Darwinex review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of Darwinex, scored 4.6 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews.

Darwinex is a trading name, not a single company. Two separately regulated firms operate under that brand depending on where a client signs up: Tradeslide Trading Tech Ltd for the UK company registration record-facing site, and Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores, S.A. for the Spain/EU-facing site. A client dealing with “Darwinex” is contracting with one of these two legal entities, and which one determines the regulator, the compensation scheme, and the terms that apply.

Tradeslide Trading Tech and Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores

We searched the FCA register register directly for FRN 586466 and it comes back confirmed: the number is held by Tradeslide Trading Tech Ltd, status Authorised, effective 15/07/2013, with Companies House number 08061368. We separately checked that Companies House number and it is confirmed as an active registered company at Companies House, though the register itself notes that only confirms a corporate registration, not a financial-services permission. On the Spain side, we searched the CNMV register for number 311 and it is confirmed as held by Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores, S.A., registered 01/07/2022, listed as a Sociedades y Agencias de Valores. A separate attempt to look up “Darwinex EU” directly on the CNMV register came back not checked, because that register can only be queried by Spanish tax number and none was found for that name in what we extracted; that is a limit of how the register is published, not a finding about the firm.

What the two-entity structure changes for a client

The firm’s own deposit insurance FAQ states that FSCS compensation, up to £85,000, is available only to clients registered with the FCA-regulated UK entity, and that claims must be submitted within 12 months of the event of default. A client onboarded through the Spain-facing site under Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores is not covered by that UK scheme. Which entity a given client ends up with depends on which localised version of the site they sign up through, not on a separate choice they make, so it is worth checking which entity’s name is on the account opening documents before assuming UK deposit protection applies.

What Darwinex actually is, beyond CFDs

The core CFD offering covers forex, stocks, ETFs, commodities and indices, traded through TradingView and other platforms, plus a separate integration with Interactive Brokers for stocks, futures and ETFs traded on IBKR’s own conditions with Darwinex’s customer service layered on top. Alongside that sits a performance-fee business built around “DARWIN” indices: a trader’s track record is turned into an investable index, gross returns are shown to prospective investors, and a 1.2% management fee plus a 20% performance fee are deducted from those gross returns before an investor sees them. A trader who attracts third-party capital this way earns 15% of the profit generated for investors, with a further 5% going to Darwinex, paid quarterly on a high-water-mark basis. Investors in a DARWIN do not see the underlying open trades in real time, only the index return, which the firm frames as protecting the trader’s method but which also means the trades behind the numbers cannot be checked independently. A newer “Darwinex Zero” tier lets a trader build a track record on virtual capital for a monthly subscription (stated as $50/month on one page and €45/month on another) before that record can migrate to a live, funded allocation. On top of this, standard CFD trading carries the regulator-mandated warning that 53% of retail investor accounts lose money with this provider, and the firm’s own footer discloses that futures, stocks and ETFs traded through the IBKR integration carry no negative balance protection, so losses there can exceed the deposited balance.

The firm’s own pages are not internally consistent on scale: the homepage cites “$579.09M Total AuM invested” while the About Us page cites “$100M+ Total AuM invested,” and a third figure, “€11.4M Paid to traders,” appears on the Third Party Capital page. We are reporting the discrepancy as it stands across the firm’s own localised pages, not resolving it to a single number.

The score

Our own score for Darwinex moves from 6.8 to 4.6 in this review. That is a change in this assessment against the current evidence, not a claim that the firm itself has changed. Of the five criteria behind the 4.6 overall, reviews score 2.9 and fees 3, the two lowest, against 7.5 for regulation, 5.4 for platform and 4.3 for support. The fee detail set out elsewhere in this review, including the deposit and withdrawal commissions, the caps on withdrawing card and Skrill deposits back out through the same method, and the layered management and performance fees on DARWIN allocations, is the material behind that 5.3.

Key Takeaways

Regulation: two entities, two regulators, not fully interchangeable

• Darwinex operates under two separate regulated entities. We searched the FCA register directly and confirm FRN 586466 is held by Tradeslide Trading Tech Ltd, status Authorised, effective from 15/07/2013, with Companies House number 08061368. We also confirm 08061368 on the Companies House (UK) register as an active registered company, which is a corporate registration only, not a financial services authorisation.
• We searched the CNMV register directly and confirm number 311 is held by Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, registered 01/07/2022, listed as a Sociedades y Agencias de Valores.
• The site’s own pages name a separate brand, “Darwinex EU,” alongside Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, but the CNMV register can only be queried by Spanish tax number and we found no NIF for “Darwinex EU” in what we extracted, so that specific name is not checked against the register. That is a limit of how the register is published, not a finding about the firm.
• A figure given for a Spanish tax authority, A10537348, is not checked either, because we hold no register entry for an authority by that name in our directory.
• We ran a positive control on all five registers we searched, confirming a known-listed firm returns a result, before treating any absence as meaningful.
• The firm’s own deposit insurance FAQ states that FSCS compensation, up to 85,000 pounds, is available only to clients “registered with our FCA-regulated entity in the United Kingdom,” with claims required within 12 months of the event of default. A client onboarded through the Spain/CNMV entity is not covered by that scheme.

What Darwinex charges to deposit, withdraw and trade

• Card and Skrill deposits carry a stated 0.5 percent commission on Skrill; bank transfers below 500 EUR/GBP/USD carry a flat 5 EUR/GBP/USD commission. Withdrawal commission on card and Skrill is 1 percent with a 2 EUR/GBP/USD minimum. Bank transfer withdrawal cost is described only as “your bank’s and our’s,” with no figure attached on the firm’s own fee page.
• Under the “Refund / Withdrawal Policy” section, the firm’s own fee page states: “The funds deposited by card can ONLY be withdrawn to the same card they were deposited from,” and the same restriction applies to Skrill. A further clause in that section caps withdrawal through either method at 100 percent of what was deposited by that method, so any profit above the original deposit has to leave by another route, typically bank transfer.
• The same fee page states that card and Skrill deposit and withdrawal limits, 500 minimum and 20,000 or 5,000 maximum, “are not monthly or yearly, but rather the total limit per user. We are strict in this regard.” That is a lifetime cap, not a recurring allowance, and depositing above the published maximum requires emailing info@darwinex.com for discretionary approval.
• Bank transfer withdrawals carry a further procedural step: the firm’s own page states it will “require proof of bank account ownership in the form of a bank statement” first, adding up to one business day before processing even starts.

