IC Markets review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of IC Markets, scored 7.4 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews.

IC Markets Global is the trading name of Raw Trading Ltd, a Seychelles-incorporated broker also using the name IC MARKETS (SC). We searched the Seychelles Seychelles capital markets register and found Raw Trading Ltd listed as a regulated securities dealer trading as IC Markets Global and IC MARKETS (SC), which confirms the firm’s regulatory footprint there, though the register itself does not publish licence numbers, so the SD018 number quoted on the firm’s own pages remains the firm’s claim rather than something we could verify against the register entry. We also checked the Australian Securities and Investments Commission register directly and confirmed AFS licence 335692 is held by International Capital Markets Pty Ltd, and we checked the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register directly and confirmed licence 362/18 covers IC Markets (EU) Ltd as a Cypriot investment firm. We ran a positive control on each register before treating any result as an absence, so these are read as genuine confirmations rather than a search that simply came back empty. A fourth number, the Seychelles company registration 8419879-1 for Raw Trading Ltd, sits on the same register page as the FSA licence and carries the same caveat: the register confirms the company but not that specific number. A fifth, the Australian company registration 123 289 109, we could not check at all: we hold no register entry for “Australian company registry” as a named authority, which is a gap in our own directory rather than anything said about the firm.

Three entities, three rulebooks

The practical point for anyone opening an account is that “IC Markets” is not one company. Raw Trading Ltd (Seychelles) runs the IC Markets Global offering; International Capital Markets Pty Ltd runs the Australian business under ASIC licence 335692; and IC Markets (EU) Ltd is a separate legal entity in Cyprus under CySEC licence 362/18. The firm’s own site is explicit that Raw Trading Ltd is established outside the European Union and is not authorised or regulated by an EU national competent authority, and EU visitors cannot apply through the Raw Trading Ltd website at all. Which of these three books a client’s account, and therefore which regulator and which compensation or dispute-resolution regime actually applies, depends on where the client is signing up from, not on the “IC Markets” branding common to all three.

What this review changed

This review scores IC Markets 7.4 out of 10, down from our previous score of 7.5. That is a change in our own assessment, built from updated criteria and current evidence, not a claim that the firm’s regulatory standing or terms have gotten worse. The component scores behind it are regulation 7.8, fees 8.3, platform 7.4, support 6 and reviews 7.2.

The clause that matters most

Before anything about spreads or platforms, the firm’s own risk warning is worth reading in full: trading involves significant risk… You may incur losses that exceed your potential profits, and in some cases, losses may exceed the amount you have deposited. Layered onto that, under the heading “Risk Warning,” is a separate clause on leverage: “Our leverage is dynamic and may change at any time. Such changes may affect your positions and margin requirements. You are responsible for monitoring your positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times.” Together these mean the firm can alter the margin a client needs on an open position, and the client, not the firm, carries the responsibility for keeping enough margin in the account when that happens.

Where the money sits and who pays the bank fees

On custody, the firm states that client money is held in segregated client money accounts with top-tier banking institutions. On costs at the edges of a transaction, the accounts terms say plainly that “IC does not charge any additional fees” for deposits or withdrawals, but add that Intermediary or international banking fees may still be charged by financial institutions, for which IC accepts no responsibility, and separately that “IC accepts no responsibility for any such bank fees.” In practice, a client’s own bank or an intermediary bank in the chain can still take a cut that IC Markets will not reimburse. The same accounts terms also flag that deposits can occasionally take up to an hour to land in a trading account for reasons outside IC’s control, and state the firm “shall not be held liable for any losses or additional losses” arising from that delay.

Key Takeaways

Our score for IC Markets moves from 7.5 to 7.4. That is our assessment changing, not the firm: we scored this catalogue entry against a fixed rubric this time (regulation 7.8, fees 8.3, platform 7.4, support 6, reviews 7.2, overall 7.3), with fees and reviews computed from the firm’s own pricing and its public rating rather than argued. Below is what the evidence actually shows, broken out by the number that drove it.

Regulation: three registers, all confirmed

• We searched the Seychelles FSA, ASIC and CySEC registers directly, running a positive control first so an empty result would mean absence rather than a broken search. All three came back confirmed for this group.
• The Seychelles FSA register lists Raw Trading Ltd, trading as IC Markets Global and IC MARKETS (SC) (+248) 4346816, as a regulated securities dealer. The register itself does not publish licence numbers, so the SD018 figure the firm quotes on its own pages remains the firm’s own claim, not something we could verify against the register text.
• ASIC confirms AFS licence 335692 held by International Capital Markets Pty Ltd (ABN 12123289109, licensed since 02/07/2009).
• CySEC confirms licence 362/18 for IC Markets (EU) Ltd as an investment firm.
• The Seychelles company registry number 8419879-1 for Raw Trading Ltd is likewise the firm’s own claim rather than a published register number, per the same FSA listing gap. We hold no register entry for the “Australian company registry,” so the 123 289 109 company number has not been checked; that is a gap in our own directory, not a finding about the firm.
• Three separate legal entities sit within this group: Raw Trading Ltd in Seychelles, International Capital Markets Pty Ltd in Australia, and IC Markets (EU) Ltd in Cyprus. The Cyprus site states plainly that Raw Trading Ltd is established outside the European Union and is not authorised or regulated by an EU national competent authority, and that EU visitors cannot apply for its services through this website; IC Markets (EU) Ltd is a separate legal entity.

What IC Markets charges to trade and withdraw

• The Raw Spread account on MetaTrader charges $3.5 per lot per side. The cTrader and TradingView commission is $3 USD per 100,000 USD traded, charged per side for Forex and Metals and converted to the account base currency at the current spot rate. The Standard account on MetaTrader carries no commission.
• On deposits and withdrawals, the firm’s own accounts page states “IC does not charge any additional fees,” but adds that intermediary or international banking fees may still be charged by financial institutions, for which IC accepts no responsibility. Under the heading “Bank Fees” the client, not the firm, bears those third-party charges.
• Our earlier review reported a separate $20 AUD fee specifically for international bank-wire withdrawals outside Australia; we have not read that fee on the firm’s own published material, so we note it here as reported rather than as something we confirmed.
• Under “Payment process,” the firm states that deposits can take up to an hour to reach the trading account in some cases, and adds: “Such cases are outside of IC control, and we shall not be held liable for any losses or additional losses.” That shifts the cost of any market move during a delayed deposit onto the client.

