Swissquote review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of Swissquote, scored 7 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews. Swissquote Group Holding Ltd is a Swiss financial group listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the symbol SQN since 29 May 2000, and its banking and brokerage business runs through Swissquote Bank Ltd, headquartered in Gland, Switzerland. The group is not a single legal entity: it operates through separately licensed subsidiaries in the UK (Swissquote Ltd), Malta, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and South Africa, plus a non-regulated technology subsidiary in Bucharest, Romania.

Our previous review scored Swissquote 4.2 out of 10; this review scores it 7 out of 10. That move is our assessment, drawn from evidence we now hold rather than any change at the firm. The regulation score of 8.3 reflects what the registers themselves showed when we checked them directly: the FCA register register confirms FRN 562170 for Swissquote Ltd, the DFSA register confirms Swissquote MEA Ltd under reference F001438, the Hong Kong Hong Kong SFC register register confirms Swissquote Asia Limited under CE reference AZV127 with a Type 3 licence, the MFSA register confirms Swissquote Financial Services (Malta) Ltd, the MAS Financial Institutions Directory Financial Institutions Directory confirms Swissquote Pte. Ltd, the ESMA register confirms Swissquote Bank Europe SA under CSSF supervision, the CySEC register confirms Swissquote Capital Markets Ltd under CIF licence 422/22, and the FSCA register confirms FSP 43908 for Swissquote South Africa (Pty) Ltd. We also searched 1441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and FSC Mauritius, and Swissquote appears on none of them; that count covers only the lists we mirror, not every regulator anywhere.

Overview Table

Facts List

• Swissquote Bank Ltd appears on the FINMA list of authorised banks and securities firms as a Bank, Gland, in FINMA’s supervisory category 4 out of 5, a size measure rather than a standing measure; the list publishes no licence number.
• The FCA register confirms FRN 562170 held by Swissquote Ltd, status Authorised, effective 02/05/2012, tied to Companies House number 07710095.
• Companies House confirms SWISSQUOTE LTD as company 07710095, a Private Limited Company incorporated 19 July 2011, status Active; this is a company registry entry, not a financial licence.
• The DFSA public register confirms Swissquote MEA Ltd. under reference F001438 as an Authorised Firm.
• A separate claimed entity, Swissquote Bank Ltd (UAE Representative Office), names the Central Bank of the UAE as regulator, but we hold no register entry for that authority and no licence number was given, so this claim is unchecked rather than confirmed or denied.
• The Hong Kong SFC Public Register confirms Swissquote Asia Limited under CE reference AZV127, licensed for Type 3 (Leveraged Foreign Exchange Trading), active, with 3 licensing conditions and no public disciplinary action on record.
• The MFSA Financial Services Register confirms SWISSQUOTE FINANCIAL SERVICES (MALTA) LTD as an Investment Firm, “Licence Authorised”, issued 22-10-2012, MBR registration code C 57936.
• The MAS Financial Institutions Directory confirms SWISSQUOTE PTE. LTD. as a Capital Markets Services Licensee; the directory publishes no licence number.
• The ESMA register confirms SWISSQUOTE BANK EUROPE SA as an active investment firm under CSSF (Luxembourg) supervision, authorised 13/11/2000, LEI 549300M2IHOB9P5WE714.
• The CySEC register shows an active CIF licence (422/22) for Swissquote Capital Markets Ltd, a financial-services authorisation rather than a plain company listing.
• The FSCA register confirms FSP 43908 held by SWISSQUOTE SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD, status Authorized.
• We searched 1441 warning-list entries mirrored from CYSEC, the FCA and FSC Mauritius and found no match for Swissquote.

What Swissquote’s own risk disclosure says about losses

Swissquote’s own Forex and CFD Risk Disclosure states that “losses are in theory unlimited and you may be required to make additional payments if your account balance falls below the required margin level.” The same document states that “the Bank is your sole counterparty for all forex instrument and CFD transactions and is not required to seek the best possible outcome when carrying out your orders. The Bank is acting in its own interest and has no duty to protect you from losses.” This matters because the older, earlier review we are updating claimed that Swissquote extends negative balance protection to all retail client accounts, a statement that conflicts with what the firm’s current risk disclosure actually says; readers should not take that older claim as verified against Swissquote’s own document.

Fees Swissquote charges beyond the spread

Swissquote’s own fee page describes an inactivity fee of up to 10 units of base currency per month after six months with no open positions, deducted monthly until the balance reaches zero, for retail clients. The same page describes a custody fee of CHF 20 to CHF 50 per quarter for holding securities or cryptocurrencies, plus 0.0075% per quarter on assets above CHF 1,000,000, and a securities transfer-out charge of EUR/USD/CHF 50 per line to move holdings to another institution (transfers within Swissquote are free). Standard, Premium and Prime accounts carry minimum deposits of $1,000, $10,000 and $50,000 respectively, with spreads described by Swissquote as starting from 1.7, 1.4 and 1.1 pips on those tiers.

Where Swissquote is headquartered and who runs each office

Swissquote Group Holding Ltd is the listed parent; Swissquote Bank Ltd carries the banking licence in Switzerland. Separate, separately licensed subsidiaries handle each region: Swissquote Ltd in London under the FCA, Swissquote MEA Ltd in Dubai under the DFSA, Swissquote Asia Ltd in Hong Kong under the SFC, Swissquote Financial Services (Malta) Ltd under the MFSA, Swissquote Pte. Ltd in Singapore under the MAS, Swissquote Bank Europe Ltd in Luxembourg under the CSSF, Swissquote Capital Markets Ltd in Cyprus under CySEC, and Swissquote South Africa (Pty) Ltd under the FSCA. Swissquote Tech Hub Bucharest S.R.L. is a software development subsidiary that is not itself regulated.

Key Takeaways

The score move, and why

• This review scores Swissquote 7 out of 10, up from our previous score of 4.2 out of 10. That change reflects our current assessment against the evidence below, not any change in the firm itself; we are restating the score against a wider set of checks than before.
• Regulation scores 8.3. We searched 11 public registers directly (FINMA, the FCA, the DFSA, the SFC, the MFSA, the MAS, the CSSF, CySEC, the FSCA, Companies House, and ACRA) and ran a positive control on each first, so an empty result would mean absence rather than a broken search. Two of the ten licence claims, Switzerland and the UK, came back confirmed in full on the named register; the results for the other licence claims are set out below.
• Fees score 7.2. The published fee pages show all-in spreads with no forex commission on the Standard, Premium and Prime tiers, alongside a list of ancillary charges that only show up once a client stops trading or moves assets.
• Platform scores 7.9. Swissquote publishes three platform routes: MetaTrader 4 and 5, its own CFXD platform, and TradingView, with real depth on instrument counts across each.
• Support scores 5.3, the weakest number in this review. The firm’s own contact pages list phone lines split across ten separate legal entities, each with its own hours and time zone, and no single global line covers them.
• Reviews score 6.2. We found three places where an earlier review’s claims do not match what Swissquote’s own current pages say, detailed below.

What the Swissquote registers actually show

• Swissquote Bank Ltd appears on the FINMA list of authorised banks and securities firms as a Bank in Gland, under FINMA supervisory category 4. FINMA sizes institutions from 1, the largest, to 5, the smallest, so category 4 is a size measure, not a mark of standing, and the list publishes no licence number to quote.
• FRN 562170 on the FCA register is held by Swissquote Ltd, status Authorised, effective 2 May 2012, and the same entity carries Companies House number 07710095, confirmed separately on the UK Companies House register as SWISSQUOTE LTD, a private limited company incorporated 19 July 2011, status Active. Companies House confirms the company, not a licence.
• Swissquote MEA Ltd holds DFSA reference F001438 on the Dubai Financial Services Authority’s public register, listed as an Authorised Firm.
• Swissquote Asia Limited holds CE reference AZV127 on the Hong Kong SFC’s Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions, licensed for Type 3, Leveraged Foreign Exchange Trading, shown as active with 3 licensing conditions attached and no public disciplinary action recorded against it.
• SWISSQUOTE FINANCIAL SERVICES (MALTA) LTD is on the MFSA Financial Services Register as an Investment Firm, status “Licence Authorised,” issued 22 October 2012, under MBR registration code C 57936.
• SWISSQUOTE PTE. LTD. is in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory as a Capital Markets Services Licensee, and separately confirmed in the ACRA register of entities under UEN 201906194G, a Local Company registered 26 February 2019, status Live Company as at the snapshot of 16 September 2026.
• SWISSQUOTE BANK EUROPE SA is on the ESMA register of investment firms and credit institutions as an investment firm, status Active, supervised by the CSSF in Luxembourg, authorised 13 November 2000.
• Swissquote Capital Markets Ltd holds an active CIF licence, number 422/22, on the CySEC register.
• FSP 43908 on the FSCA register is held by SWISSQUOTE SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD, status Authorized.
• Two claims fall outside what we hold registers for and are marked not checked rather than confirmed or denied: a UAE representative office said to sit under the Central Bank of the UAE, and a UK VAT number. Both gaps sit in our directory, not in a finding about the firm.
• We searched 1,441 warning list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Swissquote appears on none of them. That count covers only the lists we mirror, not every regulator worldwide.