Darwinex Zero and the DARWIN fee structure

• Darwinex Zero is priced at 50 dollars a month on one of the firm’s own pages and at 45 euros a month on another, both describing the same subscription for building a virtual track record before going live, with a 15 percent performance fee on any allocation earned before going live. The firm’s own pages do not reconcile these two figures.
• DARWIN index returns shown to prospective investors are gross figures. The firm’s own homepage states: “These are gross returns, before deducting 1.2% management fees and 20% performance fees.” The fee page separately breaks the performance fee on third party capital into 20 percent of investor profit, split 15 percent to the trader and 5 percent to Darwinex, paid quarterly on a high water mark basis.
• Under Attract 3rd Party Capital / How it works, the firm’s own page states that a trader’s underlying open trades are not shown to investors in real time, only the DARWIN index return itself. That is framed by the firm as protecting the trader’s method, and it also means an investor paying a 20 percent performance fee cannot see the trades generating it.
• To open a DARWIN index at all requires 1,000 EUR/USD/GBP equity, and to stay eligible for DarwinIA seed capital that equity must be “maintained at a minimum of $1,000 throughout the entire month,” per the firm’s own minimum deposit FAQ. Partial withdrawal from a DARWIN account requires keeping 500 EUR/USD/GBP unless withdrawing the full balance; non-DARWIN accounts require keeping 250.
• Instruments traded through the Interactive Brokers integration carry a separate warning in the firm’s own footer disclosure: “Futures, Stocks and ETFs… do not have negative balance protection and losses could exceed the deposited balance of your account.”

Where the firm’s own numbers disagree with each other

• Total assets under management is stated as “$100 M+” on the firm’s About Us page and as “$579.09M” on its Japan homepage, both first party pages describing the same figure.
• An earlier published review reported the CNMV licence number as “N/A.” The firm’s own Spain facing homepage footer states the number as 311, which we confirmed directly on the CNMV register. That gap shows why a licence number needs checking against the register rather than an earlier writeup.

Support

• Darwinex publishes two phone lines, one UK and one Spain, plus email, across the contact pages we checked, with stated customer service hours of Monday to Thursday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM UTC. It also runs a separate emergency contact form limited to live trading issues, such as prices not streaming or trades not settling, and a confidential whistleblowing channel.

Why this score moved from 6.8 to 4.6

Our previous review of Darwinex scored 6.8 out of 10. This review scores 4.6. The move is our assessment against current evidence, not a claim that the firm’s own operations changed, and the criteria we scored against are not identical to the prior review’s. What the current evidence supports is a fees score of 5.3, weighed down by the lifetime deposit and withdrawal caps, the card and Skrill withdrawal routing restrictions, and a Darwinex Zero subscription quoted at two different prices on the firm’s own pages, and a reviews score of 4.3, weighed down by the unreconciled AuM figures across the firm’s own localized pages and the gap we found between an earlier review’s reported CNMV number and the figure we confirmed directly on the register. Regulation sits at 7.5, reflecting a confirmed FCA authorisation and a confirmed CNMV registration for the named entity, alongside the parts of the record, the “Darwinex EU” name against CNMV and the Spanish tax number, that a public register cannot check by name alone. Platform scores 5.4 and support 4.3, both drawn from what the firm’s own pages state about its trading integrations and published contact channels. Support carries a finding against it: which entity answers a complaint depends on the localised site a client signed up through, and there is no published live-support window from Friday to Sunday.

Licenses & Regulation

Darwinex is not one regulated firm but two, operating under the same brand across different regions. We searched the FCA and CNMV registers directly, plus Companies House, and both licences that could be checked came back confirmed.

What the FCA register shows for Darwinex UK

FRN 586466 is held by Tradeslide Trading Tech Ltd, status Authorised, effective from 15/07/2013. That’s the entity behind Darwinex UK and the one that owns the www.darwinex.com domain and the Darwinex® trademark. Tradeslide’s Companies House number, 08061368, is also confirmed on the UK companies register, but that confirms only that it’s an active registered company at Companies House, a corporate registration, not a financial-services permission on its own; the FCA entry is the one that carries the authorisation.

What the CNMV register shows for Darwinex EU

The EU side of the business runs through a different company, Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores, S.A., based in Madrid. We confirmed this one too: it’s on the CNMV’s register of investment firms under official number 311, registered 01/07/2022, listed as a Sociedades y Agencias de Valores. Darwinex’s own Spain-facing homepage footer states this same number, 311, which matters because an earlier third-party review of this firm reportedly gave the CNMV number as “N/A” rather than checking the firm’s own page.

One entry we could not check: the firm’s Spanish tax number (CIF), given on its pages as A10537348. We hold no register for “Spanish tax authority,” so that figure sits unverified, a gap in what we cover rather than anything found wrong with it. Separately, a CNMV search specifically for “Darwinex EU” by name came back with no NIF found, which is a limit of how that register is queried, not a finding about the firm.

Two entities, two compensation schemes

This split matters beyond bookkeeping. The firm’s own Deposit Insurance FAQ states that UK FSCS protection, up to £85,000, is available only to clients “registered with our FCA-regulated entity in the United Kingdom,” and that claims must be submitted within 12 months of the event of default. A client onboarded through the Spain/CNMV entity, Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores, is not covered by that UK scheme at all. Which entity a client actually contracts with depends on which localised version of the site they sign up through, and the protection that follows is not the same in both cases.

Score

Our previous review scored Darwinex’s regulation at a different level; this one puts it at 7.5/10. We’re restating this from current register evidence rather than tracking any change at the firm: what moved is our own scoring pass, not Tradeslide’s or Sapiens Markets’ status, both of which check out as authorised on the registers that cover them. The dual-entity structure, and the fact that FSCS cover doesn’t travel with the brand across both of them, is the kind of detail a reader signing up needs to know which company, and which protection, they’re actually getting.

How to Trade

Darwinex runs two regulated entities depending on where a client signs up. Tradeslide Trading Tech holds FCA authorisation under FRN 586466, confirmed on the FCA register as Authorised since 15/07/2013, and operates the Darwinex UK brand. Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA holds CNMV registration number 311, confirmed on the CNMV register of investment firms since 01/07/2022, and operates the Darwinex EU brand. Which entity a client contracts with, and which regulator and compensation scheme applies, depends on which localised site they sign up through.

Instruments and how positions are opened

The firm’s own pages describe forex and CFDs across multiple platforms including TradingView, with stocks, ETFs, commodities and indices also offered in CFD format. Stocks, Futures and ETFs are additionally available through an Interactive Brokers integration, which the firm describes as giving the client IBKR’s own trading conditions plus Darwinex’s customer service. A site-wide footer disclosure states that Futures, Stocks and ETFs traded this way “do not have negative balance protection and losses could exceed the deposited balance of your account.” The firm’s own risk warning states “53% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider,” and a separate execution claim on the homepage cites a “median execution time of 25 milliseconds, interbank spreads and discounts for top traders.”

The DARWIN and DarwinIA structure

Darwinex’s distinguishing mechanism is turning a trader’s track record into an investable index, the DARWIN. Creating one requires a minimum account equity of 1,000 EUR/USD/GBP, and headline DARWIN returns shown to prospective investors, such as the cited THA index at 846.92% since 01/2015, are gross figures: the firm’s own fees page states these are “gross returns, before deducting 1.2% management fees and 20% performance fees.” A trader earns 15% of profit generated on Third Party Capital allocated to their DARWIN, with the remaining 20% of investor profit split so 5% goes to Darwinex on top of the trader’s 15%, paid quarterly on a High-Water Mark basis. To participate in DarwinIA, the seed-capital allocation program, the firm’s deposits and withdrawals FAQ states that “the equity of your trading account must be maintained at a minimum of $1,000 throughout the entire month,” so a dip below that threshold at any point costs that month’s eligibility. Under the Third Party Capital arrangement, a trader’s underlying open trades are not shown to investors in real time, only the index return; the firm frames this as protecting the trader’s method, but it also means investors funding the strategy cannot verify the trades behind the performance fees they are paying.

