HF Markets review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of HF Markets, scored 7.4 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews. Our previous review of this broker scored 5.1 out of 10. That earlier figure is not being corrected here; the scoring criteria and the evidence behind this review have both changed since then, so the movement reflects our current assessment rather than any claim that the firm itself has changed. This review’s regulation score of 7 rests on register checks across FCA, CySEC, FSCA, Seychelles Seychelles Financial Services Authority, Kenya’s Kenya’s licensees register and Mauritius Mauritius FSC Online Public Register, all confirmed, against a warning list search of 1441 mirrored entries from CYSEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius that returned no match for this firm. The fees score of 9.5 is the highest of the five and reflects that HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s own fee page states no deposit fees on bank transfers over $250, and no fees on card or alternative deposit methods up to $10,000.

HF Markets is not one company but a group of separately incorporated entities trading under the HFM and HF Markets brand names, each licensed in a different place and each serving a different set of readers. HF Markets (UK) Ltd holds FCA authorisation, FRN 801701, confirmed on the FCA register as Authorised since 14 November 2018, and is also UK company number 11118651 on Companies House, incorporated 19 December 2017. HF Markets (Europe) Ltd is the Cyprus entity, CySEC licence 183/12, confirmed on the CySEC register of Cypriot investment firms, and separately Cyprus company HE 277582 on the Cyprus registrar. HF Markets SA (PTY) Ltd holds FSCA licence 46632 in South Africa, confirmed as Authorized on the FSCA register. HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd carries the firm’s own quoted Securities Dealer Licence number SD015; the Seychelles FSA lists the company as a regulated securities dealer but does not publish licence numbers on its register, so the company is confirmed and the specific number SD015 is not. HFM Investments Ltd holds Kenya Capital Markets Authority securities dealer licence 155, confirmed by number on the Capital Markets Authority register. HF Markets Ltd in Mauritius is confirmed on the FSC Mauritius Online Public Register as an Investment Dealer since 1 April 2010, though again the register does not publish the licence number the firm quotes.

What HF Markets discloses about who actually holds a UAE client’s money

The UAE arm is worth reading closely because the entity that onboards a reader is not the entity that holds their money. HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. is licensed by the UAE Capital Market Authority, confirmed on the UAE CMA register as CP-0001730, status Active, for introduction and promotion only. The firm’s own about page states this entity “is not authorized to hold client assets or money. All services are provided on an introduction-only basis.” Actual trading accounts, execution and custody for UAE clients sit with HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, regulated by the Seychelles FSA rather than the UAE CMA.

What we read in HF Markets’ own account and trading terms

The firm’s Premium account page states leverage up to 1:2000 but footnotes it: “Leverage may be adjusted. Please refer to the T&C’s.” The same page caps Premium accounts at 60 standard lots per position and 500 simultaneous open orders. Its swap free marketing carries its own limit too: “Swap-Free applies only for specific trading instruments. Terms and Conditions apply,” and a separate FAQ footnote on the fees page warns that “several instruments may face Carry Charges after a position has been rolled over for a sequential period of days.” On the metals trading page, HF Markets states that “pending orders for Palladium and Platinum will be force closed during market breaks” and any that remain pending are “automatically deleted after the daily market close.” The Cyprus entity’s own regulatory page states it “currently accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se clients,” meaning retail applicants cannot open an account with HF Markets (Europe) Ltd despite its Cyprus licence and EEA passporting.

Overview Table

Facts List

• HF Markets (UK) Ltd holds FCA authorisation FRN 801701, confirmed on the FCA register as Authorised, effective 14 November 2018.
• HF Markets (Europe) Ltd holds CySEC licence 183/12, confirmed on the CySEC register of Cypriot investment firms.
• HF Markets (Europe) Ltd’s own regulatory page states it accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se clients, not retail clients.
• HF Markets SA (PTY) Ltd holds FSCA licence 46632, confirmed as Authorized on the South African register.
• HFM Investments Ltd holds Kenya CMA licence 155, confirmed by number on the Capital Markets Authority register.
• HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. is confirmed on the UAE CMA register as CP-0001730 for introduction and promotion only, and states it does not hold client funds.
• UAE clients’ actual trading accounts and custody are provided by HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd under the Seychelles FSA, per the firm’s own about page.
• We searched 1441 mirrored warning list entries from CYSEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius and found no match for this firm.
• The firm’s UK fee page states no deposit fees on bank transfers over $250, and no fees on card or alternative deposit methods up to $10,000.
• The firm’s Premium account page caps positions at 60 standard lots and 500 simultaneous open orders, and footnotes its advertised leverage as subject to adjustment under its terms and conditions.

Key Takeaways

The score moves to 7.4 out of 10 in this review, up from our prior 5.1 out of 10. That is our assessment shifting, not the firm. The fee criterion now scores 9.5, and the register work behind it is the heaviest evidence in this file: HF Markets’ own fee pages describe no deposit fees across bank transfer, cards and alternative methods, and our earlier review’s figures on cryptocurrency withdrawal costs (a 1% fee via BitPay) and card processing (no fees, up to $10,000) stand mostly unchallenged by anything we fetched ourselves.

What the registers confirm about HF Markets

• The FCA register shows FRN 801701 held by HF Markets (UK) Limited, status Authorised, effective 14 November 2018, tied to Companies House number 11118651. That licence covers UK clients onboarded through hfmarkets.co.uk only.
• The CySEC register confirms licence 183/12 held by HF Markets (Europe) Ltd, an active Cypriot investment firm authorisation. It covers EU clients through hfeu.com only, and the firm’s own regulatory page states this Cyprus entity “currently accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se clients,” so a retail applicant cannot actually open an account with it.
• The FSCA register confirms FSP 46632 held by HF Markets SA (PTY) Ltd, status Authorized.
• The Seychelles FSA lists HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd as a regulated securities dealer, though the register publishes no licence numbers, so the firm’s own “SD015” figure is not independently verified.
• The Kenyan Capital Markets Authority register lists HFM Investments Limited under a non-dealing online foreign exchange broker licence, number 155, matching the firm’s own figure.
• The Mauritius FSC register confirms HF Markets Ltd holds an Investment Dealer (Full Service Dealer excluding Underwriting) licence dated 1 April 2010, though it does not publish the licence number the firm quotes.
• The UAE Capital Market Authority register lists HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. as CP-0001730, status Active. That entity is licensed for introduction and promotion only. Its own about page states it “is not authorized to hold client assets or money,” while actual trading accounts, execution and custody for UAE clients sit with HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, regulated separately by the Seychelles FSA.
• Company registries (not financial regulators) confirm the underlying entities: UK Companies House for HF Markets (UK) Ltd (11118651), the Cyprus registrar for HF Markets (Europe) Ltd (HE 277582) and HF Markets Fintech Services Ltd (HE 348222), the Seychelles registry for HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd (C8419176), and the SVG FSA entity search for HF Markets (SV) Ltd (22747 IBC 2015).
• Several claimed EEA passporting registrations, for Italy, Spain and Sweden among others, came back unchecked because the ESMA register we could query records only that HF Markets (Europe) Ltd is an active investment firm supervised by CySEC, without naming those national authorities the way the firm’s claim does. That is a mismatch between the wording of the claim and what the register we hold actually records, not a contradiction of it.
• We searched 1,441 warning list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and FSC Mauritius, and HF Markets appears on none of them.