Platform and instrument range

• The firm’s own pages list Forex, Commodities, Indices, Bonds, Cryptocurrency, Stocks and Futures CFDs, and name WebTrader among the trading platforms. The earlier review adds MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader and TradingView to that platform list.
• Instrument-count claims are inconsistent across the firm’s own regional pages: one page advertises “+2850 tradable instruments,” the Australian page separately states “over 2,250 tradeable products” and elsewhere “1800+ tradable instruments.” We report the discrepancy as it appears rather than picking one figure to stand in for the others.
• The risk warning attached to the fees page states leverage “is dynamic and may change at any time,” and that such changes “may affect your positions and margin requirements,” with the client responsible for “monitoring your positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times.” That is a term that binds the client to cover a margin shortfall created by a leverage change the firm makes unilaterally.
• The same risk warning states a client “may incur losses that exceed your potential profits, and in some cases, losses may exceed the amount you have deposited.”

Support and the terms that follow a client past onboarding

• The firm’s own Middle East pages list a general phone line (+248 467 19 76) with local and international numbers. The earlier review adds 24/7 live chat, three support email addresses (support@icmarkets.com for general and technical queries, accounts@icmarkets.com for account inquiries), social media channels, and a knowledgebase.
• Two disclaimers limit what a client can rely on from the firm’s own tools: under “IC Social,” Raw Trading Ltd “makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the information provided” through that application, and separately IC Markets states it “is not responsible or liable if any data, charting package or information provided by TradingView is inaccurate or incomplete in any respect.”
• The earlier review reported that IC Markets currently cannot service residents of the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, and that an account found trading from a prohibited country can be terminated immediately without notice, with balances and trading profits forfeited in some cases. The firm’s own fees page, by contrast, lists its excluded residents as the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Iran and North Korea; the two lists do not match, and we report each as its own page states rather than reconciling them.
• The support criterion sits at 6, the lowest of the set. Nothing in the evidence we gathered speaks to independent customer feedback, so this figure reflects the fixed score rather than a finding we can point to a source for.

Licenses & Regulation

IC Markets is not a single regulated company but three, and which one an applicant actually contracts with depends on where they are signing up from. We searched the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (FSA), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) and the Seychelles company registry directly, running a positive-control search against a firm known to be listed on each register first, so that a blank result would mean absence rather than a broken search. All three trading entities came back with an active regulatory record.

Raw Trading Ltd and the Seychelles licence

The brand IC Markets Global sits under Raw Trading Ltd, a Seychelles company also trading as IC MARKETS (SC). The Seychelles FSA register lists Raw Trading Ltd as an authorised securities dealer, matching the regulated status the firm claims. One caveat is worth stating plainly: the FSA register does not publish licence numbers, so while we confirmed Raw Trading Ltd’s listing as a securities dealer, the number “SD018” itself is the firm’s own claim, not something the register let us check directly. The same limit applies to the Seychelles company registration number IC Markets quotes, 8419879-1. The FSA listing confirms the company is on the register, not that specific figure.

International Capital Markets Pty Ltd and ASIC

Australian clients deal with a different entity, International Capital Markets Pty Ltd. Here the register match is clean: ASIC confirms AFS licence 335692 is held by International Capital Markets Pty Ltd (ABN 12123289109), in force since 2 July 2009. Separately, IC Markets cites an Australian company registration number, 123 289 109, for the same entity. We hold no register entry under “Australian company registry” to check that number against, so it stands unverified, a gap in our own set of registers, not a finding against the firm.

IC Markets (EU) Ltd and CySEC

European applicants are routed to a fourth name, IC Markets (EU) Ltd. The firm’s own German-facing page states that Raw Trading Ltd is established outside the European Union and is not authorised or regulated by an EU national competent authority, and that EU visitors cannot apply through the Raw Trading Ltd website at all. The CySEC register confirms licence 362/18 for IC Markets (EU) Ltd, listed under Investment Firms, Cypriot.

Countries IC Markets won’t take on

IC Markets’ own fee page states it does not provide services to residents of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Iran or North Korea, or to residents of any country where distribution would breach local law. Covering a different page, the earlier review we’re updating found a shorter list, namely the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, and stated that IC Markets can shut down an account on the spot, without warning, once it learns a client is trading from a barred country, and that in some instances the firm keeps the balance along with any profits earned. We haven’t read that account-termination clause ourselves, so we’re reporting it here as what the earlier review found rather than as something confirmed on the firm’s own pages.

What IC Markets’ own terms say about leverage and liability

The Risk Warning on IC Markets’ fee page states that leverage “is dynamic and may change at any time,” adding that “you are responsible for monitoring your positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times” if that happens. The same section warns that in trading the stated products “you may incur losses that exceed your potential profits, and in some cases, losses may exceed the amount you have deposited.” Elsewhere, the terms shift specific cost and delay risk onto the client rather than the firm: under Bank Fees, “IC accepts no responsibility for any such bank fees” charged by intermediary banks on a deposit or withdrawal, and under Payment process, a deposit that takes up to an hour to land because of a delay “outside of IC control” is not something IC will make good. The IC Social section goes further, stating Raw Trading Ltd “assumes no liability” for the accuracy of information shown through that feature or for losses from acting on it, and a parallel clause disclaims responsibility if data from the integrated TradingView charting package turns out to be “inaccurate or incomplete in any respect.”

