FBS review.

Overview

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is our review of FBS, scored 6.9 out of 10 across regulation, fees, platform, support and reviews.

FBS is not one company but two, trading under the same brand. Tradestone Limited, registered in Cyprus as HE 353534 and holding CySEC licence 331/17 (confirmed on the CySEC register of investment firms), serves clients through fbs.com’s EU-facing pages and caps leverage at 1:30. FBS Markets Inc., registered in Belize, serves clients through the international version of the same site and advertises leverage up to 1:3000. A payments entity, HDC Technologies Ltd. (Cyprus HE 370778, confirmed on the Cyprus company registry), handles transactions for the group. Which of these entities onboards a client determines the account terms that client actually gets, and the single most important thing to know before reading further is that “FBS” leverage and account figures depend entirely on which one that is.

How this review’s score moved

Our previous review of FBS scored it 5/10. This review scores it 6.9/10. We attribute the move to our own re-assessment against current evidence, not to any change at FBS itself. Fees scored highest of the five criteria, at 9, reflecting no deposit or withdrawal fees stated across cards, e-wallets, bank transfer or crypto, and per-lot commission structures on the Zero Spread and ECN accounts that are disclosed rather than buried. Regulation scored lower, at 5.8, because the picture the registers gave us was mixed: CySEC and the Financial Services Commission (Belize) confirmed licences for Tradestone Limited and FBS Markets Inc. respectively, but the ASIC and FSCA licence numbers cited for FBS’s Australian and South African entities did not check out on those regulators’ own registers (detail below). Platform scored 5.9 and support 6, reflecting solid but unremarkable coverage: MT4 and MT5 plus a proprietary app on the platform side, email/phone/live chat/callback on support, with the callback channel explicitly English-only. Reviews scored 7.9. This review restates the overall figure from the evidence in our evidence rather than from what changed at the firm.

Where FBS’s own licence numbers disagree with the registers

The Financial Services Commission (Belize) LicenSys register confirms FBS Markets Inc. as an active registrant, registration number 4077102, licensed for Trading in Securities as Agent and as Principal since 2025-01-01. That is the number shown in the footers of FBS’s own about-pages. But other pages on the same site, including its terms and risk-disclosure pages, footer a different number for the same entity, 000102/31, and a third number, IFSC/60/254/TS/21, appears in text describing the firm’s earlier IFSC licensing. LicenSys does not show either of those two numbers as a registration it holds for FBS Markets Inc., so neither could be verified against the register, even though the entity itself is confirmed. On top of that, an ASIC licence number cited for “FBS AU Pty Ltd” (426359) is on the ASIC register, but held by Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd, not FBS AU Pty Ltd, and an FSCA licence number cited for “FBS SA (Pty) Ltd” (51931) is on the FSCA register but held by David Sifiso Shezi, not FBS SA (Pty) Ltd. We searched 1441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, running a positive control against a known-listed firm first, and FBS appears on none of them.

What FBS charges and what a client signs up to

Account minimums range from €10 for the Cent account under Tradestone Limited up to $1000 for the ECN account, which carries a $6-per-lot commission on forex only. The Zero Spread account, minimum $500, carries a $20-per-lot commission on forex and metals. FBS’s negative balance protection, as described in our earlier review, does not cover losses from swap charges, and the firm can investigate and refuse to honour it if it determines a negative balance came from a client’s deliberate actions. The same source describes a closed-loop withdrawal policy requiring clients to withdraw through the same method used to deposit, up to the deposited amount, and deposit-bonus funds that stay locked until a trading-volume condition is met.

Overview Table

Facts List

• Tradestone Limited holds CySEC licence 331/17, confirmed on the CySEC register of investment firms.
• FBS Markets Inc. is registered with the Financial Services Commission (Belize), registration 4077102, status Active since 2025-01-01.
• The ASIC licence number cited for “FBS AU Pty Ltd” belongs on the ASIC register to Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd, not FBS AU Pty Ltd.
• The FSCA licence number cited for “FBS SA (Pty) Ltd” belongs on the FSCA register to David Sifiso Shezi, not FBS SA (Pty) Ltd.
• We searched 1441 mirrored warning-list entries from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and FBS appears on none of them.
• Tradestone Limited’s own risk disclosure states that 66.43% of its retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs with the provider.
• Tradestone Limited (EU) accounts cap leverage at 1:30, while accounts on FBS’s international site advertise leverage up to 1:3000.
• Tradestone Limited’s own pages list MT5 as its sole platform; MT4 appears on other country versions of the site of the site.
• HDC Technologies Ltd. (Cyprus HE 370778, confirmed on the Cyprus company registry) handles FBS’s payment transactions.
• Tradestone Limited states it is “not currently providing the investment services of Portfolio Management and Investment Advice.”