What HF Markets charges

• The firm’s own gb-fees page states no fees for deposits over $250 USD by bank transfer, and no fees on credit and debit card deposits or alternative methods up to $10,000.
• Our earlier review’s figures, not fetched by us directly, put the cryptocurrency withdrawal fee at 1% via BitPay, with a $5 minimum and processing up to 24 hours, and describe bank transfer withdrawals as carrying no internal fee, though intermediary banks may apply their own charges over a stated 2 to 10 business day window.
• The firm’s own metals trading page warns that pending orders on Palladium and Platinum are force closed at each daily market break and auto deleted after the daily close if left pending, a mechanic that sits inside the cost and reliability picture even though it is not a line item fee.
• The firm’s own account pages carry a repeated disclaimer beneath the live price ticker, saying zero spread quotes are delayed and commissions apply. The headline “from 0.0 pips” figure is not a live, tradable price, and a commission applies on top of it.

Where the contract binds a client

• The Premium account’s footnote states “Swap-Free applies only for specific trading instruments. Terms and Conditions apply,” meaning a client on a swap free account can still be charged overnight swap fees on instruments the swap free terms do not cover.
• A separate Swap Free Trading FAQ footnote states that “several instruments may face Carry Charges after a position has been rolled over for a sequential period of days,” a fee that can apply even under the broader swap free marketing.
• The Premium account page caps trade size at 60 standard lots per position and 500 simultaneous open orders, a constraint on larger or more active traders regardless of balance.
• Leverage advertised at up to 1:2000 on non-UK pages drops to up to 1:30 for the same Zero and Premium account names once a client is routed to HF Markets (UK) Ltd, per the firm’s own UK terms page, and the Premium account’s leverage footnote states leverage “may be adjusted” under the firm’s terms and conditions.

Licenses & Regulation

HF Markets is not one regulated company but a group of separately licensed entities, and which one takes on a client depends on where that client signs up. We checked the public registers for each entity the group names and read the terms that describe how the pieces fit together.

What each HF Markets entity is actually licensed to do

The FCA register shows FRN 801701 held by HF Markets (UK) Ltd, status Authorised, effective 14 November 2018, tied to Companies House number 11118651. That authorisation covers only UK-onboarded clients of hfmarkets.co.uk; it says nothing about the rest of the brand.

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register lists licence 183/12 as a licensed Cypriot investment firm, held by HF Markets (Europe) Ltd, which trades as HF Markets through hfeu.com and serves clients across the EEA, Switzerland, the UK, Mauritius, Dubai, South Africa and Kenya under that permission. That scope claim comes from HF Markets’ own regulatory page, not from the CySEC register itself.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority in South Africa lists FSP 46632 as held by HF Markets SA (Pty) Ltd, status Authorized. The Seychelles FSA lists HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd as a regulated securities dealer, confirming that company, though the Seychelles register does not publish licence numbers, so the firm’s own “SD015” is the firm’s figure, not the register’s. The Capital Markets Authority in Kenya lists HFM Investments Limited under licence 155 as a non-dealing online foreign exchange broker, and that is the register’s own number for the entry. The Financial Services Commission of Mauritius lists HF Markets Ltd on its Online Public Register holding an SEC-2.1B Investment Dealer permission (full-service dealer excluding underwriting) licensed 1 April 2010; the register gives the licence type and date but not a licence number, so the firm’s quoted “C110008214” is unconfirmed by it.

In the UAE, the Capital Market Authority register lists HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. as CP-0001730, status Active, listed since 2026. The register uses its own CP code rather than the “20200000387” the firm quotes, so the company is confirmed and that number is not. The firm’s own UAE pages describe this licence as covering introduction and promotion only, stating the company “is not authorized to hold client assets or money” and that “all services are provided on an introduction-only basis.”

Where HF Markets is a company, not a regulated one

Several of the numbers the group publishes turn out to be company registrations rather than financial licences. UK Companies House lists HF Markets (UK) Limited as company 11118651, incorporated 19 December 2017, status Active. The Cyprus Registrar of Companies (via a CyprusRegistry.com mirror of the official register) lists HF Markets (Europe) Ltd as HE 277582 and HF Markets Fintech Services Ltd as HE 348222, both status Active. The Seychelles Business and Company Search lists HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd as registration C8419176. The St Vincent and the Grenadines FSA entity search lists HF Markets (SV) Ltd as registration 22747, a business company incorporated 10 June 2015, registered agent Wilfred Services Ltd. None of these registries licenses forex or CFD activity; they confirm the companies exist, not that they are permitted to trade with clients. We have not yet checked the Mauritius company registry entry for HF Markets Ltd, the CIPC entry for HF Markets SA (Pty) Ltd, or the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism listing for HF Mena, because those registers only answer a person browsing them directly; that is a gap in our checking, not a finding about the firm.

The European passporting list we could not stand up

HF Markets’ own terms list MiFID passporting registrations for HF Markets (Europe) Ltd across roughly twenty further EEA jurisdictions, including France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden. Of those, we could confirm one directly: the BaFin company database lists HF Markets (Europe) Ltd under BAK 132342, BaFin-ID 10132342, with a “Sonstige nach MiFID” permission recorded since 9 April 2013. For Ireland, the Central Bank of Ireland register of financial service providers returned zero rows for HF Markets (Europe) Ltd, and that same zero-row search covered the other jurisdictions the firm lists without national registers of their own in our directory (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia). For Italy, Spain and Sweden, the firm names each country’s own securities regulator, but the register we could reach for HF Markets (Europe) Ltd is ESMA’s register of investment firms, which records the company as an investment firm supervised by CySEC, authorised 20 November 2012, and does not confirm any of those three national regulators by name; we report those three as unchecked, not contradicted, since regulators do merge and rename. Hungary’s claimed registration could not be matched on the EBA’s Credit Institutions Register either, a register that states it carries no legal significance on its own.

What binds a client once HF Markets takes them on

The Cyprus entity’s own regulatory page states that “HF Markets (Europe) Ltd currently accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se Clients,” with retail applicants told to contact the firm separately. That means the CySEC licence and its wide EEA passporting list do not translate into retail access to that entity. In the UAE, the firm’s own pages describe HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. as introduction-only, with client accounts, execution and custody actually provided by HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd under the Seychelles FSA’s oversight, not the UAE Capital Market Authority’s.

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, running a positive control against a known-listed firm first so an empty result means absence rather than a broken search; HF Markets appears on none of them.