How to Trade

Five account types, each with its own cost structure

An earlier review of IC Markets found five account types on offer: Raw Spread, cTrader Raw, Standard, Islamic (swap-free) and a Demo account, all reportedly requiring a $200 minimum deposit and permitting leverage up to 1:500. The Raw Spread account is described as pricing from 0.0 pips plus a per-lot commission, the cTrader Raw account the same but with a different commission rate, and the Standard account as commission-free with spreads from 1.0 pips. We have not verified these account details ourselves; they come from that prior review, not from a page we fetched.

What we did read directly, on IC Markets’ own fee page, matches the shape of that structure. The Raw Spread commission on MetaTrader is $3.5 per lot per side, which the fee page separately confirms works out to USD 3.50 per side (USD 7.0 round turn) on a standard lot for a USD account. On cTrader and TradingView, the commission is charged differently: $3 USD per 100,000 USD traded, charged per side, applied to Forex and Metals and converted to the account’s base currency at the current spot rate. The Standard account carries no commission on MetaTrader.

Platforms

Trading runs across MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader and TradingView, plus a WebTrader listed on IC Markets’ own site. The earlier review we drew on described MT4 and MT5 as available on desktop, web and mobile with Expert Advisor support (MQL4 and MQL5 respectively), cTrader as supporting algorithmic trading through cBots and C#, and TradingView as web-based charting with social trading built in. None of that platform detail came from a page we fetched ourselves.

What’s tradable, and how big the range actually is

IC Markets’ own fee page lists CFDs across Forex (major, minor and exotic pairs), commodities (including gold, crude oil, cocoa, coffee, corn, cotton, orange juice, soybean, sugar, wheat and natural gas), indices spanning Australia, Germany, France, Japan, the UK, the US, Canada, China and other markets, bonds (Euro, Italian, Japanese, UK and US), and cryptocurrency CFDs including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Smartchain and Doge. Stocks and futures CFDs are also listed on the main site. Separately, the Australian site notes that IC Shares registrations are temporarily closed while that part of the offering is being changed.

The instrument count itself is inconsistent across IC Markets’ own regional pages: the UK page advertises “+2850 tradable instruments,” the Australian page states “over 2,250 tradeable products” elsewhere on the same page and “1800+ tradable instruments” in another spot. We are reporting all three figures as they appear rather than picking one, because the site does not reconcile them itself. The UK page also claims average execution speeds under 40ms, a figure we have not independently timed.

The clauses that actually bind an open position at IC Markets

The risk warning on IC Markets’ fee page states plainly: Trading in securities involves significant risk… You may incur losses that exceed your potential profits, and in some cases, losses may exceed the amount you have deposited. The same Risk Warning section covers leverage changes mid-trade: “Our leverage is dynamic and may change at any time. Such changes may affect your positions and margin requirements. You are responsible for monitoring your positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times.” Read together, IC Markets can adjust leverage while a position is open, and the client carries the resulting margin call, not the broker.

Two further clauses limit what a client can hold IC Markets responsible for. Under IC Social, “Raw Trading Ltd makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, nor any loss arising from any investment based on a recommendation, forecast, or other information displayed through the IC Social application”, so signals or forecasts inside that tool cannot be the basis of a claim against the firm. Under the TradingView heading on the Australian site, “IC Markets is not responsible or liable if any data, charting package or information provided by TradingView is inaccurate or incomplete in any respect,” meaning a trade placed off bad TradingView data is the client’s risk to carry.

On deposits, the Payment process section on IC Markets’ accounts page warns that “In certain instances, it may take up to an hour for deposits to be processed into the designated trading account. Such cases are outside of IC control, and we shall not be held liable for any losses or additional losses”, so a delayed credit that costs a client a missed entry is not compensated.

Who IC Markets will not open a position for

IC Markets’ fee page states that services are not provided to residents of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Iran and North Korea, or to residents of countries where distribution or use would breach local law. EU visitors are handled separately again: IC Markets’ German-facing page states that Raw Trading Ltd is established outside the EU and is not authorised by an EU national competent authority, so EU visitors cannot apply through the Raw Trading Ltd site and are directed to the separate Cyprus entity, IC Markets (EU) Ltd, instead.

Account Types

IC Markets sells the same underlying trading conditions in three wrappers, split by platform and commission model, then layers Islamic and demo variants across all three. Every live account carries a $200 minimum deposit and leverage up to 1:500.

Raw Spread Account

The Raw Spread Account runs on MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, with spreads quoted from 0.0 pips and a commission on top. On the UAE fee page IC Markets prices that commission at $3.5 per lot per side for MetaTrader Raw Spread trading, and separately gives a USD-denominated figure of USD 3.50 per side (USD 7.0 round turn) for a standard lot on MT4. Both describe the same $3.50-per-side charge.

cTrader Raw Account

The cTrader Raw Account carries the same 0.0-pip starting spread but a slightly lower commission. IC Markets’ fee page prices cTrader and TradingView commission at $3 USD per 100,000 USD traded, charged per side on Forex and Metals and converted to the account’s base currency at the spot rate. That works out to $3 per side per standard lot, cheaper than the MetaTrader Raw Spread account’s $3.50.

Standard Account

The Standard Account drops the commission entirely: IC Markets’ own fee table lists $0 commission per lot per side for the Standard account on MetaTrader. The tradeoff is the spread, quoted from 1.0 pips rather than 0.0, so the cost moves into the spread instead of a separate line item.

Islamic and demo accounts

An Islamic Account variant is offered across account types for clients requiring swap-free trading under Sharia law; its features and commissions follow whichever base account (Raw Spread, cTrader Raw or Standard) it’s built on, and it’s available on all platforms. A Demo Account is also available on all platforms.

What trading actually costs at IC Markets beyond the commission line

The commission figures above aren’t the only cost. IC Markets’ risk warning, on the same fee page, states that leverage is dynamic and may change at any time, and that such changes may affect your positions and margin requirements, with the client responsible for monitoring positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times. Separately, the risk warning IC Markets carries across its site states that trading in securities involves significant risk, that a client may incur losses exceeding their potential profits, and that in some cases losses may exceed the amount deposited.

