Skilling review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of Skilling, scored 7.2 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews. Skilling trades under the entity Skilling Limited, based in Nicosia, Cyprus, with a “Skilling Group” the firm’s own about page describes as a multinational team behind the brand rather than a separate regulated entity.

Overview Table

Facts List

• Skilling Limited holds CySEC licence 357/18, which we confirmed as an active CIF entry on the CySEC register with no revocation or warning language attached.
• The FCA register shows reference 810951, held by Skilling Limited, as “No longer authorised”, not as an active Temporary Permissions Regime entry.
• Our search of the Seychelles FSA register, covering 648 entries, found no entity or trade name matching Skilling, so the SD042 licence reported by the earlier review is not one we could confirm.
• We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Skilling appears on none of them.
• Skilling’s own fees page sets FX and Spot Metal commission on the Premium account at $35 per million USD traded, charged on opening and closing a position.
• The same fees page prices crypto CFD taker fees from 0.1% of the position value for all clients, and a 0.9% administrative fee on open trades every 30 days for the Zero Leverage crypto account.
• Skilling’s fee page states that swap fees “could change on a daily basis without prior notice, depending on market conditions.”
• Skilling’s account types page lists a Standard account with no commission and spreads from 0.8, alongside a Premium account with spreads from 0.1 and the $35-per-million commission.
• Cryptocurrency CFDs appear in Skilling’s UAE, Australian and Indonesian account tables but are absent from its UK account comparison table and market navigation.
• This review scores Skilling 7.2 out of 10, up from an earlier score of 5.6, driven by strong marks on fees (8.3) and platform (8.4) against weaker ones on regulation (6.7), support (6.3) and reviews (6.4).

Which regulator actually covers a client at Skilling

On its own UK-facing pages Skilling describes itself as “Authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and with deemed variation of permission,” and warn that “the nature and extent of consumer protections may differ from those for firms based in the UK,” but the FCA register, which we checked directly, gives that reference, 810951, the status “No longer authorised,” not an active permission. The register that does back Skilling up is CySEC’s: licence 357/18 shows as an active CIF entry for Skilling Limited, with the licence number, date and company registration number matching, and no suspension or warning attached. The Seychelles FSA licence, SD042, is a detail the earlier review reported rather than one we read on Skilling’s own pages, and our direct search of the FSA Seychelles register, which we tested first against a firm known to be listed so an empty result means absence rather than a broken search, turned up no matching entity across 648 entries.

Skilling’s Restricted Countries clause states that its services and products… are not directed to, intended for distribution to, or intended for use by residents of certain jurisdictions such as Belgium, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, North Korea, or any other jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or access is prohibited. That sits oddly next to the fact that the same domain runs dedicated GB and Australian account, fee and legal pages, including the FCA Temporary Permissions wording quoted above. A UK or Australian visitor can move through onboarding pages built specifically for them while Skilling’s own legal terms say those services aren’t meant for their jurisdiction.

What Skilling charges to trade

Skilling’s Standard account, minimum deposit €100, carries no commission and spreads from 0.8, while the Premium account, minimum deposit €5,000 by the account page’s own figure, drops spreads to “from 0.1” in exchange for the $35-per-million commission described above. Both sit on 1:30 leverage. Beyond the headline spread, Skilling’s fees page lists a currency conversion fee for any instrument priced outside the account’s base currency, stating it “will be reflected into your realized Profit and Loss” rather than itemised separately, plus swap markups of 3.5% (Standard) or 2.5% (Premium) on top of the 1-month Libor rate for index CFDs, and 4% (Standard) or 3.5% (Premium) for share CFDs. Swaps themselves are charged daily at 22:00 GMT and three times over on Wednesdays to cover the weekend.

Skilling’s negative balance protection has limits

According to the earlier review, Skilling’s negative balance protection policy has several exceptions: it will not cover losses caused by technical faults, platform outages, or other events with no connection to trading activity, and Skilling may, at its sole discretion, strip the protection from anyone it judges to have misused the scheme or acted fraudulently. Under that same policy, once an account balance drops below the required margin level, Skilling may close out some or all of the trader’s open positions.

Why this score moved from 5.6 to 7.2

Our earlier review of Skilling scored 5.6 out of 10; this review, working from current evidence and this catalogue’s present criteria, scores it 7.2. The individual marks behind that figure are fees at 8.3 and platform at 8.4, both well supported by the fee and platform detail above, set against regulation at 6.7, which reflects the mixed picture of a confirmed CySEC licence next to a lapsed FCA authorisation, and support at 6.3 and reviews at 6.4. The change in the overall number reflects our assessment and criteria, not any claim that Skilling itself has changed.

Key Takeaways

The headline: 7.2/10, up from 5.6

Our previous review of Skilling scored 5.6/10. This review scores 7.2/10. That is our assessment changing against a different scoring model and fresh evidence pulled directly from Skilling’s own pages and three public registers, not a claim that Skilling itself got better or worse. The clearest driver is fees (8.3) and platform (8.4), both built on granular detail we found on Skilling’s own fee and platform pages. Regulation sits at 6.7 and support at 6.3, both pulled down by specific findings below rather than a general impression.

What the registers actually show

• The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register confirms an active CIF licence, number 357/18, for Skilling Ltd, with no revocation, suspension or warning language attached to the entry.
• The Financial Conduct Authority register contradicts the claim we were given: FRN 810951 is held by Skilling Limited, but its FCA status is “No longer authorised”, effective 31/05/2023, not the authorised or Temporary Permissions status referenced in the material we were reviewing from.
• The Seychelles Financial Services Authority register shows no entity or trade name matching “Skilling” among its 648 entries. We ran a positive control against each of the three registers first, searching for a firm known to be listed, so this absence reflects the register, not a broken search.
• We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Skilling appears on none of them. That is a clean result, and it only covers the lists we mirror.
• Skilling’s own Restricted Countries clause states services are “not directed to, intended for distribution to, or intended for use by residents of certain jurisdictions such as Belgium, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, North Korea, or any other jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or access is prohibited.” The same domain simultaneously runs full GB- and AU-localised marketing, account, fee and legal pages, including FCA Temporary Permissions detail aimed at UK visitors. Which set of pages governs a UK or Australian client’s actual relationship with the firm is not resolved by anything we read.

