FBS is built to be easy to start with: one dollar opens a cent account, the mobile app is genuinely well made, and support answers in about two minutes at midnight. The cost of that accessibility shows up in two places. Spreads on the standard account were the widest of the four brokers we measured side by side, and unless you live in the EU or Australia, the entity holding your account is registered in Belize with no compensation scheme behind it — including, oddly, traders in South Africa, where FBS holds a local licence it does not onboard new clients under.
Disclosure: we may earn a commission if you open an account through links on this page. It does not affect our findings, our scores, or the order brokers appear in. Read how we make money.
| Overall rating | 6.5/10 |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2009 |
| Headquarters | Belize, with entities in Cyprus, Australia and South Africa |
| Main licences | CySEC Cyprus (331/17), ASIC Australia (AFSL 426359), FSCA South Africa (FSP 50885), FSC Belize (000102/460) |
| Minimum deposit | $1 (Cent), $5 (Micro), $100 (Standard), $500 (Zero Spread), $1,000 (ECN) |
| Spread from | 0.5 pips advertised on Standard; we measured 1.3 pips average on EUR/USD |
| Maximum leverage | 1:3000 (Belize entity); 1:30 for retail clients under CySEC and ASIC |
| Instruments | 550+ |
| Swap-free available | Yes — all live account types, but with an administrative charge after two days |
| Retail loss rate | 66.43% (FBS EU) and 76.2% (FBS Australia) as disclosed in July 2026; 72.12% was disclosed at the time of our testing |
We opened live accounts, funded them, placed real trades, requested a real withdrawal and contacted support without identifying ourselves as reviewers. Read our full methodology. Testing ran across February and March 2026; every licence, entity and warning register was re-checked on 27 July 2026 before this review was published.
Pros and cons
We spent more than two weeks with FBS in early 2026 and placed over 60 trades across major pairs and commodities. The picture that emerged is a broker that is very good at getting beginners through the door and fairly average once they are inside.
What we liked
- A cent account that opens from $1 and trades in cent lots, so a losing position costs pennies rather than a meaningful part of a small balance.
- Our $150 Skrill withdrawal cleared in three hours, with no fee.
- Support answered live chat in about two minutes at 11pm on a Friday, and email in six hours. Cover is 24/7 in 14 languages.
- No inactivity fee at all, which is rarer than it should be.
- The FBS Trader mobile app is a properly designed product, not a stripped-down afterthought.
- Negative balance protection on every account type, applied automatically.
- Over 200 funding methods, and no deposit fees on any of them.
What we did not
- Standard-account spreads were the widest of the four brokers we measured: 1.3 pips average on EUR/USD against 1.0 at Exness and 0.5 at FXTM.
- Outside the EU and Australia, clients are onboarded under the Belize entity, which carries no investor compensation scheme.
- The Zero Spread account charges $20 per lot in commission, against $7 for the comparable XM account. In our own comparison it worked out more expensive than simply trading the Standard account.
- No Autochartist, no Trading Central, and no proprietary desktop platform.
- Only five cryptocurrency CFDs, against 30+ at Exness and 50+ at XM.
- Slippage appeared in 8 of our 50 measured orders, reaching 1.5 pips twice during data releases.
- FBS Trader has no price alerts, a basic feature almost every competitor ships.
- The company is private and publishes no audited group financials.
Company information
FBS was founded in 2009 and has built its client base primarily in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa. It operates through several separately incorporated entities, and which one holds your account is decided by your country of residence at sign-up.
| Legal entity (international) | FBS Markets Inc., Belize |
|---|---|
| Legal entity (Europe) | Tradestone Ltd, Cyprus |
| Legal entity (Australia) | Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd, trading as FBS Oceania |
| Legal entity (South Africa) | Trade Stone SA (Pty) Ltd |
| Founded | 2009 |
| Registered users claimed | Over 27 million |
| Industry awards claimed | Over 100 |
| Ownership | Private; unchanged when re-checked in July 2026 |
The registered-user and awards figures are the company’s own and we could not verify either. FBS is not listed on any exchange and publishes no group financial statements — normal for a private brokerage, but it means nobody outside the firm can assess its solvency directly. The exception is Tradestone Ltd, which must file financial reports with CySEC: transparency at that entity and nowhere else.
Who this broker suits (and who it does not)
FBS fits people starting with very small amounts, where the cent account is a real advantage rather than a marketing line. It also fits traders who want copy trading in a simple package, anyone needing support at unusual hours, and traders who move money in and out often, since FBS charges for neither and paid us quickly.
