Best Trading Platform UK: What the FCA Register Shows That the Brand Doesn't

UK platform comparisons rank spreads and app design. None of them open the FCA register. We did, for eleven brands UK traders actually search for, and most have something on record worth reading before you fund an account.

Last verified 19 October 2026 · how we check

Here’s the direct answer first. We checked eleven platforms that show up for “best trading platform UK” against the FCA register ourselves, firm by firm. Four are clean enough to recommend without a follow-up question. Seven are still worth using, but only after you confirm one specific thing first, which we name for each.

Which platform, and what to confirm first

Four of the eleven need nothing extra: their FCA record is clean and there’s no second entity or clone to rule out first. The other seven are still real, licensed businesses, but the brand name alone doesn’t tell you which company you’d actually be signing with, or whether a lookalike is sitting one search result away. That’s the thing a star rating can’t settle and the register can, for free, in about two minutes per firm.

What the register returned, firm by firm

The clone problem is bigger than any single brand

Three of the eleven, FxPro, XTB and IC Markets, have the same underlying issue from different angles. FxPro and XTB are both real, both authorised, and both have multiple unconnected entities on the FCA warning list using their names. XTB’s case is sharper: one of the warned entities shares the exact postcode, E14 5AA, of the authorised company. Someone searching the brand name has no easy way to tell, from the name alone, which site they’ve landed on.

IC Markets runs the other direction. The brand has real licences, ASIC in Australia and CySEC in Cyprus, but the actual website most international traffic reaches, icmarkets.com, is the one the FCA names directly in a warning that’s been live since October 2024. A UK searcher who finds a legitimately licensed firm two clicks away can still end up funding an account with the entity the FCA has already flagged.

Two entity problems that don’t involve any clone

Vantage Markets and OANDA show a different failure mode: the register is accurate and there’s no impersonation, but reading it correctly takes more than a glance.

Vantage has two FCA-authorised firms whose names both start with “Vantage,” registered eight years apart under different Companies House numbers. The brand doesn’t tell you which one actually holds client accounts, and getting it wrong means checking the wrong firm’s permissions and disciplinary history.

OANDA’s register entry doesn’t say “Authorised” at all. It says “See full details,” a composite status that exists because a now-cancelled payment-institution authorisation sits next to a separate, live investment-services authorisation on the same FRN. An automated check that only looks for the word “Authorised” would flag a firm that is, in fact, properly licensed for the service it’s selling.

The one with an actual enforcement record

Of the eleven, only Plus500 carries a Final Notice: a formal enforcement action, not a warning about someone else using the name, for failing to report transactions accurately and on time under SUP 17 and the FCA’s third Principle for Businesses. The fine was £205,128. Nothing else in this list carries a disciplinary record of its own; every other flag here is either a clone, a naming ambiguity or a status-field quirk.

What a clean record actually looks like

Pepperstone and CMC Markets are the two that returned nothing to work around. Pepperstone’s FCA authorisation, ASIC licence and CySEC listing all line up with no caveat attached. CMC Markets has the single longest paper trail of any firm we’ve checked, authorised since December 2001, and its only flag is a clone using a similar name on the warning list rather than anything about the real entity.

Tickmill and Swissquote sit close behind: both authorised cleanly, both with permissions that extend past plain CFD dealing into territory most retail brokers don’t carry, which is informative rather than a warning sign.

Why all eleven cap leverage the same way

Every clean authorisation above also comes with the same ceiling, and it isn’t a competitive choice any of these firms made. The FCA’s rules confirmed in 2019 limit leverage on CFDs sold to UK retail clients to “between 30:1 and 2:1” depending on the instrument, force a close-out once a client’s funds fall to 50% of the margin needed to hold their open positions, and guarantee that a retail client can never lose more than the funds actually in the account. The CFD rules took effect 1 August 2019 and the equivalent rules for CFD-like options a month later, on 1 September 2019.

That ceiling is why “30:1 retail” shows up identically across Pepperstone, CMC Markets, Tickmill and the rest: it’s the FCA floor and cap at once for anyone authorised here, not a number any brand picked to look competitive. A platform advertising materially higher retail leverage to a UK visitor is telling you, before anything else, that the account isn’t actually opening under a UK entity. Our leverage limits by regulator page has the figures for other jurisdictions, which is where that higher number usually comes from.

What a compensation scheme actually buys you here

An FCA authorisation also puts a firm inside the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which pays up to £85,000 per eligible person, per firm, for claims against a firm that’s failed since 1 April 2019. That figure is set by the scheme itself and reviewed periodically, not by any broker.

It matters more than it looks for the entity questions above. FSCS protection follows the authorised UK legal entity, not the brand. Someone who thinks they’re dealing with “Vantage” without knowing which of the two authorised Vantage entities actually holds the account doesn’t know, with certainty, which company’s failure the £85,000 would even apply to.

The check we didn’t find a reason to run: appointed representative status

One more thing the FCA register shows for every authorised firm is whether it holds its own, standalone authorisation or operates as an appointed representative: a firm trading under a separate, principal firm’s permission rather than its own. An AR arrangement isn’t a red flag by itself, but it means the AR’s cover depends on the principal choosing to keep it on, and that cover can be withdrawn by the principal’s decision rather than anything the AR firm did. None of the eleven platforms above showed up as an appointed representative in what we checked; each carries its own standalone authorisation under its own FRN. That’s a real, checkable difference from a firm whose “FCA regulated” claim turns out to run through someone else’s licence, and it’s worth the extra look specifically for any brand not on this list that advertises UK regulation without a clearly stated FRN of its own.

How to run this check yourself

Search the register directly, not the brand’s own claim. register.fca.org.uk takes a firm name or FRN and returns the legal entity, the authorisation date and any warnings tied to similarly named firms.

Open the Permissions tab, not just the headline status. “Authorised” without reading what it’s authorised for told us nothing about Tickmill’s futures permission or Swissquote’s pension permission; both only show up one tab deeper.

Check the postcode and company number against the website footer, not just the name. That’s the only thing that would have caught XTB’s clone sharing an address with the real firm.

Treat “best” as a starting list, not a verdict. Every platform above still needs the firm-specific checks in its own review: entity match, leverage cap for your country, and what the terms say about withdrawals. See the methodology for how we score each one individually.

None of this ranks who has the tightest spread, and that’s deliberate. The spread changes by the hour. The register entry doesn’t, until the firm changes something that matters.

One more free check, outside the FCA entirely

Companies House, the UK’s company registrar, is a separate database from the FCA register and worth cross-referencing for a reason the FCA record alone doesn’t cover: whether the legal entity behind the FCA authorisation is still an active, filing company. A firm can hold an FCA authorisation that’s technically live while its Companies House record shows overdue accounts or a dormant filing status, which is a different kind of warning sign than anything the FCA’s own register surfaces. The FCA’s own firm page for each FRN above names the company registration number behind it; feeding that number into find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk is free and takes under a minute.

Sources

• FCA — Financial Services Register
• FCA — warning list of unauthorised firms and clones
• Our review — Pepperstone, FRN 684312
• Our review — Plus500, FRN 509909
• Our review — IC Markets, ASIC AFSL 335692
• Our review — Vantage Markets, FRN 590299 and FRN 416697
• FCA — permanent restrictions on CFD sales to retail consumers (PS19/18)
• FSCS — investment compensation limits