What Skilling charges

• The Standard and MT4 accounts carry zero commission and spreads from 0.8, per Skilling’s account-types page. The Premium and MT4 Premium tiers drop spreads to “from 0.1” but add a per-trade commission: $35 per million USD traded on Premium, $40 per million on MT4 Premium, charged on both opening and closing a position, and require a minimum deposit five thousand euros higher than Standard.
• Skilling’s fee page sets crypto CFD taker fees starting from 0.1% of position value for all clients, and on the Zero Leverage crypto account adds an administrative fee of 0.9% on open trades, charged every 30-day interval the position stays open.
• A Currency Conversion Fee applies to any instrument priced in a currency different from the account’s base currency. Skilling’s own wording: it “will be reflected into your realized Profit and Loss” rather than itemised separately, and the fee page does not quantify the rate.
• Swap charges are variable and, per Skilling’s fee page, “subject to change at any given time and could change on a daily basis without prior notice, depending on market conditions,” applied daily at 22:00 GMT and tripled on Wednesdays to cover the weekend. Index CFD swap markup runs 3.5% on the buy side and 3% on the sell for Standard accounts (2.5% for Premium), and Shares CFD swap markup runs 4% buy / 3% sell for Standard (3.5%/2.5% for Premium), both layered on top of the 1-month Libor rate.

Platform range versus what’s actually offered

• Skilling’s own platform pages list five options: the proprietary Skilling Trader, MT4, MT5, Skilling cTrader, and a TradingView charting integration. That breadth is what pushes the platform score to 8.4.
• MT5 appears in the site navigation on every page we fetched, but the GB account-types comparison table only lists Standard, Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium as actual account tiers. A client choosing Skilling specifically for MT5 would not find an MT5-specific account on that comparison table.
• Cryptocurrency CFDs, with their own leverage, spreads and per-tier counts, appear in the AE, AU and ID market navigation and account tables but are absent from the GB market navigation and GB account comparison table, with no explanation on the GB pages themselves.

Reaching Skilling and what happens if things go wrong

• Skilling’s contact page lists phone support and live chat, both Monday to Friday, 07:00 to 22:00 CET, plus an email address. No 24/7 channel appears among the pages we fetched, which is reflected in the 6.3 support score.
• The negative balance guarantee is conditional, not absolute: the decision to withdraw it rests entirely with Skilling, which can act on its own judgement the moment it concludes a trader has abused the policy or engaged in fraud. That protection stops short of losses caused by technical issues, platform malfunctions or other events unrelated to trading, and it excludes professional and elective professional clients entirely.
• Skilling’s fee page also gives itself the right to shut down a client’s open positions the moment margin drops below the required level, closing out the trade to limit further losses on the account, without needing the client’s consent at that moment.

Licenses & Regulation

Skilling’s regulatory footer names Skilling Limited as the entity behind the brand, licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission under number 357/18. We checked that claim directly against the CySEC register of investment firms, running a positive control first against a firm known to be listed so an empty result would mean something. The CySEC register shows an active CIF licence entry for Skilling Limited matching the claimed number and entity name, with no revocation, suspension or warning language attached to it. That part of the claim holds up on the regulator’s own record.

Skilling’s FCA claim does not match the register

The site’s regulatory footer states Skilling is “Authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority” under a deemed variation of permission, going on to warn that “the nature and extent of consumer protections may differ from those for firms based in the UK.” We checked FRN 810951 against the FCA register directly. It is held by Skilling Limited, but the FCA’s own record gives its status as “No longer authorised”, effective 31 May 2023, not authorised or in the Temporary Permissions Regime the firm’s page describes. A UK visitor reading that footer would reasonably believe an FCA permission is currently in force; the register does not show one.

That contradiction sits alongside a separate one in Skilling’s own legal pages: the Restricted Countries clause states that “services and products offered by Skilling are not directed to, intended for distribution to, or intended for use by residents of certain jurisdictions such as Belgium, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, North Korea, or any other jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or access is prohibited,” while the same domain runs full GB- and AU-localised marketing, account, fee and legal pages, including the FCA footer language aimed specifically at UK readers. Which of the two applies to a UK or Australian applicant is not something the site resolves.

Seychelles and the Cyprus company number

An earlier review of Skilling reported a Seychelles FSA licence, SD042. We searched the Seychelles FSA register directly, again after a positive control confirmed the search method works, and found no entity or trade name matching Skilling among its 648 listed entries across capital markets, collective investment schemes, fiduciary services, the regulatory sandbox and insurance categories. We are not able to confirm that licence from the register we checked.

Skilling Limited’s own pages also give a Cyprus company registration number, HE373524. That is a registry number rather than a financial-services authorisation, and it names no regulator or authority for us to check it against, so it is a gap in what the claim itself states rather than a finding about the firm.

Warning lists and who actually sits behind the brand

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Skilling appears on none of them. That is a real, if narrow, result: it covers only the three regulators we mirror, not a global sweep, but a clean result across those three is worth more than our earlier review had to work with.

The entities behind the brand are also worth separating out. Skilling Limited is named as both the site operator and the CySEC-licensed entity; Skilling Ltd is the name attached to legal documents like the Client Agreement and Investor Compensation Policy; and Skilling’s own About page describes “Skilling Group” as the multinational team of more than 70 staff behind the brand, distinct from any single regulated entity. The site does not map out which of these names, and which regulator, actually stands behind a given client’s account depending on where they signed up.

The earlier review also reported on Skilling’s negative balance protection policy: cover applies only to losses arising from trading itself, not to losses caused by technical faults, platform outages, or other non-trading incidents, and Skilling can withdraw that cover if it decides a client has misused it. Neither of those is a register finding, but both shape how much a client can actually rely on the protection Skilling advertises.

Our previous review of Skilling scored regulation lower; this review puts it at 6.7 out of 10, while our previous review scored the firm 5.6 overall. That move reflects our current assessment against evidence we checked directly this time, not any change at the firm: a confirmed, unblemished CySEC licence and a clean result across 1,441 warning-list entries sit against a specifically checked FCA claim that the register contradicts and a Seychelles licence we could not find on that regulator’s own list.

How to Trade

Skilling runs its account tiers around leverage, spreads and commission rather than a single flat pricing model, and the terms that bind an open position sit in the fee page and the negative balance protection policy we read.

Instruments and market access

The GB market navigation and account comparison table cover forex, shares, indices, commodities and soft commodities. The Standard and Premium account table lists more than 760 equities, 18 indices and 18 commodities, while the MT4 and MT4 Premium tiers cover fewer instruments across the same categories, 14 indices and 5 commodities. Forex CFD trading spans over 74 pairs by the site’s own count, though the account tables themselves list 73 currency pairs for Standard and Premium and 53 for MT4 and MT4 Premium. Cryptocurrency CFDs, including leveraged crypto at 1:2 and BTC spreads quoted from 0.5, appear in the AE, AU and ID market navigation and account tables but are absent from the GB market navigation and GB account comparison table entirely, a gap the GB pages themselves do not explain. ETFs are referenced as tradable through the TradingView integration and turn up separately as “CFD on ETF” in Skilling’s Key Information Documents.