It does not fit scalping strategies, where a 1.3-pip average spread compounds on every round turn; traders who rely on third-party analysis tools, since neither Autochartist nor Trading Central is available; anyone with a serious interest in crypto CFDs; or anyone whose priority is being a retail client of a tier-1 regulated entity — unless you live in the EU or Australia, FBS cannot offer that. Our broker reviews cover several firms that onboard international clients under a tier-one licence rather than an offshore one.
Licensing and regulation
We checked each licence against the regulators’ own registers, first in early 2026 and again on 27 July 2026. All four were active on both occasions, with no change to numbers or entity names.
| Regulator | Entity | Licence | Tier | Retail clients? | Protection |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CySEC (Cyprus) | Tradestone Ltd | 331/17 | Tier 1 | Yes | Investor Compensation Fund up to €20,000 |
| ASIC (Australia) | Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd | AFSL 426359 | Tier 1 | Yes | Segregated funds, AFCA dispute resolution |
| FSCA (South Africa) | Trade Stone SA (Pty) Ltd | FSP 50885 | Tier 2 | Not in practice | Segregated funds |
| FSC (Belize) | FBS Markets Inc. | 000102/460 | Offshore | Yes | Segregated funds only |
You can confirm the first two in under a minute on the CySEC register and via ASIC. Note that AFSL 426359 is held by Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd, which operates the FBS Oceania brand — the licence is real and active, but it sits with that entity rather than with FBS Markets Inc.
The licence list is not the protection you get
This is the most important thing to understand about FBS. EU residents are onboarded under Tradestone Ltd and genuinely get CySEC supervision under MiFID II, Investor Compensation Fund cover up to €20,000, and leverage capped at 1:30. Australian residents get ASIC supervision, AFCA access and the same 1:30 cap. Both are real protections, and unlike some competitors whose tier-1 entities take no retail business at all, FBS actually serves retail clients under them.
Everyone else lands under FBS Markets Inc. in Belize, where protection narrows to segregated funds and negative balance protection — no compensation scheme, lighter supervision, and leverage up to 1:3000. The most telling case is South Africa: FBS holds an FSCA licence through Trade Stone SA (Pty) Ltd, yet when we checked in July 2026 new South African clients were still registered under the Belize entity. A licence that exists but does not hold your account is a marketing asset, not a safeguard. FBS holds no FCA authorisation and does not serve UK retail clients.
Regulator listings we found — and what they are not
Our July 2026 register sweep surfaced three items. We disclose all of them, and we explain why none of them changed our verdict.
- Securities Commission Malaysia Investor Alert List. An FBS entry appears on this list for carrying on unlicensed capital market activity. Context matters: Malaysia does not license retail spot forex brokers at all, so the list is a register of firms operating without local authorisation rather than a finding of misconduct. It ran to roughly 1,900 entities when we checked. It was still present on 27 July 2026 and applies to residents of Malaysia.
- Japan FSA unregistered-operators list. FBS Markets Inc. is named for soliciting over-the-counter derivative transactions online without Japanese registration, with the conduct traced back to at least August 2015. This is a long-standing territorial listing, not an enforcement action, and it applies to residents of Japan.
- An FCA warning that is not this broker. The FCA Warning List contains an entry for “Fbs Fx Trading” at fbsfxtrading.com, listed on 22 September 2023 with a US postal address. That is a different, unrelated firm with a confusingly similar name — not FBS Markets Inc. or Tradestone Ltd. We flag it because anyone searching for “FBS FCA” will find it, and because the resemblance is exactly the kind of thing impersonators rely on. Verify any FBS domain against the broker’s own official sites before depositing.
You can check both the FCA Warning List and the Malaysia SC Investor Alert List yourself. What we did not find, as at 27 July 2026, is any enforcement action, fine, licence suspension, revocation or fraud finding against FBS from CySEC, ASIC, the FSCA or the Belize FSC. That distinction is why we published a score rather than withholding one.
Opening an account and verification
Registering in February 2026 took under five minutes.
- Enter an email address and create a password.
- Select country of residence — this silently determines which entity holds your account.
- Choose an account type.
- Enter personal identity details.
- Upload verification documents.
KYC requires a colour copy of a passport or national ID plus proof of address, accepted as JPG, PNG, HEIC, WEBP or PDF up to 50MB. Our documents were approved in about 18 hours. That is slower than Exness, which cleared our documents in four hours in comparable testing, but well within normal industry range.