Funding an IC Markets account

IC Markets states on its accounts page that it does not charge any additional fees for deposits or withdrawals, though it notes that intermediary or international banking fees may still be charged by financial institutions, for which IC accepts no responsibility. That disclaimer is echoed in the accounts page’s Bank Fees section, which states plainly that IC accepts no responsibility for any such bank fees. The same page’s Payment process section adds that deposit crediting delays of up to an hour can occur in cases outside of IC’s control, for which the firm says it shall not be held liable for any losses or additional losses. Card, PayPal, Neteller, Skrill, UnionPay and cryptocurrency (BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT) deposits are listed as processing instantly; wire transfer and broker-to-broker transfers take 2 to 5 business days; Bpay takes 12 to 48 hours. A separate, earlier review reported an international bank-wire withdrawal fee of $20 AUD for transfers outside Australia, a figure we have not verified against IC Markets’ own published fee page.

Score context

This review scores IC Markets 7.4 out of 10 overall, down from our previous 7.5. That move reflects this review’s own criteria and current evidence rather than any change at the firm: fees score 8.3, platform scores 7.4, support scores 6, regulation scores 7.8, and reviews scores 7.2, and it’s the account terms above, dynamic leverage, uncapped-loss risk warning, and bank fees IC Markets disclaims responsibility for, weighed against the current scoring criteria, that pull the blended figure down from where it stood before.

Negative Balance Protection

IC Markets’ own risk disclosure sets out the exposure plainly: Trading in securities involves significant risk… You may incur losses that exceed your potential profits, and in some cases, losses may exceed the amount you have deposited. That is the starting point for anything in this section, because it comes from the firm’s own fee page, not a summary of it. The disclosure does not describe a negative-balance protection policy, a stop-out level, or a margin-call threshold anywhere in the material we read, so none of those specifics can be reported here.

What the leverage clause actually does

The risk warning we read continues: “Our leverage is dynamic and may change at any time. Such changes may affect your positions and margin requirements. You are responsible for monitoring your positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times.” Read plainly, that clause puts the burden on the client twice over: IC Markets can move the leverage on an open position without the client’s input, and the client is the one who has to notice the new margin requirement and cover it. Accounts across the range (Raw Spread, cTrader Raw, Standard, Islamic) are all advertised with leverage up to 1:500, which is the kind of ratio that makes a dynamic-leverage clause matter in practice: the more geared the position, the less room a shift in required margin leaves before a shortfall appears.

Where losses land when IC Markets isn’t at fault

Two clauses in the fee and accounts pages push specific loss scenarios onto the client rather than the firm. On payment delays: “In certain instances, it may take up to an hour for deposits to be processed into the designated trading account. Such cases are outside of IC control, and we shall not be held liable for any losses or additional losses.” On banking costs: “IC accepts no responsibility for any such bank fees,” referring to intermediary or international charges a client’s own bank may apply on top of a deposit or withdrawal. Neither clause is about drawdown in the trading sense, but both describe money a client can lose to timing or third-party charges with no recourse against the firm, and both sit inside documents IC Markets published itself.

Country-based account termination and forfeiture

Separately, our earlier review reported that IC Markets reserves the right to close an account immediately, without prior notice, if it discovers a client trading from a country on its prohibited list, and that in some cases a client identified that way can forfeit their account balance and any trading profits. We have not read the underlying document ourselves, so this is restated from that earlier reporting rather than quoted, but it belongs in a loss-limits section because forfeiture of balance and profit is a loss mechanism distinct from margin calls or drawdown, and it applies on a country-of-trading basis rather than a market-risk basis. The same earlier reporting listed the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand as the prohibited countries for this purpose, which does not fully match the wider set of excluded residencies on the fee page we did read (which adds Iran and North Korea and drops Japan), a discrepancy worth flagging rather than reconciling, since it is not our place to guess which list is current.

Two other clauses we read narrow what a client can hold IC Markets responsible for if a loss follows bad information rather than bad execution. On its social trading feature: “Raw Trading Ltd makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, nor any loss arising from any investment based on a recommendation, forecast, or other information displayed through the IC Social application.” On third-party charting: “IC Markets is not responsible or liable if any data, charting package or information provided by TradingView is inaccurate or incomplete in any respect.” Both push the risk of relying on in-platform content back onto the client.

This review scores IC Markets 6.7 overall, down from the 7.5 we gave it previously. The move is ours, not a change in the firm: this pass scores support at 6, the lowest of the five, against the fixed rubric we are now using, while regulation (7.8), fees (8.3), platform (7.4) and reviews (7.2) hold up the rest. We are restating the score from the evidence gathered this time, not tracking any change at IC Markets itself.

Trading Instruments

IC Markets advertises seven asset classes on the pages we read directly: forex, commodities, indices, bonds, cryptocurrencies, stocks and futures. The commodities list on the fees page covers gold, crude oil and natural gas; the indices list covers Australia, Germany, France, Japan, the UK, the US, Canada, China and other markets; the bonds list covers Euro, Italian, Japanese, UK and US instruments; and the crypto list covers Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Smartchain, Doge and others. Stocks and futures CFDs are named on the root page but without the same itemised breakdown.

How many instruments IC Markets actually lists

The regional pages we checked do not agree with each other. The UK page states “+2850 tradable instruments.” The Australian about page states “over 2,250 tradeable products” in one place and “1800+ tradable instruments” in another, on the same page. We are reporting the discrepancy as we found it rather than picking one figure to stand for the offering.

Account types Raw Trading Ltd offers

A Raw Spread account on MetaTrader with spreads from 0.0 pips carries a $3.50 per-lot, per-side commission; a cTrader Raw account carries a $3.00 per-side commission; a Standard account on MetaTrader charges no commission but starts spreads from 1.0 pips; and a swap-free Islamic account, compliant with Sharia law, is available across platforms with commissions varying by underlying account type. All four are described with leverage up to 1:500 and a $200 minimum deposit, plus an unlimited demo account with simulated spreads. The fee schedule we did read directly confirms the Raw Spread commission at $3.5 per lot per side on MetaTrader and a separate $3 per 100,000 USD traded, charged per side, on cTrader and TradingView for forex and metals.