What we read in Swissquote’s own terms

• The Forex and CFD Risk Disclosure states plainly: “Losses are in theory unlimited and you may be required to make additional payments if your account balance falls below the required margin level.” That is a client obligation to pay in beyond what is on deposit, not a blanket negative balance protection guarantee.
• The same disclosure states: “The Bank is your sole counterparty for all forex instrument and CFD transactions and is not required to seek the best possible outcome when carrying out your orders. The Bank is acting in its own interest and has no duty to protect you from losses.” Swissquote trades against the client as principal, with no best execution duty written into that clause.
• Section 10 of the applicable law and jurisdiction terms confines client disputes to Swiss law and the courts of Gland, Switzerland, while reserving Swissquote’s own right to sue a client “in a court of competent jurisdiction of your place of residence or before any other competent court or jurisdiction,” an asymmetric arrangement that runs one way.
• Section 7 on data retention states Swissquote keeps “communication data for up to 10 years after your last interaction with us.”
• Section 4.2 on formalities and limitations states that exercising data subject rights “may prevent us from providing you with all or part of our services” and that Swissquote “may decide to terminate our relationship with you,” with a fee possible for requests judged repetitive or excessive.

What Swissquote charges, beyond the spread

• An inactivity fee of up to 10 units of the account’s base currency per month applies to retail clients after six months with no open positions or trading, deducted monthly until the balance reaches zero or trading resumes; the fee will not push a balance negative, and introducing brokers, money managers, institutional and corporate clients are exempt.
• A custody fee of CHF 20 to CHF 50 per quarter applies to any account holding securities or cryptocurrencies, plus 0.0075% per quarter on the portion of assets above CHF 1,000,000, charged per account.
• Moving securities to another financial institution costs EUR, USD or CHF 50 per line; transfers within Swissquote, in either direction, are free.
• A tax statement costs CHF 100 per account per year, and a bank confirmation costs 100 CHF.
• If Swissquote loses contact with a client, its “assets without contact” schedule layers on further charges over time: CHF 100 for initial steps, CHF 200 for basic research within Switzerland or CHF 300 abroad, CHF 150 an hour with a CHF 300 minimum for advanced research plus any third party costs, CHF 50 for a SIX SIS notification, and CHF 150 a year for ongoing management, all excluding VAT.
• Stock CFD commissions scale by tier: on US shares, USD 0.03 per share on Standard, USD 0.02 on Premium and USD 0.01 on Prime, each per side with a tier specific minimum; on Swiss, German, UK and French shares the rate runs from 0.15% on Standard down to 0.09% on Prime.
• Dividend adjustments on stock CFDs are not symmetric: a long position receives a withheld tax reduced share of the dividend, for example 65% on Swiss stocks or 55% on US stocks, while a short position is charged the full 100% of the dividend.

Where Swissquote’s platforms and account tiers sit

• The account tiers run Standard from $1,000, spreads from 1.7 pips; Premium from $10,000, spreads from 1.4 pips and the firm’s own most popular tier; and Prime from $50,000, spreads from 1.1 pips, all with no forex commission and leverage up to 1:100 outside the EU or 1:30 inside it.
• Trading runs across MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, Swissquote’s own CFXD platform, and TradingView. The MT4/MT5 WebTrader route runs on a MetaQuotes hosted site outside Swissquote’s control, and Swissquote’s own material disclaims liability for use of that site.
• Stop out handling differs by platform: on CFXD and TradingView it liquidates on a FIFO basis, “realizing the oldest positions first,” with thresholds that widen from 0.30% up to 2.25% or more as total open position size grows; on MetaTrader, below a 30% margin level, “positions with the largest loss (regardless of their size) will be liquidated first.”
• Certain corporate actions, including splits, reverse splits, acquisitions, mergers, spin offs and some stock dividends, “will cause your positions to be automatically closed on your behalf” without a separate client instruction.

Where support gets thin, and where our earlier review does not hold up

• Support is split across ten regional entities with separate lines: Zurich HQ on +41 44 825 88 88, hours 08:00 to 22:00 CET Monday to Friday; London on +44 20 7186 2600, 08:00 to 18:00 UK time; Dubai on +971 4 450 1777, 08:30 to 17:30 Sunday to Thursday; Hong Kong on +852 3902 0000; Singapore on +65 6982 6780, 09:00 to 18:00 SGT; Luxembourg on +352 2603 2003; Cyprus on +357 25 258 250; and South Africa on +27 21 565 0930. A dedicated Forex Dealing Desk runs nearly around the clock, 23:00 Sunday to 23:00 Friday CET, though calls to it are recorded and it is reserved for forex, CFD and cryptocurrency orders.
• An earlier review claimed Swissquote “cannot accept clients” from Singapore and Hong Kong. Swissquote’s own pages describe staffed, regulated subsidiaries in both: Swissquote Pte. Ltd, MAS licensed in Singapore, and Swissquote Asia Ltd, SFC licensed in Hong Kong.
• The same earlier review headlined “spreads from 0.6 pips.” Swissquote’s own current pricing pages give Standard from 1.7 pips, Premium from 1.4 pips and Prime from 1.1 pips; no published tier matches the figure from our earlier review.
• The same earlier review stated Swissquote provides negative balance protection “for all retail client accounts.” Swissquote’s own Forex and CFD Risk Disclosure states losses are “in theory unlimited” and clients “may be required to make additional payments” below the required margin level, which does not match a blanket protection claim.
• Separately from our earlier review, Swissquote’s own pages disagree with each other: the UK site states “78.23% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider,” while other regional risk disclosure pages state 68.22% of retail investors… lost money… over the past 12 months.

Licenses & Regulation

Swissquote sits inside a licensed banking group, and the entity list is among the widest we have checked for any CFD provider in this catalogue: nine jurisdictions, most of them checked directly against a register rather than taking the firm’s “regulated” badge on trust.

The core banking licence and the entities behind it

The parent is Swissquote Bank Ltd, which the FINMA list of authorised banks and securities firms carries under its French name, Swissquote Bank SA, showing it as a Bank in Gland, supervisory category 4 on FINMA’s own 1-to-5 scale, where 1 is the largest institution and 5 the smallest. That category is a size measure, not a standing rating, and the FINMA list publishes no licence number for it, so none is quoted here. Around that Swiss core sit country subsidiaries, and the UK one carries the deepest paper trail: Swissquote Ltd holds FCA reference 562170, shown on the FCA register as Authorised with an effective date of 2 May 2012, and the same entity is company number 07710095 on Companies House, incorporated 19 July 2011 and currently Active. Companies House is a company registry rather than a financial regulator, so it confirms the company’s existence and never a trading permission.