FBS lets you trade small amounts before verification completes, but withdrawal requires the full process to be finished. Complete it immediately — the most common cause of the withdrawal delays traders complain about is an unfinished verification discovered at the moment they want their money.
Account types
We opened two accounts, Cent and Standard, to compare conditions directly. FBS offers five live types.
| Account | Minimum deposit | Spread from | Commission | Max leverage | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cent | $1 | 1.0 pips | None | 1:1000 | Beginners and practice |
| Micro | $5 | 3.0 pips fixed | None | 1:3000 | Very small balances |
| Standard | $100 | 0.5 pips | None | 1:3000 | General trading |
| Zero Spread | $500 | 0 pips fixed | $20 per lot | 1:3000 | Rarely the cheapest option |
| ECN | $1,000 | -1.0 pips | $6 per lot | 1:500 | Experienced traders |
Trading the cent account with a $10 deposit felt identical to the standard account in execution speed and tooling — only the position sizing differs. As a way to learn risk management with real money at stake but trivial amounts on the line, it works.
The Zero Spread account is the one we would steer people away from. A zero spread sounds like the cheapest option, but $20 per lot in commission means a EUR/USD round turn costs more than simply trading the same pair on the Standard account at 1.3 pips. We ran that comparison during testing and the Standard account won. Compare it to XM Zero at $7 per lot and the pricing looks harder to justify.
On leverage: 1:3000 under the Belize entity is a hazard rather than a feature. It magnifies losses at exactly the rate it magnifies gains, shortening the distance between a normal market move and a wiped-out account. The 1:30 cap EU and Australian regulators impose exists for that reason. Most retail investor accounts lose money trading these products.
Swap-free accounts
Swap-free status can be enabled on every live account type — Cent, Micro, Standard, Zero Spread and ECN — either at account creation or later from the client area. It removes overnight interest charges across all instruments, which matters both to traders observing Islamic finance principles and to anyone who simply wants overnight costs off the table.
The detail people miss is what replaces the swap. We held a EUR/USD position on a swap-free account for five days: nothing was charged for the first two, and on day three an administrative fee appeared. FBS calculates it as a fixed charge based on position size and full days held, and describes it as an administrative cost rather than interest. Exotic pairs carry a weekly commission instead.
| Availability | All live account types |
|---|---|
| Overnight swap | None |
| Grace period | Two days |
| After the grace period | Administrative fee based on size and days held |
| Exotic pairs | Weekly commission instead |
| Instruments covered | All available instruments |
The practical consequence: FBS swap-free works well for one- to two-day positions and becomes expensive for genuine long-term holds. Grace periods and substitute fees vary widely between brokers, so compare directly rather than assuming “swap-free” means the same thing everywhere. Traders with religious requirements should read the full terms and take their own qualified guidance, since the permissibility of CFD trading itself is a separate question this review cannot answer.
Fees and trading costs
We sampled spreads across different sessions on the Standard account through February and March 2026. During London and New York hours, EUR/USD ran between 1.1 and 1.4 pips. Through the Asian session it widened to 1.8–2.2 pips. Around major economic releases we saw 4–5 pips on some pairs.
Averages we measured against three competitors on comparable commission-free accounts, all sampled in the same period:
| Instrument | FBS Standard | XM Ultra Low | Exness Standard | FXTM Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EUR/USD | 1.3 pips | 0.8 pips | 1.0 pips | 0.5 pips |
| GBP/USD | 2.0 pips | 1.2 pips | 1.2 pips | 0.8 pips |
| USD/JPY | 1.5 pips | 0.9 pips | 1.1 pips | 0.5 pips |
| AUD/USD | 1.8 pips | 1.2 pips | 1.4 pips | 0.9 pips |
| USD/CHF | 2.1 pips | 1.5 pips | 1.5 pips | 1.0 pips |
| Gold (XAUUSD) | 30 cents | 25 cents | 20 cents | 18 cents |
| Oil (WTI) | 5 cents | 4 cents | 4 cents | 5 cents |
FBS came last on almost every instrument. The gap is small in isolation — half a pip on EUR/USD — but it is a per-trade cost, so it scales directly with how often you trade. At one round turn a day it is noise; at twenty it is the difference between strategies.
Commissions: none on Cent, Micro and Standard. ECN charges $6 per lot round turn, in line with industry norms; Zero Spread charges $20 per lot, which is not. Overnight swaps are uniform across live account types and sit near the industry average on majors, with per-instrument figures in the contract specifications.