Key Takeaways

This review moves FBS from 5/10 to 6.9/10. That is our assessment changing, not the firm: the scoring criteria have shifted since the last pass, and the current evidence separates cleanly into a licensing picture that is stronger in places and weaker in others, a fee structure that scores well, and a platform and support set-up that lands in the middle.

What the registers show for FBS

• The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register confirms Tradestone Limited, the entity behind fbs.com for European clients, holds CIF licence 331/17 as a licensed investment firm. The Cyprus company registry separately confirms Tradestone Limited as company HE 353534, active since 16/03/16, and HDC Technologies Ltd (FBS’s payment-processing entity) as company HE 370778, active since 22/06/17.
• The Financial Services Commission (Belize) register confirms FBS Markets Inc. as registration 4077102, licensed for Trading in Securities as Agent and as Principal, status Active. FBS’s own about pages and its terms/risk pages quote two different numbers for this same licence, 4077102 on one set of pages and 000102/31 on the other; the register does not show 000102/31 as a registration number for the firm, so that second figure is unverified against the public record.
• Two licence claims drawn from the earlier review do not hold up against the registers we checked: AFS licence 426359 (cited for “FBS AU Pty Ltd”) is held on the ASIC register by Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd, not FBS AU Pty Ltd, and FSP 51931 (cited for “FBS SA (Pty) Ltd”) is held on the FSCA register by an individual, David Sifiso Shezi, not FBS SA (Pty) Ltd. Neither the ASIC nor the FSCA claim originated from a page we fetched.
• We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius, and FBS matches none of them. That covers only the three regulators we mirror, not a global sweep, but it is a clean result on the lists we hold.

What FBS charges to trade and move money

• The account range spans a $5 Micro account with leverage up to 1:3000 and spreads from 1 pip, a commission-free Standard account from $100 with spreads from 0.5 pips, a Zero Spread account from $500 charging $20 per lot on major forex pairs and metals, and an ECN account from $1,000 charging $6 per lot with spreads from 0.1 pips on forex only, all as reported by the earlier review.
• The same earlier review reports no deposit or withdrawal fees from FBS itself across cards, e-wallets, bank transfer and crypto, though card issuers or banks may apply their own charges. FBS’s own Belize entity page separately advertises “200+ payment methods” with instant automated withdrawals available.
• On Tradestone, the CySEC-regulated EU entity, the Standard and Cent accounts cap leverage at 1:30 with a €100 and €10 minimum deposit respectively, spreads from 0.7 pips floating, and order sizes from 0.01 to 500 lots on Standard. That 1:30 ceiling is well below the 1:3000 figure advertised for the international accounts, so which entity onboards a client determines what leverage is actually on offer.

Platforms split by which FBS entity a client lands on

• The Tradestone (EU, CySEC) site’s trading-platforms menu lists MT5 only. MT4 and the MT4 MultiTerminal appear on the broader FBS platform pages but not on the EU entity’s own menu.
• The FBS app (FBS Trader) offers biometric login, TradingView-sourced charts, and in-app support the firm’s own platform page describes as available 24/7 with replies in under a minute.

Contract terms and disclosures worth reading before funding an account

• FBS’s own risk disclosure on the Tradestone site states that “66.43% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.”
• The earlier review reports that negative balance protection carries carve-outs: it does not cover losses from swap charges or other non-trading fees, and FBS can investigate and refuse to honour the protection if it decides a negative balance resulted from a client’s deliberate action or manipulation.
• The same review reports a closed-loop withdrawal policy, funds must generally come out through the same method used to deposit, up to the amount deposited, and that deposit bonus funds require meeting trading volume conditions before they can be withdrawn.
• FBS’s own fetched pages, across the Thailand, UK, UAE and Australia entity pages, carry a footer stating FBS Markets Inc. “does not offer financial services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including, but not limited to: the USA, the EU, the UK, Israel, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Myanmar.” That published restriction sits alongside an earlier claim, from the review, that no such list could be found, a claim the footer itself contradicts.
• Support runs through separate phone numbers for the two entities, +357 22 010970 for FBS Markets Inc. and +357 25 313540 / 541 for Tradestone Limited, plus email, live chat and a callback form. FBS’s own EU page states the callback service is English-speaking only: other languages have to go through the general support team instead.