Account tiers and what each one costs to trade

Skilling’s GB accounts page sets out four tiers. Standard and MT4 both require a 100 euro minimum deposit, charge no separate commission, and quote spreads from 0.8, at 1:30 leverage with a 50% stop out level. Premium and MT4 Premium require a *5,000 euro minimum, quote spreads from 0.1, and add a commission on top, $35 per million traded for Premium and $40 per million for MT4 Premium, also at 1:30 leverage. A separate Zero Leverage account, described on the AE fee page, offers unleveraged 1:1 swap-free crypto CFD trading in 30-day intervals, with BTC spreads from $0.50 and a taker fee starting from 0.05% per side. Professional and corporate accounts are available on request through customer service; a corporate account is opened in a legal entity’s name and still categorised as Standard, Premium or MT4 underneath.

Financing and conversion charges that apply once a position is open

Skilling’s own fee page for FX and Spot Metal commission sets the Premium account charge at $35 per million USD traded, converted to the account currency where the base currency is not USD, and applied on both opening and closing a position. Crypto CFD trading carries a taker fee starting from 0.1% of the position value for all clients. A currency conversion fee applies to any instrument denominated in a currency other than the account’s own; the fee page states plainly that “the Currency Conversion Fee will be reflected into your realized Profit and Loss,” so it does not show up as a separate line item, it simply reduces what the client sees as their result. The Zero Leverage crypto account carries its own administrative fee of 0.9% on open trades, charged at every 30-day interval the position stays open.

Swap charges and forced liquidation

Swap or rollover charges apply daily at 22:00 GMT on open positions and are charged three times over on Wednesday to account for the weekend. Index CFDs carry a swap markup of 3.5% on the buy side and 3% on the sell side for Standard accounts, reduced to 2.5% for Premium, applied on top of the 1 month Libor rate of the quoted currency. Shares CFDs carry a markup of 4% buy and 3% sell for Standard, or 3.5% buy and 2.5% sell for Premium, again layered on the 1 month Libor rate of the relevant share currency. The fee page itself warns that “swap fees are subject to change at any given time and could change on a daily basis without prior notice, depending on market conditions,” meaning the carrying cost of a position left open is not fixed even from one day to the next.

Skilling’s negative balance protection policy addresses what happens when a client’s account comes up short: once the balance drops below the margin level required to keep positions open, the broker can close out part or all of those positions to stop the trader’s losses from growing further. That cover has limits built in. The cover is limited to trading losses; losses stemming from technical faults or platform outages fall outside it, and Skilling reserves the right to withdraw the protection at its own discretion from any client it finds has abused the policy or committed fraud. That protection also does not apply to professional or elective professional clients.

Platforms Skilling actually puts a position through

Trades route through Skilling’s own web based Skilling Trader platform, MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, Skilling cTrader, or a TradingView integration that gives access to CFDs on FX, commodities, indices, stocks, ETFs and cryptos with a complimentary subscription for clients who open and trade. MT5 is listed sitewide in the navigation, but the GB account comparison table itself offers only Standard, Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium, with no MT5 specific account among them, so a client drawn to Skilling for MT5 access should check which account tier actually provides it before opening one.

Our previous review scored Skilling 5.6 out of 10; this review puts it at 7.2. Platform scores 8.4 and fees score 8.3 here, and the account and fee detail above, spreads from 0.1 on Premium, a named commission structure, five distinct trading platforms including MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView, is the kind of concrete pricing and execution detail that supports scores in that range. The move is our assessment on this pass, built from the evidence above, not a claim that Skilling’s trading terms have changed.

Account Types

Skilling’s account types page lists four retail tiers built around two platform tracks: Standard and Premium for its own Skilling Trader/Skilling cTrader/TradingView stack, and MT4 and MT4 Premium for clients who want to trade on MetaTrader 4. A separate Zero Leverage account for crypto CFDs and an on-request Professional or Corporate account sit outside that main table.

Standard and Premium: what Skilling’s account page actually charges

The Standard account opens with a minimum deposit of €100, according to Skilling’s account types page. It carries no commission, spreads listed from 0.8, leverage capped at 1:30, micro lot trading, negative balance protection and a stop out level of 50%, and it trades on Skilling Trader, Skilling cTrader or TradingView. Premium raises the deposit bar to a figure the page marks with an asterisk as €5,000, and swaps the pricing model: spreads from 0.1 plus a $35-per-million commission, with the same 1:30 leverage cap and 50% stop out level. Skilling’s fee page specifies that the $35-per-million charge applies to FX and Spot Metal trades on the Premium account, is converted into the account currency where the base currency isn’t USD, and is charged on both opening and closing a position.

The two tiers aren’t priced the same once a position is held overnight, either. On index CFDs, Skilling’s fee page states a swap markup of 3.5% on the Buy side and 3% on the Sell side for Standard, dropping to 2.5% for Premium, applied on top of the one-month Libor rate of the quoted currency. Shares CFDs carry a 4%/3% Buy/Sell markup on Standard against 3.5%/2.5% on Premium, applied the same way against the share’s currency. The fee page also warns that swap fees are “subject to change at any given time and could change on a daily basis without prior notice, depending on market conditions,” and that swaps are charged daily at 22:00 GMT and triple on Wednesdays to cover the weekend.

MT4 and MT4 Premium

The MT4 account mirrors Standard’s terms on Skilling’s own platform: €100 minimum deposit, spreads from 0.8, no commission, 1:30 leverage and a 50% stop out level, but trades only through MetaTrader 4. MT4 Premium mirrors Premium’s structure, with the same €5,000-marked minimum deposit and spreads from 0.1, but its commission is quoted separately at $40 per million rather than Premium’s $35. Both MT4 tiers offer fewer tradable instruments than their Skilling Trader counterparts: the account comparison table lists 53 currency pairs and 14 indices on the MT4 tiers against 73 pairs and 18 indices on Standard/Premium, and only 6 crypto CFDs against more than 50.

Skilling’s Zero Leverage account for crypto

Skilling’s fee page also describes a Zero Leverage account built for unleveraged, 1:1, swap-free crypto CFD trading, with spreads quoted from $0.50 on Bitcoin and a taker fee from 0.05% per side. Rather than daily swaps, it charges an Administrative Fee of 0.9% on open trades at every 30-day interval the position stays open. Outside that account, the fee page states that all clients pay a crypto CFD taker fee starting from 0.1% of the position’s value. Whichever account a crypto CFD is opened on, the fee page also notes a separate Currency Conversion Fee on any instrument priced in a currency other than the account’s base currency, stating that Skilling “will charge a Currency Conversion Fee for trades on instruments denominated in a currency different to the currency of your account,” and that “the Currency Conversion Fee will be reflected into your realized Profit and Loss” rather than shown as a standalone line item.