Swissquote’s regional licences, checked one by one

Outside the UK, the group holds authorisations that the register text describes with real specificity. Swissquote MEA Ltd is Authorised Firm F001438 on the DFSA public register. Swissquote Asia Ltd holds CE reference AZV127 on the Hong Kong SFC register, licensed for Type 3, Leveraged Foreign Exchange Trading, shown active, with three licensing conditions attached and no public disciplinary action recorded against it. Swissquote Financial Services (Malta) Ltd is on the MFSA register as an Investment Firm with status “Licence Authorised” since 22 October 2012, permissioned for execution of orders and reception/transmission of orders across a long list of instrument classes, restricted to eligible counterparties and professional clients rather than retail. Swissquote Pte. Ltd appears in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory as a Capital Markets Services Licensee, covering dealing in capital markets products, securities, collective investment schemes, exchange-traded and OTC derivatives, and custodial services; MAS’s directory, like FINMA’s list, publishes no licence numbers. Swissquote Bank Europe Ltd is on the ESMA register as an active investment firm under Luxembourg’s CSSF, authorised 13 November 2000, LEI 549300M2IHOB9P5WE714. Swissquote Capital Markets Ltd holds CIF licence 422/22 on the Cyprus CySEC register, which the register itself frames as a financial-services authorisation and not merely a company filing. And Swissquote South Africa (Pty) Ltd is FSP 43908 on South Africa’s FSCA register, status Authorized.

Where the record runs out

Three items on Swissquote’s own pages fall outside what we could check. The Dubai representative office is described as licensed by the “Central Bank of the UAE,” but we hold no register entry for that authority and the firm’s own text names no licence number to look up, so this is a gap in our directory rather than a finding for or against the firm. The same applies to the UK VAT number 133445531 quoted on the site, and to the share capital figures disclosed for Swissquote Asia Ltd (HKD 5,500,000) and Swissquote Tech Hub Bucharest S.R.L. (RON 45,000): both are capital disclosures, not registry or licence numbers, and neither authority is named clearly enough to check. We also ran a positive control before treating any of these as absent, searching all eleven registers for a firm we already knew was listed, so a register returning nothing genuinely means nothing was found rather than a broken search.

Company registrations that back the licences

Two entries confirm the corporate shell rather than a trading permission: Companies House for Swissquote Ltd as above, and Singapore’s ACRA register, where Swissquote Pte. Ltd appears under UEN 201906194G as a Local Company, registered 26 February 2019 and status Live Company as at ACRA’s snapshot of 16 September 2026.

The warning-list search

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Swissquote appears on none of them. That is a genuine clean result worth stating plainly, but its scope is exactly those three sources, not a clearance from every regulator worldwide.

Our previous score for this review was 4.2 out of 10; this one scores 7 overall, with regulation itself at 8.3. The move is ours, not a change in the firm: this pass rests on eleven registers checked directly, each returning a confirmed licence or company record with a positive control behind it, plus a clean 1,441-entry warning-list search, and that density of directly verified permissions across banking, investment-firm and securities regulators is what the regulation score reflects.

How to Trade

Swissquote runs three retail CFD tiers off a single pricing ladder, and the tier a client opens sets both the cost and the size of what they can trade. The firm’s own fee page puts the Standard account’s minimum deposit at $1,000 with spreads “from 1.7 pips” and a minimum trade size of 0.01 lot; Premium raises the deposit to $10,000 for spreads “from 1.4 pips” and a 0.1 lot minimum; Prime needs $50,000 for spreads “from 1.1 pips” and a 1 lot minimum. None of the three carries a separate commission on forex. A fourth, Professional, tier is volume-based with pricing set case by case for clients who qualify. The same page gives Standard Leverage as 1:100 for every tier, against a maintenance margin of 100 and a stop out at 30%. It carries an asterisk beside that figure whose footnote we did not find on the pages we fetched, so whether the 1:100 holds for clients of every entity is not something this page settles.

What Swissquote actually lists

The tradable range spans more than 130 forex pairs across majors, minors and exotics, all priced through an all-in spread with no separate commission, according to the firm’s fee page. CFDs extend to precious metals, government bonds, indices such as Spot US 30, US Tech 100, Germany 40, Japan 225 and China 50, and commodities including WTI Crude Oil, all under the same all-in-spread structure. Stock CFDs cover US, Swiss, German, UK and French names, priced separately by commission rather than spread: the fee page gives US share CFDs at USD 0.03 per share on Standard, USD 0.02 on Premium and USD 0.01 on Prime, each with a per-side minimum of USD 20, 15 and 10 respectively, while CH/DE/UK/FR share CFDs run 0.15%, 0.12% and 0.09% of trade value on the same three tiers, again per side. Swissquote also books real stocks as securities across more than 50 markets, alongside what its Singapore page describes as over 9,000 ETFs, nearly a million options and futures, and more than 20,000 funds. Bitcoin and Ethereum trade as leveraged CFDs around the clock, and the firm separately runs SQX, its own exchange, for spot trading in 52 cryptocurrencies.

Platforms, and who Swissquote is when the order fills

Orders route through MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, Swissquote’s own CFXD platform (also referenced in older material as Advanced Trader), or TradingView, per the firm’s platform and pricing pages. MT4 and MT5 are also reachable through MetaQuotes’ own WebTrader, which the platform page flags as hosted on a third-party site outside Swissquote’s control, with Swissquote disclaiming liability for its use. Whichever platform the order runs on, Swissquote’s own risk disclosure sets the execution relationship in unambiguous terms: “The Bank is your sole counterparty for all forex instrument and CFD transactions and is not required to seek the best possible outcome when carrying out your orders. The Bank is acting in its own interest and has no duty to protect you from losses.” The same disclosure warns that stop-loss orders “may be executed at prices significantly worse than the price you desire,” and that a pending order “may also not be cancelled outside business days or outside the hours of operation of the platforms.”

Margin, exposure limits and forced closes

Exposure is capped by what Swissquote calls Net Open Position, or NOP, limits, which the firm’s fee page describes as set and adjusted dynamically by Swissquote itself; an order that would exceed the client’s current NOP limit “is rejected and it will be cancelled,” with the client expected to check the live figure through eBanking rather than being shown it upfront. Once a position is deep enough underwater, the two platform families liquidate differently. On CFXD and TradingView, Swissquote’s fee page describes a FIFO stop-out, “realizing the oldest positions first,” with the margin-level threshold that triggers it ranging from 0.30% up to 2.25% or more depending on total open position size, so a larger book gets a less forgiving cutoff. On MetaTrader, the same page sets the trigger differently: below a 30% margin level, “positions with the largest loss (regardless of their size) will be liquidated first,” which need not be the position the client would have chosen to close.

Corporate actions, dividends and the crypto downtime carve-out

A handful of clauses on Swissquote’s fee page reach directly into open positions. Certain corporate actions on the underlying share, including splits, reverse splits, acquisitions, mergers, spin-offs and some stock dividends, “will cause your positions to be automatically closed on your behalf,” with no separate instruction from the client required. Cash dividends on stock CFDs are adjusted asymmetrically: long positions receive a withheld-tax-reduced share of the dividend, which the fee page puts at 65% for Swiss stocks, 73.625% for German stocks and 55% for US stocks, while short positions are charged the full, un-withheld dividend amount. For crypto CFDs, which the firm says trade 24/7, the fee page also carves out scheduled weekend maintenance windows of up to two to four hours; during those windows, “we cannot be held responsible for any potential losses on these products,” so a position left open through a maintenance gap carries its market risk with no platform recourse. Forward products sit outside the normal rollover charge but instead carry a round-turn commission per lot, which the fee page prices at USD 10 on Standard, USD 5 on Premium and USD 0 on Prime.

Our previous score for Swissquote was 4.2 out of 10; this review scores it 7 out of 10. The move is our assessment, not a change in the firm, and it follows from what direct checks turned up rather than from the material from our earlier review this catalogue previously relied on. Regulation now scores 8.3, built on the eleven-register search above rather than a summary of licences. Platform scores 7.9 on the range actually documented on Swissquote’s own pages: four trading platforms, four figures’ worth of instruments across forex, CFDs, real stocks, funds and two separate crypto offerings. Support scores lower, at 5.3, which is consistent with a firm that routes clients through more than a dozen separate regional phone lines and email addresses rather than one channel.

Account Types

Swissquote sells four CFD/forex account tiers plus a separate automated-investing product, and the tiers are priced apart mainly by minimum deposit, quoted spread, and the per-lot or per-share commission charged on stock CFDs and forward products. The firm’s own fee page for the Standard, Premium and Prime tiers is the source for the figures below.

