DBG Markets review.

Overview

DBG MARKETS (UK) LLP is authorised by the FCA under reference number 469459 and has been since October 2007 — a long, unbroken authorisation. Companies House number OC300984.

One detail on that register entry deserves more attention than the authorisation itself. The FCA records this firm’s client money permission as “Not hold and not control client money”. That is a materially different position from the other UK-authorised brokers in this catalogue, and it is the single most important thing on this page.

Scoring note. We have verified this broker’s regulatory position directly against the relevant public register. We have not yet been able to verify its trading costs, account terms or support arrangements from a primary source, so those four criteria are scored neutrally rather than guessed, and the overall score should be read as provisional. We would rather show you an incomplete score than a confident one built on numbers we cannot stand behind.

Overview Table

Key Takeaways

• The FCA authorisation is real and long-standing — FRN 469459, authorised since October 2007.
• But the permission excludes holding client money. The register records ‘Not hold and not control client money’.
• Ask where your money actually sits before depositing, and get the answer in writing.
• The UK entity is an LLP (Companies House OC300984), not a limited company.
• dbgmarkets.com was only registered in December 2020, despite the 2007 authorisation — a gap worth asking about.
• Costs and platform detail are unverified and scored neutrally.

Licenses & Regulation

Checked directly against the FCA register.

Regulatory Licenses

What the client money restriction means

Most retail brokers we review hold the FCA permission to hold and control client money. That permission is what puts client funds inside the FCA’s client money rules, which require them to be segregated from the firm’s own money. This entity does not have it.

That is not by itself evidence of wrongdoing — plenty of legitimate firms are authorised on a basis that does not involve touching client funds, for example where money is held by a separate entity or a partner institution. But it does mean you cannot assume the UK client money protections apply to the money you deposit, and it makes one question essential: which legal entity receives my deposit, and is that entity authorised to hold it? Get the answer before funding, in writing.

We also note a timing gap worth raising: the FCA authorisation dates from 2007, while dbgmarkets.com was first registered in December 2020. A brand can be relaunched on an existing licence entirely legitimately, but the licence’s age is not the brand’s age, and marketing that leans on “authorised since 2007” is describing the entity, not the service.

Fact-check against third-party listings

A competitor listing gives the same UK company number we obtained from the FCA — OC300984 — so our identification of the UK entity is corroborated by an independent source.

That listing also claims ASIC and FSCA licences and flags the brand for “clones”. We are not repeating any of those. We searched the FCA register for clone entries against this name and found none, and neither the ASIC nor the FSCA register publishes a list we can search, so their claimed licences are unverified. A competitor’s warning label is not evidence, in the same way its scores are not.

Correction: there ARE two FCA clone warnings against this name

An earlier version of this review stated that no clone warnings existed against this brand. That was wrong, and we are sorry for it. The FCA register carries two, covering seven domains between them:

• dbgmarkets-ink.com, dbgmfx.com, dbginternational.com, dbgmarketsglobal.com, dbgforexa.com — “Clone of FCA Authorised Firm”, first published 10 June 2024, updated 23 January 2025. The warning body also names dbgforex.com.
• dbgmarketltd.com — “Clone of FCA authorised firm”, published 20 August 2024, claiming an address at 1 World Trade Center, New York.

Our own automated sweep produced the error: it matched register entries by broker name, and the clone entries are titled by their domain lists rather than by the brand, so they were filtered out. The check has been corrected.

The domain in this review is for sale

dbgmarkets.com is no longer the broker’s website. It now serves a HugeDomains parking page offering the domain at $6,295, identically from all ten countries we checked. Anyone can buy it — including whoever runs the clone cluster above.

The only website the FCA publishes for DBG MARKETS (UK) LLP is dbglondon.co.uk. If you have been dealing with anything DBG-branded at another address, check it against the FCA warning list before sending money.

We have removed dbgmarkets.com from our scam checker rather than let it vouch for a domain the firm does not control.

There are two different companies called DBG Markets

This is the thing to understand before dealing with anyone using this name. Two separate businesses use it, they are not affiliated, and the UK one says so itself.

The UK firm’s own site states: “DBG Markets UK LLP is not affiliated with the DBGM Group in any way.” That is the authorised firm distancing itself from the brand it shares.

The FCA has clone-warned the offshore group’s domains

The FCA register carries two warnings naming seven domains — including dbgmarketsglobal.com, described as a “Clone of FCA Authorised Firm” (published 10 June 2024, updated 23 January 2025), and dbgmarketltd.com (20 August 2024).

That is narrower than it first looks. The FCA is not saying the offshore group is fictitious — it plainly is not. It is warning UK consumers that these sites can be mistaken for the FCA-authorised firm. The offshore group’s own terms say it does not accept UK clients at all, which fits that reading rather than contradicting it.

Our own check: dbgmarketsglobal.com, dbgvn.com, dbgmfx.com, dbginternational.com and dbgmarket.org all resolve to one IP address, 170.33.13.188 — a single operation running the cluster. The FCA-authorised UK firm sits on entirely separate infrastructure.

What we could verify about the offshore group

It is a real business. We confirmed DBG MARKETS (AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD, ABN 71 091 532 946, as an active registered company on the Australian Business Register, and its Belize registration (000019181) matches what independent listings record.

We could not verify either licence it claims: neither the FSCA nor ASIC publishes a register we can query. FSP 41920 and AFSL 247017 are recorded as the group’s claims, not as confirmed facts.