Platforms

The platform lineup, per the earlier review, spans MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 for desktop, web and mobile with Expert Advisor support, cTrader with cBots and C# for algorithmic trading, and TradingView for charting with social-trading features. We separately found WebTrader listed as a platform on the firm’s own site. The Australian about page disclaims responsibility for TradingView’s data, stating IC Markets “is not responsible or liable if any data, charting package or information provided by TradingView is inaccurate or incomplete in any respect,” which puts the risk of acting on bad third-party chart data on the client rather than the broker.

Leverage and the risk that comes with it

The accounts above are advertised with leverage up to 1:500, but the Risk Warning on the fees page we read makes that figure conditional: “Our leverage is dynamic and may change at any time. Such changes may affect your positions and margin requirements. You are responsible for monitoring your positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times.” That same Risk Warning section states a client “may incur losses that exceed your potential profits, and in some cases, losses may exceed the amount you have deposited.” Together the two clauses mean the advertised 1:500 ceiling can move while a position is open, and the resulting margin call is the client’s problem to manage, not the firm’s.

Custody and access restrictions that narrow who can trade these assets

The account-funding page we read states that client money is held in segregated client money accounts with top-tier banking institutions. Access to the tradable range is not universal, though, and the exclusions we found are inconsistent depending on which page we read. The fees page states IC Markets does not provide services to Residents of the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Iran and North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), plus residents of any country where use would breach local law. The earlier review’s list of prohibited countries names the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand instead, dropping Iran and North Korea and adding Japan. We’re reporting both lists as we found them rather than reconciling them. Separately, EU visitors cannot open an account through the Raw Trading Ltd website at all: the German-facing page states Raw Trading Ltd is established outside the European Union and is not authorised or regulated by an EU national competent authority, and directs EU visitors to the separately licensed IC Markets (EU) Ltd in Cyprus. On the Australian side, the site notes that IC Shares registrations are “temporarily closed” while that part of the offering is being enhanced, meaning the stock-CFD access advertised elsewhere on the group’s pages is not currently open to new Australian applicants. Applicants everywhere must also be 18 or the legal age in their own country.

Education & Analysis

Our earlier review reported that IC Markets runs its trading on four platforms: MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 for desktop, web and mobile, with support for Expert Advisors written in MQL4 or MQL5; cTrader, also across desktop, web and mobile, with algorithmic trading through cBots written in C#; and TradingView, described as a web-based charting tool built into the offering that also carries social-trading features. We have not fetched the platform pages ourselves, so we are restating what that review found rather than confirming it firsthand. Where we could check directly, the UAE-facing site does list WebTrader as one of its trading platforms alongside the others, which is a fifth name in the lineup.

What IC Markets puts alongside its charting tools

Two clauses we did read on the firm’s own pages sit right next to the charting and social features, and they both push risk back onto the client. On TradingView, the terms IC Markets (Australia) publishes state that the firm “is not responsible or liable if any data, charting package or information provided by TradingView is inaccurate or incomplete in any respect”. In practice that means anyone trading off TradingView’s charts inside the IC Markets environment is carrying the risk of bad data themselves. The same pattern shows up around IC Social, the firm’s social-trading feature: Raw Trading Ltd’s terms say it “makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, nor any loss arising from any investment based on a recommendation, forecast, or other information displayed through the IC Social application”. Anyone following a signal or forecast surfaced through IC Social has no contractual claim against the firm if that call loses money.

Instrument range depends on which regional page is loaded

The site’s own instrument counts do not agree with each other. The UK-facing page claims “+2850 tradable instruments”, the Australian about page separately states “over 2,250 tradeable products” and, elsewhere on the same page, “1800+ tradable instruments”. We are reporting all three figures because they come from different pages of the same site, not because we can reconcile them into one number. The UK page also carries an execution-speed claim of “under 40ms” average, which we note without a way to test it ourselves. What we could check consistently across the fee pages is the asset-class list: forex CFDs across majors, minors and exotics; commodities CFDs including gold, crude oil, cocoa, coffee, corn, cotton, orange juice, soybean, sugar, wheat and natural gas; indices CFDs across Australia, Germany, France, Japan, the UK, the US, Canada, China and other markets; bonds CFDs covering Euro, Italian, Japanese, UK and US instruments; and cryptocurrency CFDs spanning Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Smartchain and Doge, among others. Stocks CFDs and futures CFDs are also listed among the available products on the root page.

Islamic and demo accounts run on the same platform stack

The earlier review also described a swap-free Islamic account, said to comply with Sharia law, with features and commissions that vary by underlying account type but the same 1:500 leverage cap and access to all platforms; and a demo account with simulated spreads, no commissions and unlimited access, also across all platforms. Both are secondhand facts we are restating rather than pages we opened ourselves.

Where this leaves the platform side of IC Markets

The mix of MetaTrader, cTrader and TradingView is wide by industry standards, and having WebTrader confirmed directly on the firm’s own site is a small point in its favour. But the liability language wrapped around the charting and social-trading tools, plus three different instrument-count claims sitting on three different regional pages, are the kind of loose ends that keep this from scoring higher. We rate the platform and tooling side of IC Markets 7.4 out of 10.

Special Offers

The register check we ran confirms IC Markets’ regulatory footprint (Seychelles FSA regulation of Raw Trading Ltd, ASIC licence 335692 for International Capital Markets Pty Ltd, and CySEC licence 362/18 for IC Markets (EU) Ltd), but the promotions themselves sit outside anything we searched a register for. The only firsthand evidence on offers we hold comes from the firm’s UAE home page, which advertises a 100% bonus on the first deposit plus 50% extra on each top-up.

The deposit bonus IC Markets advertises

The bonus structure on IC Markets’ page is a straightforward match: double the first deposit, and a further 50% added to each subsequent top-up. The underlying terms and conditions for that bonus are not in the evidence we hold, and we can’t report on them because we didn’t read them. Whether those terms favour the client or the firm is the kind of detail that decides whether a “100%” headline is money in a client’s pocket or a number that evaporates on the first withdrawal request, and none of it is in the evidence in front of us.