Standard, Premium and Prime

The entry tier, Standard, needs USD 1,000 or the currency equivalent to open, carries spreads “from 1.7 pips” on the firm’s own pricing page, charges no commission on forex, and caps leverage at 1:100 with a minimum trade size of 0.01 lot. Premium steps the minimum deposit up to USD 10,000, tightens the quoted spread to “from 1.4 pips,” and is marked on the same page as the firm’s most popular tier; leverage on Premium is given as 1:100 on that page, with no separate figure for clients booked in the EU, and the minimum trade size rises to 0.1 lot. Prime needs USD 50,000, quotes spreads “from 1.1 pips,” carries the same 1:100 figure, and lifts the minimum trade size to a full lot. None of the three tiers charges a commission on forex itself; the spread is the cost.

The gap between tiers is more visible in what Swissquote charges on stock CFDs and forward products, and this is where the deposit tiers actually pay for something concrete. On US share CFDs, the per-side commission is USD 0.03 per share on Standard, USD 0.02 on Premium and USD 0.01 on Prime, each with its own minimum ticket of USD 20, USD 15 and USD 10 per side respectively. On Swiss, German, UK and French share CFDs the same three tiers charge 0.15%, 0.12% and 0.09% of trade value per side, again with the USD 20/15/10 per-side minimums. Forward products, which are exempt from the rollover fee that applies to other CFDs, instead carry a round-turn commission that falls from USD 10 on Standard to USD 5 on Premium to zero on Prime. A client moving up the deposit ladder is therefore buying a lower per-trade commission on stocks and forwards, not a materially different product.

Professional accounts

Above Prime sits a Professional tier, described on the same fee page as volume-based or custom rather than carrying a published minimum deposit, with pricing and spreads set individually for eligible clients meeting certain criteria. The page does not set out what those criteria are or publish a rate card for this tier.

What holding a Swissquote account costs beyond the spread

Two account-level charges sit outside the tier structure and apply regardless of which of the four tiers a client holds. Swissquote’s fee page states an inactivity fee of up to 10 units of the account’s base currency per month (or the CHF 10 equivalent), triggered after six months with no open positions and no trading, deducted monthly until either the balance reaches zero or trading resumes; it applies to retail clients only, and the same page exempts introducing brokers, money managers, institutional and corporate clients. A separate custody fee of CHF 20 to 50 per quarter, plus 0.0075% per quarter on assets above CHF 1,000,000, applies per account whenever it holds securities or cryptocurrencies, according to the firm’s contact/fees page. That same page prices a tax statement at CHF 100 per account per year, generated within ten working days on request, and prices moving securities out to another financial institution at EUR/USD/CHF 50 per line, while transfers into a Swissquote account or between Swissquote accounts are free.

Invest Easy

Alongside the CFD tiers, Swissquote’s UAE page describes Invest Easy, an automated investing product with a stated minimum deposit of 500, given without a currency beside it, and an annual management fee of 0.60%. The page does not set out a further breakdown of what that management fee covers beyond the automated allocation itself.

Reading the tiers against Swissquote’s own risk terms

The account pages advertise deposit size as the route to tighter spreads and lower commissions, but the firm’s Forex and CFD Risk Disclosure, which we read directly, states that “losses are in theory unlimited and you may be required to make additional payments if your account balance falls below the required margin level,” on any of these accounts. The same disclosure states that Swissquote “is your sole counterparty for all forex instrument and CFD transactions and is not required to seek the best possible outcome when carrying out your orders.” Nothing in the account-tier pages we read qualifies either statement by tier, so a Prime account carries the same principal-counterparty and margin-call exposure as a Standard one; it simply pays a lower commission on the way in.

Negative Balance Protection

Swissquote’s own Forex and CFD Risk Disclosure does not promise to cap a client’s losses at their account balance. It says the reverse: “Losses are in theory unlimited and you may be required to make additional payments if your account balance falls below the required margin level.” That single sentence, from the firm’s own risk disclosure document, is the starting point for this section, because it rules out treating Swissquote as a blanket negative-balance-protection broker.

What Swissquote’s risk disclosure says about who bears the loss

The same document sets out the dealing relationship in plain terms: “The Bank is your sole counterparty for all forex instrument and CFD transactions and is not required to seek the best possible outcome when carrying out your orders. The Bank is acting in its own interest and has no duty to protect you from losses.” Read together with the unlimited-losses line above, the disclosure describes a principal dealing model with no best-execution duty and no stated obligation to shield a client’s balance, rather than the protective backstop some CFD brokers advertise.

Stop-loss orders and order cancellation

The same risk disclosure warns that stop loss orders “may be executed at prices significantly worse than the price you desire,” and that open orders “may also not be cancelled outside business days or outside the hours of operation of the platforms.” A stop loss placed to cap a loss at a given level is therefore not a guarantee of that level, and a client who wants to pull an order outside trading hours may not be able to.

How Swissquote closes positions once margin runs low

Swissquote’s fee and platform documentation sets out separate stop-out mechanics depending on the platform. On CFXD and TradingView, the stop-out policy uses FIFO liquidation, “realizing the oldest positions first,” with stop-out thresholds that the firm’s own page puts at a range “from 0.30% up to 2.25%+” depending on the size of total open positions, meaning larger books are stopped out at a less forgiving margin level than smaller ones. On MetaTrader, the mechanic is different again: below a 30% Margin Level, “positions with the largest loss (regardless of their size) will be liquidated first.” A client running MT4 or MT5 alongside CFXD is therefore subject to two different liquidation orders depending on which platform holds the position.

Ahead of forced liquidation, Swissquote also polices exposure through Net Open Position (NOP) limits that the firm sets and adjusts itself: “should an order exceed your NOP limits, its execution is rejected and it will be cancelled.” The published material describes these limits as dynamic and checked through the client’s own eBanking access, not disclosed upfront on a rate card.

Forced closures outside the margin process

Two further conditions can close or affect a position without a drawdown being reached. Swissquote’s fee page states that certain corporate actions on the underlying stock, including splits, reverse splits, acquisitions, mergers, spin-offs and some stock dividends, “will cause your positions to be automatically closed on your behalf” on the relevant stock CFD. Separately, on cryptocurrency CFDs, which the firm’s material says trade 24/7 with occasional scheduled weekend maintenance windows of two to four hours, Swissquote states: “We cannot be held responsible for any potential losses on these products during platform downtimes.” A position open into one of those maintenance windows carries market risk that the firm’s own wording disclaims responsibility for.

The loss-rate figures Swissquote publishes about itself

Swissquote’s own pages do not agree on the percentage of retail clients who lose money. The UK site states that “78.23% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider,” while other regional risk-disclosure pages, including the general and UAE versions, state that 68.22% of retail investors… lost money… over the past 12 months. Both figures come from the firm’s own published pages rather than from us, and the fact that they diverge by entity or region is worth a prospective client’s attention before assuming either number describes their own market.

Where an earlier review of Swissquote got this wrong

An earlier review of this firm stated that Swissquote provides negative balance protection for all retail client accounts. We are not repeating that claim. It is contradicted by the firm’s own risk disclosure quoted above, which describes losses as “in theory unlimited” and reserves the right to require additional payments below the required margin level. Where a claim from our earlier review conflicts with the firm’s own document, we go with the document.

Trading Instruments

Swissquote’s own fee page for its Middle East entity lists forex as more than 130 currency pairs, priced on an all-in spread with no separate commission, and folds precious metals, index CFDs (the page names Spot US 30, US Tech 100, Germany 40, Japan 225, China 50), commodity CFDs such as WTI Crude Oil, and government bond CFDs into that same all-in-spread offering. Stock exposure comes two ways on that page: CFDs on shares from the US, Switzerland, Germany, UK and France, and real stocks bought as securities across more than 50 stock markets worldwide. Swissquote’s Singapore page adds to the securities side of the business: over 9,000 ETFs, close to a million options and futures contracts, and more than 20,000 funds. Forward products are named on the fee page too, exempt from the rollover fee but carrying their own round-turn commission instead.