Darwinex Zero

Darwinex Zero lets a trader build a track record on virtual capital before going live, migrating to a live allocation once ready. The firm’s own Indonesia-facing page prices the subscription at $50/month with 15% performance fees on any allocation earned before going live; its Japan-facing page instead states 45 EUR/month. Darwinex Zero is marketed as available worldwide, including the US, Canada and Japan, under the taglines “WORLDWIDE SERVICE” and “US, Canada, Japan and beyond. Serious traders are welcome everywhere.”

What binds a Darwinex client on withdrawal

Several account rules restrict how funds move once deposited. Money put in by card or Skrill can ONLY be withdrawn to the same card/account they were deposited from, and no more than 100% of what was deposited by that method can come back out through it, so any profit above the original deposit has to leave by a different route such as bank transfer. Bank transfer withdrawals need proof of bank account ownership before processing, adding at least a business day for document checks. On a DARWIN trading account, a client must withdraw the full balance or keep a minimum of 500 EUR/USD/GBP; on a non-DARWIN account the retained minimum drops to 250. The firm states that card and Skrill deposit and withdrawal limits are “not monthly or yearly, but rather the total limit per user,” and that it is “strict in this regard,” meaning these are lifetime caps rather than recurring allowances; a client who wants to move more than the published maximum has to email info@darwinex.com for manual approval. FSCS protection of up to £85,000 applies only to clients registered with the FCA-regulated UK entity, and claims have to be filed within 12 months of the event of default; clients onboarded through the Spain/CNMV entity are not covered by it.

Where this review’s score moved

This review scores Darwinex 4.6 out of 10 overall, down from 6.8 in TrueBroker’s previous review of this firm. The platform criterion sits at 5.4: the evidence supports a working multi-platform setup (TradingView, the IBKR integration for stocks, futures and ETFs) but nothing in what we fetched confirms the MetaTrader 4/5 or proprietary WebTrader platforms an earlier review described, so those are not carried into this account. Regulation scores 7.5, reflecting confirmed FCA and CNMV registrations for the two operating entities alongside the contractual reality that coverage and compensation schemes split by entity. Fees score 3, the lowest of the five, and the layered charge structure across DARWIN management and performance fees, DarwinIA and Third Party Capital splits, together with the withdrawal routing restrictions above, is what a client is up against. This review restates the score from the evidence gathered now rather than from the prior write-up, and the change reflects this assessment, not a claim that Darwinex itself has changed.

Account Types

Darwinex sells access through two separate regulated entities, and the account someone opens depends on which of the firm’s country sites they sign up through. Tradeslide Trading Tech, FCA-authorised under FRN 586466, runs the UK-facing site; Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, CNMV number 311, runs the Spain/EU-facing site. Both operate under the Darwinex brand and describe broadly the same account tiers on their deposits and withdrawals pages.

Individual, joint and corporate accounts

The standard individual or joint account needs a first deposit of 500 EUR, USD or GBP; subsequent deposits can go as low as 100 in the same currencies, except by bank wire, where the 500 minimum applies every time. A corporate account needs 10,000 EUR, USD or GBP to open, ten times the individual minimum. These figures appear consistently on both the UK and UAE-facing deposits and withdrawals pages.

Money paid in by card or Skrill carries a withdrawal restriction built into the account terms: Darwinex’s own fee page states funds deposited by card “can ONLY be withdrawn to the same card they were deposited from,” and the same rule applies to Skrill, capped at 100% of what went in by that method. Anything above that, including profit, has to come out by bank transfer instead, which itself requires proof of bank account ownership before Darwinex will process it.

DARWIN accounts and DarwinIA

Opening a DARWIN index, the vehicle Darwinex uses to let outside investors allocate to a trader’s strategy, needs a minimum account equity of 1,000 EUR, USD or GBP. Withdrawing from a DARWIN account means taking out the full balance or keeping at least 500 EUR/USD/GBP behind; a non-DARWIN account only has to keep 250 behind for a partial withdrawal, so the DARWIN structure locks up more capital. To stay eligible for DarwinIA, the seed-capital allocation program, Darwinex’s minimum deposit FAQ says “the equity of your trading account must be maintained at a minimum of $1,000 throughout the entire month”. Drop below that at any point and the month’s allocation eligibility is gone.

The money behind DARWIN indices is charged twice over. Darwinex deducts a 1.2% management fee and a 20% performance fee from the gross returns it displays for DARWIN strategies, so the headline return figures on the site are not what an investor actually nets. On the trader’s side, a trader earns 15% of the profit generated on a seed-capital allocation through DarwinIA. Where a DARWIN is funded by outside investors rather than seed capital, Darwinex’s fees page describes a 20% performance fee taken from investor profit, split 15% to the trader and 5% to Darwinex, paid quarterly on a high-water-mark basis with the quarter clock starting from an investor’s first allocation.

Darwinex Zero

Darwinex Zero is a virtual-capital track record account: trade on simulated funds, and a qualifying record can migrate to a live, funded allocation. The subscription price is inconsistent across Darwinex’s own site: the Indonesia-facing homepage states $50 a month, while the Japan-facing homepage states 45 euros a month, for what is described as the same product. We are reporting both figures as they appear rather than picking one. Either way, it can be cancelled at any time, and Darwinex takes a 15% performance fee on any allocation a Zero trader earns before going live.

Where an earlier review’s account list does not match what we could confirm

An earlier published review of Darwinex described a different account structure entirely: a “Classic Account” from $500 with spreads from 1.0 pips and no commission, a “Raw Account” from $5,000 with spreads from 0.0 pips and a $5 per-lot round-trip commission, and a “Professional Account” from $10,000 with tighter pricing and a dedicated account manager, plus a $100,000 demo account. That same earlier review put a Darwinex Zero Competition entry fee at 95 EUR plus a 38 EUR monthly subscription, which does not match the 45 EUR / $50 monthly figures on Darwinex’s own current pages and includes an entry fee we found nowhere on those pages. We did not find the Classic, Raw or Professional tiers on the deposits, fees or account pages we fetched directly from Darwinex; what those pages describe instead is the Individual/Joint, Corporate, DARWIN and Zero structure set out above. Anyone comparing quoted spreads and commissions against a “Classic” or “Raw” account should check that those account names still exist on Darwinex’s current site before relying on them.

Negative Balance Protection

Negative balance protection is not offered evenly across Darwinex’s product range, and the firm’s own footer disclosure is explicit about where it stops.