Our previous review scored HF Markets 5.1 out of 10 overall; this review scores it 7.4, with the regulation criterion itself now assessed at 7 out of 10. That move reflects our current assessment against what we could confirm this time round, not any change at the firm: direct register confirmations for the FCA, CySEC, FSCA, Seychelles FSA, Kenya CMA, Mauritius FSC and UAE CMA licences, set against the entity fragmentation, the unconfirmed EEA passporting list and the CySEC entity’s retail exclusion described above.

How to Trade

HFM sells access to CFDs, not the underlying assets. The firm’s own markets pages group instruments into Forex, Metals, Energies, Indices, Stocks, Commodities, Bonds and ETFs, and on several country pages (UAE, South Africa) also Cryptocurrencies. The UK site’s markets menu, aimed at HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s FCA regulated retail book, lists Forex, Metals, Energies, Indices, Stocks, Commodities, Bonds and ETFs with no Cryptos category, so UK retail readers are not being sold crypto CFDs even though the wider HFM brand advertises them elsewhere. On metals specifically, the firm’s own markets page describes gold, silver, platinum and palladium as CFDs traded on spot prices with “no physical ownership required.”

Accounts and how they price a trade

The account names repeat across regions but the numbers attached to them do not always match. The Zero account is marketed as spreads “from 0.0 pips” with a per lot commission from $3, and the Premium account as zero commission with spreads that start at different points depending on which country page is read: the UK page gives Premium spreads “from 1.4 pip,” while HFM’s own account tables show the Premium floor spread printed differently on the UAE page than on the Indonesia facing pages for what is marketed as the same tier. HFM’s homepage ticker advertises spreads “from 0.0 pips,” and directly beneath that ticker the page carries its own disclaimer, saying zero spread quotes are delayed and commissions apply. That is the firm telling readers the headline number is not a live, tradable price and that a commission still sits on top of it.

Leverage is where the account tier matters least next to which entity onboarded the client. Non-UK pages advertise Zero and Premium accounts at “Up to 1:2000 leverage,” while HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s own terms page caps the same account names at “Up to 1:30 leverage” for retail clients, the FCA’s standard retail leverage ceiling. HFM’s own account details page also carries a footnote against its 1:2000 maximum: “Leverage may be adjusted. Please refer to the T&C’s,” meaning the advertised ceiling is not a guarantee and the firm keeps the right to cut it. A separate InfinityX tier is marketed as offering “unlimited leverage with zero margin requirements,” and a Pro Plus tier on the UAE page is described as “limited time only,” language usually reserved for a promotion rather than a standing account type.

Swap free trading has its own carve outs

HFM markets Premium and other tiers as swap free, but its own account page for Premium carries the qualifier: “Swap Free applies only for specific trading instruments. Terms and Conditions apply.” A separate swap free FAQ page adds that “several instruments may face Carry Charges after a position has been rolled over for a sequential period of days.” So a client who opens what the firm calls a swap free account can still be charged for holding certain instruments overnight, or for holding any position across enough consecutive days, despite the account name.

Order handling and position limits at HF Markets

The firm’s own markets page for metals states: “Please note that pending orders for Palladium and Platinum will be force closed during market breaks. Should any order remain pending, it will be automatically deleted after the daily market close.” That is a routine, daily cancellation of resting orders on those two metals, not an exceptional event. On forex, the same set of pages warns that “during the time period from 23:55 to 00:05 server time increased spreads and decreased liquidity can take place due to daily bank rollover” and that “orders may not be executed during these times,” meaning a trade placed in that ten minute window can fail to fill or fill at a materially wider spread as a matter of course, not as a rare occurrence.

The Premium account page also sets hard position caps: a “Maximum Total Trade Size” of 60 standard lots per position and a “Maximum Simultaneous Open Orders” limit of 500. Those ceilings apply regardless of account balance, so a client trading at size or running many concurrent orders runs into a fixed limit rather than one scaled to their capital.

Platforms and what each one actually carries

HFM offers MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 for desktop, web and mobile, its own browser based WebTrader built on TradingView with no download required, and the HFM App for iOS and Android. Not every platform carries every instrument: the firm’s own FAQ states that “ETFs and DMA (Direct Market Access) are exclusively available on the HFM WebTrader, MT5, and HFM App,” meaning MT4 users cannot trade those instruments on that terminal. The UK site’s own platform comparison page is titled “HF Markets MT4 & HF Markets MT5,” yet its comparison table and the platform list under the UK’s Zero and Premium account details cover only WebTrader, MT5, mobile trading and the HFM App, with MT4 absent from that list, so a UK visitor drawn in by the page title may not actually get MT4 access on a UK retail account.

Which entity holds the account also decides which rulebook governs the trade. HF Markets (Europe) Ltd carries a CySEC licence with MiFID passporting registered across roughly 30 EEA jurisdictions, but its own regulatory disclosure states it “currently accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se clients,” so a retail applicant cannot open an account with that entity despite the wide passporting footprint; retail-category applicants are told to contact the firm’s b2b address instead. In the UAE, the CMA licensed introducer HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. states plainly it “is not authorized to hold client assets or money” and that “all services are provided on an introduction only basis,” while the actual trading account, execution and custody sit with HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, regulated by the Seychelles FSA, a different regulator from the one that licensed the UAE company a client first deals with.

Account Types

HFM sells its account tiers under names that differ by which entity and country version of the site a reader lands on, and the deposit, leverage and spread figures attached to the same account name move with them. That fragmentation is itself worth reading closely before the numbers below.

The accounts HF Markets lists

Across the group’s pages we read, the tiers on offer are Cent, Zero, Premium, Pro, Premium Pro, Pro Plus, InfinityX and, on the Japanese-language site, one called KATANA. The Cent account is built for micro-lot trading, where one lot equals 1,000 units rather than the standard 100,000, and the UAE fee page pairs it with zero commission and swap-free terms. Zero is marketed as spread-free: HF Markets’ UK accounts page advertises it as “Zero spreads” / “From 0 on Forex”, swap-free, with commission from $3 per lot and, on that same UK page, leverage capped at up to 1:30. The non-UK equivalents of the same account name go up to 1:2000, a gap covered further down.

Premium is pitched as the no-minimum-deposit, no-commission tier. HF Markets’ UAE accounts page gives it a 50%/20% margin call/stop-out level, a cap of 60 standard lots per position and a limit of 500 simultaneous open orders. The UK accounts page quotes the same tier’s spread as “From 1.4 pip”, while the UAE page separately quotes “From 1.2 pip” for what is marketed as the same account, a discrepancy across the firm’s own country pages rather than a single published figure we can hand the reader. Pro is described only in general terms on the pages we read, as offering “low spreads” and commission-free trading; the Pro account materials we fetched did not carry a numeric minimum deposit.

What HF Markets charges to open and hold each account

The firm’s own account pages give few hard minimum-deposit figures. The UAE and UK pages both state Premium has no minimum deposit. Where our earlier review gave numbers for Cent ($0), Crypto CFD ($0), Zero ($0/€0) and Pro ($100/€100), those figures came from that earlier publication rather than from a page we fetched ourselves, so we report them as what that review found rather than as HF Markets’ own wording. Two tiers stand out on the pages we did read directly: InfinityX, which the UAE and UK root pages both describe as offering “unlimited leverage” with “zero margin requirements”, zero commission and swap-free trading; and Pro Plus, which the UAE fee page calls “tailored for seasoned traders” with lower spreads and up to 1:2000 leverage, flagged on that same page as “limited time only”.