Swissquote’s account tiers change the price of the same assets, not the list

The UK fee page sets out four tiers on the CFD side, and what moves between them is cost and size, not what is tradable. Standard needs a $1,000 minimum deposit, quotes forex spreads from 1.7 pips with no commission, leverage up to 1:100 and a minimum trade size of 0.01 lot. Premium sits at the $10,000 level, with spreads from 1.4 pips, leverage capped at 1:100 outside the EU (1:30 inside it), and a minimum trade size of 0.1 lot. Prime needs $50,000, spreads from 1.1 pips, the same leverage split, and a 1 lot minimum. A fourth tier, Professional, is described as volume-based with custom spreads for clients who qualify. A separate product, Invest Easy, is pitched on the UAE page as automated investing with a 500 minimum and a 0.60% annual management fee, distinct from the CFD tiers.

Where Swissquote’s own pages pull in different directions on who can trade what

Swissquote MEA Ltd’s own general legal information states that it does not promote, arrange or provide CFDs, rolling spot FX or other restricted speculative investments, as the DFSA Rulebook defines them, to retail clients. That statement sits on the same UAE site that markets forex and gold trading with leverage to a general regional audience. We read both pages; we did not see the MEA entity’s page reconcile the two. Separately, Swissquote’s Singapore page restricts access to its own content to Accredited, Institutional or Expert Investors as defined in Section 4A of the Securities and Futures Act (Cap. 289), and states it is not intended for retail clients or US residents. That page also corrects our earlier review: the earlier text claimed Swissquote cannot accept clients from Singapore or Hong Kong, but Swissquote’s own pages describe staffed, licensed operations in both, Swissquote Pte. Ltd under its Capital Markets Services licence and Swissquote Asia Ltd under its SFC licence, so the blanket exclusion in that earlier review does not match what Swissquote’s own site describes.

What can happen to a position Swissquote holds for a client

The fee page’s corporate actions section states that certain events, splits, reverse splits, acquisitions, mergers, spin-offs and some stock dividends, “will cause your positions to be automatically closed on your behalf”, with no separate instruction from the client required. The same page sets out an asymmetric dividend adjustment on stock CFDs: a long position receives a withheld-tax-reduced share of the dividend (the page gives 65% for Switzerland, 73.625% for Germany, 55% for the US), while a short position is charged the full gross dividend. A different fee page states that for crypto CFDs, “we cannot be held responsible for any potential losses on these products during platform downtimes” during scheduled weekend maintenance windows of up to two to four hours. That same page describes Net Open Position limits set and adjusted by Swissquote itself, with any order that exceeds a client’s NOP limit rejected and cancelled, and sets out two different stop-out regimes depending on platform: on CFXD and TradingView, liquidation follows FIFO order, closing the oldest positions first, at thresholds the page lists from 0.30% up to 2.25% or more depending on total open position size; on MetaTrader, once margin level falls below 30%, the position “with the largest loss (regardless of their size)” is liquidated first. A client choosing between platforms is choosing between two different rules for which of their positions gets closed first in a margin call.

Platforms Swissquote offers for trading these assets

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are both listed on Swissquote’s platform page as ways to trade these assets. MT4 covers 130+ forex pairs, 60+ stock CFDs and 30+ index CFDs, comes with over 30 indicators, runs on desktop, web and mobile, and supports Expert Advisors. MT5 adds 38+ indicators and 21 timeframes, plus MQL5 custom indicators and EAs. Both are also reachable through browser based MT4/MT5 WebTrader access; the same page notes that WebTrader is hosted by MetaQuotes on a third-party website outside Swissquote’s control, and Swissquote disclaims liability for its use. Alongside MetaTrader, Swissquote’s own material names CFXD, its proprietary platform, and TradingView as the other two ways to trade the forex and CFD range.

Education & Analysis

Swissquote runs three platforms side by side: MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and its own CFXD (also referenced as “Advanced Trader” in older material), with TradingView offered as a fourth option for forex and CFDs, according to the firm’s own platform and root pages.

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 on Swissquote

The firm’s platforms page lists MT4 with access to 130+ forex pairs, 60+ stock CFDs and 30+ index CFDs, plus 30 or more built in indicators, delivered across desktop, web and mobile, with Expert Advisor support. MT5 is listed separately with 38 or more indicators and 21 timeframes, also across desktop, web and mobile, with MQL5 custom indicators and EAs. Both are standard MetaQuotes builds rather than anything Swissquote has modified, which is the usual arrangement at brokers that offer MetaTrader alongside a proprietary platform.

A browser based route into both, MT4/MT5 WebTrader, is also listed, but the same page discloses that this WebTrader is hosted by MetaQuotes on a third party website outside Swissquote’s control, and that Swissquote disclaims liability for use of that site. A trader who takes the WebTrader link as just another Swissquote surface is, per the firm’s own disclosure, actually on infrastructure the firm does not run and will not answer for.

CFXD, Swissquote’s own platform

Alongside MetaTrader, the firm’s fee page for its UAE audience describes CFXD as Swissquote’s own proprietary trading platform, built around one click trading and its own execution model. The evidence available to us does not carry a feature by feature breakdown of CFXD’s charting tools, so we cannot report on its indicator count or drawing toolset the way we can for MT4 and MT5; what we can say is that CFXD is where several of the firm’s execution mechanics documented elsewhere in its terms actually apply. The stop out policy for CFXD and TradingView, set out in the firm’s own material, liquidates on a first in first out basis, realizing the oldest positions first, with stop out thresholds that range from 0.30% up to 2.25% or higher depending on the size of the total open position. That is a materially different liquidation logic from MetaTrader, where the firm’s terms specify that below a 30% margin level, positions with the largest loss, regardless of their size, are liquidated first. A trader who splits activity across CFXD and an MT4 account is, by the firm’s own account, operating under two different rules for which position gets closed first in a margin call.

TradingView as a fourth option

Swissquote’s UK site lists TradingView as a third platform offered alongside CFXD and MetaTrader for forex and CFDs. As with CFXD, the evidence we hold does not include a page detailing what of TradingView’s charting library, indicators or layout tools Swissquote’s integration actually exposes, so we report the offering itself rather than its depth. What the firm’s terms do specify is that TradingView shares the same FIFO stop out regime as CFXD, so the execution mechanics described above for CFXD apply here too.

Instruments the platforms carry

Across these platforms, Swissquote’s own fee material lists 130 or more currency pairs across majors, minors and exotics, all-in spread pricing on forex with no separate commission, and CFDs on precious metals, indices such as Spot US 30, US Tech 100, Germany 40, Japan 225 and China 50, commodities including WTI Crude Oil, and government bond CFDs, all folded into the same all-in spread structure. Bitcoin and Ethereum are tradable 24/7 as leveraged CFDs, though the firm’s fee page notes occasional scheduled weekend downtime of two to four hours, and separately warns that it cannot be held responsible for potential losses on these products during that downtime. Stock CFDs cover US, Swiss, German, UK and French listed shares, priced per share or as a percentage of value depending on account tier, alongside real stock trading Swissquote describes as reaching more than 50 stock markets worldwide. Its Singapore page adds that clients can also reach over 9,000 ETFs, close to a million options and futures contracts, and more than 20,000 funds through the same account infrastructure, figures published on that regional site rather than broken out by platform.

What Swissquote’s charting offer does not cover in our evidence

The pages we fetched describe MT4, MT5, CFXD and TradingView as the platform lineup and give feature notes for the first two, but say nothing about a native charting package independent of these four, and nothing about API or algorithmic trading access outside MT4/MT5’s own Expert Advisor support. We did not fetch a dedicated CFXD or TradingView integration walkthrough, so any claim about drawing tools, indicator counts or layout customization on those two would be going beyond what the firm’s own pages, as gathered here, actually show.

Special Offers

Swissquote’s own fee and account pages are the only pages we read for this review, and none of them is a promotions page. The account-tiers page we fetched and the fee schedule pages describe pricing through spreads, per-lot commissions and a set of fixed charges. They say nothing about a welcome bonus, a deposit-match offer, a referral credit or a discount code, so we have nothing to report on that front beyond the fact that the pages we hold do not mention one.

What Swissquote’s tiers actually change

What the fee pages describe instead is four account tiers that widen access as deposit size rises, not a promotional ladder. The Standard tier requires $1,000 (or the equivalent) and carries spreads “from 1.7 pips” with no commission on forex, leverage up to 1:100, and a minimum trade size of 0.01 lot. Premium requires $10,000, tightens spreads to “from 1.4 pips”, and is described on the same page as the firm’s most popular tier. Prime requires $50,000 and spreads “from 1.1 pips”. A fourth tier, Professional, has no published minimum and is described as “volume based / Custom”, with pricing set individually for clients who meet its eligibility criteria, per the same fee page. None of this is framed on the page as a limited-time offer; it reads as the firm’s standard, permanent pricing structure.

