Exness review 2026

Account opening

Opening an account is quick. Exness offers two groups of accounts:

• Standard accounts: Standard and Standard Cent, with no commission and spreads from 0.2 pips. They are aimed at beginners and have a low minimum deposit. A pip is the standard unit of price movement in forex: if EUR/USD moves from 1.1100 to 1.1101, it has moved one pip.
• Professional accounts: Pro, Zero and Raw Spread, with tighter spreads and, on Zero and Raw Spread, a commission per lot. They suit more active traders.

You can compare them on Exness’s pages for Standard accounts and Professional accounts.

A demo account is available as soon as you select your country of residence and enter an email address and password:

Once you have set up your account, you can explore the Exness Terminal. To unlock a real account, you need to verify your email, phone number and profile information, and then your identity:

Products and markets

Exness only offers CFDs, so you never own the underlying asset. Its offering falls into five categories:

• Forex CFDs: Exness’s core business, with over 100 currency pairs and swap-free trading on many of them.
• Commodity CFDs: metals such as gold (including against non-USD currencies), silver and copper, and energy products such as oil and natural gas. Agricultural commodities such as grains are not available.
• Stock CFDs: a selection of large-cap companies, mainly listed in the US.
• Index CFDs: the main global stock indices.
• Crypto CFDs: CFDs on major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, which can also be traded against assets such as gold.

Exness offers very high leverage through its offshore entities, far above the 1:30 cap that applies to retail clients in the EU and UK. High leverage magnifies losses as well as gains.

Fees

Exness mainly earns from the spread, the difference between the buy and sell price. On Standard accounts there is no commission, while Zero and Raw Spread accounts charge a commission per lot in exchange for much tighter spreads.

Spreads are variable and depend on the account type, the instrument and market conditions, and they can widen sharply around news events and outside main trading hours. You can check current spreads for each instrument on Exness’s product pages before trading.

Exness doesn’t charge withdrawal fees, although your payment provider may.

Safety and red flags

Exness lists licences from a long list of regulators, including the Financial Services Authority (FSA) of Seychelles, the Central Bank of Curaçao and Sint Maarten (CBCS), the Financial Services Commissions of the British Virgin Islands, Mauritius and Belize, South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA), the Jordan Securities Commission (JSC), the UAE’s Capital Market Authority, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). You can review them on its regulation page.

The catch is on that same page: Exness (Cy) Ltd and Exness (UK) Ltd do not offer trading services to retail clients. Its two top-tier licences therefore don’t protect ordinary traders. Retail clients in most countries are onboarded through offshore entities, such as Exness (SC) Ltd in the Seychelles, Exness (VG) Ltd in the British Virgin Islands or Exness B.V. in Curaçao. Clients in South Africa, Kenya and a few other markets are served by a local entity under their own regulator.

The practical difference is protection. Retail clients of a CySEC- or FCA-regulated broker are covered by an investor compensation scheme if the firm fails. At Exness’s offshore entities, client funds are segregated, but there is no equivalent statutory compensation scheme.

If you live in India: Exness is on the Reserve Bank of India’s Alert List of platforms that are not authorised to deal in forex or operate forex trading platforms under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), and has been since the list was first published in September 2022. The RBI has warned that residents who trade forex on unauthorised platforms can face legal action under FEMA.

Reviews: Exness has a high Trustpilot score, around 4.7 out of 5 from tens of thousands of reviews. That contrasts with complaints about delayed withdrawals and account blocks on other review sites and forums. Review scores on their own say little about a broker’s safety, so we weigh them far less than regulation.

Supported countries

Exness operates in many countries, with a website and support in more than 15 languages, and it is particularly active in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

It doesn’t onboard retail clients in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area or Australia, among other countries. The entity you’re served by, and the protection you get, depends on your country of residence, so check it before you deposit.

Exness alternatives

If you’d prefer a broker with stronger protection, you can read all our broker reviews. For CFD trading, we like XTB and Plus500, both regulated by top-tier authorities that serve retail clients. If you want real stocks, ETFs and other products beyond CFDs, Interactive Brokers is our top pick, and for social trading, eToro is the best-known option.

Bottom line

We have no evidence that Exness is a scam, and it is one of the largest forex brokers in the world by trading volume. However, its top-tier licences don’t apply to retail clients, most retail traders are served by offshore entities without a compensation scheme, and its offering is narrow outside forex CFDs.

If you have access to a broker regulated for retail clients in your country, we’d suggest choosing it, or at least comparing its terms with Exness’s. And whichever broker you use, spreading your money across more than one means you keep access to your funds if one of them runs into trouble.