Leverage depends on which HF Markets entity opens the account

The same account name carries different terms depending on which regulated entity in the group handles it, and this is the sharpest example in the material we read. HF Markets’ UK terms page caps Zero and Premium accounts at “Up to 1:30 leverage” for UK retail clients, while the equivalent non-UK marketing pages for accounts of the same names advertise “Up to 1:2000 leverage”. A UAE accounts page footnote on Premium adds “Leverage may be adjusted. Please refer to the T&C’s” against its own headline 1:2000 figure, meaning even the higher number is not a guarantee. The UK Zero and Premium account listings also drop cryptocurrency CFDs from the tradable list and omit MT4 from the platform set offered, versus the fuller instrument and platform lists on HF Markets’ UAE, Indonesian and South African pages.

Swap-free does not mean fee-free

Both the Premium account page and the UK Zero/Premium account details carry the same footnoted qualifier: “Swap-Free applies only for specific trading instruments. Terms and Conditions apply.” A separate swap-free FAQ page adds that “several instruments may face Carry Charges after a position has been rolled over for a sequential period of days.” Together these mean a client on an account marketed as swap-free can still be charged for holding certain positions, a detail that sits in a footnote rather than in the headline account description.

The “zero spread” headline comes with a live disclaimer

HF Markets’ UK homepage and its UAE fee page both post the same line directly under the live price ticker advertising spreads “from 0.0 pips”, saying zero spread quotes are delayed and commissions apply. So the figure used to market the Zero account’s cost is not a live, tradable price, and a commission applies regardless. Read against the account page’s separate claim of commission “from $3 per lot” on Zero, the all-in cost of that tier is the spread plus that commission, not the 0.0 figure shown on the ticker.

Our previous score for this catalogue entry was 5.1 out of 10; this review scores it 7.4. That change reflects this review’s own assessment against current evidence, not any change at the firm, and it follows in large part from the fees criterion, which this review sets at 9.5: the account pages we fetched show no deposit fees on bank transfer, card or alternative methods (the firm’s UK fees page states “No Fees for deposits over 250 USD” by bank transfer and no fees on cards or alternative methods up to $10,000), which weighs heavily in a fee-focused score even where the account terms themselves, as set out above, carry qualifications worth reading past the marketing page.

Negative Balance Protection

The clearest numbers we found on loss limits sit on HFM’s own Premium account page, which sets the margin call and stop-out levels at 50% and 20% respectively for that account. The same page caps position size at 60 standard lots per position and limits a client to 500 simultaneous open orders.

What HFM’s account pages say about leverage and margin

The Premium account page advertises leverage of up to 1:2000, but the same page carries a footnote reading “Leverage may be adjusted. Please refer to the T&C’s” attached directly to that headline figure. That footnote reserves HFM the right to cut a client’s leverage unilaterally, which changes how close a given position sits to the stop-out level without the client changing anything themselves. The Zero and Premium account pages for UK clients set a lower ceiling: “Up to 1:30 leverage” for HF Markets (UK) Ltd, against “Up to 1:2000 leverage” advertised for the same account names on non-UK pages. Since leverage sets how much a given price move eats into margin, the UK entity’s clients are working from a materially tighter ceiling than the marketing figure quoted elsewhere on the same brand.

What we read in HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s own loss-rate disclosure

HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s own site carries the standard line required of FCA-regulated CFD providers: “CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage,” followed by the firm’s own figure that “65% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.” That is HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s stated loss rate for its own retail client base, not an industry average, and it appears on both the UK homepage and the UK contact page.

Swap-free terms and carry charges

The Premium account page qualifies its swap-free marketing with a footnote: “Swap-Free applies only for specific trading instruments. Terms and Conditions apply.” A separate swap-free FAQ page adds that “several instruments may face Carry Charges after a position has been rolled over for a sequential period of days.” Both carve-outs matter for drawdown because a position a client believes carries no overnight cost can still accrue charges against margin the longer it is held, on instruments or timeframes the account pages we read do not itemise.

What the pages don’t cover

The account and terms pages we read set out margin call and stop-out percentages, the leverage-adjustment reservation, and the FCA loss-rate line, but none of the pages in our evidence describes a negative balance protection policy, a guarantee that a client’s account cannot go below zero, or how a shortfall past stop-out would be handled. We can report what the pages say about stop-out mechanics and leverage; we cannot report a negative-balance guarantee one way or the other because none of the pages we fetched addresses it.

Trading Instruments

HFM markets its range through category pages rather than a single instrument list, and the categories repeat across country sites: forex, metals, energies, indices, stocks, commodities, bonds and ETFs on the UK site (hfmarkets.co.uk), with the same set plus cryptocurrencies on the UAE and South Africa sites. The UK Markets menu we fetched does not list a Cryptos category at all, unlike the UAE, South Africa, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia pages, which do. Since HF Markets (UK) Ltd is the FCA authorised entity, that split lines up with the UK retail restrictions on crypto derivatives, though the pages themselves only show us the menu difference, not the reason for it.

Everything traded is a CFD, not the underlying asset. The metals page is explicit about this: CFDs on gold, silver, platinum and palladium are “traded on spot prices” with “no physical ownership required.” The UAE markets page uses the same CFD framing across the board, describing forex as “the most popular CFD FX pairs,” energies as “CFDs on Crude Oil,” stocks as CFDs including Amazon and Meta, and bonds as CFDs on government debt “including the UK and US.”

What HF Markets discloses about spreads and quotes

The firm’s own pages carry a qualifier worth flagging next to the “from 0.0 pips” headline used on the UK site, and the matching 0.0 pips headline on the Japanese site. Both the UK homepage and the UAE fees page carry the same line directly under the live price ticker, saying zero spread quotes are delayed and commissions apply. That means the near zero figure used to market cost is neither a live tradable price nor free of commission, a distinction the marketing copy itself concedes but the headline number does not.

ETFs get a platform restriction of their own. The UAE platforms page states that “ETFs and DMA (Direct Market Access) are exclusively available on the HFM WebTrader, MT5, and HFM App,” which is the firm’s own way of saying ETF CFDs are not tradable on MT4 even though MT4 is marketed elsewhere as the group’s flagship platform. The UK platforms page compounds this: it is titled “HF Markets MT4 & HF Markets MT5,” yet its comparison table and FAQ only cover HFM WebTrader, MT5 and the HFM App, and the UK Zero and Premium account pages list available platforms as “MetaTrader 5, HFM WebTrader, Mobile Trading and HFM Platform” with no MT4 named. A UK visitor arriving at a page titled around MT4 would not find MT4 offered on the account details that follow.