The same tiering carries through into commission schedules on the AE fee page: forward products carry a round-turn commission of USD 10 on Standard, USD 5 on Premium and USD 0 on Prime; US share CFDs are charged USD 0.03/USD 0.02/USD 0.01 per share across the same three tiers, each with its own minimum ticket charge; and CFDs on Swiss, German, UK and French shares are charged 0.15%/0.12%/0.09% per side across the tiers. These are lower per-trade costs unlocked by depositing more, which a marketing page might frame as a benefit of the higher tiers, but the fee page itself presents them as the applicable commission rate for that tier rather than as a discount against some other stated price.

Invest Easy

The one named product on Swissquote’s own pages that comes with its own minimum deposit and its own fee is Invest Easy, an automated investing product described on the AE site with a minimum deposit of 500 and an annual management fee of 0.60%. That is a standing product fee, not a promotional rate, and the page gives no indication that 0.60% is discounted from a higher list price or that it runs for a limited time.

Charges that work against the client, not for them

Where the fee pages do talk about money moving in the client’s favour or against it, it is mostly the latter. The AE fee page sets an inactivity fee of up to 10 units of the account’s base currency per month, deducted after six months without an open position or a trade, running until the balance reaches zero or trading resumes; it applies to retail clients only, exempting introducing brokers, money managers, institutional and corporate clients. The same page lists a tax statement fee of CHF 100 per account per year, an additional position statement by post at CHF 25, a bank confirmation at CHF 100, and postal delivery of statements at CHF 10 per month. Swissquote’s contact page adds a custody fee of CHF 20 to CHF 50 per quarter for holding securities or cryptocurrencies, rising by 0.0075% per quarter on the portion of assets above CHF 1,000,000, and a charge of EUR/USD/CHF 50 per line to transfer securities out to another institution, while transfers into or within Swissquote are described as free.

None of the pages we fetched for this review describes a bonus, a cashback scheme, a spread rebate, or a time-limited sign-up incentive. What they describe is standing, tier-based pricing and a list of account-servicing fees, and that is what we can report.

Opening an Account

Swissquote publishes its account tiers as deposit thresholds rather than an application process: the firm’s own fee pages give Standard at USD 1,000 or the equivalent, Premium at USD 10,000, and Prime at USD 50,000, each carrying its own quoted spread from and its own minimum trade size (0.01 lot on Standard, 0.1 lot on Premium, 1 lot on Prime). A Professional tier is listed as volume based or custom, for clients meeting certain criteria, without those criteria stated on the page we read. Separately, the firm’s UAE page describes Invest Easy, an automated investing product opened with a minimum deposit of 500 and carrying a 0.60% annual management fee.

Which Swissquote entity opens the account

Swissquote is not one legal counterparty. The group runs separate regulated entities by region, and which one takes a new client determines which regulator and which terms apply. In the UK, the account sits with Swissquote Ltd, and the FCA register shows FRN 562170 held by Swissquote Ltd, status Authorised, effective 02/05/2012, Companies House number 07710095; Companies House itself confirms Swissquote Ltd as company 07710095, a private limited company incorporated 19 July 2011, status Active. In Dubai, the relevant entity is Swissquote MEA Ltd, confirmed on the DFSA public register of firms under reference F001438, listed as an Authorised Firm. In Singapore, Swissquote Pte. Ltd is confirmed in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory as a Capital Markets Services Licensee, and separately confirmed by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority’s register (ACRA open datasets, snapshot of 2026-09-16) under UEN 201906194G, a Local Company registered 2019-02-26, status Live Company. In Hong Kong, Swissquote Asia Limited holds CE reference AZV127 on the SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions, licensed for Type 3, Leveraged Foreign Exchange Trading, with 3 licensing conditions attached and no public disciplinary action recorded against it. In Cyprus, the CySEC register shows an active CIF licence, 422/22, for Swissquote Capital Markets Ltd. In Malta, the MFSA Financial Services Register lists Swissquote Financial Services (Malta) Ltd as an Investment Firm, licence authorised 22 October 2012, but scopes its permitted client types on that licence to Eligible Counterparties and Professional Clients, not retail investors. In South Africa, the FSCA record shows FSP 43908 held by Swissquote South Africa (Pty) Ltd, status Authorized. In Luxembourg, the ESMA register of investment firms and credit institutions shows Swissquote Bank Europe SA as an active investment firm supervised by the CSSF, authorised 13/11/2000. And in Switzerland, the FINMA list of authorised banks and securities firms carries Swissquote Bank Ltd as a Bank based in Gland, in FINMA’s supervisory category 4, a size grouping rather than a rating of standing; that list does not publish a licence number.

Who Swissquote will not open a retail account for

The firm’s own pages carry explicit exclusions rather than a single global eligibility rule. The Singapore site states that access is restricted to Accredited, Institutional or Expert Investors as defined in section 4A of the Securities and Futures Act (Cap. 289), and says it is not intended for retail clients or for US residents. On the UAE site, Swissquote MEA Ltd states that it does not promote, arrange or provide CFDs, rolling spot FX or other restricted speculative investments, as the DFSA Rulebook defines them, to retail clients, even though the same regional pages market forex and gold trading with leverage to that audience; a reader in the region drawn in by that marketing may find the entity is not actually permitted to open that product for them as a retail client. Visitors reaching the UK site through Swissquote Bank Ltd, which is not FCA authorised for that purpose, are shown a legal gate before they can continue, rather than being allowed to invite themselves into an offer the entity in front of them cannot make. Across all of these, the practical restriction is the same shape: which entity is willing to onboard a given applicant depends on where they live and what client category they fall into, not just whether they can fund an account.

What accepting Swissquote’s terms commits a new client to

The account application sits on top of terms that bind from the point of opening. The firm’s Forex and CFD Risk Disclosure states plainly that “Losses are in theory unlimited and you may be required to make additional payments if your account balance falls below the required margin level,” which a new client accepts before the first trade rather than discovering later. Section 10 of the legal terms we read fixes the relationship’s law and forum: This Policy is exclusively governed by Swiss law… The exclusive place of jurisdiction for any dispute… is Gland, Switzerland, while Swissquote reserves the right to take legal action against you in a court of competent jurisdiction of your place of residence or before any other competent court or jurisdiction, an asymmetric right that a client agrees to on account opening but does not receive in return. Section 4.2 of the same terms warns that exercising data subject rights “may prevent us from providing you with all or part of our services” and that Swissquote “may decide to terminate our relationship with you,” with repetitive or excessive requests chargeable or refusable, and section 7 sets communications data retention at up to 10 years after the last interaction. None of these are steps in the application itself, but they are the obligations an applicant is agreeing to the moment the account is approved.

Deposits & Withdrawals

The only funding rail described in the material we pulled is wire transfer. Swissquote’s UAE fee page says a wire transfer runs “up to 1 working day” and that third-party fees may apply on top of whatever Swissquote itself charges, meaning the receiving or intermediary bank can take its own cut before the money lands. We did not fetch pages describing card funding, e-wallets or local transfer rails, so this describes what the wire transfer page says and nothing more about the rest of the funding menu.

What Swissquote charges once money is in the account

Opening the door costs different amounts depending on which tier a client lands in. Our earlier review put the Standard account minimum at $1,000, Premium at $10,000 and Prime at $50,000, with a Professional tier priced on a custom, volume basis; the Swissquote pages we fetched for this review do not carry those figures, so they are restated from that earlier publication rather than confirmed by us. None of that is a deposit fee as such, it is the entry price of each tier, and it sets how much has to move across the wire before trading starts.