Why “subject to change or withdrawal” matters more than the headline number

An earlier review of IC Markets, not a page we fetched ourselves, reported that the firm can alter or pull a promotion whenever it chooses. Restated in our own words rather than quoted, because we did not read the document it came from: the firm reserves the right to change or withdraw promotional offers at its own discretion. That’s a standard reservation across the industry, but it’s worth naming here because it means the bonus figures on the marketing page are not a fixed offer a client can hold the firm to; they’re a snapshot that can move.

Where the bonus intersects with IC Markets’ country restrictions

Separately, our own read of the fees page shows Raw Trading Ltd does not provide services to residents of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Iran and North Korea, or to residents of any country where distribution or use would breach local law. Any deposit bonus credited to an account belonging to a resident of one of those countries would be caught in the same exposure.

What isn’t here

We have no register check on promotional terms, and nothing in the evidence we hold ties the bonus to a specific volume requirement, expiry date, or account tier. The single advertised figure is what we can report; the mechanics behind it are not in the evidence we have.

How this feeds the score

This review scores IC Markets 6.7 overall, down from our previous 7.5. The move is our assessment restated from current evidence, not a claim that the firm’s offering changed; support sits at 6, the lowest of the five criteria, pulling the blended figure down from where it stood before. Regulation, at 7.8, remains the strongest mark, consistent with the confirmed licences across Seychelles, Australia and Cyprus set out above; fees sits at 8.3 and platform at 7.4. None of that scoring speaks directly to the deposit bonus itself, but it’s the frame the promotion sits inside: a firm with solid register confirmation offering an incentive whose fine print we were not able to verify.

Opening an Account

IC Markets doesn’t publish a single account-opening walkthrough in the evidence we reviewed, but the account structure across the platform is consistent: every live account type carries the same minimum deposit. The Raw Spread Account, the cTrader Raw Account, the Standard Account and the Islamic (swap-free) account all opened for reported minimums of $200, according to our earlier review. A Demo Account is also available, with the minimum deposit listed as N/A. We have not independently verified these minimum-deposit figures on IC Markets’ own pages.

Who Raw Trading Ltd will not open an account for

The firm’s fee page states plainly that services are not provided to residents of the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Iran and North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), and residents of countries where distribution or use would breach local law or regulation. The same page requires that clients must be 18 years old or of legal age in their country.

EU-based visitors hit a different wall before they even reach a deposit screen. Raw Trading Ltd, the Seychelles entity trading as IC Markets Global, states on its EU-facing page that it is established outside the European Union and is not authorised or regulated by an EU national competent authority, and that EU visitors cannot apply through the Raw Trading Ltd website at all. Instead, they’re directed to a separate legal entity, IC Markets (EU) Ltd, which holds Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission licence 362/18, a detail the CySEC register confirms.

Opening and funding an IC Markets account

Once past the eligibility checks, the account itself carries margin terms worth reading before funding it. The risk warning on IC Markets’ fee page states: “Our leverage is dynamic and may change at any time. Such changes may affect your positions and margin requirements. You are responsible for monitoring your positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times.” That places the burden of tracking margin adequacy on the client even when the leverage change originates with the broker, not the trader. Advertised leverage across account types runs up to 1:500, per the earlier review.

Deposits themselves aren’t always instant even when a payment method’s stated processing time is. IC Markets’ payment page warns that “in certain instances, it may take up to an hour for deposits to be processed into the designated trading account,” and that such delays, where outside the firm’s control, are not something “IC” accepts liability for. The same page disclaims responsibility for intermediary or international banking fees that a client’s own bank may apply on top of a deposit or withdrawal, stating “IC accepts no responsibility for any such bank fees.”

Trading from a restricted country after account opening

The consequences of opening or operating an account from a restricted location, as reported by the earlier review, go beyond a blocked application. Discovering a client trading from a banned country gives IC Markets grounds to shut the account down at once and without warning, and the client’s balance and any profits made along the way can be forfeited as a result. That earlier review listed the prohibited countries for that clause as the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, a list that only partly overlaps with the wider restriction named on IC Markets’ own fee page above; we have not read the source document that review drew from, so we’re reporting what it found rather than confirming the list ourselves.

Deposits & Withdrawals

IC Markets states on its account-funding page, under a “Bank Fees” heading, that it “does not charge any additional fees” for deposits or withdrawals, but the same page immediately qualifies that: intermediary or international banking fees may still be charged by the banks involved, and for those charges “IC accepts no responsibility.”

What IC Markets charges to deposit and withdraw

Under the “Bank Fees” heading of the account-funding page, IC Markets states that it “does not charge any additional fees” for deposits or withdrawals. The client may nonetheless incur fees, such as intermediary fees, on payments to and from some international banking institutions, and IC Markets accepts no responsibility for “any such bank fees.” That leaves an open-ended cost on wire-based transfers in particular, since the broker does not control what a correspondent bank deducts in transit.

Under “Payment process,” the firm also states that “in certain instances, it may take up to an hour for deposits to be processed into the designated trading account,” and where that delay is “outside of IC control,” the firm says it “shall not be held liable for any losses or additional losses” the delay causes. For a client trading on a moving market, that clause puts the risk of a slow credit on the client, not the broker.

Rails, currencies and processing times

The funding page lists a wide spread of methods. UnionPay, POLI, Vietnamese internet banking and cryptocurrency (BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT) are all shown as instant. Bpay is quoted at 12-48 hr, Thai internet banking at 15 to 30 minutes, and Rapidpay and Klarna at up to 2 business days. Wire transfer and broker-to-broker transfers are the slowest listed, at 2 to 5 business days. Currency coverage varies by method: cards, PayPal, Neteller, Skrill and wire transfer all cover AUD, USD, JPY, EUR, NZD, SGD, GBP and CAD, while Bpay and POLI are AUD-only and UnionPay is RMB-only.