Non-trading fees are where FBS does well: no deposit fees, no withdrawal fees except on bank transfers under $200 ($15), and no inactivity fee at all, so a dormant balance stays intact. Net position is mid-table — wider spreads than direct rivals, offset partly by the absence of the small charges that quietly erode accounts elsewhere. Frequent traders should look elsewhere; occasional traders will find the total acceptable.
Desktop platforms
FBS runs entirely on MetaTrader on desktop — MT4, MT5, and browser versions of both. There is no proprietary desktop platform, which is a gap against Exness and XM.
MT4 remains the most-used option among FBS clients and covers the basics: 50+ built-in indicators, nine timeframes, four chart types and Expert Advisor support. We ran a simple EA for three days on FBS servers without a technical problem. MT5 adds 21 timeframes, an integrated economic calendar, market depth and Stop Limit orders, and it carries the stock and index CFDs that MT4 does not. Execution on MT5 was marginally faster in our testing.
The web terminals run in-browser with no download and were fine for monitoring and quick order entry, but offer fewer indicators and less customisation than the desktop builds.
Mobile apps
FBS offers its own FBS Trader app alongside the official MT4 and MT5 apps. We used FBS Trader on Android for a week and placed 25 trades through it on a live account.
This is the strongest thing FBS builds. The interface is modern and clear, a guided tour walks new users through the basics, and it packs in 90+ technical indicators, an economic calendar, a video education section and direct support contact. On Google Play it held 4.3 stars from over 15,000 reviews at the time of our testing.
Two real weaknesses. Charts were slow to load when switching quickly between instruments, which will irritate anyone trading fast. And there are no price alerts — a basic feature that most competitors ship and that you will need the MetaTrader app to get.
| App | Google Play rating | Reviews | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| FBS Trader | 4.3 stars | 15,000+ | Day-to-day trading and monitoring |
| MetaTrader 4 | 4.2 stars | Official MetaQuotes app | Technical analysis |
| MetaTrader 5 | 4.1 stars | Official MetaQuotes app | Multi-asset trading |
Trading tools
FBS advertises 550+ instruments. We checked availability on the platforms rather than taking the marketing page at face value.
| Asset class | Instruments | What we found |
|---|---|---|
| Forex | 72+ | Solid coverage of majors, minors and exotics |
| Share CFDs | 120+ | Major US and European names, MT5 only |
| Indices | 11+ | S&P 500, NASDAQ, DAX, FTSE and others |
| Metals | 4 | Gold, silver, platinum, palladium |
| Energy | 3 | WTI, Brent, natural gas |
| Cryptocurrencies | 5 | The clear weak spot |
Forex coverage is genuinely good and execution on majors was smooth, though exotics such as USD/TRY and USD/ZAR widened noticeably outside peak hours. Share CFDs are MT5-only, so choose your platform accordingly. The crypto selection of five is the standout weakness against 30+ at Exness and 50+ at XM, and index coverage at 11 is thin against rivals offering 20 or more.
Copy trading runs through a separate CopyTrade app. We copied three traders for a week; the mechanics were smooth and one-click, with an automatic 10% stop-loss as a floor — though that protection is capped at three positions across three traders, and search and filtering are limited next to dedicated platforms such as eToro. Copy trading does not remove risk; you inherit a strategy’s drawdowns as directly as its gains.
Order execution
We placed 50 measured orders on a live account across different sessions and instruments.
FBS uses market execution routed to liquidity providers on an NDD/STP basis, which in principle means no requotes. That held: zero requotes across all 50 orders. FBS states 95% of orders execute within 0.4 seconds; execution was quick during London and New York hours, but we recorded delays reaching a full second around US employment data.
Slippage appeared in 8 of 50 orders — 16%. Most was 0.1–0.3 pips, which is unremarkable. But on two orders placed during a major data release it reached 1.5 pips, higher than we would like, and matching a recurring theme in public complaints about FBS execution in volatile conditions.
Order types are market, buy/sell limit, buy/sell stop, stop loss and take profit, with Stop Limit added on MT5. All behaved correctly. Overall: adequate for swing and position trading, questionable for scalping strategies that depend on precise fills around news, where the execution-led brokers measure materially tighter.