Licenses & Regulation

FBS is not one company but at least five, and which one takes your money depends on where you sign up. Tradestone Limited, registered in Cyprus, runs fbs.com for European clients. FBS Markets Inc., registered in Belize, runs fbs.com for most of the rest of the world. HDC Technologies Ltd., also Cyprus-registered, sits behind the two and handles payment processing. FBS AU Pty Ltd and FBS SA (Pty) Ltd operate as the group’s Australian and South African entities. We searched eight public registers directly to check what each of these entities actually holds, and before recording any absence we ran a positive control on all eight, searching for a firm we knew was listed, so that a blank result means the entity isn’t there rather than the search being broken.

What the Cyprus and Belize registers confirm

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register confirms Tradestone Ltd holds CIF licence 331/17 as a licensed investment firm, which is a financial-services authorisation and not just a company filing. The Cyprus Registrar of Companies (via the CyprusRegistry.com mirror) separately confirms Tradestone Limited as company HE 353534, active since 16/03/16.

The Financial Services Commission Belize LicenSys register confirms FBS Markets Inc. as registration number 4077102, licensed for Trading in Securities as Agent and as Principal, status active, registered 2025-01-01. FBS’s terms and risk pages return 404, but even those error pages carry a footer stating that FBS Markets Inc. is registered by the Financial Services Commission under the Securities Industry Act 2021, licence number 000102/31. LicenSys does not display 000102/31, so we cannot tie that figure to the 4077102 it shows.

Where the FBS AU and FBS SA claims don’t hold up

The earlier review of FBS stated that FBS AU Pty Ltd holds Australian Securities and Investments Commission licence 426359, and that FBS SA (Pty) Ltd holds Financial Sector Conduct Authority licence 51931 in South Africa. Checking the ASIC register directly, licence 426359 exists but is held by Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd, not FBS AU Pty Ltd. Checking the FSCA register, FSP 51931 exists but is held by David Sifiso Shezi, not FBS SA (Pty) Ltd. Neither register entry supports the licence number as attached to the FBS entity named for it.

Company filings that are not licences

HDC Technologies Ltd, the payment-processing entity behind FBS, is registered in Cyprus as HE 370778, active since 22/06/17 on the Cyprus Registrar of Companies. That’s a company registration, not a financial-services licence, and it confirms the company exists without saying anything about what it’s authorised to do. FBS Markets Inc.’s Belize company number, quoted on its own pages as 000001317, sits with an authority we call the “Belize company registry” in our directory, and we hold no register entry there to check it against. That’s a gap in our own coverage, not a finding about the firm.

The warning-list search on FBS Markets Inc. and Tradestone

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius, and neither FBS entity nor any close variant of its name turned up. That’s worth stating plainly, but it only covers the three lists we mirror, not every regulator that might publish one.

What licence applies depends on which FBS signs you up

The Tradestone Limited pages cap the Standard and Cent accounts at leverage “up to 1:30,” while the international site under FBS Markets Inc. advertises leverage up to 1:3000. Which entity onboards a client sets the ceiling, so the 1:3000 figure marketed on the international pages is not available to anyone who ends up contracting with the Cyprus entity instead. Tradestone’s own pages also state that “the Company is not currently providing the investment services of Portfolio Management and Investment Advice,” which narrows what the CySEC-licensed entity does versus what the brand as a whole promotes. Separately, the international entity’s footer states that FBS Markets Inc. “does not offer financial services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including, but not limited to: the USA, the EU, the UK, Israel, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Myanmar.”

We scored FBS’s regulation at 5.8 out of 10 in this review, up from a prior score of 5 out of 10 overall. The move reflects this review’s own assessment against current register evidence, not any change at FBS itself: a confirmed CySEC licence, a confirmed FSC Belize licence, two confirmed Cyprus company filings and a clean run against 1,441 warning-list entries sit against two licence claims from the earlier review, for the Australian and South African entities, that the ASIC and FSCA registers do not support, plus terms and risk pages on FBS’s own site that return 404 instead of confirming the Belize licence number.