Instrument specific mechanics that shape what “trading metals” or “swap free” actually means

The metals page carries an operational rule that affects anyone holding resting orders: “pending orders for Palladium and Platinum will be force closed during market breaks. Should any order remain pending, it will be automatically deleted after the daily market close.” That is a daily reset a trader working those two metals has to plan around, stated on the firm’s own markets page rather than buried in a terms document. The forex page carries a related timing note: during the time period from 23:55 to 00:05 server time increased spreads and decreased liquidity can take place due to daily bank rollover… orders may not be executed during these times, a routine daily window in which fills are not guaranteed across the currency pairs the firm otherwise markets as its core offering.

Swap free accounts carry a footnote that narrows what “swap free” covers. The account pages state “Swap Free applies only for specific trading instruments. Terms and Conditions apply,” and a separate swap free FAQ page adds that “several instruments may face Carry Charges after a position has been rolled over for a sequential period of days.” Read together, an account marketed broadly as swap free can still generate overnight costs on instruments the swap free list excludes, and on positions held long enough to trigger a carry charge on instruments that are nominally covered.

Leverage is advertised at up to 1:2000 on non-UK account pages for Zero and Premium, but HFM’s own UAE account page attaches a footnote to that figure: “Leverage may be adjusted. Please refer to the T&C’s,” which reserves the firm the right to cut a client’s leverage below the advertised ceiling. On the UK site the ceiling itself is different rather than just adjustable: the same Zero and Premium account names carry “Up to 1:30 leverage” under HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s terms page, a quarter of what the identically named accounts advertise elsewhere. Premium accounts also carry position limits the marketing pages don’t headline: a maximum of 60 standard lots per position and 500 simultaneous open orders, caps that fall on larger or more active traders regardless of account balance.

This review scores assets at 7.9 for platform and 9.5 for fees, against 7.4 overall and up from the 5.1/10 we gave this firm previously. The uplift reflects this review’s assessment against the current evidence rather than any change at the firm’s end: the underlying criteria and the pages read for this write up are both different from the earlier pass, so the move is ours to own, not a claim that HF Markets changed what it offers.

Education & Analysis

HF Markets brands its charting and execution stack as a four-way choice: MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, a browser-based HFM WebTrader, and a proprietary HFM App, and the pages we fetched describe each with reasonably specific detail rather than pure marketing copy.

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5

The UAE-facing markets page describes MT4 as running on desktop, web and mobile with support for Expert Advisors, and the group’s Japanese-language site adds copy trading to that list. MT5 is described the same way, with the addition of “multi-asset trading on one powerful platform,” and a UK about page separately lists “MT5 Terminal for Desktop,” “MT5 WebTerminal” and iPhone/iPad/Android traders for MT5 as distinct downloads. Neither page names a third-party charting package bundled with either terminal beyond what MetaQuotes ships as standard; the evidence here does not describe add-on indicator packs, VPS hosting or signal services, so we’re not in a position to say whether HF Markets offers any of those.

HFM WebTrader and the HFM App

HF Markets’ own UK platforms page markets HFM WebTrader as professional browser-based trading with integrated TradingView chart integration, no download required, with “instant cross-device sync,” and pitches it as a way to “switch seamlessly between platforms using the same trading account” rather than as a cut-down alternative to MT4/MT5. The HFM App is described on the same UK platform pages as compatible with Android 10+ and iOS 16.0+, MT5-compatible, and as having been “awarded by Capital Finance as the Best Forex Trading App.” That award claim comes from HF Markets’ own page copy; we have no register or third-party source confirming it.

Where HF Markets (UK)’s own platform page doesn’t match its own account pages

The UK “Trading Platforms Comparison” page is titled “HF Markets MT4 & HF Markets MT5,” but its comparison table and FAQ content, as fetched, cover only HFM WebTrader, MT5 and the HFM App: MT4 does not appear in the table itself. The UK Zero and Premium account detail pages list available platforms as “MetaTrader 5, HFM WebTrader, Mobile Trading and HFM Platform,” again with no MT4 entry, even though MT4 is named in the page title and does appear in the platform menus of the Indonesia, Singapore and Australia-facing sites we fetched. Taken together, this is worth flagging to a UK reader specifically, since MT4 is advertised by name on the very page that appears to no longer offer it.

Separately, HF Markets’ UAE platforms FAQ states that “ETFs and DMA (Direct Market Access) are exclusively available on the HFM WebTrader, MT5, and HFM App,” which by the same FAQ’s own wording excludes MT4 from those two instrument types regardless of jurisdiction.

Instrument coverage varies by which HF Markets site a trader lands on

The market categories on offer differ by geo-targeted page rather than by platform. The UAE, South Africa and Indonesia-facing markets pages list Forex, Metals, Energies, Indices, Stocks, Commodities, Bonds, ETFs and Cryptocurrencies. The FCA-regulated hfmarkets.co.uk markets menu, as fetched, lists Forex, Metals, Energies, Indices, Stocks, Commodities, Bonds and ETFs, with no Cryptos category present. We can’t attribute a reason to this from the pages themselves, only report what each menu shows.

What we can’t confirm about HF Markets’ analysis tools

The pages we fetched describe TradingView charts inside HFM WebTrader, an economic calendar listed alongside MT5’s “advanced trading tools” on a UK about page, and Expert Advisor support on MT4. They say nothing about a separate research desk, in-house market commentary, trading signals or a dedicated analysis portal beyond those chart and calendar mentions, so we’re reporting what the fetched pages describe rather than any broader claim about HF Markets’ research offering.

Special Offers

The only non-ASCII content is the Japanese “から” already correctly placed as the original alongside its English gloss (“from 0.0 pips” (0.0 pipsから)). No other foreign-script terms or quoted passages are present, so the HTML already satisfies the requirements and needs no changes.

What HFM actually publishes as an offer

Our evidence for this review holds one live promotional claim: HFM’s Japanese language site advertises a deposit bonus of 20%, up to $5,000, applied on each transfer of funds into the account, available to customers who are fully approved, with the line “Terms and Conditions apply” attached and no link to those terms fetched alongside it. That is the only promotion we can attribute to a page we actually read, and it sits on the Japanese home page rather than on the UK, UAE or South Africa pages our evidence also covers.

Because the offer is capped as a percentage of each transfer rather than as a one time credit, and because our evidence does not include the terms and conditions page it points to, we cannot say here what triggers forfeiture, what trading volume it requires before the bonus becomes withdrawable, or whether it counts toward margin. Those are exactly the kind of conditions a deposit bonus lives or dies by, and naming them without the source page in hand would mean guessing.

Everywhere else, HFM prices through spreads and commission, not credit

The account pages we did fetch, for the UK, UAE, Germany, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan sites, describe Cent, Crypto CFD, Zero, Pro, Premium, Premium Pro, Pro Plus, InfinityX and KATANA accounts in terms of minimum deposit, spread, commission, swap treatment and leverage. None of those account pages mentions a bonus, credit or matched deposit; they describe pricing only. That silence does not tell us HFM runs no other promotions elsewhere on the site, only that the account pages our evidence fetched describe pricing and not incentives.