Professional and Corporate accounts

Skilling’s account types page states that Professional and Corporate accounts are available on request through customer service rather than through self-service signup. A Corporate account is opened in the name of a legal entity and then categorised under one of the existing Standard, Premium or MT4 pricing structures rather than having terms of its own. It is worth noting for professional clients specifically that the negative balance protection described on the retail tiers above does not extend to them.

What the account tables leave out

The GB account comparison table Skilling published lists no MT5-specific tier, even though MetaTrader 5 appears in the platform navigation on every page we fetched. Crypto CFDs, complete with leverage terms, spreads and per-tier counts, appear in the account tables and market navigation Skilling publishes for its AE, AU and ID visitors, but are absent from the GB market navigation and GB account comparison table entirely, with no explanation on the GB pages themselves for the difference.

Negative Balance Protection

Skilling’s own account comparison page puts a stop-out level of 50% on all four of its core account types: Standard, Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium. On the same page, negative balance protection is listed as a named feature of the Standard account, alongside 0% commission, spreads from 0.8 and 1:30 leverage. The Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium rows repeat the 50% stop-out figure but the table does not repeat a negative-balance-protection line for those three tiers.

When Skilling can close a position

Our earlier review of Skilling noted that the broker keeps the right to shut some or all of a trader’s open positions once the account balance drops below the required margin level, a mechanism meant to stop losses from growing further. That is a standard margin call/stop-out mechanism rather than something specific to Skilling, and it lines up with the 50% stop-out figure the firm’s own account table states. Separately, Skilling’s fee page (read directly, not from a summary) warns in its own words that “swap fees are subject to change at any given time and could change on a daily basis without prior notice, depending on market conditions.” For a client holding a leveraged position overnight, that means the carrying cost feeding into the account’s margin level can move without warning, which is worth reading alongside the stop-out rule rather than as a separate issue.

What Skilling’s negative balance protection does not cover

The earlier review reported three limits on the policy that a client relying on the “negative balance protection” label should know before assuming it means an unconditional cap on losses. According to the earlier account, the protection only applies to losses that result directly from trading itself, not to losses tied to technical faults, platform outages or other events that fall outside trading. It also noted, secondly, that Skilling reserves the right to withdraw the protection whenever it judges, on its own, that a client has misused the policy or acted fraudulently, with that call made internally rather than by any independent adjudicator. Third, it reported that professional clients and elective professional clients are excluded from the protection entirely, a category covering anyone Skilling has placed or moved into that status, usually in return for higher leverage.

Which regulatory protections actually attach to a UK client

Skilling’s own regulatory footer states that it is Authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and with deemed variation of permission… The nature and extent of consumer protections may differ from those for firms based in the UK, which is Skilling’s own acknowledgement that a UK client under this arrangement is not getting the same protection baseline as a client of a fully UK-authorised firm. We checked the FCA register directly for the FRN it cites, 810951, and the register shows that number held by Skilling Limited with a status of “No longer authorised,” not the authorised status the site’s Temporary Permissions language implies. That contradiction matters for a section on loss limits specifically because negative balance protection and margin rules for retail clients are the kind of consumer safeguard that differs between an EU/UK-style investor-protection regime and whatever regime actually governs the entity a UK client is onboarded to. We separately confirmed Skilling Limited’s Cyprus licence, 357/18, as active on the CySEC register, with no revocation, suspension or warning language attached, so the CySEC-regulated entity’s status is not in question; it is specifically the FCA basis for UK clients that the register does not support as the site describes it. We also searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Skilling does not appear on any of them, which is a clean result but only covers those three lists.

Trading Instruments

Skilling’s UK markets page puts forex CFDs at over 74 currency pairs, though the firm’s own account comparison tables show fewer than that headline figure once a tier is chosen: 73 pairs on the Standard and Premium tiers, and 53 on MT4 and MT4 Premium. Shares run to more than 760 equities on the Standard and Premium account table, alongside 18 indices and 18 commodities on those same two tiers, dropping to 14 indices and 5 commodities on MT4 and MT4 Premium. A separate “Soft Commodities” category sits in Skilling’s own market navigation alongside Commodities, but none of the pages fetched describe what it contains.

Crypto CFDs: on the account tables for some countries, absent from others

Skilling’s UAE, Australian and Indonesian pages list more than 50 crypto CFDs on the Standard and Premium account tables and 6 on MT4 and MT4 Premium, with leverage of 1:2 and Bitcoin spreads quoted from 0.5. The same product line does not appear in the market navigation or the account comparison table on Skilling’s UK pages. The UK pages give no reason for the gap. It lines up with the FCA’s ban on selling crypto derivatives to retail clients, but that is our inference from the pattern, not something the UK pages themselves say, and it is worth noting because a UK visitor comparing Skilling’s advertised range against what their own account actually offers would otherwise have no way to know why crypto is missing.

Skilling’s account pages also separate out a Zero Leverage Account for crypto: unleveraged 1:1 trading with 30-day swap-free intervals, Bitcoin spreads from $0.50, a taker fee starting from 0.05% per side, and an administrative fee of 0.9% charged on open trades at each 30-day interval. That administrative fee is a recurring cost specific to holding a crypto position open on this tier, not a one-off entry charge, and it runs alongside the standard crypto taker fee of starts from 0.1% of the value of the position that the fee page applies to all clients trading crypto CFDs.

Platforms Skilling lists but does not always let you select

Skilling’s site navigation lists MetaTrader 5 as an available platform on every page we fetched, and the UK homepage describes it as a “next generation multi-asset trading platform with advanced charting, automated trading, and access to global CFD markets.” The UK Account Types comparison table, however, only offers four tiers, Standard, Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium, and none of them is built on MT5. A client drawn to Skilling specifically for MT5 would find it advertised sitewide but not among the accounts actually on offer in the UK.

What is on offer spans four platforms in practice: the proprietary Skilling Trader web platform, with real-time quotes, charting and a trade assistant aimed at beginners; MetaTrader 4, which Skilling’s own homepage calls the platform that has “established itself as the industry standard for more than 16 years”; Skilling cTrader, with C#/.net Automate Editor and cBot support for algorithmic trading; and a TradingView integration, described as giving a complimentary subscription for clients who open and trade and covering CFDs on FX, commodities, indices, stocks, ETFs and cryptos. ETFs themselves are not listed as their own tradable asset class on Skilling’s markets pages; they surface only through that TradingView integration and as “CFD on ETF” wording in the firm’s Key Information Documents.

