Why trust OnlineBroker.ae?

Scores are calculated, not assigned

Scores are editorially controlled and produced from one consistent methodology, applied to every broker in the same way. A commercial relationship never changes a broker’s score, and non-partner brokers can and do outrank partners.

The overall score is also calculated rather than assigned: it is derived from the published category scores, so there is no field in which a headline number could be quietly adjusted for a partner. Ranking order is a hand-authored editorial judgement: there is no bidding, no promoted slots and no code path in which a payment reorders a list. No broker on this site currently holds a paid placement arrangement, and no broker pays for placement or for ranking order. Where a ranking entry carries a Partner tag, that tag marks a commercial affiliate relationship, not a paid position and not a purchased place in a list. If a paid arrangement is ever taken, it will be named here too, because a commercial position inside a ranking is never left undisclosed.

Who researches, edits and fact-checks

Reviews are researched, tested and written by Giles Thomas, who funds and runs the live accounts behind them. Braden Chase edits them, and every one is independently fact-checked before publication by Tomislav Turčin, our fact-checker. Tomislav has been director of CSAD Consulting in Zagreb since 2013, where his work covers market analysis and trading in forex and futures markets.

That trading background is what shows up in the reviews: a fee schedule read by someone who pays those fees, and a spread or overnight-financing claim checked against what the broker actually publishes rather than what it advertises. Every review and guide on the site currently carries an independent fact-check.

Every regulatory claim traced to a register entry

This is the part we take furthest. Every regulatory claim is traced to the specific legal entity that would contract with you as a UAE client, not the parent brand, and checked against the regulator’s own public register: the DFSA Public Register, the ADGM FSRA Financial Services Register, or the UAE Capital Market Authority licensed-companies list.

If a broker only arranges your account in the UAE while your money is actually held and your trades executed by an offshore entity, we say so plainly. The entity that onboards you, not the brand on the homepage, is what decides which rules and which protections apply to your account.

Fee and account facts are checked against the broker’s own current documentation before publication, with the date they were checked shown on the page.

What affiliate revenue does not buy

We are funded by affiliate commissions, and we’re open about it. Editorial decisions are kept separate from commercial ones: the people who score a broker are not the people negotiating its commercial terms.

We do not accept payment to publish inaccurate regulatory information or to soften a genuine criticism, including of brokers we have a commercial relationship with. Our full funding model is set out on the how we make money page.

What we publish, including what we have not measured

We publish our methodology, our funding model and the real people behind the research, and we show a last-reviewed date on every page.

We also publish what we have not measured. Funded-account testing has filled the measured sections of our best forex brokers guide, but the depth behind them is not equal across the five brokers it ranks, and each table names the broker a figure is still missing for. eToro is the one still without a spread measurement or a completed withdrawal. Pepperstone’s spread figures are two single readings rather than a spread study, and Capital.com’s come from two round trips taken on one day, which is a measurement but not a sample.

A broker’s own indicative spread is not a measurement, and where a figure is still provisional we mark it as provisional rather than dressing it up as a final number. We would rather show a gap than disguise one.

What we check for a UAE resident

We track the details that decide things locally: which UAE regulator supervises the onboarding entity (DFSA in the DIFC, FSRA in ADGM, or the CMA onshore), along with AED funding routes, conversion costs and access to UAE-listed markets.

Islamic account terms are recorded as a factual yes or no in every review’s key-data table, including the distinction that matters most: a swap-free account is not the same thing as a genuinely Sharia-certified one, and brokers frequently market the first as though it were the second.

We also state clearly that UAE-onboarded clients are not covered by any statutory investor-compensation scheme, unlike clients of many of the same brokers’ UK or EU entities. Client money held in segregated accounts is not the same as being compensated if the firm fails.