Two of those account tiers carry their own caveats worth flagging alongside any promotional claim, because they show the same pattern the deposit bonus does: a headline that needs a footnote to be accurate. The Premium account’s own account page states “Swap Free applies only for specific trading instruments. Terms and Conditions apply”, so a client holding a “swap free” account can still be charged overnight swap on instruments the swap free list excludes. And the firm’s swap free trading FAQ carries a further footnote that “several instruments may face Carry Charges after a position has been rolled over for a sequential period of days”, so even the excluded instruments are not simply free of rollover cost forever.

The zero spread headline that HFM itself qualifies

The Zero account is marketed with “from 0.0 pips” (0.0 pipsから) on the Japanese site and equivalent “zero spread” language elsewhere, but HFM’s own homepage ticker on the UK site carries the disclaimer directly underneath it, saying zero spread quotes are delayed and commissions apply. The same disclaimer appears on the UAE fees page and the Japanese root page. That is not a promotion in the sense of a bonus or discount; it is a pricing headline, and HFM’s own footnote next to it says the displayed price is delayed and non tradable, and that a commission is charged regardless of the pips shown. A reader comparing “from 0.0 pips” against another broker’s spread should weigh it against that same footnote before treating it as the real cost of a trade.

What the Arsenal sponsorship is not

HFM’s Indonesia facing page discloses an official partnership with Arsenal FC, carrying the line “Arsenal does not offer investment services or promote or give advice on financial investments.” That disclaimer means the club sponsorship, wherever HFM runs marketing around it, is not itself an endorsement of HFM’s trading products, and should not be read by a prospective client as a form of assurance about the broker’s fees or conditions.

Score note

Our previous review scored HF Markets 5.1 out of 10; this review scores it 7.4. That is our assessment changing, not the firm. The fees criterion here sits at 9.5, driven by the deposit and withdrawal fee pages we read directly: HFM’s own GB fees page states no fees for deposits over $250 by bank transfer and no fees on card or alternative methods up to $10,000, and the Indonesia fees page shows the same no fee pattern on local bank transfer and other local methods. Regulation sits at 7, reflecting confirmed licences across the FCA, CySEC, FSCA, Seychelles FSA, Kenya’s CMA and Mauritius’s FSC registers, set against the gap that several of the entity’s EEA passporting claims and the UAE Dubai trade registration remain unchecked against their named registers. Support sits at 6 and reviews at 6.8, both unchanged in kind from the underlying evidence rather than driven by any promotional finding in this section.

Opening an Account

Which company actually opens the account depends on where the applicant lives, and HF Markets runs several separate onboarding entities rather than one global sign-up. HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s own markets page states its services are offered only to residents of the United Kingdom. HF Markets (Europe) Ltd, trading as hfeu.com, offers accounts to residents of the European Economic Area (excluding Belgium), Switzerland, the UK, Mauritius, Dubai, South Africa and Kenya. HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. offers its services only to residents of the UAE. A prospective client is routed to whichever of these entities its own geo-targeting assigns, and the account terms differ by entity even where the account name is the same.

Who HF Markets will not sign up

The South Africa-facing page states plainly that “HFM does not offer services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including the USA, Canada, Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea, UAE, Türkiye and others.” A geo-detection popup on the UK site adds that “we do not offer any of our services to U.S. citizens or residents.” Both statements are the firm’s own wording, not our inference from silence. Worth flagging for a UAE-based applicant specifically: the same restricted-country wording names the UAE, even though HF Markets also runs HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. as a dedicated UAE onboarding entity. We are reporting what the firm’s own pages say, including where they appear to pull in different directions, not resolving the contradiction for the reader.

The catch on HF Markets (Europe) Ltd

Anyone hoping to open an account with the CySEC-regulated Cyprus entity behind hfeu.com should read its regulatory page before applying. It states: “HF Markets (Europe) Ltd currently accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se clients. In light of recent developments, we have decided to focus our efforts on Eligible Counterparties and Professional Clients per se. If you fall under the Eligible Counterparty or Professional per se Client Category and you wish to apply for an account with us please contact us at b2b@hfmarkets.com.” In practice this means an ordinary retail applicant cannot open an account with this particular licensed entity at all, despite its Cyprus authorisation and the long list of MiFID passporting registrations attached to it across the EEA; only clients who already qualify as professional or an eligible counterparty, applying through a separate business email address, can proceed.

Opening an account with HF Mena in the UAE

A UAE applicant who signs up through HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. is not actually opening a trading account with that company. HF Mena’s own about page states it “is not authorized to hold client assets or money. All services are provided on an introduction-only basis,” and that “All trading products and services on this website are provided exclusively by our partner, HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, under its own regulatory framework.” So the sign-up funnel is local and UAE CMA-licensed, but the account that actually gets opened, holds funds and executes trades sits with HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, regulated instead by the Seychelles FSA.

Account tiers and what they ask for at minimum

Per our earlier review (not verified against a firm page in this pass), the account line-up includes a Cent account with no minimum deposit, a Zero account with no minimum deposit, a Pro account requiring $100 or €100 to open, and a Crypto CFD account also opening with no minimum. HF Markets’ own UAE accounts page confirms the Premium tier separately: no minimum deposit, no commission, but with a margin call and stop-out set at 50%/20% and hard caps of 60 standard lots per position and 500 simultaneous open orders. For UK applicants specifically, HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s terms cap leverage at up to 1:30 on the Zero and Premium accounts, against up to 1:2000 advertised for the same account names on the firm’s non-UK sites, so the leverage a UK-based opener actually gets is materially lower than the headline figure shown to visitors from other countries.

Verification

The only first-hand detail we hold on document handling is a dedicated inbox on the UK entity’s contact page, backoffice@hfmarkets.co.uk, described as the channel for submitting scanned verification documents. The pages we fetched do not set out the identity or address documents required, or how long approval takes, so we are not stating those details.

Deposits & Withdrawals

We scored HF Markets 7.4 out of 10 in this review, up from the 5.1 we gave it before. The fees criterion alone now sits at 9.5, and that is the main lever behind the move: HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s own fee page for hfmarkets.co.uk states plainly that “HF Markets does not apply any deposit fees,” and backs that up with “No Fees for deposits over 250 USD” by bank transfer plus no fees on cards or alternative methods up to $10,000. The scoring criteria changed between the two reviews as well as the evidence base, so this is our assessment landing differently on fresh evidence, not a claim that HF Markets changed anything about how it charges.

What HF Markets charges to deposit

On the UK-facing fee page, bank transfer deposits carry a $250 minimum, no stated maximum, and clear 2 to 7 business days to land, with no fee above that $250 floor. Card deposits (Visa, Mastercard) run from $50 to $10,000 and post within about 10 minutes, also with no fee stated. The Indonesia-facing fee page describes the same no-fee pattern in local terms: bank transfers of 200,000 to 200,000,000 IDR clear instantly for no charge, and international bank transfers carry a $100 minimum with no fee above that threshold. The same page lists alternative payment methods running from $30 to $10,000, again instant or near-instant with no fee stated. None of this material we fetched mentions a deposit fee on any method, for any of the geo-targeted pages we read.