Where account tier changes the underlying cost of holding a position

The instrument range on paper is the same across Standard, Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium, but the cost of carrying a position overnight is not. Skilling’s fee page sets index CFD swap markup at 3.5% on buy positions and 3% on sell positions for Standard accounts, falling to 2.5% for Premium; shares CFD swap markup runs at 4% buy and 3% sell on Standard, against 3.5% buy and 2.5% sell on Premium. Both markups sit on top of the 1-month Libor rate for the relevant currency, and Skilling’s swap terms state that “Swap fees are subject to change at any given time and could change on a daily basis without prior notice, depending on market conditions.” Swaps are applied daily at 22:00 GMT and charged three times over on Wednesdays to cover the weekend.

Premium accounts also carry a specific FX and Spot Metal commission of $35 per million USD traded, charged on both opening and closing a position and converted into the account currency where that differs from USD; MT4 Premium carries the equivalent commission at $40 per million. Standard and MT4 accounts instead price through the spread, quoted from 0.8, against spreads from 0.1 on Premium and MT4 Premium. Separately, Skilling’s fee page states that “Skilling will charge a Currency Conversion Fee for trades on instruments denominated in a currency different to the currency of your account,” adding that this fee “will be reflected into your realized Profit and Loss” rather than shown as its own line item, on any tier and for any instrument priced outside the account’s base currency.

Education & Analysis

Skilling’s platform lineup is the strongest part of this catalogue entry, and it is also where the site’s own pages contradict each other. The account comparison table on the GB site lists four account types, Standard, Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium, and ties each one to specific platforms: Standard and Premium run on Skilling Trader, Skilling cTrader and TradingView, while MT4 and MT4 Premium run on MetaTrader 4. MetaTrader 5 shows up in the site navigation on every fetched page, described on the GB homepage as a “next generation multi-asset trading platform with advanced charting, automated trading, and access to global CFD markets.” But no account in the GB account comparison table actually offers it. A client who signs up specifically for MT5 has no account tier that puts them on it, at least going by the account table we fetched.

Skilling’s own platform: Skilling Trader

The GB platforms page positions Skilling Trader as the company’s in house web platform, pointing to real time quotes, interactive charts and technical indicators, plus a “trade assistant for beginners,” and noting that it works fully across both web and mobile. It is one of the two platforms available to every account tier we found (Standard, Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium accounts all list it or MT4 as their base), alongside Skilling cTrader.

MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and cTrader

The GB homepage markets MetaTrader 4 as having “established itself as the industry standard for more than 16 years,” available on web, desktop, Android and iOS, and this is the platform actually assigned to the MT4 and MT4 Premium account tiers. Skilling cTrader is pitched separately, on the GB platforms page, as an “advanced platform” with fast order entry and coding customisation through a C#/.net Automate Editor and cBots, downloadable on Windows, iOS and Android or run through a browser. It sits alongside Skilling Trader on the Standard and Premium tiers.

TradingView is also folded into the offering: the GB platforms page describes a TradingView integration giving access to TradingView charting, with a complimentary subscription for clients who open an account and trade, covering CFDs on FX, commodities, indices, stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies. That crypto access through TradingView sits oddly next to another gap in the evidence: cryptocurrency CFDs, complete with leverage, spreads and per tier crypto counts, appear in the market navigation and account tables fetched from the AE, AU and ID versions of the site, but are absent from the GB market navigation and the GB account comparison table entirely. Nothing on the GB pages we fetched explains why.

What Skilling’s account tiers actually charge for market access

The account tables also set the size of what a client can actually trade on each platform. The GB market page and AE account tables put forex CFDs at over 74 pairs firmwide, with 73 currency pairs available on Standard and Premium and 53 on MT4 and MT4 Premium. Shares run to more than 760 equities on Standard and Premium. Indices run to 18 on Standard and Premium against 14 on MT4 and MT4 Premium, and commodities run to 18 on Standard and Premium against 5 on MT4 and MT4 Premium. A separate “Soft Commodities” category sits in the GB site navigation alongside Commodities, but none of the pages we fetched break out what instruments sit inside it.

Where the evidence stays silent

Beyond the platforms and instrument counts above, the pages we fetched describe order execution, charting tools and market access largely through the platform descriptions quoted here, and say nothing about matching engine details, execution speed claims, or third party platform audits. We are not treating that silence as an absence, it simply means we did not fetch a page covering it.

This review scores Skilling’s platform criterion at 8.4 out of 10, up from a prior review of this broker overall at 5.6 against this one’s 7.2. That movement reflects this review’s own reassessment across all the scoring criteria based on the evidence gathered here, including the range of platforms on offer (Skilling Trader, MT4, cTrader and the TradingView integration), rather than any change in what Skilling itself has done.

Special Offers

Skilling’s own site did not give us a promotions or bonus page to read, and none of the pages we fetched are laid out as a special offers section. So this section reports what actually turned up: a regulatory restriction on bonuses that applies to Skilling’s CySEC entity, one complimentary feature tied to opening an account, and the account-tier structure that functions as the firm’s closest thing to a headline offer.

The CySEC bonus ban and Skilling Limited

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register confirms an active CIF licence, number 357/18, for Skilling Limited, with no revocation, suspension or warning language attached. Our earlier review reported that ESMA rules bar CySEC-regulated brokers from offering bonuses or incentives to retail clients. We have not read the ESMA rule or a CySEC circular ourselves, so we cannot quote its wording or confirm it applies clause-for-clause to Skilling; we can only say the earlier review flagged it as a restriction on this class of firm, and Skilling Limited is licensed as exactly that class of firm. Anyone expecting a deposit-match, cashback or credit-style promotion of the kind common outside the EU should read that restriction before assuming one is available through the CySEC entity.

What Skilling’s own pages actually offer instead

The one thing on Skilling’s own pages that reads as a perk rather than a straight cost is the TradingView integration: the firm’s platform page describes it as giving clients access to TradingView charting with a complimentary subscription for those who open and trade. Nothing on that page attaches a deposit threshold or a time limit to it, and we did not find promotional wording of the kind a cashback or bonus offer would use.

Beyond that, the account-fee pages describe tiered pricing rather than promotional terms. Skilling’s account comparison page gives a Standard account at a 100 € minimum deposit, zero commission and spreads from 0.8, against a Premium account at a 5,000 € minimum deposit, spreads from 0.1 and a $35-per-million commission on FX and spot metal trades. The MT4 and MT4 Premium accounts mirror that same split at the same deposit thresholds, with the Premium tier’s commission quoted at $40 per million instead. None of this is framed on the page as a limited-time or conditional offer; it reads as the firm’s standing fee schedule, where a larger deposit buys tighter spreads in exchange for paying commission. The fee page also sets out an Administrative Fee of 0.9% on open trades every 30-day interval for the Zero Leverage crypto account, and a swap markup that runs 3.5% on the buy and 3% on the sell side for Standard index CFDs against 2.5% for Premium, both stated as ongoing charges rather than as introductory terms.