Holding securities or cryptocurrency in the account, rather than cash, draws a custody fee: the firm’s fee page gives this as CHF 20 to CHF 50 per quarter, plus 0.0075% per quarter on the slice of assets above CHF 1,000,000, charged per account. Clients who want a paper record of what happened to their money pay again: a tax statement costs CHF 100 per account per year and is produced within 10 working days of the request, an additional position statement sent by post costs 25 CHF, a bank confirmation costs 100 CHF, and postal delivery of bank statements costs 10 CHF per month, all per the same fee schedule. Non-private clients domiciled abroad, meaning legal-form account holders rather than individuals, face a separate 300 CHF per year processing charge, subject to exceptions the fee page does not spell out.

What it costs to get money and securities back out

Moving securities within Swissquote, between accounts held at the firm, costs nothing according to the fee schedule. Moving them to another financial institution is where the charge appears: the firm’s fee page prices that at EUR/USD/CHF 50 per line, meaning per security position transferred, not per transfer instruction. A client holding several different lines and closing out to move to a rival broker is paying that fee multiple times over. The evidence we hold does not price cash withdrawals by wire separately from the general “up to 1 working day, third-party fees may apply” wording on the funding page, so we cannot say whether Swissquote applies its own withdrawal charge on top of that.

Sitting still costs money at Swissquote

An inactivity fee applies to retail accounts with no open positions and no trading for six months: the firm’s fee schedule caps it at 10 units of the account’s base currency per month, or the CHF 10 equivalent, deducted monthly until either the balance reaches zero or trading resumes, and the fee schedule specifies it will not take the balance negative. Introducing brokers, money managers, and institutional and corporate clients are exempt. That cap and the exemption list are both stated on the fee page itself, not inferred.

Go further than inactive and become genuinely unreachable, and the charges escalate. The same fee schedule lists an “assets without contact” process that opens with CHF 100 for initial steps, moves to CHF 200 for basic research inside Switzerland or CHF 300 for research abroad, and can run to CHF 150 an hour with a CHF 300 minimum for advanced research, plus whatever third-party costs that research involves, on top of a CHF 50 notification fee to SIX SIS and a CHF 150 annual management charge for as long as the account sits unclaimed, all stated exclusive of VAT. A client who loses touch with Swissquote, rather than one who simply stops trading, is billed on a different and considerably longer schedule than the capped inactivity fee.

Our previous review of Swissquote scored it 4.2/10 overall; this review scores it 7/10, with the fees criterion itself landing at 7.2/10. That move is ours, made against the fee schedule above rather than against any change on the firm’s side: every charge in that schedule, from the inactivity cap to the per-line securities transfer fee to the tiered dormant-assets process, is published with a specific figure and a specific trigger, which is the kind of disclosure this catalogue can actually check and score against rather than take on faith.

Customer Support

Swissquote does not run one support desk; it runs ten, one per licensed entity, and which one answers depends on which regulator issued the account. The firm’s own about page lists direct phone lines for each subsidiary: Zurich headquarters on +41 44 825 88 88 (8:00 to 22:00 CET, Monday to Friday), London on +44 20 7186 2600 (8:00 to 18:00 UK time, email info@swissquote.co.uk), Dubai’s MEA office on +971 4 450 1777 (8:30 to 17:30, Sunday to Thursday, email ae.sales@swissquote.com), a separate Dubai representative-office line on +971 4 450 17 03 with the same Sunday-to-Thursday hours, Hong Kong on +852 3902 0000 with a Chinese-language toll-free number on 4000 850 999, Malta on +356 222 65 100 with a named contact, Singapore on +65 6982 6780 (9:00 to 18:00 Singapore time, email b2bsingapore@swissquote.com), Luxembourg on +352 2603 2003 (email clientservices@swissquote.lu), Cyprus on +357 25 258 250 (9:00 to 18:00 Cyprus time, with Italian and Spanish cover extended to 19:00), and South Africa on +27 21 565 0930 (email SA-Desk@swissquote.com). None of these pages describe a live chat function; the channels on record are phone and email, entity by entity.

The Forex Dealing Desk and the general hotline

Alongside the entity switchboards, the firm’s UK contact page lists a Client Hotline for private clients and partners trading forex, on +41 44 825 87 77 (fx@swissquote.com, 8:00 to 18:00 CET Monday to Friday), and a separate Forex Dealing Desk on +41 22 999 94 76. The same page states the Dealing Desk runs close to around the clock, from 23:00 Sunday to 23:00 Friday CET, but restricts it to customers actually placing forex, CFD or cryptocurrency orders, and states plainly that all calls to it are recorded. That is a dealing line, not a general help line, and the recording notice on it is the one piece of the support setup the firm states in writing rather than leaving implicit.

What Swissquote’s own terms do to a client who complains

The firm’s UK legal notice states that Swissquote keep[s]… communication data for up to 10 years after your last interaction with us, so a support call or email logged with the firm stays on file for a decade after the account closes. The same notice sets conditions on a client who tries to push back through their data rights: exercising them “may prevent us from providing you with all or part of our services,” and Swissquote “may decide to terminate our relationship with you” as a result, while requests judged repetitive or excessive can be charged a fee or refused outright. A client raising a formal data or privacy complaint is therefore reading a clause that ties that complaint to the possible loss of service, not a neutral escalation path.

On where a dispute actually gets heard, the same legal notice states the relationship “is exclusively governed by Swiss law” and that the exclusive place of jurisdiction for any dispute… is Gland, Switzerland, while Swissquote reserve[s] the right to take legal action against you in a court of competent jurisdiction of your place of residence or before any other competent court or jurisdiction. Read together, a client contesting the firm is pointed to Swiss courts under Swiss law, while Swissquote keeps the option of suing the client on the client’s own home turf instead. That asymmetry sits underneath any support interaction that escalates past a phone call or an email.

Named contact points for complaints and security

Two specific inboxes stand out from the general run of entity contact details: privacy@swissquote.com, given on the UK legal page as the route for data-protection queries, and phishing.report@swissquote.ch, given on the UAE accounts page for reporting suspected fraud or impersonation. The same accounts page names the firm’s only official apps as “Swissquote” and “CFXD” and lists its exclusive official domains, which reads as a firm that has had enough impersonation attempts to put the warning on a client-facing page rather than an internal one.

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from the CySEC, FCA and FSC Mauritius lists and found no match for Swissquote, so none of the entities named above carries a public warning from those three regulators. That is a narrow check, limited to the lists we mirror, but it is worth stating because a clean result there is not something our earlier review had to work with.

Why this score moved

This review scores support at 5.3 out of 10, against an overall score this catalogue previously gave the firm of 4.2. The two numbers are not measuring the same thing and neither restates the other: this is a fresh assessment built from the entity list, contact pages, risk disclosure and legal notice above, not a judgment that the support desk itself got better or worse. What the evidence shows is a genuinely large, regulator-by-regulator contact network with named phones, faxes and emails for ten separate entities, set against no visible live-chat channel, a recorded dealing line, a decade-long data-retention period on communications, and a jurisdiction clause that runs one way for the client and another way for the firm.

Prohibited Countries

Reading each entity’s own site, what we found is a set of narrower, entity-specific gates: some pages restrict who inside a given market may open an account, and one restricts which products a given entity may sell to retail clients at all.

Singapore: gated to accredited and institutional investors

Swissquote’s Singapore site states that access to the content on that site is Restricted to Accredited/Institutional/Expert Investors as defined in Section 4A of the Securities and Futures Act (Cap. 289); not intended for retail clients or US residents. Swissquote Pte. Ltd, the entity behind that site, is confirmed on the MAS Financial Institutions Directory as a Capital Markets Services Licensee, with activities listed as dealing in capital markets products, securities, collective investment schemes, exchange-traded derivatives, over-the-counter derivatives and custodial services. It is also confirmed on the ACRA register (UEN 201906194G, Local Company, registered 2019-02-26, status Live Company). The gate is investor classification rather than nationality: a Singapore resident is not shut out as such, but a retail one is, because the content is stated not to be intended for retail clients. The same notice separately names US residents as excluded from that site’s content.

Dubai: retail clients kept off CFDs and rolling spot FX

Swissquote MEA Ltd’s own site states that it does not promote, arrange or provide CFDs, rolling spot FX and other products the DFSA Rulebook defines as restricted speculative investments, to retail clients. Swissquote MEA Ltd is confirmed on the DFSA public register under reference F001438, listed as an Authorised Firm. Worth flagging as a genuine inconsistency inside the firm’s own material rather than a settled fact for readers to rely on: the same regional pages that carry this retail exclusion also market forex and gold trading with leverage to the same audience, so what a Dubai-based retail visitor is shown and what the entity states it is permitted to provide to them do not line up on the pages we fetched.