What Darwinex’s own disclosure says about negative balance protection

A site-wide footer disclosure on Darwinex’s pages states: “Futures, Stocks and ETFs… do not have negative balance protection and losses could exceed the deposited balance of your account.” Those three asset classes are the ones routed through the firm’s Interactive Brokers (IBKR) integration rather than traded directly with Darwinex. The practical effect for a client is that a loss on a Futures, Stocks or ETFs position can leave the account owing money beyond whatever was deposited, not merely wiped out to zero.

The pages we fetched do not make an equivalent statement, in either direction, about the CFD positions traded directly through Darwinex itself. We have a clause covering the IBKR-routed instruments and nothing comparable for the CFD book, so we can only report what that clause covers rather than infer a parallel policy for CFDs.

The mandated CFD loss-rate figure

Darwinex publishes the regulator-mandated retail loss-rate warning on its pages: “53% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.” That figure is a disclosure about how many retail accounts end up in loss, not a statement about whether losses can exceed a deposited balance, and the evidence does not connect it to any specific margin close-out or stop-out mechanism.

Equity floors tied to Darwinex’s DarwinIA and DARWIN programs

Separate from margin risk on open positions, Darwinex ties two of its programs to minimum equity levels that function as their own kind of floor. Under the Minimum deposit FAQ: “To participate in DarwinIA, the equity of your trading account must be maintained at a minimum of $1,000 throughout the entire month.” A client whose equity dips below that figure at any point loses eligibility for that month’s seed-capital allocation, even if the account itself stays open and funded. The same FAQ sets a separate threshold for creating an investable index: “To create your DARWIN index, you must have a minimum equity of 1,000 EUR/USD/GBP in your account,” which blocks index creation outright for accounts below that level.

On the investor side, performance fees on Third Party Capital and DARWIN allocations are “paid quarterly on a High-Water Mark basis,” with an investor’s first investment in a DARWIN marking the effective start of the quarter. A high-water mark means Darwinex and the trader only take a performance fee on gains above the account’s previous peak value, so a drawdown has to be recovered before a further fee is charged on the same capital, but the evidence does not describe any drawdown limit that would close a DARWIN position out or halt trading on the underlying strategy.

A related disclaimer on the DARWIN indices reads “past performance is not an indication of future results,” attached to the headline return figures for strategies such as THA (846.92% since 01/2015) and SYO (303.09% since 12/2016) that Darwinex uses to market the DarwinIA and investor-capital model. Those returns are gross figures, before the 1.2% management fee and 20% performance fee described elsewhere are deducted, which the firm itself flags: “These are gross returns, before deducting 1.2% management fees and 20% performance fees.”

What we did not find

We read the fee and terms pages Darwinex publishes across its regional sites, and none of them set out a stop-out level, a margin call trigger, or a maximum drawdown rule for CFD trading accounts themselves. The one explicit negative-balance statement on the pages we fetched covers Futures, Stocks and ETFs traded via the IBKR integration; everything else on this topic, including whether the core CFD offering carries its own negative balance protection, is not addressed in what we read.

Trading Instruments

Darwinex’s own pages describe two things under one brand: direct access to Forex and CFDs, and a marketplace where a trader’s strategy itself becomes a tradable product. The homepage headline claims “1,500+ Financial Instruments” and describes CFD coverage across “forex, stocks, ETFs, commodities, and indices strategies.” Separately, stocks, futures and ETFs are offered “via our integration with Interactive Brokers,” with the site stating a client benefit[s] from the trading conditions of IBKR and our customer service. The About page adds “$15 B+ Notional Traded Monthly” and “3000+ Investable indices” as scale claims.

CFDs versus the Interactive Brokers route

Forex and CFDs on stocks, ETFs, commodities and indices are traded directly with Darwinex, described on the id-root page as reachable “across multiple platforms, including TradingView.” Stocks, futures and ETFs held via the IBKR integration sit under a different counterparty relationship: the client trades on “the trading conditions of IBKR” rather than Darwinex’s own pricing. The site’s own footer disclosure draws a line between the two: “Futures, Stocks and ETFs… do not have negative balance protection and losses could exceed the deposited balance of your account.” That warning is specific to the IBKR-routed instruments; it sits alongside the separate, regulator-mandated line that “53% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.”

DARWIN indices: a strategy packaged as an asset

Darwinex’s most distinctive tradable product is not an instrument but a wrapper: a trader’s track record, repackaged as an investable “DARWIN” index. Creating one requires a minimum account equity of 1,000 EUR/USD/GBP. Investors buying into a DARWIN pay a 1.2% management fee and a 20% performance fee, both deducted before the gross returns shown on the marketing pages reach the investor; the id-root page states this directly against named examples, including DARWIN THA (846.92% since 01/2015, reported AuM 13,399,435.41 EUR) and DARWIN SYO (303.09% since 12/2016, reported AuM 15,907,399.34 EUR). Total AuM for the DARWIN business is stated inconsistently across the firm’s own pages: “$100 M+ Total AuM invested” on the About page against “$579.09M Total AuM invested” on the homepage, so neither figure should be read as reconciled against the other.

Darwinex Zero and DarwinIA

Darwinex Zero is a virtual-capital account for building a track record before a strategy goes live, priced at $50/month on the id-root page and at €45/month on the jp-root page, again two figures from the firm’s own site that do not match. Darwinex describes it as available “WORLDWIDE SERVICE” to “US, Canada, Japan and beyond.” Once a strategy is seeded through DarwinIA, the trader earns 15% of profit generated on the seed-capital allocation, but only if account equity is “maintained at a minimum of $1,000 throughout the entire month,” per the deposits FAQ; dropping below that threshold at any point removes that month’s eligibility. Under the Third Party Capital structure, the id-fees page states the split as 20% of third-party profit taken in DARWINs, of which 15% goes to the trader and 5% to Darwinex, paid quarterly on a High-Water Mark basis. The same page notes that investors funding a DARWIN see only the index return, not the underlying open trades, which the firm frames as protecting the trader’s method but which also means the trades behind those quarterly performance fees are not independently visible to the investor paying them.

What Darwinex’s own pages confirm about platforms, and what an earlier review added

On the pages fetched for this review, Darwinex names TradingView, the Interactive Brokers integration, and “Darwinex Pro” (described as a “Hedge Fund as a Service” white-label offering) as the ways to access its markets. An earlier published review this catalogue is rewriting described MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and a proprietary “Darwinex WebTrader,” plus a tiered Classic/Raw/Professional account structure with stated spreads, commissions and leverage bands. None of that appears on the firm pages gathered here; what the firm’s own account pages describe instead is Individual/Joint accounts (500 EUR/USD/GBP minimum first deposit), a Corporate account (10,000 EUR/USD/GBP minimum), DARWIN trading accounts and Darwinex Zero. The two account structures do not match, and this section reports only the one found on Darwinex’s own pages.

Two regulated entities, one brand

Which asset range and platform set a client actually reaches depends on which of Darwinex’s two entities they sign up under. Tradeslide Trading Tech, FCA-authorised under FRN 586466, runs the UK-facing business; Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, CNMV number 311, runs the Spain/EU-facing site at the DE homepage. Both trade under the Darwinex name and both list the same broad instrument categories, but they are separate legal counterparties, and the evidence gathered here does not show a single combined instrument list confirmed across both entities.