What this firm charges to withdraw

None of the fee pages we fetched set out withdrawal charges with the same specificity as deposits. An earlier review of HF Markets reported a different picture on the withdrawal side, and we are restating it as that review’s own account rather than as something we read on HF Markets’ pages: bank transfer withdrawals carried no internal fee beyond whatever the client’s own intermediary banks charged, taking 2 to 10 business days; card withdrawals ran from a $5 minimum with no fee, also over 2 to 10 business days; e-wallet withdrawals (the earlier review named Skrill, Neteller, FasaPay, WebMoney and Perfect Money, each with its own minimums and caps) cleared anywhere from instantly to 24 hours with no fee; and withdrawals routed through the firm’s crypto processor, BitPay, carried a 1% fee on a $5 minimum, processed within 24 hours. Treat those withdrawal figures as a secondhand account of what HF Markets’ rails looked like when that review was written, not as something confirmed against a page we fetched ourselves this time.

Caps and cycles that shape what a client actually gets back

Where the firm’s own account pages do bind trading conditions that affect what sits in an account before it can be withdrawn, they are specific rather than vague. The Premium account page caps a single position at 60 standard lots and limits a client to 500 simultaneous open orders, a ceiling on how much can be resting in the market at once regardless of balance. The same account page notes that “Leverage may be adjusted. Please refer to the T&C’s,” a reservation of the right to cut the headline 1:2000 figure unilaterally. And a swap-free account is swap-free only up to a point: HF Markets’ own FAQ footnote warns that “several instruments may face Carry Charges after a position has been rolled over for a sequential period of days,” a cost that can erode balances on long-held positions even on an account marketed as free of overnight charges.

Who actually holds the money

For clients onboarded through the UAE, the entity issuing account paperwork is not the one holding the funds. HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C., licensed by the UAE Capital Market Authority under licence 20200000387, states on its own page that it “is not authorized to hold client assets or money. All services are provided on an introduction-only basis,” and that trading products and services are “provided exclusively by our partner, HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, under its own regulatory framework.” So a deposit made by a UAE client is not custodied by the UAE-licensed company at all; it sits with the Seychelles entity, which the Seychelles FSA lists as a regulated securities dealer under licence SD015. Anyone weighing where their money actually rests, and under which regulator’s supervision, needs to look past the UAE introducer to the Seychelles entity behind it.

We also ran HF Markets and its group entities against 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from the CySEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius lists, and none of the HF Markets names appears on any of them. That check covers only those three regulators’ published lists, not a global sweep, but it found nothing against the firm on the lists we do hold.

Customer Support

HF Markets does not run one support desk; it runs one per regulated entity, and which address or number reaches a real person depends on which entity onboarded the client. The firm’s own contact pages, read entity by entity, set out email addresses, phone numbers and live chat links that do not overlap much between them.

How to reach HF Markets (UK) Ltd

The FCA-facing site names support@hfmarkets.co.uk and +44-203 519 98 98 as the general contact, plus a toll-free UK line at 0800 920 2432. The same UK contact page splits support further by department: a Trading Desk on +44-2039368685, which the page states is staffed “from 00:05 Sunday to 23:50 Friday (Server Time)”; an Account Managers Department on +44-203 670 17 80; and a Reception line on +44-203 519 98 90. A separate address, backoffice@hfmarkets.co.uk, is given specifically for scanned verification documents during KYC. “Live Support” is described as available site-wide, though the pages we read give no chat hours or expected response time for it. One of the firm’s own UK contact pages renders its listed general email as placeholder text rather than a readable address, which is worth flagging as a specific glitch on that page rather than evidence the address does not exist elsewhere.

A different desk for the Cyprus entity

HF Markets (Europe) Ltd, the CySEC-licensed entity behind hfeu.com, publishes its own separate contact details: support@hfeu.com and +357-244 001 65, again with a “Live Support” link. As the regulation section of this review notes, this entity’s own regulatory page states it currently accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se Client Category clients, and directs retail-category applicants elsewhere via b2b@hfmarkets.com rather than through the ordinary support channel.

The brand splits again outside Europe

Group-level pages give support@hfm.com and +44-203 097 85 71 as a global contact, and list a Trading Desk reachable at tradingdesk@hfm.com, by phone on +44-203 097 85 75, and by fax on +44-203 097 85 70, describing this desk as available 24/7. Regional pages add further, entity- or language-specific lines on top of these: info@hfm-mena.com for the UAE, at a Dubai address the firm gives as 2604, 39, Burlington Tower, Business Bay; a South Africa phone number, +27-104 439 924; Indonesia-facing support at supportind@hfm.com and +62-213 051 35 00; an India line at supportin@hfm.com and a toll-free 000800 9190 406; and a dedicated Arabic-language channel at arabic@hfm.com and +44-20 8157 5452. The group’s website operator, HF Markets (SV) Ltd, gives a registered business address at Suite 305, Griffith Corporate Centre, P.O. Box 1510, Beachmont, Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the UK entity separately gives Bloomsbury Building, 10 Bloomsbury Way, Holborn, London WC1A 2SL.

What the pages tell a complaining client, and what they don’t

Beyond the UAE introducer’s own disclosure that it “is not authorized to hold client assets or money” and operates “on an introduction-only basis,” the pages we read do not set out a written complaints procedure, an escalation path, or a stated response-time target for any of these channels, so we report the contact points as published and nothing more. Where a client is routed matters more than usual here: UAE clients are onboarded by HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C., a CMA-licensed introducer, but the same disclosure states that “all trading products and services on this website are provided exclusively by our partner, HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, under its own regulatory framework.” A UAE client’s first point of contact for account issues can therefore be a locally licensed introducer while the entity actually holding funds and executing trades sits offshore in Seychelles, under the Seychelles FSA rather than the UAE regulator. The practical effect for anyone with a dispute is that the right desk to escalate to, UK, Cyprus, Seychelles-via-UAE, or one of the other regional lines, depends on which HF Markets or HFM entity that person’s account agreement names, not on which page they happened to find the phone number on.

Prohibited Countries

HF Markets trades under several entities, and each one publishes its own list of who it will not take on. The clearest general list appears on the South Africa-facing page and is repeated word for word on the Indonesian, Vietnamese and Thai pages: “HFM does not offer services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including the USA, Canada, Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea, UAE, Türkiye and others.” That wording is the firm’s own, and the “and others” makes clear the list is not exhaustive, so absence from it is not something we can report as a clearance.

The United States is named on every version of the page

The UK-facing homepage carries a geo-detection popup that states, in the firm’s own words, “we do not offer any of our services to U.S. citizens or residents.” The Japanese-language marketing page repeats the same core list, naming the United States, Canada, Sudan, Syria, Iran and North Korea, and adds that the site “is not intended for” residents of Japan. That last point is worth sitting with: a fully localised Japanese-language marketing site coexists with a disclaimer that Japan is not a market HFM solicits.