What we could not check

We searched Skilling against 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and FSC Mauritius, running a positive control against a known-listed firm first so an empty result means absence rather than a broken search; Skilling appears on none of them. That result speaks to the firm’s warning-list standing, not to whether it runs promotions elsewhere. We did not fetch a country-specific promotions page for any of the AE, AU, GB or ID sites in our evidence, so we cannot say what, if anything, is offered to new clients outside the CySEC entity where the ESMA restriction the earlier review cited would not apply in the same way.

Opening an Account

Skilling opens accounts through four named retail tiers on its GB pages, plus a separate crypto-only tier and a route for entities. The account comparison table lists Standard and MT4 with a minimum deposit of 100 €, and Premium and MT4 Premium with a minimum deposit given as 5,000 € (marked with an asterisk in the source table), according to Skilling’s own account-types page.

The account tiers Skilling puts in front of a new client

Standard and MT4 carry no commission, spreads described as “from 0.8”, leverage of 1:30, micro lot trading, negative balance protection and a 50% stop-out level, per the account-types page. Premium and MT4 Premium drop the spread to “from 0.1” but add a per-side commission, $35 per million traded on Premium and $40 per million on MT4 Premium, with the same 1:30 leverage and 50% stop-out level. Standard and Premium route to Skilling Trader, Skilling cTrader or TradingView; MT4 and MT4 Premium route to MetaTrader 4 only, again per the account-types page. Skilling’s UAE fee page separately describes a Zero Leverage Account for crypto CFDs, traded unleveraged at 1:1 with 30-day swap-free intervals, spreads quoted “from $0.50” on BTC, and an administrative fee of 0.9% on open trades charged every 30-day interval the position stays open.

Professional and Corporate accounts at Skilling

A Corporate account, opened in the name of a legal entity rather than an individual, is categorised under one of the same Standard, Premium or MT4 tiers and is described as available on request through customer service rather than through the standard sign-up flow, per the account-types page. Our earlier review reported that negative balance protection does not extend to professional or elective professional clients, which, if accurate, means a client who moves to that classification loses the loss-capping backstop that retail Standard and Premium account holders get by default.

Who Skilling says it will not take on

Skilling’s own legal page states: “Restricted Countries: Services and products offered by Skilling are not directed to, intended for distribution to, or intended for use by residents of certain jurisdictions such as Belgium, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, North Korea, or any other jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or access is prohibited.” That clause names the United Kingdom and Australia directly. Yet the same domain we checked runs dedicated GB and AU sections, including GB account-opening pages, a GB accounts comparison table and GB contact details, alongside AU account and legal pages of their own. Nothing in the pages we fetched reconciles the two: the legal page disclaims UK and Australian custom while the marketing and account pages actively solicit it, so which set of terms governs a UK or Australian applicant who does open an account is not something we can answer from what’s published.

Which regulator actually stands behind the Skilling account you’d open

We checked the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register directly for licence 357/18, claimed by Skilling on its own GB pages for the entity Skilling Limited. The register entry is confirmed: an active CIF licence record matching that number and entity name, with no revocation, suspension or warning language attached. Skilling’s GB regulatory footer separately states: Authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and with deemed variation of permission… The nature and extent of consumer protections may differ from those for firms based in the UK. Checking the FCA register directly against the firm reference number cited for this claim, 810951, shows that number is held by Skilling Limited but with a status of “No longer authorised”, not the “Authorised” status the footer implies, as of 31 May 2023. On the Seychelles Financial Services Authority register, which we searched directly (648 entries across its capital-markets, collective-investment-scheme, fiduciary, sandbox and international-trade-zone categories), no entity or trade name matching “Skilling” appears, despite our earlier review reporting a Seychelles FSA licence numbered SD042 for the firm. Separately, the Cyprus company registration number HE373524 that Skilling publishes alongside its CySEC details is a company-registry number, not a financial-services authorisation, and the claim as given names no regulator to check it against. We also searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Skilling does not appear on any of them, though that search covers only the regulators we mirror, not every authority worldwide. Taken together, the entity actually confirmed to be licensed for the accounts Skilling markets is the Cyprus one; the UK and Seychelles claims made on or about the site did not hold up against the registers themselves.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Funding a Skilling account

Skilling runs two live account groups with different entry points. The Standard and MT4 accounts both list a minimum deposit of 100 EUR, spreads from 0.8 pips and no commission, according to the account-types page for the GB site. The Premium and MT4 Premium tiers carry an asterisked minimum of 5,000 EUR, spreads from 0.1 pips, and a per-side commission of 35 dollars per million traded on Premium (40 dollars per million on MT4 Premium) instead of a wider spread. The account-types page does not explain what the asterisk on the Premium minimum refers to, so we cannot say whether that figure is negotiable or fixed. A separate Zero Leverage account for unleveraged, swap-free crypto CFD trading is described on the fee page, but no minimum deposit is listed for it there.

Payment methods

Our earlier review reported four funding routes: credit and debit cards processed instantly, bank transfer taking two to five business days, and Skrill and Neteller both processed instantly. That earlier review also reported that Skilling does not add its own charge on any of the four, though it flagged that Skrill and Neteller may apply their own fees on their end. We have not independently checked Skilling’s payments page, so these processing times and no-fee claims should be read as carried over from that prior write-up rather than confirmed against the firm’s own material.

Currency conversion costs that eat into what comes back out

Skilling’s own fee page states plainly: “Skilling will charge a Currency Conversion Fee for trades on instruments denominated in a currency different to the currency of your account. The Currency Conversion Fee will be reflected into your realized Profit and Loss.” That means the charge never shows up as a line item on a statement; it is folded into the closed-trade P&L, so a client holding, say, a USD account and trading GBP-quoted instruments will not see a separate conversion charge to check against, only a smaller realized profit or a larger realized loss than the raw price move would suggest. The fee page does not state the rate.

Swap charges and what they do to an open balance

The same fee page sets out that overnight swap or rollover charges apply daily at 22:00 GMT on open positions, are charged three times over on Wednesday to account for the weekend, and can be positive or negative depending on the instrument. It also warns, in its own words: “Swap fees are subject to change at any given time and could change on a daily basis without prior notice, depending on market conditions.” On index CFDs the swap markup sits at 3.5% on buys and 3% on sells for Standard accounts (2.5% for Premium), and on shares CFDs at 4% on buys and 3% on sells for Standard (3.5% and 2.5% for Premium), both layered on top of the one-month Libor rate for the relevant currency. Any of this can reduce the equity a client is able to withdraw from a position left open over several sessions, and the no-prior-notice language means a client cannot rely on today’s swap rate holding tomorrow.

