Our broker review methodology

Who runs this process

Reviews and rankings are produced by identifiable people, not an anonymous “team”. They are researched, tested and written by Giles Thomas, who funds and runs the live accounts behind them, edited by Braden Chase, and independently fact-checked by Tomislav Turčin, our fact-checker, who has been director of CSAD Consulting in Zagreb since 2013 and works in market analysis and forex and futures trading.

Authorship and verification are deliberately separate roles: the person who writes a review is not the person who signs off on its accuracy. 9 broker reviews are published under the current methodology, and every review and guide carries Tomislav as fact-checker.

What we review

We assess each broker across ten scored categories, each marked out of 5 against consistent, documented criteria, so that the same test is applied to every broker:

• Fees
• Safety & regulation
• Deposit & withdrawal
• Account opening
• Mobile app
• Web platform
• Assets
• Customer support
• Research & education
• UAE suitability

How we collect broker data

We gather data from broker documentation, published fee schedules and the platforms’ own account and pricing screens. Every regulatory claim is checked against the primary source: the public register of the authority that supervises the entity in question, not the broker’s description of its own licensing.

We also open, fund and trade a real account with the brokers we review, as a UAE resident rather than on a demo. Every figure that requires a live measurement, spreads and all-in trading cost, deposit and withdrawal timings, is captured on that funded account, with the account type and the capture date and time recorded against it. We do not publish a broker’s own indicative figures as if they were measurements, and where a measurement is still outstanding the review says which one.

For brokers regulated abroad we also check the relevant international registers: the FCA, CySEC, ASIC and others. In every case we record which legal entity actually onboards a UAE resident, since that, and not the parent brand, determines the protections that apply to your account.

For UAE traders the registers that matter most are the local ones, and we lead with those:

• CMA: onshore UAE, formerly the SCA (uaecma.gov.ae)
• DFSA: DIFC (dfsa.ae/public-register/firms)
• FSRA: ADGM (adgm.com/public-registers/fsra)
• VARA: Dubai, virtual assets (vara.ae)

Which entity we tested

Some brokers serve UAE clients through one legal entity while operating, custodying assets, or holding funds through a different one, often in a different jurisdiction. Where that split exists, we state which entity our testing account was actually opened and funded with, and which entity the account’s protections and permissions actually derive from. A broker being “tested live” does not mean every entity in its structure was tested, only the one our account was opened with.

How we score brokers

The overall score is a weighted mean of the categories we scored. Safety and regulation carries 23%, and the remaining 77% is shared equally between the others, normally nine. Where we have not tested a category we leave it unscored rather than entering a zero, so it drops out of the mean instead of dragging the overall down, and the 77% is split between however many categories remain. On a broker comparison the question “is this entity licensed to hold my money” matters more than any single feature, so safety is the one category given a weight of its own rather than an equal share.

The overall score is derived, never authored. It is calculated from the category scores and rounded to one decimal place, so a headline score can never contradict the sub-scores printed beside it, and an editor cannot type a number over the top of the criteria. The weights are declared in one place, which means changing one changes every headline score on the site at once.

UAE suitability is one of the ten scored categories rather than a second, parallel rating, so it feeds the overall like any other, though we also surface it on its own in the review header, because a broker can score well globally and still be a poor fit for a UAE resident. Islamic-account availability is tracked separately and deliberately kept out of the overall, since whether a swap-free account matters depends entirely on whether you need one; it is recorded instead as a factual yes or no in every review’s key-data table, alongside AED support, which is assessed within the UAE-suitability category.

What we have not measured yet

Funded accounts have closed most of the gaps this page used to list, and the ones still open are named here rather than left implied. A measurement we have not taken is published as pending, never estimated, and never filled in from a broker’s own figures.

Funded-account testing runs deposit through trade to withdrawal. That whole chain is complete for Interactive Brokers, Pepperstone, AvaTrade, XTB, XM, Capital.com, Sarwa and Amana. eToro is the exception: the account was opened and funded, but there is no spread measurement and no completed withdrawal, so its chain is unfinished and the review says so on its own page. Complete is not the same as unqualified, and each review states its own qualification: the Interactive Brokers account is held with the US company rather than the DIFC branch that review covers, so the branch itself was not tested; the AvaTrade account was opened before the review began, so its opening is neither timed nor captured, though its deposit and withdrawal were both timed end to end; Pepperstone’s spread figures are two single readings rather than a spread study and its deposit is timed on one run; Capital.com’s spreads come from two round trips taken on one day rather than a sample; and Amana’s trade is not yet reconciled against a statement and its overnight fee is not measured. Until those are captured, the figures that depend on them stay pending rather than filled from broker marketing.

One gap applies to every review on the site: execution quality. Each one rests on a single round trip rather than a sample of trades, which is enough to show what one fill actually cost and not enough to describe slippage or requote behaviour across a trading session, so no broker here is described as fast.

A broker’s own indicative spread is not a measurement. It moves with liquidity, it differs between a raw-spread and a spread-only account, and the commission attached to a raw-spread account can reverse a ranking entirely. Four sections of our best forex brokers guide stay gated for that reason: that page ranks five brokers, and its tables need the same measurement on all five, on each account type, before any of them can be filled:

• Spreads and all-in trading cost: EUR/USD and GBP/USD spreads, and the all-in cost per round turn.
• Execution quality and slippage: fill quality, slippage and requote behaviour across the London and New York sessions.
• Deposit and withdrawal timings: real AED deposit and withdrawal times end to end, including the conversion actually applied.
• Scored ratings for that page: pending the same funded-account round; a score shown on a broker card there is a preview carried from the broker record, not a measurement earned on that page’s criteria.

How often we update data

Reviews are revisited on a recurring cycle and updated whenever fees, regulation or platform features change. A regulatory status change is treated as urgent rather than waiting for the next cycle.

Every review and guide carries the date it was last reviewed, so you can see how current it is. A regulatory change is treated as urgent rather than held for the next cycle.

How we handle affiliate partners

Affiliate status has no bearing on scores. The same methodology is applied to every broker, partner or not, and a commercial relationship never raises a rating or softens a criticism.

Because the overall score is computed from the category scores rather than entered by hand, there is no field in which a rating could quietly be adjusted for a partner: the number follows from the criteria. How we earn money is set out in full on our how we make money page.

Limitations of our reviews

Broker terms change, and they vary by client entity and residency, so a figure that is accurate for one entity may not hold for the one that onboards you. Our reviews are informational and not personalised advice.

The gaps described above are real limitations rather than rhetorical modesty: where we have not measured something, the page says so instead of estimating. Always verify the current details with the broker and the relevant regulator before depositing.