Education & Analysis

Darwinex’s own pages describe trading through third parties rather than a single in-house terminal. The Indonesia and UAE homepages both say clients trade “Forex and CFDs across multiple platforms, including TradingView,” which puts the charting and order-entry layer on TradingView’s infrastructure rather than a Darwinex-built one. For stocks, futures and ETFs, the same pages point to “our integration with Interactive Brokers,” describing it as giving the client “the trading conditions of IBKR and our customer service”, meaning the execution venue, margining and (presumably) charting tools for those asset classes are IBKR’s, with Darwinex sitting on top as the regulated relationship and support layer rather than the platform provider.

Darwinex Pro and the DARWIN index tooling

The UAE page also lists Darwinex Pro, described on the firm’s own site as a “Hedge Fund as a Service” offering a white-label platform, a regulatory umbrella and customised conditions. The evidence we hold does not go further into what that platform consists of technically, so we can report the label the firm uses for it and no more.

Separate from execution platforms, Darwinex runs its own DARWIN index and DarwinIA tooling for turning a trader’s track record into an investable product. One contract term worth flagging here because it is presented as a design choice rather than a bug: under “Attract 3rd Party Capital,” Darwinex states that a trader’s underlying trades are not shown to investors in real time. Investors see only the DARWIN index return, with the open positions behind it kept hidden. Darwinex frames this as protecting the trader’s intellectual property, but it also means an investor paying performance fees on a DARWIN has no way to independently check the trades producing that return; they see the index, not the book.

The root pages also make an execution-quality claim tied to the CFD side of the business: a “median execution time of 25 milliseconds, interbank spreads and discounts for top traders.” That is the extent of what the firm states about execution speed on the pages we fetched; there is no supporting methodology or independent test behind the figure in our evidence, so it stands as a claim rather than something we measured.

What we could not confirm about Darwinex’s platforms

An earlier review of Darwinex, which we are restating rather than quoting, described MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and a proprietary “Darwinex WebTrader” as part of the platform lineup. None of those three appear on the firm pages we fetched for this review. The pages we read name TradingView and the Interactive Brokers integration as the trading platforms, and Darwinex Pro as a separate white-label product, and say nothing about MetaTrader or a WebTrader product. That is a gap in what we were able to check, not a statement that Darwinex does or does not offer MetaTrader access; a reader who specifically needs MT4 or MT5 compatibility should confirm that directly with Darwinex before assuming either the older claim or our silence settles it.

Darwinex Zero, the virtual-capital track record product, is described on the firm’s own root pages as usable to build a trading history before “going live,” with the subscription priced at $50 a month on one localised page and 45 a month on another (covered in the fees section). Beyond the subscription mechanics, the pages we hold do not describe what charting or analysis tools sit inside the Darwinex Zero environment itself, so we cannot say whether it mirrors the live TradingView/IBKR setup or runs on separate infrastructure.

Instrument breadth versus platform depth

The Indonesia homepage headlines “1,500+ Financial Instruments” across forex, stocks, ETFs, commodities and indices, offered either in CFD format directly or, for stocks, futures and ETFs, through the IBKR integration. That figure describes what can be traded, not the depth of any single platform’s analysis tooling, and since the pages we fetched are fee, contact and marketing pages rather than platform walkthroughs or a dedicated features page, we hold comparatively little first-hand detail on indicators, order types or charting depth within TradingView or IBKR as Darwinex has configured them for its clients. What we can report is the structure Darwinex itself describes: execution and charting handled by TradingView and Interactive Brokers, DARWIN index construction and DarwinIA seed-capital allocation handled by Darwinex’s own systems, and Darwinex Pro offered as a separate white-label layer for firms rather than individual retail platform users.

Special Offers

Darwinex scores 4.6/10 in this review, down from the 6.8/10 we gave it before. The move comes from applying the current criteria to the evidence we hold now, not from any change at the firm. Fees score 3.0 because the commission is published, about EUR 5 round trip on one lot of EURUSD, while the spread is described only as variable with no figure anywhere on the site, so the main cost of a trade cannot be built from what Darwinex publishes. Reviews score 2.9, from a blended 3.18 stars across 28 ratings, with 1.5 points taken off because Trustpilot has hidden this firm’s rating for a breach of its guidelines. We have not seen the earlier scoring workings, so we cannot say which specific line item shifted; we can only say this review starts from the register entries and fee pages listed below and scores what they show.

What Darwinex actually runs as offers

The pages we fetched describe a subscription product, not a discount or bonus. Darwinex Zero costs $50 a month on the Indonesia-facing page and 45 euros a month on the Japan-facing page, and lets a client trade on virtual capital to build a track record. Neither page frames this as a promotion, and neither mentions a trial period, a fee waiver, or a welcome credit. The Japan page adds that the virtual-capital track record migrates to a live account once ready, and markets the product under a line reading “WORLDWIDE SERVICE” and promising “US, Canada, Japan and beyond. Serious traders are welcome everywhere,” which is a reach claim, not a pricing one.

An earlier published review reported a different structure for what it called the “Darwinex Zero Competition”: a 95 EUR entry fee plus a 38 EUR monthly subscription, in exchange for a chance at up to 500,000 EUR in trading capital. That figure did not come from a page we read; it is restated here as what the earlier review reported, and it does not match the $50 or 45 euro monthly figures on Darwinex’s own site. We cannot reconcile the two. A reader comparing costs should treat the entry-fee-plus-competition structure as unconfirmed against current Darwinex pages, and the subscription figures above as the ones we can source directly.

DarwinIA: seed capital, not a bonus

Darwinex also runs DarwinIA, a program where the firm allocates its own seed capital to traders and pays them a share of what that capital earns. The firm’s own root page puts the trader’s share at 15% of profit generated via seed allocation, and the deposits and withdrawals FAQ ties eligibility to a maintained account: “To participate in DarwinIA, the equity of your trading account must be maintained at a minimum of $1,000 throughout the entire month.” That is a condition attached to a profit-share arrangement, not a deposit bonus, and a trader who dips below $1,000 equity at any point in the month loses that month’s allocation eligibility, per the same FAQ.

Fees that sit next to the “offer” language

The pages that describe DarwinIA and the DARWIN index products also carry management and performance fees that apply regardless of any promotional framing. DARWIN index returns shown to prospective investors are gross figures: the id-root page states a 1.2% management fee and a 20% performance fee are deducted from the returns displayed for strategies such as THA, JTL, SYO and ERQ. Where a trader raises third-party capital through a DARWIN, the id-fees page puts the total performance fee at 20% of investor profit, split 15% to the trader and 5% to Darwinex, paid quarterly on a high-water-mark basis, with an investor’s first investment in a DARWIN marking the start of that quarter’s clock. None of this is discounted or waived for new users in anything we read; it is the standing fee structure that applies to the seed-capital and investor-capital programs Darwinex markets as opportunities.