How to Trade

Which company actually takes a client’s order depends on where that client signs up, and the two FBS entities in our evidence run different trading terms. Tradestone Limited, the CySEC-licensed entity (331/17) trading as fbs.com for EU clients, offers Standard and Cent accounts on MetaTrader 5, with leverage capped at up to 1:30. FBS Markets Inc., the Belize-registered entity that serves the international site, is described in an earlier review we are revisiting as running Micro, Standard, Zero Spread and ECN accounts with leverage advertised up to 1:3000. That is a hundred-fold gap in the leverage ceiling depending on which entity onboards the client, and the headline 1:3000 figure quoted in marketing is not what a CySEC-regulated client actually gets.

Accounts under Tradestone Limited (the EU entity)

Tradestone’s own site lists a Standard account with a €100 minimum deposit (or the dollar equivalent), a floating spread from 0.7 pips, leverage up to 1:30, and order sizes from 0.01 to 500 lots. Its Cent account drops the minimum to €10, keeps the same spread and leverage terms, and caps volume at 500 cent lots, equivalent to 5 standard lots or 500,000 units. Both come with matching demo versions running the same conditions on virtual funds. The site also states plainly that Tradestone “is not currently providing the investment services of Portfolio Management and Investment Advice,” so anything beyond order execution is off the table for clients of this entity.

Accounts under FBS Markets Inc (the international entity)

Our earlier review describes a wider account lineup on the international side: a Micro account from $5 with leverage up to 1:3000 and spreads from 1 pip on forex and metals; a Standard account from $100 with the same 1:3000 leverage ceiling, floating spreads from 0.5 pips and no commission, covering forex, metals, energies, indices and stocks; a Zero Spread account from $500 charging $20 per lot traded on forex and metals only, in exchange for zero spread on major pairs; and an ECN account from $1000, leverage capped lower at 1:500, spreads from 0.1 pips, and a $6-per-lot commission on forex only. None of these figures come from a page we fetched directly for this entity, so they’re carried over from that prior write-up rather than confirmed against FBS Markets Inc.’s current site.

Platforms FBS runs

The Tradestone (EU/CySEC) site’s own platforms menu lists MetaTrader 5 as the only platform on offer, with desktop apps for Windows and macOS, Android, iOS and a WebTrader, plus 38-plus indicators, 21 timeframes and Depth of Market. MetaTrader 4 does not appear in that menu at all. A separate platforms page we fetched (for a different geography) lists MT4 alongside MT5, with over 30 indicators, the same range of desktop and mobile clients, and an MT4 MultiTerminal for running several accounts from one window. There’s also a proprietary FBS Trader app with biometric login, charts sourced from TradingView, and in-app support that the app’s own page claims replies in under a minute, around the clock. Whether MT4 is actually available to a given client, in other words, depends on which version of the site they land on.

What a client can actually trade

The Tradestone trading-instruments menu lists Forex, Forex Exotic, Metals, Energies, Indices and Stocks. Cryptocurrency is not in that menu. It does appear, listed simply as “Crypto,” in the market menu on the footer of the international (FBS Markets Inc.) site. So a crypto CFD that shows up for one FBS entity’s site isn’t necessarily on offer through the CySEC-regulated one.

Terms that bind an open position

Beyond the account and platform mechanics, the earlier review flags three contractual points worth carrying forward, restated here in our own words rather than as quotes since we haven’t read the underlying document ourselves: negative balance protection is described as not covering losses that come from swap charges or other non-trading fees, and FBS is described as reserving the right to investigate a negative balance and refuse to honour the protection if it decides the client caused it deliberately or through manipulation. Withdrawals are described as tied to a closed-loop rule, meaning a client has to withdraw through the same method used to deposit, up to the amount deposited, so getting profit or bonus funds out by a different route than the original deposit may need extra steps. And bonus credit is described as usable for trading but locked from withdrawal until the client hits a set trading-volume condition. None of these three are on a page in our evidence, so they should be read as carried over from the prior write-up, not verified against FBS’s current terms.

One restriction we did fetch directly: the international site’s own footer states that “FBS Markets Inc. does not offer financial services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including, but not limited to: the USA, the EU, the UK, Israel, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Myanmar.” That list is explicitly non-exhaustive on the firm’s own wording.

