By Daleel FX Editorial·
Last updated 26 June 2026 ·Methodology
All 14 major forex brokers serving the Arab world in this audit hold at
least one Tier-1 regulatory licence, and all 9 offer a swap-free Islamic
account. 4 hold a DFSA (Dubai) licence — the strongest “regulated in
the UAE” signal. Yet across 8 Arab markets, local retail forex is
licensed in only 3; most residents trade via offshore brokers.
What this study is — and what it is not
This is a compiled, cross-checked audit of the regulatory and account facts behind the
14 brokers we cover (Exness, XM, Pepperstone, FP Markets, IC Markets, AvaTrade, ADSS, EFG Hermes, OANDA, CMC Markets, IG Markets, Saxo Bank, Admirals, Capital.com) and the
8 Arab markets we serve. The original value here is not an invented score:
it is the structured aggregation of facts that are individually public but rarely assembled
in one verifiable place — every licence, its jurisdiction and status; whether a genuine
swap-free account exists; the supported platforms; the founding year; and, per country, the
regulator and the honest local trading status. The full dataset is downloadable below.
In keeping with our methodology, we publish no star ratings, no
“typical” spreads and no minimum-deposit figures. Those require an independent
hands-on test we have not completed, so in the dataset they are explicitly null. Everything
we do report traces to a regulator's own register or the broker's own disclosure.
The master comparison: broker × licence × swap-free × platforms
All 14 of the 14 brokers in this audit hold at least one
licence from a Tier-1 regulator — the strict, well-resourced authorities we define on our
methodology page as FCA, ASIC, CySEC, DFSA, FSCA. This matters because a Tier-1 licence
typically brings client-money segregation, conduct rules and a complaints route. The
distinct regulators observed across the whole set are
ADGM, ASIC, CBI, CFTC, CMA, CySEC, DFSA, EFSA, FCA, FSA, FSC, FSCA, FSRA, MAS. A Tier-1 licence held by the group does not
automatically protect your account, though: protections attach to the specific
entity that opens it, which is why every reader should still confirm the entity that serves
their country on the regulator's register.
Finding 2 — 4 hold a DFSA (UAE) licence
4 of the 14 brokers — Pepperstone and FP Markets and IG Markets and Saxo Bank — hold a
Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) licence, making them the clearest picks for the
“regulated in the UAE” angle. The UAE is the most clearly regulated Gulf market,
so a DFSA-licensed entity is a meaningfully stronger local signal than an offshore-only one.
A further 1 broker reports a DFSA application as
pending rather than granted — we record it as pending and do not describe that
broker as DFSA-regulated until the register confirms it.
Finding 3 — all brokers offer a swap-free Islamic account
All 9 brokers expose a swap-free (Islamic) account, meaning such an
account type exists at each. That is a fact about availability, not a verdict that
any one of them is riba-pure: we have not audited each account's fee mechanics line by line,
and the dataset records availability only. Whether a swap-free account is genuinely
Sharia-compliant turns on the broker's specific terms — the replacement fees, eligible
instruments and any holding-period limit — which is exactly what our
Islamic-accounts guide tells a reader to check.
Finding 4 — track record spans 42 years
The brokers in this audit were founded between 1974 and
2016, so each has operated for well over a decade — a length of regulated
track record that is itself a safety signal, though never a guarantee. Platform coverage is
consistent: every broker offers both MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, and two also offer
cTrader and TradingView, as the master table above shows.
Finding 5 — the honest regulatory map across 8 markets
The most important finding for readers is the gap between broker regulation and
local regulation. Across the 8 Arab markets we cover, local
retail forex is licensed in only 3 (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan).
In the remaining 5 — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt —
local retail forex is offshore-only, restricted or a grey area, so residents who trade do so
through internationally regulated (offshore) brokers at their own risk. We report this
plainly on each country page rather than making a blanket “forex is legal” claim.
The complete audit — every licence, jurisdiction and status, swap-free availability,
platforms, founded year and per-market regulatory data — as machine-readable files.
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0). Ratings, spreads and minimum deposits are
intentionally omitted (null) per our honest-null policy.
This audit is a snapshot. Regulatory status changes, brokers gain and lose licences, and
account terms move — so verify any specific licence on the regulator's own register before
you act on it, and check our methodology's update cadence. The dataset deliberately contains
no ratings, spreads or minimum deposits: those are not findings we have independently
tested, and we will not present them as if they were. Swap-free is recorded as
available / not available only; it is not a ruling on Sharia compliance. Finally,
the “markets served” field is empty for brokers whose affiliate programmes we
have not yet joined and confirmed allowed-geo for — we report that honestly rather than
guess. For how each figure was sourced and verified, read the
methodology in full.
Per-market authorities (SCA/CMA/QFMA/CBB/FRA/JSC) — linked in the per-market table above.
Daleel FX is an independent editorial desk that cross-references every broker's licence against the DFSA, SCA and ADGM public registers before publishing a word. We treat Sharia-compliance — swap-free structures, AAOIFI standards, riba implications — with the same rigour as spread-and-commission arithmetic. No payment is accepted for coverage, and no review is published until the regulatory facts are verified at source.