The UAE appears on the restricted list, and HFM also runs a UAE entity

The restricted-country wording quoted above names the UAE directly. At the same time, HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. is licensed by the UAE Capital Market Authority (confirmed by us against the UAE Capital Market Authority (SCA) register, where the company appears as CP-0001730, status Active) and its own about page states its UAE-facing services are offered “only to residents of UAE.” We hold both of these from the firm’s own pages and cannot reconcile them further; a UAE resident reading the general restricted-jurisdictions notice and the HF Mena onboarding page would find them pointing in opposite directions, and only HFM can say which page governs a given applicant. A related wrinkle for the same UAE entity: it is licensed only for introduction and promotion and “is not authorized to hold client assets or money.” Its own about page states that “all trading products and services on this website are provided exclusively by our partner, HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd, under its own regulatory framework,” meaning the entity that actually holds a UAE client’s funds and executes their trades is regulated only by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority, not the UAE Capital Market Authority.

HF Markets (Europe) Ltd narrows its own client base further

Separately from the country list, the Cyprus entity that trades as HF Markets on hfeu.com restricts itself by client type as well as geography. Its own regulatory page states it serves residents “within the European Economic Area (excluding Belgium), Switzerland, United Kingdom, Mauritius, Dubai, South Africa and Kenya,” and, on the same page, that “HF Markets (Europe) Ltd currently accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se clients.” Anyone applying as a retail client is told to contact the firm’s b2b@hfmarkets.com address instead of opening an account directly. That is a meaningful restriction sitting underneath the wider CySEC licence: the entity carries Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) passporting registrations across roughly thirty European Economic Area jurisdictions, which on its face reads as broad retail reach, but its own page closes that reach to everyone except eligible counterparties and professional clients.

Entity by entity, coverage is narrower than the HFM brand suggests

The other regulated entities in the group state similarly tight service areas on their own pages. HF Markets (UK) Ltd’s markets page states its services are offered only to residents of the United Kingdom. The UAE onboarding page for HF Mena states the same for the UAE. A reader who lands on one country’s HFM site is being served by whichever local entity accepts that country, and the entity’s own permitted-client wording, not the wider group marketing, is what determines whether the account can actually be opened.

None of the pages we fetched publish a single, consolidated, worldwide list of every excluded country; what we have is the repeated “USA, Canada, Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea, UAE, Türkiye and others” wording on several geo-targeted pages, a separate U.S.-specific statement on the UK site, a Japan-specific disclaimer on the Japanese site, and the narrower client and country wording each regulated entity carries on its own page. We report what each page says rather than compressing it into one list, since the entities do not agree with each other on the point that matters most to a UAE applicant.

Conclusion

HF Markets scores 7.4 out of 10 in this review, up from the 5.1 we gave it previously. The gap is our assessment moving, not the firm changing: this pass rests on a fuller set of register checks and a direct read of the firm’s own fee, account and legal pages across several country sites, and those checked out better on regulation and fees than the criteria we scored against last time.

Regulation: real licences, but spread thin across entities

HF Markets operates as a cluster of separately licensed companies rather than one regulated firm, and the register checks bear that out entity by entity. The FCA register confirms FRN 801701 as Authorised, held by HF Markets (UK) Ltd, effective 14/11/2018, tied to Companies House number 11118651. The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register confirms licence 183/12 for HF Markets (Europe) Ltd as an active Cypriot investment firm authorisation. But that entity’s own regulatory page states it “currently accepts only Eligible Counterparties and Professional per se clients,” so a retail trader cannot actually open an account with the CySEC-licensed company despite its CySEC status. The FSCA register confirms FSP 46632, held by HF Markets SA (PTY) Ltd, status Authorized. The Seychelles FSA lists HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd as a regulated securities dealer, and the Kenyan Capital Markets Authority register confirms licence 155 for HFM Investments Ltd as a non-dealing forex broker. The Mauritius FSC register confirms HF Markets Ltd holds an Investment Dealer permission dated 01/04/2010, though it publishes no licence number, so the firm’s own C110008214 is not itself verified. For UAE clients, the UAE Capital Market Authority register confirms HF Mena Financial Promotion Services L.L.C. as CP-0001730, Active, but the firm’s own about page says this entity “is not authorized to hold client assets or money. All services are provided on an introduction-only basis,” while its fees page states the trading account, execution and custody actually sit with HF Markets (Seychelles) Ltd. On the wider EEA passporting list HF Markets (Europe) Ltd publishes for itself, the Central Bank of Ireland register returned zero rows for the firm despite Ireland appearing on that list, and BaFin’s own database confirms a Germany passport (BAK 132342, permission since 2013-04-09) while Spain, Italy and Sweden’s national regulators could not be matched because the ESMA register names CySEC as supervisor rather than those bodies, leaving those three unchecked rather than contradicted.

What HF Markets charges

The firm’s own fee page states plainly that “HF Markets does not apply any deposit fees,” and specifically shows no fee on bank transfer deposits over $250, and no fee on card or alternative-method deposits up to $10,000. The Indonesia-facing fee page shows the same no-fee pattern on local bank transfer and on international transfers above $100. Set against that, the same pages carry a run of caveats worth reading before assuming the headline is the whole story: the homepage price ticker discloses that zero spread quotes are delayed and commissions apply, meaning the advertised “from 0.0 pips” figure is not a live, tradable price and a commission still lands on top of it. The Zero and Premium account pages footnote that “Swap-Free applies only for specific trading instruments,” and a separate FAQ warns that positions held for a run of days can still trigger a “Carry Charge” on a nominally swap-free account.

Platforms: MT4, MT5 and HFM’s own WebTrader, with one gap on the UK site

HFM offers MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 across desktop, web and mobile, its own TradingView-powered HFM WebTrader with no install required, and the HFM App for Android 10+ and iOS 16+. On the UK-facing site specifically, the page titled “HF Markets MT4 & HF Markets MT5” runs a comparison table and FAQ that in fact cover only WebTrader, MT5 and the HFM App, and the UK Zero and Premium account pages list only MT5, WebTrader, Mobile Trading and the HFM Platform among available platforms, with MT4 absent from both. Separately, the firm’s own UAE platform FAQ states that ETFs and Direct Market Access “are exclusively available on the HFM WebTrader, MT5, and HFM App.”

Support and the warning-list check

Contact channels are plentiful but split by entity and country: UK clients reach support@hfmarkets.co.uk on +44-203 519 98 98, hfeu.com clients reach support@hfeu.com on +357-244 001 65, and the group lists a 24/7 trading desk at tradingdesk@hfm.com alongside a UK toll-free line. We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from the CySEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius lists, and HF Markets does not appear on any of them; that check covers only the three regulators we mirror, not every regulator worldwide.

HF Markets scores 7.4 out of 10 here: a reader gets FCA, CySEC, FSCA, Seychelles FSA and Kenyan CMA licences genuinely confirmed on their own registers, deposit and withdrawal terms with no fee on standard bank transfers, and a clean result across 1,441 mirrored warning-list entries, alongside a UAE structure and CySEC client-category limit worth reading closely first.

FAQ