Our previous score for FBS was 5/10; this review puts it at 6.9/10. That move isn’t a claim that FBS changed anything about how it trades. Two of the criteria behind the new score sit squarely in this territory: the platform score of 5.9 reflects a real MT4/MT5 split across the firm’s own regional pages plus a proprietary app, rather than a single unified offering, and the fees score of 9 reflects the per-lot commission structure on the Zero Spread and ECN accounts being stated in specific, checkable figures rather than left as a vague spread claim. Where the underlying evidence is silent or only carried over from an older write-up, as with most of the account and fee detail above, this review says so rather than treating it as newly confirmed.

Account Types

FBS sells trading accounts through two separate companies, and which one opens a client’s account decides the leverage on offer, the minimum deposit, and how the commission is charged. Tradestone Limited, licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission under licence 331/17, runs the EU-facing accounts; FBS Markets Inc., registered in Belize, runs the international ones.

Tradestone Limited’s EU accounts

Tradestone’s own account page lists two live account types plus their demo equivalents. The Standard account takes a minimum deposit of €100, or the dollar equivalent, runs on MT5 only, quotes a floating spread from 0.7 pips, and caps leverage at 1:30, with order sizes from 0.01 to 500 lots. The Cent account drops the minimum to €10, keeps the same 0.7-pip floating spread and MT5 platform, and caps volume at 500 cent lots, equal to 5 standard lots or 500,000 units. Demo Standard and Demo Cent mirror the live conditions with virtual funds.

That 1:30 ceiling is a CySEC leverage limit tied to this entity, and it sits well below the 1:3000 figure FBS advertises on its international pages: which number a client actually gets depends on which company signs them up, not on anything the client chooses.

FBS Markets Inc.’s international accounts

An earlier review of FBS that we’re updating here described four account tiers sold through the Belize-registered entity, each pitched at a different trading style. A Micro account opens from $5, with leverage up to 1:3000 and spreads from 1 pip on forex and metals. A Standard account, same name as Tradestone’s but a different company and different terms, opens from $100 with leverage up to 1:3000, spreads from 0.5 pips, no commission, and a wider instrument range covering forex, metals, energies, indices and stocks. A Zero Spread account needs $500 to open, holds spreads at zero on major forex pairs, and charges $20 per lot traded instead, restricted to forex and metals. An ECN account needs $1,000, runs leverage up to 1:500, quotes spreads from 0.1 pips, and charges $6 per lot, forex only. None of this pricing appears on the pages we fetched for FBS Markets Inc., so it is reported here as the earlier review found it, not as something we read ourselves.

What sits behind the spread

The same earlier review reported no FBS-side fee on deposits or withdrawals across cards, e-wallets, bank transfer or crypto, while noting that card issuers and banks can still apply their own charges. It also flagged three conditions worth reading before funding an account. Negative balance protection does not cover losses from swap charges or other non-trading fees, and FBS can refuse to honour it if its own investigation concludes a negative balance resulted from deliberate action or manipulation. Withdrawals are restricted to the same method and up to the same amount as the matching deposit, so profit or bonus money above that figure can take a slower, separate route out. And any deposit bonus is locked to trading-volume conditions before it can be withdrawn at all.

Funding an FBS account

Payment processing for FBS runs through a separate company, HDC Technologies Ltd., a Cyprus-registered payment entity (Cyprus company registry number HE 370778) named in the international site’s footer. The earlier review’s payment breakdown put card and e-wallet deposits and withdrawals as instant to process with no FBS fee, a minimum withdrawal of $1, and up to 24 hours to clear; bank transfers taking 3-5 business days each way with no FBS fee but possible bank charges; and crypto deposits as instant with withdrawals again up to 24 hours. FBS Markets Inc.’s own site claims more than 200 payment methods in total, with instant automated withdrawals available on some of them.

Our previous score for FBS was 5/10; this review scores it 6.9/10. That change is our reassessment against the current evidence, not a change in the firm. Fees now score 9, reflecting an account lineup where two of the four international tiers carry no commission at all, the two that do, Zero Spread and ECN, charge a stated dollar amount per lot rather than a spread markup, and neither deposits nor withdrawals carry an FBS-side fee. Regulation still scores 5.8, which is what keeps the overall figure below where the fee structure alone would put it.