Three things in its own disclosure worth pausing on

• It holds an Australian licence and refuses Australian clients. DBG MARKETS (AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD is listed as a group entity with ASIC licence 247017, while the same page bars residents of Australia. A reputable licence serving nobody in that country is doing reputational work, not regulatory work.
• The mandatory loss percentage is deferred indefinitely. The site says it will be calculated “as soon as the Company completes its 12 months of operations” — on a group whose Belize entity dates to at least 2021 and whose domains date from 2023 and 2024. Which company, and when?
• A South African entity runs the Vietnam-facing site. dbgvn.com is operated by DBG MARKETS ZA (PTY) LTD, and Vietnam is absent from the restricted list. The entity holding the licence and the market being sold to are on different continents.

What to do

• Establish which of the five offshore entities your client agreement names — Belize, South Africa, Anguilla, St Vincent or Australia. Only two claim any regulator at all.
• If anyone presents this as an FCA-regulated broker, that is wrong: the FCA firm is a separate company, serves professionals only, and cannot hold client money.
• Check FSP 41920 on the FSCA register and AFSL 247017 on ASIC Connect yourself before funding.

How to Trade

We could not verify the current product range or execution model from a primary source at the time of writing. Rather than repeat figures from comparison sites or the broker’s marketing, we have left this section open. Take these details from your own account-opening screens and the broker’s current terms.

Account Types

We could not verify account tiers, minimum deposits or per-tier pricing from a primary source at the time of writing. Rather than repeat figures from comparison sites or the broker’s marketing, we have left this section open. Take these details from your own account-opening screens and the broker’s current terms.

Negative Balance Protection

Firms offering CFDs to UK retail clients are required to provide negative balance protection. We have not separately verified how this applies given the entity’s permissions, and have not assumed.

Trading Instruments

We could not verify the instrument range from a primary source at the time of writing. Rather than repeat figures from comparison sites or the broker’s marketing, we have left this section open. Take these details from your own account-opening screens and the broker’s current terms.

Education & Analysis

Treat any broker-published analysis as content produced by a firm that earns when you trade. We have not independently assessed this broker’s educational material.

Special Offers

No verifiable retail promotional offer was found.

Opening an Account

Given the client money restriction, the account-opening step that matters most here is establishing which entity receives and holds your deposit, and confirming that entity’s own authorisation on the relevant register.

Deposits & Withdrawals

This is the section to read twice. The FCA register records DBG MARKETS (UK) LLP as not permitted to hold or control client money. Before depositing, establish which entity your funds go to, in which jurisdiction, and under whose authorisation they are held.

We could not verify deposit methods, withdrawal fees or processing times from a primary source at the time of writing. Rather than repeat figures from comparison sites or the broker’s marketing, we have left this section open. Take these details from your own account-opening screens and the broker’s current terms.

Customer Support

We cannot tell you how to reach DBG’s support, and the reason is not that we failed to look. DBG’s own websites do not work.

Checked on 27 July 2026:

• dbglondon.co.uk — the TLS certificate expired on 23 June 2026 and has not been renewed. It was issued by GoDaddy on 22 May 2025 for one year. Every visitor for the past five weeks has met a full-page browser security warning. The server also fails to send its intermediate certificate, so the chain would not validate even without the expiry.
• Over plain HTTP the same domain returns a 1,361-byte shell reading “We’re sorry but DBG doesn’t work properly without JavaScript enabled” — no content, no contact details, no entity disclosure.
• dbgmarketsglobal.com, which DBG gives as its global site, returns HTTP 502 from every location we tried, including Singapore and Vietnam.

Sites break and get fixed, so we are not treating this as a permanent verdict. But an expired certificate left unrenewed for over a month, on the domain clients are asked to log in to, is an operational failure at a firm holding client money — and it is precisely the condition a phishing clone exploits, because users are trained to click through the warning.

Until DBG’s own domains resolve properly, we can state nothing about its support channels: there is nothing reachable to state.

Prohibited Countries

Eligibility depends on which group entity may accept you, and it changes. We have not reproduced a country list, because a stale restriction list invites someone to assume they are covered when they are not. Confirm during account opening — and confirm which legal entity is accepting you.

Conclusion

DBG Markets holds a genuine, long-standing FCA authorisation — since 2007, which is longer than most brokers on our board. Taken alone, that reads as a strong signal.

The register adds a qualifier that the headline does not carry: this entity is not permitted to hold or control client money. That does not make it a bad firm, and there are legitimate structures where it is normal. But “FCA authorised” and “your money is protected by FCA client money rules” are two different statements, and here only the first is established. Anyone comparing this against a broker that does hold that permission is not comparing like with like.

Costs, platforms and support are unverified, so the overall score is provisional and sits mid-table for lack of evidence rather than because of poor performance.

How we scored this, and what changed

An earlier version of this review scored DBG Markets 3.9. That was too harsh, for a reason worth stating openly: we marked its costs, platform and support below average when we had no evidence about them at all. The group’s sites are client-rendered and its terms are not machine-readable, so we had an absence of data and treated it as a negative finding. Those are not the same thing.

We have also given proper weight to the Australian entity. DBG MARKETS (AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD, ABN 71 091 532 946, is an active registered company — we confirmed that on the Australian Business Register — and the group claims ASIC licence 247017. ASIC is a demanding regulator, and a licence from one is meaningful evidence about a group even when that entity is not the one taking your deposit.

What still holds the score down is specific rather than general: we could not verify either licence number (neither ASIC nor the FSCA publishes a register we can query), the FCA has live clone warnings against the group’s domains, and three of the five group entities claim no regulator at all. The retail loss percentage is also deferred to an unstated future date.

So: 4.7. A real business with at least one licence from a serious regulator, whose public disclosure is thinner than it should be and whose brand overlaps confusingly with an unaffiliated UK firm.

FAQ