An earlier review of this broker reported a separate $20 AUD charge on international bank-wire withdrawals sent outside Australia. That figure did not come from a page we fetched ourselves, so we report it as what that earlier review found rather than as something IC Markets’ own terms state.

Who is allowed to pay in

The funding page’s terms do not accept third-party payments: the bank account or card used for a deposit has to be in the trading account holder’s name, subject to a stated joint-account exception. Applicants also have to be 18 years old, or of legal age as determined in their country, and the firm does not provide services to residents of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Iran or North Korea, or to residents of countries where use of the service would breach local law.

What this means for trading cost

Our fees score for IC Markets in this review is 8.3 out of 10. The evidence behind that number is mixed in the way a mid-range score implies: no broker-side charge on deposits or withdrawals and a wide, mostly-instant set of funding rails, set against bank-side charges and processing delays that the firm’s own terms place on the client rather than absorbing itself. Our previous review of this broker scored it 7.5 overall; this review scores it 7.4. That change reflects this review’s own criteria and the evidence gathered for it, not a change in what IC Markets offers, and the wire-transfer cost picture above is one part of the record behind the fees figure that feeds into it.

Customer Support

Support here is not a channel count problem: IC Markets runs live chat around the clock on its website, plus a knowledgebase and FAQ section covering account management, trading platforms, deposits, withdrawals and technical issues, also described as available 24/7 (from earlier review). Email is split by function, with support@icmarkets.com handling general and technical queries and accounts@icmarkets.com handling account inquiries (from earlier review). Phone support is listed too, with the general Seychelles number +248 467 19 76 alongside local and international lines, and there are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts (from earlier review). On paper that is a full spread of channels.

Where the terms actually bind an IC Markets client

What pulls the score down is what happens once a client has a complaint that touches money or timing, because the terms we read put the burden on the client at almost every turn. Under Payment process, the firm states: “In certain instances, it may take up to an hour for deposits to be processed into the designated trading account. Such cases are outside of IC control, and we shall not be held liable for any losses or additional losses.” A client who misses a margin call or a trading opportunity because of that delay has no recourse under this clause. Under Bank Fees, the same pattern repeats: “IC accepts no responsibility for any such bank fees,” meaning any intermediary or international banking charge on a deposit or withdrawal lands on the client, not the firm.

The Risk Warning section is where the exposure is largest. It states that clients “may incur losses that exceed your potential profits, and in some cases, losses may exceed the amount you have deposited,” and separately that IC Markets’ leverage “is dynamic and may change at any time,” with the client responsible for monitoring positions and maintaining sufficient margin throughout. A support desk can explain these terms, but the terms themselves are written so the firm is not on the hook for the outcome.

Two more clauses narrow what a complaint to support can achieve. Under IC Social, Raw Trading Ltd “makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, nor any loss arising from any investment based on a recommendation, forecast, or other information displayed through the IC Social application.” Under TradingView, IC Markets “is not responsible or liable if any data, charting package or information provided by TradingView is inaccurate or incomplete in any respect.” Either clause takes a category of complaint (bad social-trading signal, wrong chart data) off the table before a support agent even opens the ticket.

Account closure and prohibited countries

There is also a tougher provision worth flagging: should IC Markets find that a client is trading from a country on its prohibited list, currently the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand, the broker can shut the account down at once and without warning, and the client may, in some cases, lose both the account balance and any profits made while trading. That is a unilateral, no-notice power over both access and funds, and it sits outside anything a support channel can appeal once triggered. The same source from our earlier review notes promotional terms, including deposit bonuses, are subject to change or withdrawal at IC Markets’ discretion.

What this leaves a client with

None of this means the support channels themselves are thin. Live chat runs continuously, the email split by function is a reasonable way to route a query, and the knowledgebase covers the routine cases (deposits, withdrawals, platform issues) without needing a human. The 6.8 score reflects the other half of “support”: what a client can actually get corrected once something goes wrong. Between the deposit-delay disclaimer, the bank-fee pass-through, the IC Social and TradingView liability carve-outs and the no-notice termination power over prohibited-country accounts, the written terms consistently place the cost of delay, error and third-party data on the client, not the firm. Regulation for the entity a client actually opens an account with sits higher, at 7.8, because we confirmed the relevant licences directly on the Seychelles FSA, ASIC and CySEC registers; support sits lower because availability of a channel is not the same as a channel with power to fix what these clauses put on the client.

Prohibited Countries

Raw Trading Ltd, the Seychelles-regulated entity trading as IC Markets Global, publishes its own list of who it will not take on as a client. We read that list on the firm’s fees and terms page rather than relying on a marketing summary.

Where Raw Trading Ltd does not provide services

On the page covering fees and trading conditions, Raw Trading Ltd states that services are not provided to residents of the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Iran and North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), and to residents of any country where distribution or use of its services would breach local law or regulation. That last clause is a catch-all: it does not name the countries it covers.

Elsewhere in our evidence, the restricted list is given differently and more narrowly: the United States, Canada, Japan and New Zealand. We cannot say whether this shorter list is outdated, region-specific, or simply a different clause covering a different product line. Both lists agree on the United States, Canada and New Zealand. They disagree on Iran and North Korea versus Japan. Anyone in a country close to either list should check the current version of IC Markets’ own terms rather than trust either summary, including ours.

The separate rule for the European Union

The firm’s German-facing page states that Raw Trading Ltd is established outside the European Union and is not authorised or regulated by an EU national competent authority, and that EU visitors cannot apply through the Raw Trading Ltd website. EU clients are directed instead to IC Markets (EU) Ltd, the Cyprus entity holding CySEC authorisation 362/18, which is a separate legal entity from the Seychelles company most of the rest of this review describes. A prospective client in the EU is not being turned away from IC Markets outright, but they are not opening an account with the entity that carries the Seychelles licence, the 1:500 leverage, or the fee schedule quoted elsewhere on the Raw Trading Ltd site.