Deposits
FBS supports over 200 payment methods, which is among the broadest in the industry. Our Visa card deposit completed in under a minute.
| Method | Minimum | FBS fee | Processing time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visa / Mastercard | $5 | Free | Instant |
| Skrill | $5 | Free | Instant |
| Neteller | $5 | Free | Instant |
| Bank transfer | $100 | Free | 1–3 business days |
| Cryptocurrency | $10 | Free | 15–30 minutes |
| Regional e-wallets | Varies | Free | Instant to 24 hours |
FBS charges no deposit fee on any method; any charge you see comes from the payment provider. Cards and e-wallets landed near-instantly in our testing — 15 to 20 minutes at the outside — while bank transfers took the full 1–3 business days.
Withdrawals
This is where FBS performed best. We requested a $150 withdrawal to Skrill and the funds arrived in three hours, with no fee and no follow-up questions.
| Method | Minimum | FBS fee | Processing time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visa / Mastercard | $5 | Free | 15–20 minutes to 1 business day |
| Skrill | $5 | Free | 15–20 minutes |
| Neteller | $5 | Free | 15–20 minutes |
| Bank transfer over $200 | $200 | Free | 3–5 business days |
| Bank transfer under $200 | — | $15 | 3–5 business days |
| Cryptocurrency | $10 | Free | 15–30 minutes |
Two rules to know. First, KYC must be fully complete before any withdrawal is processed. Second, FBS applies a same-method policy: your first withdrawal must return to the funding source up to the amount deposited, with profits above that withdrawable by other means. Both are standard anti-money-laundering practice rather than obstruction.
Public complaints about delayed FBS withdrawals do exist and we take them seriously, even though we did not encounter one. The pattern in the reports we reviewed points to incomplete verification or additional compliance checks rather than refusal to pay. Avoid small bank transfers, which attract the $15 fee and the slowest processing, and use an e-wallet where you can.
Customer support
Support runs 24/7 in 14 languages, which beats the 24/5 industry standard. We tested three channels without identifying ourselves as reviewers.
| Channel | Hours | Our response time |
|---|---|---|
| Live chat | 24/7 | About 2 minutes |
| 24/7 | About 6 hours | |
| Phone | Business hours | Not tested |
| Social media | Variable | About 1 hour |
Live chat at 11pm on a Friday produced an agent in roughly two minutes who answered detailed questions about swap-free account terms accurately. Our Tuesday email enquiry came back in about six hours with a substantive answer — faster than the 24 to 48 hours some competitors take.
The one criticism: some replies read as scripted rather than composed, and technical terminology occasionally came through as a literal translation. It is a minor flaw against genuinely good availability and speed.
Research and education
Education is a real strength. The Forex Guidebook runs across four levels — beginner, elementary, intermediate, advanced — with written lessons and video for each, and is genuinely usable for building a foundation. Webinars are offered in several languages.
Research is thinner: an economic calendar, a forex calculator, a currency converter and a trading ideas section based on support, resistance and indicator divergence. Competent but basic. The conspicuous gap is third-party analysis — no Autochartist as at XM, no Trading Central as at FXTM, so you work with MetaTrader’s built-in tools and FBS’s own commentary. Fundamental coverage of central bank decisions and major data is more developed than the technical side, but still mid-tier against XM’s daily output.
Fund safety and protections
How well your money is protected at FBS depends almost entirely on which entity holds your account.
| Protection | CySEC (EU) | ASIC (Australia) | FSC (Belize) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Segregated client funds | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Negative balance protection | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Investor compensation scheme | Yes — up to €20,000 | No | No |
| Supervisory intensity | High (MiFID II) | High | Limited |
| Maximum retail leverage | 1:30 | 1:30 | 1:3000 |
Client funds are held at tier-one banks separately from the firm’s operating capital across all entities, and negative balance protection applies automatically to every account type, so you cannot lose more than you deposit. Those two protections are universal here and they matter, but they are only two of the three layers that make up fund safety.
Beyond that the difference is stark: an EU client has €20,000 of compensation cover and MiFID II supervision, a Belize client has segregation and nothing else. Check which entity your account agreement names before you deposit — it is the most consequential fact in your relationship with this broker, and the sign-up flow does not draw attention to it.
Verdict
FBS scores 6.5 out of 10.
| Category | Weight | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation and licensing | 25% | 5.5 |
| Trading costs | 20% | 5.5 |
| Withdrawals and fund access | 20% | 8.5 |
| Platforms and execution | 15% | 6.5 |
| Customer support | 10% | 8.0 |
| Research and transparency | 10% | 5.5 |
| Overall | 100% | 6.5 |
Regulation is the category holding this score down. FBS holds two genuine tier-1 licences and does serve retail clients under them — but only if you live in the EU or Australia. Everyone else, including South Africans whose own regulator has licensed an FBS entity, is routed offshore to Belize. Combined with two territorial unregistered-operator listings and 1:3000 leverage on the offshore book, that is a mid-table regulatory picture dressed up as a strong one. Trading costs are the other drag: coming last on six of seven instruments against three named competitors is not a rounding error, and the Zero Spread account’s $20 commission is hard to defend at nearly three times XM‘s equivalent.