Forced closes and the limits of negative balance protection

On margin calls, the earlier review summarized Skilling’s approach this way: once a trader’s account balance drops below the required margin level, Skilling may close some or all open positions to shield the account from further losses. The earlier review also flagged a boundary within that same policy: coverage only extends to losses arising from trading activity, so losses stemming from technical faults, platform outages, or other non-trading causes fall outside it, and Skilling retains the discretion to pull the negative balance protection from any trader it determines has misused the policy or committed fraud. Together these mean a client’s account can be liquidated unilaterally once margin falls short, that a technical outage is not necessarily Skilling’s problem to absorb, and that Skilling itself decides when the protection no longer applies to a given client. Separately, negative balance protection does not extend to professional or elective professional clients at all, per that same reporting.

Who Skilling will actually let deposit and withdraw

Skilling’s own legal page carries a Restricted Countries clause: “Services and products offered by Skilling are not directed to, intended for distribution to, or intended for use by residents of certain jurisdictions such as Belgium, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, North Korea, or any other jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or access is prohibited.” That clause names the United Kingdom and Australia directly, yet the same domain runs dedicated GB and AU marketing, account and fee pages, including a GB regulatory footer describing FCA-related permissions. A UK client depositing through those GB pages is funding an account with a firm whose own published legal terms say its services are not intended for UK residents, and it is not clear from the site which set of pages actually governs that relationship. On the regulatory point itself, the FCA register lists Skilling Limited’s FRN 810951 as “No longer authorised” as of 31 May 2023, not the Temporary Permissions Regime status the earlier review described, and the Seychelles FSA register shows no entity or trade name matching Skilling among its 648 entries.

Customer Support

Skilling lists three ways to reach a human: phone, live chat, and email. The phone line, +357 22 276710, and the live chat both run Monday to Friday, 07:00 to 22:00 CET, according to the firm’s own contact page. Email goes to support@skilling.com. There is also a stated postal presence at 62 Athalassas Avenue, 2nd Floor, Strovolos, CY-2012, Nicosia, which is the same Cyprus address tied to the CySEC-licensed entity. Beyond these, the TradingView integration FAQ on Skilling’s platforms page mentions clients can “ask for feedback through Support tickets,” which suggests a ticketing channel exists for at least that product, though the pages we fetched do not describe a general support-ticket system with its own SLA.

What Skilling’s channels actually cover

None of the contact-page material we read states a response-time target for email or a ticket, and none of it describes a formal complaints procedure, an escalation tier, or an internal ombudsman step. What we have is a channel list and a set of hours; whether a complaint gets a same-day answer or sits for a week is not something the pages say either way.

Where a complaint actually goes if support cannot resolve it

The client-facing legal documents are held under Skilling Ltd, and the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register we checked directly confirms an active CIF licence, number 357/18, for Skilling Limited, with no revocation, suspension, or warning language attached. For a client dealing with the Cyprus entity, that register is the backstop if a complaint escalates past Skilling’s own support desk.

UK clients sit on different ground. Skilling’s own regulatory footer describes UK business as run under a “deemed variation of permission” via the Temporary Permissions Regime, adding that “the nature and extent of consumer protections may differ from those for firms based in the UK.” We checked the FCA register directly against the firm’s stated FRN, 810951, and it shows that reference held by Skilling Limited with a status of “No longer authorised,” not authorised, as of 31/05/2023. A UK client escalating a complaint on the assumption that FCA authorisation stands behind it is escalating against a status the FCA’s own register does not currently show as active. We also searched the Seychelles Financial Services Authority register directly for the SD042 reference associated with this brand and found no matching entity or trade name among the 648 entries checked; we ran a positive-control search on a known-listed firm first, so the empty result reflects an absence, not a broken search.

Set against that, we searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA, and the FSC Mauritius, and Skilling does not appear on any of them. That’s a clean result worth stating plainly, though it only covers the three lists we mirror, not every regulator a client might think to check.

Terms that bite if a client is already in dispute

Two points from the firm’s negative balance protection policy matter specifically to a client who is complaining about money owed rather than asking a routine question. First, the policy lets Skilling waive the negative balance protection itself where it decides a trader has abused the policy or acted fraudulently, a determination the firm makes on its own rather than through independent review. Second, the same protection is stated to cover trading losses only, explicitly excluding losses caused by technical issues or platform malfunctions, so a client disputing a balance that resulted from an outage rather than a market move is outside the protection as described. There is also a margin clause worth flagging for the same reason: once account balance drops below the required margin level, Skilling can close out some or all of a client’s open positions on its own initiative, with no further consent needed from the client at that point. Practically, that clause decides what a client ends up disputing after the fact, since there is no chance to weigh in before the positions are closed.

What Skilling’s support setup adds up to

The channels are conventional for the sector, phone and chat during a 15-hour weekday window, email otherwise, and the firm sits on an active CySEC licence that gives Cyprus-onboarded clients a working regulator to escalate to. Where the picture weakens is exactly where a complaint would need it most: no published response-time commitment, no complaints procedure on the pages we read, and for UK clients specifically, a regulatory footer invoking Temporary Permissions status while the FCA’s own register currently shows the firm’s FRN as no longer authorised. That gap between what the footer implies and what the register currently shows is the kind of thing a client should check before assuming FCA backing sits behind an unresolved complaint. This review scores support at 6.3 out of 10, reflecting a working set of contact channels against a thin published complaints process and an unclear current regulatory backstop for UK clients.

Prohibited Countries

Skilling’s own legal page states the restriction directly: “Services and products offered by Skilling are not directed to, intended for distribution to, or intended for use by residents of certain jurisdictions such as Belgium, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, North Korea, or any other jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or access is prohibited.” That is a named list, not a general disclaimer, and it names two markets, the UK and Australia, that the same site otherwise treats as core territories.

What Skilling’s restricted-countries clause says, against what the site actually serves

The clause above comes from the firm’s AE-facing legal page. The domain also runs dedicated GB and AU sections, the firm’s UK home page, the firm’s UK accounts page, the firm’s UK contact page on the UK side, the firm’s Australian home page, the firm’s Australian accounts page, the firm’s Australian legal page, the firm’s Australian terms page on the Australian side, each with localised account tables, fee schedules and, for the UK, a specific FCA Temporary Permissions notice. A UK or Australian visitor can browse account tiers, deposit minimums and spreads pitched directly at them, while the firm’s own restricted-countries wording says its services are not intended for use by residents of exactly those two countries. Nothing on the pages we fetched resolves which of the two positions, the marketing or the disclaimer, actually governs a client who signs up from London or Sydney.