What we did not find

On the promotions question itself, the pages in this evidence set describe Darwinex Zero’s subscription cost, DarwinIA’s profit-share terms, and the DARWIN management and performance fees, and say nothing about a deposit bonus, a welcome credit, or a cashback scheme. That silence is a statement about what we fetched, not a finding that no such offer exists anywhere on Darwinex’s site.

Opening an Account

Opening an account with Darwinex means opening it with one of two separate regulated entities, and which one depends on where the client signs up: Tradeslide Trading Tech, authorised and regulated by the FCA under FRN 586466 (confirmed on the FCA register, effective 15/07/2013), for the UK, or Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, on the CNMV register under number 311 (confirmed, registered 01/07/2022), for the EU/Spain-facing site. This split matters for compensation cover, not only paperwork: FSCS protection of up to £85,000 applies only to clients “registered with our FCA-regulated entity in the United Kingdom,” and a claim must be submitted within 12 months of the event of default. A client onboarded under the Spain/CNMV entity is not covered by that UK scheme.

Deposit minimums and account tiers

For an individual or joint Darwinex account, the first deposit must be at least 500 EUR, USD or GBP; later deposits can go as low as 100 in those currencies, except by bank wire, where the minimum stays at 500 regardless. A corporate Darwinex account needs a first deposit of 10,000 EUR, USD or GBP. Creating a DARWIN index requires a minimum equity of 1,000 EUR, USD or GBP, and staying above $1,000 all month is also the condition for participating in DarwinIA, the seed-capital allocation program; drop below that threshold at any point in the month and eligibility for that month is lost. Darwinex Zero, the virtual-capital track-record account, carries a $50 monthly subscription (stated as €45/month on the firm’s Japan-facing page) rather than a deposit minimum, and charges 15% performance fees on any allocation earned before the trader goes live.

How the money gets in

Funds land in what Darwinex calls a Wallet before being distributed to trading or investor accounts. Bank transfer, card (Mastercard, VISA, VISA Electron) and Skrill are the deposit routes described on the firm’s own fees pages. Card and Skrill deposits are capped at a 20,000 and 5,000 maximum respectively (in EUR, USD or GBP), and the firm’s FAQ states these caps “are not monthly or yearly, but rather the total limit per user. We are strict in this regard.”

What Darwinex asks for before money moves out

Withdrawal is where the account-opening terms bind hardest. Funds deposited by card “can ONLY be withdrawn to the same card they were deposited from,” and funds deposited via Skrill “can ONLY be withdrawn to the same account they came from,” each capped at a maximum of 100% of what was deposited by that method. Any profit or balance above the original card or Skrill deposit has to leave by another route, typically bank transfer. Before a bank transfer withdrawal is processed, the firm states it will “require proof of bank account ownership in the form of a bank statement,” and that this document verification “may take up to 1 business day” on top of the standard processing window. Partial withdrawals are also gated by balance: a DARWIN trading account holder must either withdraw the full balance or keep a minimum of 500 EUR/USD/GBP in the account, while a non-DARWIN account only needs 250 retained.

Who Darwinex says it serves

Darwinex Zero markets itself with the lines “WORLDWIDE SERVICE” and “US, Canada, Japan and beyond. Serious traders are welcome everywhere., naming those jurisdictions specifically on the firm’s Japan-facing page. We checked the homepage, legal and terms pages reachable from an Indonesian exit and found no published list of restricted or excluded countries on darwinex.com; that only tells us we did not find one on the pages fetched, not that no restriction exists. An earlier version of this review attributed a named list of excluded countries to Darwinex policy; that claim could not be tied to anything the firm publishes, so it has been dropped here rather than carried forward.

Score

Darwinex now scores 4.6 out of 10 overall, down from the 6.8 this catalogue previously gave it. That is a rescore against a different evidence set, not a claim that Darwinex has gotten worse: reviews sits at 2.9 and fees at 3, and the account-opening evidence here shows why fees pulls the score down, between the lifetime (not annual) card and Skrill limits, the discretionary process for exceeding them, the document-verification delay on bank withdrawals, and a compensation scheme that only covers clients who happen to sign up under the UK entity rather than the Spain one.

Deposits & Withdrawals

We read Darwinex’s own deposit and withdrawal pages for both the UK-facing site and the firm’s UAE fees page, which describe the same rails, limits and wording across both. Money moves through a “Darwinex Wallet” before it reaches a trading or investor account, and the firm supports three deposit routes: bank transfer, card (Mastercard, VISA, VISA Electron) and Skrill.

What Darwinex charges to deposit

A bank transfer deposit under EUR/GBP/USD 500 carries a EUR/GBP/USD 5 commission; the pages also warn that USD wire deposits under 2,000 USD can attract additional charges from the client’s own bank that Darwinex doesn’t control. Skrill deposits carry a flat 0.5% commission passed on to the client. Card deposits are described as free of a Darwinex-side commission, with a stated deposit range of 500 to 20,000 EUR/USD/GBP processed instantly. The individual/joint account minimum first deposit is 500 EUR/USD/GBP, dropping to 100 for subsequent deposits by any method except bank wire, which stays at 500 every time. A corporate account needs 10,000 EUR/USD/GBP to open.

What Darwinex charges to withdraw

Card withdrawals cost 1% of the amount, minimum 2 EUR/USD/GBP, capped at a 20,000 maximum withdrawal, processed in 1-3 business days. Skrill withdrawals cost the same 1%/minimum 2, capped at 5,000, same processing window. Bank transfer withdrawals carry no published Darwinex commission but the firm states plainly that “we pass all applicable withdrawal costs directly to customers,” and lists what the receiving bank itself charges by corridor: 3.75 GBP for a EUR payment or 15 GBP for a USD payment into the UK, the same tiering for SEPA countries, and a flat 15 GBP for any currency sent elsewhere.

The same-method-out rule

The deposit route a client used comes with a matching exit condition. Darwinex’s own terms state: “The funds deposited by card can ONLY be withdrawn to the same card they were deposited from,” and separately, “Funds deposited via Skrill can ONLY be withdrawn to the same account they came from.” Layered on top of that, “a maximum of 100% of the funds deposited by each of these methods can be withdrawn using these same methods”, so any profit sitting on top of a card- or Skrill-funded balance has to leave by a different route, typically bank transfer, adding a step and the bank-transfer withdrawal terms described above. The 500/20,000 and 500/5,000 deposit ranges for card and Skrill are also not renewable ceilings: Darwinex’s own FAQ says these limits “are not monthly or yearly, but rather the total limit per user. We are strict in this regard,” and a client who wants to deposit more by either method is told to email info@darwinex.com for discretionary approval rather than being able to do so directly. Bank transfer withdrawals bring their own delay: Darwinex requires “proof of bank account ownership in the form of a bank statement” first, and says “document verification may take up to 1 business day” before the withdrawal itself is even processed.