Against that, withdrawals and support are legitimately strong — a three-hour payout with no fee, no inactivity charge, and a two-minute chat response at midnight are what traders notice month to month. FBS is a reasonable choice for a beginner starting small, someone who values fast fund access and responsive support, or a trader curious about copy trading. It is a poor choice for scalpers, crypto traders, anyone dependent on third-party research tools, and anyone outside the EU or Australia whose priority is tier-1 regulatory protection.
Risk warning: most retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. FBS disclosed a 66.43% retail loss rate for its EU entity and 76.2% for its Australian entity when we checked in July 2026; 72.12% was disclosed at the time of our testing. Leverage of up to 1:3000 on the offshore entity increases the risk of rapid loss substantially. Never trade with money you cannot afford to lose. This review assesses a broker; it does not predict outcomes and is not investment advice.
Is FBS trustworthy?
Is FBS a scam?
No. FBS has operated since 2009, holds active licences from CySEC and ASIC that we verified directly on the regulators’ registers in July 2026, and paid our withdrawal in three hours. We found no enforcement action, fraud finding, fine or licence suspension against any FBS entity. The legitimate criticism is not that FBS takes money — it is that most clients are onboarded under a Belize entity with far weaker protection than the tier-1 licences the marketing emphasises.
Why does FBS appear on regulator warning lists?
Three separate things get conflated here. The Securities Commission Malaysia lists FBS on its Investor Alert List for unlicensed capital market activity — but Malaysia does not license retail forex brokers at all, so that list names roughly 1,900 firms operating without local authorisation. Japan’s FSA names FBS Markets Inc. on its unregistered-operators list over conduct dating back to at least 2015. Neither is an enforcement action or a fraud finding; both are territorial registration matters that apply to residents of those countries. Separately, the FCA Warning List carries an entry for “Fbs Fx Trading” at fbsfxtrading.com — a different, unrelated firm with a similar name, listed in September 2023.
Can I actually withdraw my money from FBS?
Yes. Our $150 Skrill withdrawal cleared in three hours with no fee. The condition is that KYC verification must be fully complete first, and your first withdrawal must return to the original funding method up to the amount you deposited. Most delay complaints we reviewed trace back to verification that was never finished.
Which FBS entity will hold my account?
EU residents get Tradestone Ltd under CySEC (€20,000 cover, 1:30 leverage). Australian residents get Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd under ASIC (AFCA access, 1:30). Almost everyone else, including South African clients, gets FBS Markets Inc. in Belize — segregation and negative balance protection, but no compensation scheme. FBS has no FCA authorisation and does not serve UK retail clients. Check the entity named in your account agreement before you deposit.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum deposit at FBS?
One dollar for a Cent account, $5 for Micro, $100 for Standard, $500 for Zero Spread and $1,000 for ECN. That $1 entry point is among the lowest in the industry.
Does FBS offer swap-free accounts?
Yes, on every live account type, enabled at sign-up or later from the client area. No overnight swap is charged, but an administrative fee applies to positions held beyond two days, and exotic pairs carry a weekly commission instead. It suits short holds better than long ones.
Is FBS good for beginners?
It is one of the better options for starting out, mainly for the cent account, the $1 minimum, the absence of inactivity fees, and the quality of the mobile app and education library. That said, beginners are precisely the group most endangered by 1:3000 leverage, and most retail accounts lose money regardless of broker.
What spreads does FBS charge?
Standard accounts advertise from 0.5 pips. In our sampling across February and March 2026 the EUR/USD average was 1.3 pips — 1.1 to 1.4 during London and New York hours, 1.8 to 2.2 in the Asian session, and 4 to 5 around major data releases.
How does FBS compare to XM and Exness?
FBS wins on entry cost, with the lowest minimum deposit and the cent account. XM is stronger on research tools, notably Autochartist. Exness was faster on withdrawals and tighter on spreads in our testing. On regulation FBS has an edge in that its tier-1 entities do accept retail clients — but only for EU and Australian residents.
Does FBS charge inactivity fees?
No. You can leave an account dormant indefinitely without deductions, which is better than many competitors that bill monthly after a set idle period.
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