UK: a legal gate in front of the Swiss bank, not the FCA entity

Swissquote runs two separate operations into the UK. Swissquote Ltd is the FCA-authorised entity, FRN 562170, confirmed on the FCA register with status Authorised, effective 02/05/2012, and Companies House number 07710095 (confirmed on the Companies House register, incorporated 19 July 2011, status Active). But the UK legal pages also describe content published by Swissquote Bank Ltd, the Swiss bank, and visitors reaching that content are shown a legal gate before continuing because Swissquote Bank Ltd is not authorised by the FCA for that purpose. A UK visitor’s actual counterparty, in other words, depends on which of the two entities’ content they land on.

Where an earlier review’s country list does not hold up

An earlier published review of Swissquote claimed the firm “cannot accept clients” from the United States, Canada, Belgium, France, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. We did not read whatever source that review drew the list from, and on the two of those seven markets we can check against Swissquote’s own pages, the claim does not hold. Swissquote Pte. Ltd is licensed and registered for Singapore as described above, with a staffed Singapore office (phone +65 6982 6780, hours 9:00 to 18:00 SGT Monday to Friday). Swissquote Asia Ltd is confirmed on the Hong Kong SFC Public Register of Licensed Persons and Registered Institutions under CE reference AZV127, licensed for Type 3 (Leveraged Foreign Exchange Trading), carrying three licensing conditions, with the register recording no public disciplinary action against it, and its own staffed Hong Kong office (phone +852 3902 0000, plus a Chinese toll-free line). Neither market reads as one the firm is shut out of on the pages we fetched.

For the remaining five countries the earlier review named, the United States, Canada, Belgium, France and Japan, the pages we fetched say nothing either way. We hold no restriction naming any of them and no confirmation that Swissquote serves them either, so we are not in a position to confirm or contradict the earlier review’s claim there. That gap is ours, not a finding about the firm.

Conclusion

Swissquote scores 7 out of 10 in this catalogue’s CFD category, up from a 4.2 the last time we reviewed the firm. The rise is our assessment, not the firm’s: this pass rests on eleven register checks and a direct read of Swissquote’s own fee, risk and legal pages rather than on our earlier review the previous score drew from, and several of that earlier review’s headline claims do not hold up against what Swissquote’s own site actually says. The 8.3 regulation mark reflects a genuinely wide, confirmed licensing footprint; the 5.3 support mark and the contradictions below are the reason the overall score sits at 7 rather than higher.

Swissquote’s licences, confirmed register by register

We searched 11 public registers directly and ran a positive control on each first, so a clean result means absence rather than a broken search. Swissquote Ltd holds FCA reference 562170, status Authorised, effective 02/05/2012, and is Companies House company 07710095. Swissquote MEA Ltd is on the DFSA register under reference F001438 as an Authorised Firm. Swissquote Asia Ltd holds Hong Kong SFC reference AZV127, licensed for Type 3 Leveraged Foreign Exchange Trading, with 3 licensing conditions attached and no public disciplinary action recorded. Swissquote Financial Services (Malta) Ltd is on the MFSA register with status “Licence Authorised”, issued 22-10-2012, as an Investment Firm. Swissquote Pte. Ltd is in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory as a Capital Markets Services Licensee, and separately on the ACRA register as UEN 201906194G. Swissquote Bank Europe SA is on the ESMA register of investment firms as Active, supervised by the CSSF, authorised 13/11/2000. Swissquote Capital Markets Ltd holds an active CIF licence, number 422/22, on the CySEC register. Swissquote South Africa (Pty) Ltd holds FSCA licence 43908, status Authorized. Swissquote Bank Ltd appears on the FINMA list of authorised banks as a Bank, Gland, in supervisory category 4 of 5, which measures the institution’s size and not its standing; that list publishes no licence number. Two claims in the firm’s own material fall outside our directory: the UAE representative office’s claim against the “Central Bank of the UAE” and Swissquote Ltd’s UK VAT number are both gaps in our register coverage, not findings about the firm. We also checked 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and Swissquote appears on none of them.

What Swissquote charges to trade and to leave

The firm’s fee pages set three retail tiers: Standard from $1,000 with spreads from 1.7 pips, Premium from $10,000 with spreads from 1.4 pips, and Prime from $50,000 with spreads from 1.1 pips, all with no forex commission. Past the spread, the same pages list a custody fee of CHF 20 to CHF 50 per quarter (plus 0.0075% per quarter on holdings above CHF 1,000,000) for anyone holding securities or crypto rather than cash, an inactivity fee of up to 10 units of base currency a month after six months without a trade, and a tax statement fee of CHF 100 a year. Moving securities to another institution costs EUR/USD/CHF 50 per line, though transfers within Swissquote are free. If Swissquote loses contact with a client, its fee page lists an escalating “assets without contact” charge running from CHF 100 for initial steps up to CHF 150 an hour for advanced research (minimum CHF 300) plus CHF 150 a year in management fees. Stock CFD commissions also step down by tier, from $0.03 to $0.01 per US share and from 0.15% to 0.09% on CH/DE/UK/FR shares, and forward products carry a per-lot round-turn commission in place of a rollover charge.

CFXD, MetaTrader and the instrument list

Swissquote offers its own CFXD platform alongside MT4, MT5 and TradingView, across desktop, web and mobile, with Expert Advisor support on MetaTrader. The instrument range on the firm’s own pages covers 130+ forex pairs, index, commodity and bond CFDs, real stocks and stock CFDs across US, Swiss, German, UK and French markets, over 9,000 ETFs, more than 20,000 funds, and BTC and ETH tradable as CFDs 24/7 aside from scheduled weekend maintenance windows of two to four hours, during which the firm’s own terms say it “cannot be held responsible for any potential losses” on open crypto positions.

Support split across eleven entities

The support score of 5.3 reflects a contact structure spread across separate desks rather than one route in: Zurich on +41 44 825 88 88 (8:00-22:00 CET), London on +44 20 7186 2600 (8:00-18:00 UK time), Dubai on +971 4 450 1777 (8:30-17:30 Sunday-Thursday), Hong Kong on +852 3902 0000, Singapore on +65 6982 6780 (9:00-18:00 SGT), Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus and South Africa each with their own numbers and, in several cases, their own inbox. The dedicated Forex Dealing Desk on +41 22 999 94 76 runs close to around the clock, from 23:00 Sunday to 23:00 Friday CET, but is reserved for clients placing forex, CFD and crypto orders, and the firm states all calls to it are recorded.

Where Swissquote’s own pages contradict our earlier review

The previous review’s negative-balance-protection claim does not match Swissquote’s own risk disclosure, which states losses are “in theory unlimited and you may be required to make additional payments if your account balance falls below the required margin level.” Its “spreads from 0.6 pips” headline is not matched by any tier on the firm’s own fee page, where the lowest published figure is 1.1 pips on Prime. And its claim that Swissquote cannot accept clients from Singapore and Hong Kong sits against the firm’s own MAS-licensed Singapore entity and SFC-licensed Hong Kong entity, both actively described and staffed on Swissquote’s own pages. Separately, the firm’s own UK page states “78.23% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider,” while its general risk disclosure gives 68.22% for the same period, a discrepancy inside Swissquote’s own material rather than an outside source. The risk disclosure also states Swissquote is “your sole counterparty for all forex instrument and CFD transactions and is not required to seek the best possible outcome when carrying out your orders,” and its legal terms set an asymmetric jurisdiction clause: disputes go to Gland, Switzerland under Swiss law, but the firm reserve[s] the right to take legal action against you in a court of competent jurisdiction of your place of residence or before any other competent court or jurisdiction.

Swissquote’s licences are confirmed on the FCA, DFSA, SFC, MFSA, MAS, CSSF and CySEC registers, and its fee schedule adds custody, inactivity and dormant-account charges on top of spreads that start at 1.7 pips. This review scores Swissquote 7 out of 10 for CFD trading, up from a prior 4.2, with regulation at 8.3 and support the weakest mark at 5.3.

FAQ