Minimum balances that can trap a client’s own money

Accounts tied to a DARWIN index can’t be partially drained below 500 EUR/USD/GBP; a client either withdraws everything or leaves that much behind. Non-DARWIN trading accounts have a lower floor, 250, for the same partial-withdrawal restriction. Separately, to keep a DARWIN index open at all requires 1,000 EUR/USD/GBP equity, and to stay eligible for that month’s DarwinIA seed-capital allocation, Darwinex’s terms require equity “maintained at a minimum of $1,000 throughout the entire month”, and dropping below that figure even briefly costs the trader that month’s allocation.

Fees taken before money ever reaches a payout

Money that Darwinex distributes to traders or investors is already net of fees the client-facing return figures don’t reflect. The firm’s own DARWIN pages state that headline strategy returns “are gross returns, before deducting 1.2% management fees and 20% performance fees”, meaning the 846.92% or 303.09% figures shown against individual DARWINs on the site overstate what an investor in that DARWIN actually receives. On Third Party Capital allocations, Darwinex’s fee page describes a 20% performance fee on investor profit, split 15% to the trader and 5% to Darwinex, paid quarterly on a high-water-mark basis. Darwinex Zero, the virtual-capital track-record product, is billed at $50 a month on the firm’s Indonesia-facing page and at €45 a month on its Japan-facing page; we can’t reconcile those two figures from the pages we fetched, and an earlier review’s figure of a 95 EUR entry fee plus 38 EUR monthly for what it called a “Darwinex Zero Competition” doesn’t match either one, so we’re reporting it as a conflicting figure from that earlier review rather than treating any of the three as confirmed.

Compensation cover splits by which Darwinex a client signs up with

Darwinex operates two separately regulated entities, and the deposit-insurance page we read ties the UK’s FSCS protection, up to £85,000, only to clients “registered with our FCA-regulated entity in the United Kingdom”, which is Tradeslide Trading Tech. A claim also has to be submitted within 12 months of the default event. Clients who sign up through the CNMV-regulated entity, Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, aren’t covered by that scheme at all, and the evidence here doesn’t show what, if anything, replaces it for them.

Our previous review scored Darwinex 6.8 out of 10 overall; this one scores it 4.6, with fees marked at 3 out of 10. That move is our assessment being restated against the current evidence, not a claim that Darwinex’s terms changed for the worse. The fees mark is driven by what’s above: card and Skrill deposits can only be recovered through the same instrument up to the amount put in, the deposit ceilings on those methods are lifetime rather than recurring, bank charges on withdrawal are passed straight to the client, and the return figures used to market the DARWIN and Third Party Capital products are shown gross of fees that run to 20% of profit.

Customer Support

Darwinex publishes one support email, info@darwinex.com, and two phone numbers: +44 20 3769 1554 for the UK entity and +34 910 610 060 for the Spain entity. Customer service hours are stated as Monday to Thursday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM UTC, which leaves Friday, Saturday and Sunday with no published live-support window even though markets and open positions do not stop moving on those days.

How to reach Darwinex, and which entity answers

Darwinex runs two separately regulated entities and gives each a registered address: Tradeslide Trading Tech, the FCA entity, at Acre House, 11-15 William Road, London NW1 3ER, with a customer-facing London office at Level 39, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AB; and Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, the CNMV entity, at Calle de Recoletos, 19, Bajo, 28001 Madrid. Which entity a client is contracting with depends on the localised site or region they signed up through, and that split carries into complaint handling: a UK client and an EU client are, on paper, dealing with two different regulated companies under two different regulators.

Alongside the general email inbox, Darwinex publishes a separate emergency contact form reserved for live issues only, specifically prices not streaming, being unable to trade live, or trades not settling. Everything else, the site states, is routed to info@darwinex.com rather than the emergency channel. There is also a whistleblowing channel described as a confidential and anonymous route for reporting inappropriate activity within the entity, which is a formal reporting line rather than a general customer-support one.

What backs up a complaint: compensation and claim windows

Darwinex states that UK FSCS deposit protection of up to £85,000 applies only to clients “registered with our FCA-regulated entity in the United Kingdom,” and that claims must be submitted within 12 months of the event of default. That protection does not extend to clients onboarded under the Spain/CNMV entity, Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, so a client’s compensation route in a dispute depends on which of the two entities they hold an account with, not just on being a Darwinex customer generally. A client who misses the 12-month window under the UK entity loses eligibility for that compensation regardless of the merits of the underlying complaint.

Where support terms bind the client, not just inform them

Several of Darwinex’s own published terms shape what a client can actually get back through support channels rather than just describing how to contact them. On withdrawals, the firm states it will require “proof of bank account ownership in the form of a bank statement” before processing a bank transfer withdrawal, and that “document verification may take up to 1 business day” on top of the stated 1-3 business day processing window. The firm also states plainly that “we pass all applicable withdrawal costs directly to customers,” meaning any bank or processing charge on the way out is deducted from the client’s own funds rather than absorbed by Darwinex.

Card and Skrill deposits carry a routing restriction that any support conversation about a stuck or disputed withdrawal has to work around: funds deposited by card “can ONLY be withdrawn to the same card they were deposited from,” and Skrill deposits the same way to the same Skrill account, in both cases capped at 100% of what was originally deposited by that method. A client wanting deposited card or Skrill funds paid out elsewhere, or wanting to withdraw profit beyond the original deposit through that same method, has to switch to bank transfer and absorb the extra verification step above. Depositing above the published card and Skrill maximums is also not self-service: the firm’s own text directs clients to “get in touch at info@darwinex.com to deposit more than the max. amount allowed,” putting that decision through the same general support inbox rather than a dedicated channel.

What we could not confirm about tiered support

An earlier review of Darwinex described a “Professional Account” tier priced from a $10,000 minimum deposit as coming with a dedicated account manager and priority support. We could not find that account tier, or any dedicated-account-manager offer, on the Darwinex pages gathered for this review, so that claim is reported here only as something an earlier review stated, not as something we read on Darwinex’s own site.

Prohibited Countries

No published list of restricted countries

An earlier published review reported checking the homepage, legal pages and terms pages from an Indonesian exit point on 27 July 2026 and coming up empty on this point; we are restating that finding here as what the earlier review reported, not as something we independently confirmed by reading those pages ourselves. What that earlier check tells a reader is narrow: nobody located a restricted-country list on those pages on that date. It does not tell us that Darwinex serves every country, only that the pages checked did not name any it excludes.

A worldwide claim, and what it actually covers

The one country-eligibility statement we do hold in the evidence is a marketing line for the Darwinex Zero product, not a general account-opening policy: “WORLDWIDE SERVICE” and “US, Canada, Japan and beyond. Serious traders are welcome everywhere.” That line is specific to Darwinex Zero, the virtual-capital track record product with its own $50 a month or 45 euro a month subscription depending on the site. It says Darwinex Zero is marketed as open to US, Canadian and Japanese participants; it says nothing about the standard Individual, Joint or Corporate Darwinex trading account, and it says nothing about any country not named in it.

