worth?
Not much in terms of protection. Vanuatu grants dealer licences quickly and cheaply and supervises lightly. The licence proves a real company paid for real permission to deal, which is better than nothing, but there is no investor compensation fund, no guaranteed segregation of client money and no realistic enforcement if you are outside Vanuatu.
What should I check before depositing with any offshore broker?
Four things. Open the regulator's register yourself and match the exact company name. Confirm the company that takes your money is the same one named on the licence. Test a small withdrawal before funding properly. And check whether the brand or domain has changed recently, because a fresh domain with no review history hides whatever happened under the old one.
What we recommend
The practical takeaway from everything above.
If you are considering this broker, or you already have money with it, this is what we would do.
- Do not treat the Vanuatu licence as protection. It confirms the company exists and paid for a dealer licence. It does not insure your deposit and there is no compensation scheme behind it.
- Check which website you are actually on. vanexfx.com is a parked domain and no longer belongs to a working broker. Anyone inviting you to deposit through that address is not connected to the licence holder.
- If you hold a balance from the VANEXFX era, ask for it in writing now. The brand closed in early 2024 and the same company still trades at vanex.site. Put the request in writing, keep every reply, and record account numbers, dates and amounts.
- Before depositing anything new, test a withdrawal. Send a small amount, ask for it back straight away, and see what happens before you add more.
- Verify the licence yourself. Open the VFSC list and look for VANEX LIMITED with company number 41695. It takes a minute and the broker does not link to it for you.
- Be careful with the deposit bonus. The bonus offered under the old brand was non withdrawable and was removed in proportion when you withdrew, which reduces what you can actually take out.
- If you were refused a withdrawal or had a profit cancelled, complain to the VFSC in writing, and if you paid by card or bank transfer ask your provider about a chargeback or recall straight away.
This is an independent assessment of risk, not a legal ruling. Scores and verdicts follow the Wikilix broker-safety methodology and can change as new evidence appears. Review scores are treated with caution when a broker’s reviews look manipulated. Last reviewed September 2, 2026. If any detail here is out of date or incorrect, or you represent this broker, please contact us.