What that leaves unclear for a UK client of Skilling

The GB regulatory footer states Skilling is “Authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and with deemed variation of permission” and adds that “the nature and extent of consumer protections may differ from those for firms based in the UK.” That wording describes the Temporary Permissions Regime, under which a firm authorised elsewhere in the EU is permitted to keep serving existing UK business while its full UK authorisation is pending or unresolved. Our own register check of FRN 810951 found the FCA lists Skilling Limited’s status as “No longer authorised”, not Authorised, as of 31/05/2023, a contradiction between the firm’s own footer wording and the FCA register we searched directly rather than something we are asserting ourselves. Set against the restricted-countries clause naming the UK outright, a UK reader is left with three different signals, none of which the site reconciles on the pages we read: a GB account-opening flow, an FCA footer claiming permissions, and a legal clause disclaiming UK use.

Other jurisdictions named, and what we could not check

The same clause names the United States and North Korea alongside Belgium, Australia and the UK, then closes with “or any other jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or access is prohibited,” which leaves the boundary of the restriction open-ended rather than fixed to the five countries listed. We did not find, on the pages fetched, any separate country list, KYC residency check, or onboarding step that enforces this clause, so we can only report the wording as published, not how or whether it is applied at signup.

Registers checked against these named jurisdictions

Skilling’s CySEC licence, number 357/18 held by Skilling Limited, is confirmed on the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register, showing an active CIF entry with no revocation, suspension or warning language attached. That licence is a Cyprus authorisation and does not itself extend to the UK or Australian markets the restricted-countries clause separately addresses. We also searched the Seychelles FSA register directly for the SD042 licence number carried over from the earlier review of this firm and found no entity or trade name matching Skilling among its 648 entries, a not on the register result rather than a finding that the licence does not exist elsewhere. Separately, we searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Skilling appears on none of them; that result covers only the three regulators we mirror, not a global clearance.

Our previous review of Skilling scored regulation at a level that produced an overall 5.6/10; this review’s fixed criteria score regulation at 6.7 and the overall figure at 7.2. That movement is our assessment being restated against current evidence, not a change in the firm: the CySEC confirmation stands as before, but this pass also surfaced the FCA register’s “No longer authorised” status against the firm’s own “Authorised” footer wording, and the UK/Australia contradiction inside the restricted-countries clause itself, both of which now sit alongside the score rather than being smoothed over.

Conclusion

Skilling’s own footer, checked against the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register, shows an active CIF licence, number 357/18, for Skilling Limited, with no revocation, suspension or warning language attached. That entry is real and it is current. But it is not the whole picture: the firm’s claim from our earlier review to hold Seychelles FSA licence SD042 does not match anything in the Seychelles FSA register we searched, and the firm’s claim from our earlier review to FCA authorisation under FRN 810951 is contradicted by the FCA register itself, which lists that number as “No longer authorised” as of 31 May 2023, not as an active Temporary Permissions entry. A reader relying on Skilling’s own regulatory footer for its UK status would be relying on something the FCA’s own record does not currently support.

Why the regulation score sits at 6.7

A confirmed CySEC licence for the entity actually named on the site carries real weight, and it is the reason this score is not lower. Against that, one claimed licence is unconfirmed on its own regulator’s register and one is contradicted outright, and Skilling’s Restricted Countries clause names the United Kingdom and Australia as jurisdictions its services are “not directed to, intended for distribution to, or intended for use by,” while the same domain runs full GB and AU marketing, account and fee pages, including GB pages that still cite FCA Temporary Permissions. A UK visitor reading the legal page and a UK visitor reading the accounts page get two different answers about whether Skilling wants their business. That gap, not the CySEC entry on its own, is what keeps the regulation score in the middle of the range rather than higher.

What Skilling charges, and what moves without notice

The fees score of 8.3 reflects pricing that is published in detail rather than buried. Skilling’s own fee page puts Standard account spreads from 0.8 pips with no commission, and Premium account spreads from 0.1 pips plus $35 per million USD traded on FX and spot metals, charged on both opening and closing a position. Crypto CFDs carry a taker fee starting from 0.1% of position value on all clients, and the Zero Leverage crypto account adds an administrative fee of 0.9% on open trades every 30 day interval. None of that is hidden behind a “contact us” page.

Two clauses on that same fee page deserve a client’s attention before they trade, not after. Skilling states that “swap fees are subject to change at any given time and could change on a daily basis without prior notice, depending on market conditions,” which means overnight holding costs on an open position are not fixed and not guaranteed in advance. And Skilling states it will charge a Currency Conversion Fee on any instrument denominated in a currency different to the account’s base currency, with that fee “reflected into your realized Profit and Loss” rather than itemised as a separate line. A client trading, say, a USD denominated share CFD on a EUR account will not see this fee as a fee; they will see a smaller profit or a larger loss than the raw price move accounts for.

Platforms: real choice, with one gap on the GB pages

The platform score of 8.4 is the highest of the five, and the evidence supports it: Skilling’s own pages list MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, the proprietary Skilling Trader, Skilling cTrader with C# and .net automation support, and a TradingView integration covering forex, commodities, indices, stocks, ETFs and crypto. That is a genuinely wide spread of platform choice for a CFD broker of this size. The one inconsistency worth flagging: MT5 appears in the site navigation on every page we fetched, but the GB Account Types comparison table offers only Standard, Premium, MT4 and MT4 Premium, with no MT5-specific account listed. A UK client who chooses Skilling specifically for MT5 may not find it selectable at signup on the GB accounts page.

Support and reviews: the two scores holding this back from higher

Support scores 6.3. Skilling’s contact page lists phone and live chat coverage Monday to Friday, 07:00 to 22:00 CET, plus email support, which is reasonable but not round the clock, and the evidence available to us does not extend to weekend or holiday coverage. Reviews sits at 6.4, the lowest of the five criteria, reflecting a reputational picture this review has not independently rebuilt from scratch.

The warning list check, and what it does and does not cover

We searched 1,441 warning list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Skilling appears on none of them. That is a genuine clean result, run against a positive control so an empty result means absence rather than a broken search, and it covers three regulators, not every regulator worldwide.

Skilling Limited holds a confirmed CySEC licence (357/18) and publishes its fees in detail, but its FCA claim is contradicted by the FCA register and its Seychelles claim is not on that regulator’s list. TrueBroker scores it 7.2 out of 10, up from 5.6 in our previous review.

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