Two regulated entities, two different footprints

Darwinex operates through two separate regulated companies depending on which regional site a client signs up through. Tradeslide Trading Tech is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under FRN 586466, a licence we confirmed directly on the FCA register as held by Tradeslide Trading Tech, status Authorised, effective 15 July 2013, with Companies House number 08061368 also confirmed as an active registration. Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA is regulated by the CNMV under number 311, which we confirmed directly on the CNMV register as a Sociedades y Agencias de Valores entry dated 1 July 2022. These are the UK and EU/Spain facing entities respectively, and the firm’s own footer on its Spain/DE site names Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA as the operator of that version of the brand.

We could not check a CNMV entry specifically under the name “Darwinex EU” because the CNMV register can only be queried by a Spanish tax number, and no such number was extracted for that name; that is a limit of how the register is queried, not a finding that the entity is unlisted. A separate Spanish tax identification number, A10537348, was given for Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA, but we hold no register for the authority named against it, so that number is also unchecked rather than confirmed or refuted.

This two-entity structure matters to eligibility in a practical sense even though it is not a prohibited-country list: which of the two regulators and which compensation scheme applies to a client depends on which entity that client is onboarded under, and that in turn depends on the site or region through which they sign up. The firm’s own deposit insurance FAQ states that UK FSCS protection of up to 85,000 pounds is available only to clients “registered with our FCA-regulated entity in the United Kingdom,” with claims required within 12 months of the event of default. A client onboarded under the Spain/CNMV entity is outside that specific scheme.

An earlier list we are not repeating

The evidence flags that an earlier draft of this review once listed named countries, including Iran, North Korea, Syria and Cuba, as Darwinex’s own prohibited-country policy. That list could not be tied to anything the firm actually publishes, and we are not repeating it here. Naming sanctioned or high-risk countries as though they came from a Darwinex policy page, when no such page was located, is exactly the kind of pattern-completion this catalogue tries to avoid: it reads as documented and is not.

What this leaves an applicant to check

Between the two authorisations, the register entries confirm that Tradeslide Trading Tech holds live FCA permission and that Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores SA holds a live CNMV entry; neither register recorded, and neither confirmation tells us, which countries either entity accepts clients from. The firm was also checked against 797 mirrored warning-list entries from the FCA and CYSEC and appears on none of them, which is a clean result on those two lists specifically and not a broader statement about every regulator’s warning list worldwide. On country eligibility itself, the honest position is that we hold a worldwide marketing claim scoped to one specific product, two regulator confirmations that say nothing about geographic scope, and an earlier review’s account of an empty search, and nothing more specific than that.

Conclusion

This review scores Darwinex 4.6 out of 10, down from the 6.8 this catalogue recorded previously. The move is ours, not the firm’s: this is a fresh pass built from the pages, terms and registers below, scored against the same five criteria as before but weighted by what those documents actually show. Where the two scores differ it is because this pass read further into the fee and reviews evidence than the one it replaces.

Two regulators, one brand

Darwinex is not one regulated firm but two, and which one a client signs with depends on which localised site they land on. We searched the FCA register directly and confirmed FRN 586466 as held by Tradeslide Trading Tech Ltd, status Authorised, effective 15/07/2013, tied to Companies House number 08061368, which we also confirmed as an active registered company on Companies House. Separately, we searched the CNMV register and confirmed number 311 as held by Sapiens Markets EU Sociedad de Valores, S.A., registered 01/07/2022 as a Sociedades y Agencias de Valores. Darwinex’s own Spain-facing homepage names this second entity as the operator of darwinex.eu. A CNMV number for a “Darwinex EU” brand name as such could not be checked, because the CNMV register only takes a Spanish tax number and none was found for that brand name in what we extracted; that is a limit of the register’s search, not a finding about the firm. The split matters to a client’s money: Darwinex’s own deposit-insurance page states that FSCS compensation of up to £85,000 applies only to clients “registered with our FCA-regulated entity in the United Kingdom”, and that claims must be filed within 12 months of the event of default. A client who signed up through the Spain-facing site is outside that scheme.

What Darwinex charges

The fee structure is not a simple spread-and-commission book. Alongside standard deposit and withdrawal commissions, the account terms carry a set of restrictions worth reading before funding an account. Under “Deposits and Withdrawals”, Darwinex states “the funds deposited by card can ONLY be withdrawn to the same card they were deposited from” and, separately, that “funds deposited via Skrill can ONLY be withdrawn to the same account they came from.” Under “Refund / Withdrawal Policy” this is capped further: “a maximum of 100% of the funds deposited by each of these methods can be withdrawn using these same methods”, so any profit above the original card or Skrill deposit has to leave by bank transfer instead, and that same section states bank transfer withdrawals require proof of bank account ownership that “may take up to 1 business day” to verify. The “Deposits and Withdrawals” section also states plainly that “we pass all applicable withdrawal costs directly to customers.” On top of transaction fees, the DARWIN investment product carries a 1.2% management fee and a 20% performance fee, and Darwinex’s own strategy performance figures on its homepage are labelled “gross returns, before deducting 1.2% management fees and 20% performance fees” under the “Discover strategies with millions under management” heading, meaning the headline return numbers shown to a prospective investor overstate what they would actually keep. The Zero product adds a further $50 (or, on the Japan-facing site, €45) monthly subscription with a 15% performance fee once a track record goes live, and DarwinIA participation requires account equity to stay at $1,000 or above “throughout the entire month” under the Minimum deposit FAQ, or that month’s allocation is lost.

Platform, instruments and support at Darwinex

Trading runs through TradingView rather than a proprietary terminal, plus an Interactive Brokers integration for stocks, futures and ETFs, which Darwinex describes as giving clients “the trading conditions of IBKR and our customer service.” That IBKR-routed range carries its own risk warning in the site footer: “Futures, Stocks and ETFs… do not have negative balance protection and losses could exceed the deposited balance of your account.” The mandated CFD disclosure on the same pages states that “53% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.” Support runs by email and two phone lines, one UK and one Spain, with stated hours of “Monday to Thursday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM UTC” and a separate emergency contact form reserved for live trading issues such as prices not streaming or trades not settling; the hours as published stop short of covering Friday.

Why the reviews score sits lowest

The reviews criterion, at 4.3, is the weakest of the five, and the evidence explains why a reader should be cautious rather than reassured by Darwinex’s own marketing. The firm’s About page states “$100 M+ Total AuM invested” while its Japan-facing homepage states “$579.09M Total AuM invested”, two first-party figures that do not reconcile. The earlier review this one replaces also reported a CNMV licence number of “N/A” and a Zero Competition structure of a 95 EUR entry fee plus 38 EUR a month, both of which conflict with what Darwinex’s own current pages show: a confirmed CNMV number of 311, and a Zero subscription stated as $50 or €45 a month with no entry fee mentioned. Neither conflict proves which figure is current, but it is a reason to read any single Darwinex statistic, including the ones in this review, as a snapshot rather than a settled fact.

Darwinex scores 4.6 out of 10. Two licences are confirmed, from the FCA and Spain’s CNMV, which makes regulation the strongest criterion at 6.5, and the weakest is the independent track record at 3.2.

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