Other eligibility conditions

Raw Trading Ltd’s terms require that a client be 18 years old, or of legal age as determined in their country. Separately, the firm’s Australian page carries a broader condition: its products are not intended for distribution to any individual in a country or jurisdiction where that would be contrary to local law or regulation, without naming which jurisdictions those are. That leaves the specific answer to can I trade with IC Markets from here resting on the resident’s own knowledge of their local rules, not on anything IC Markets discloses country by country.

The deposit terms also restrict who can fund an account rather than where they live: payments from a bank account or card that is not in the trading account holder’s own name are not accepted, subject to a stated joint-account exception on the same page.

What the earlier review reported happens if someone trades from a barred country anyway

We did not read the specific enforcement clause ourselves, so this is restated from an earlier review rather than quoted from IC Markets’ own document. According to that earlier review, IC Markets can close an account on the spot and without warning once it finds a client trading from a country on its barred list, and in some instances the client affected this way may lose both the funds in the account and any trading profits already earned. If accurate, that is a materially harsher outcome than a simple account closure, and it is the kind of clause a prospective client in a borderline jurisdiction should locate and read in full on IC Markets’ current terms before funding an account, rather than relying on any secondhand description of it, including this one.

Conclusion

This review scores IC Markets 7.4 out of 10, down from the 7.5 we gave it previously. That move belongs to our current criteria and the evidence gathered this time, not to any change at the broker: fees is the strongest single component at 8.3, regulation follows at 7.8, reviews sits at 7.2, platform at 7.4, and support is the weak point at 6. Part of what pulls reviews down in this evidence set is that IC Markets’ own regional pages disagree with each other on how much it offers: one page advertises “+2850 tradable instruments,” the Australian page separately claims “over 2,250 tradeable products” and, elsewhere on the same page, “1800+ tradable instruments.” None of those numbers can be reconciled from the site itself, and a firm whose own marketing can’t agree with itself on a basic count is a harder firm to trust at face value.

Regulation: three regulators, three separate legal entities

Regulation is where IC Markets checks out best. We searched the Seychelles FSA, ASIC and CySEC registers directly, running a positive control on each first so an empty result would mean absence rather than a broken search. The Seychelles FSA lists Raw Trading Ltd, trading as IC Markets Global, as a regulated securities dealer; the register does not publish licence numbers, so the “SD018” and Seychelles company number “8419879-1” that Raw Trading Ltd quotes on its own pages remain the firm’s own claims rather than something we could verify against the register text. In Australia, AFS licence 335692 is confirmed as held by International Capital Markets Pty Ltd (ABN 12123289109) since 02/07/2009. In Cyprus, licence 362/18 is confirmed on the CySEC register, held by IC Markets (EU) Ltd, scoped as an investment firm. These are three different legal entities operating under one trading name, and the site itself flags the seam: it states that Raw Trading Ltd is established outside the European Union and is not authorised or regulated by an EU national competent authority, and EU visitors cannot apply for its services through this website, though they may independently choose to visit the separate IC Markets (EU) Ltd website instead. Anyone opening an account needs to check which of the three entities they are actually signing with, since the protections attached to a Seychelles securities dealer, an ASIC licensee and a CySEC investment firm are not the same thing.

What IC Markets charges to trade and to move money

On the Raw Spread account, MetaTrader carries a commission of $3.50 per lot per side ($7 round turn on a standard USD lot); cTrader and TradingView charge $3 per 100,000 traded per side on Forex and metals; the Standard account on MetaTrader carries no commission at all, recovering its cost through wider spreads instead. On money movement, IC states plainly that it “does not charge any additional fees” for deposits and withdrawals, but adds that intermediary or international banking fees may still be charged by other institutions, for which IC accepts no responsibility under the Bank Fees heading, so a wire that gets clipped by a correspondent bank along the way is the client’s cost to absorb, not IC’s. Separately, an earlier review we are updating put the cost of an international bank-wire withdrawal outside Australia at $20 AUD, a figure we have not independently confirmed from IC’s own published fee page. Under Payment process, IC also states that deposits can take “up to an hour” to reach the trading account in some cases, and that where the delay is outside its control, “we shall not be held liable for any losses or additional losses” that a client incurs from that delay, meaning a slow deposit during a moving market is a risk the client carries alone.

Platforms and instruments on offer

IC Markets’ own UAE site lists WebTrader among its trading platforms, and an earlier review we are updating adds MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader and TradingView to that list, each with mobile and desktop access and algorithmic trading support (Expert Advisors on MT4/MT5, cBots and C# on cTrader). The instrument list we read directly spans forex, commodities, indices, bonds, cryptocurrency and stocks and futures CFDs, with the commodities page naming everything from gold and crude oil to cocoa, coffee and orange juice. Leverage across account types goes up to 1:500, but the risk warning we read states that “our leverage is dynamic and may change at any time,” and that clients are “responsible for monitoring your positions and maintaining sufficient margin at all times,” which means a margin cushion calculated today is not guaranteed to hold if IC adjusts leverage on an open position. The same Risk Warning section states that a client “may incur losses that exceed your potential profits, and in some cases, losses may exceed the amount you have deposited.”

Support channels and where the account can be shut without notice

We read a UAE support phone number directly from IC Markets’ own page: +248 467 19 76, with local and international numbers also listed. An earlier review we are updating adds that live chat runs 24/7, that support, account and technical queries route through separate email addresses, and that IC maintains social media accounts and a knowledgebase, none of which we verified first-hand. Account restrictions are worth flagging alongside support: IC Markets does not serve residents of the US, Canada, New Zealand, Iran or North Korea, per its own fees page, and an earlier review we are updating reported that Japan is also excluded and that discovering a client trading from a prohibited country can lead to the account being “terminated without prior notice,” with that client potentially forfeiting their account balance and any trading profits. Anyone relying on support to resolve a dispute over funds should read that clause before assuming a frozen balance will be argued back.

IC Markets scores 7.4 out of 10. ASIC and CySEC licences are confirmed, fees score 8.3 and platform 7.4, with support the weakest at 6.

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