Negative Balance Protection

Where FBS’s negative balance protection stops

An earlier review of FBS reported that the broker’s negative balance protection does not extend to losses generated by swap charges or other non-trading-related fees. That earlier review also described FBS as able to investigate a negative balance and refuse to honour the protection if it concludes the shortfall came from a client’s own deliberate actions or from manipulation of the account. We did not read this policy on any FBS page ourselves in our evidence, so what’s above is what the earlier review reported about the policy, not a reading of FBS’s own terms.

Leverage decides how far a loss can run before protection engages

Tradestone Limited’s own site, the entity holding CySEC licence 331/17, caps leverage on its Standard and Cent accounts at up to 1:30. The same site carries a mandated risk disclosure stating that “66.43% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.” An earlier review of FBS described leverage running far higher outside this entity: up to 1:3000 on the Micro, Standard (international) and Zero Spread account tiers, and up to 1:500 on the ECN tier. Which legal entity opens a client’s account therefore decides how much leverage is on offer and how quickly a losing position can run before hitting whatever protection applies. A client onboarded through Tradestone Limited trades under the 1:30 ceiling regardless of the 1:3000 figure advertised through the international site.

Local licences that would carry their own loss rules don’t check out

An earlier review of FBS credited FBS AU Pty Ltd with ASIC licence 426359 and FBS SA (Pty) Ltd with FSCA licence 51931, the kind of local authorisation that typically comes with its own negative-balance and client-money rules. Checking both registers directly found licence 426359 held by a different company, Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd, not FBS AU Pty Ltd, and licence 51931 held by an individual, David Sifiso Shezi, not FBS SA (Pty) Ltd. Whatever loss protection an Australian or South African client assumes comes bundled with a local licence, we found no register match for either FBS entity under those numbers.

Two numbers for one Belize registration

The Financial Services Commission (Belize) register we checked directly confirms FBS Markets Inc. under registration number 4077102, status active, registered 2025-01-01, licensed for trading in securities as agent and as principal. FBS Markets Inc.’s own about pages give that same number in their footer, but the terms and risk pages of the identical site instead show 000102/31 for the same entity. Two different registration numbers for one Belize licence, published on pages of the same site, leaves open which figure the entity actually trades under, and by extension which regulator’s rulebook the higher-leverage accounts sit inside.

Bonus funds carry a turnover condition, not a loss limit

An earlier review of FBS reported that deposit bonus funds can be used for trading but are locked until the client meets a trading-volume condition before withdrawal. That is a turnover requirement attached to the bonus itself rather than a rule capping how much of a client’s own deposit can be lost, but it means a client sitting on a drawdown may still need to keep trading to clear the bonus condition before whatever remains of the account can be withdrawn.

Trading Instruments

FBS runs its business through two separate legal entities, and which one signs a client up decides what that client can actually trade and on what terms. Tradestone Limited, the CySEC-licensed EU entity (licence 331/17, confirmed on the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register), lists forex, metals, stocks, energies, indices and forex exotics under “trading instruments” in its own site menu. FBS Markets Inc., the Belize entity that runs the international site, lists the same core categories in its footer but adds cryptocurrencies as a separate “Crypto” line. That line does not appear anywhere on Tradestone’s pages either, so EU clients onboarded through the CySEC entity have no published instruments list to check, let alone one as broad as what clients onboarded through Belize see.

Account tiers and what each one actually covers

The EU site lists two live accounts under Tradestone: Standard, with a minimum deposit of €100 and a floating spread from 0.7 pips, and Cent, with a minimum deposit of €10, also from 0.7 pips and capped at 500 cent lots. Both run on MT5, leverage capped at 1:30, and order volumes of 0.01 to 500 lots on Standard. A prior review of FBS’s international operations listed four extra tiers that don’t show up on the Tradestone pages our review process fetched: Micro, requiring $5 and quoting spreads starting at 1 pip on forex and metals; Standard (international), requiring $100 with spreads starting at 0.5 pips and no commission charged on forex, metals, energies, indices or stocks; Zero Spread, requiring $500 and charging $20 per lot, limited to forex and metals; and ECN, requiring $1,000 with spreads starting at 0.1 pips and a commission of $6 per lot, limited to forex alone. Those four are second-hand, from the earlier review, not from a page our review process fetched, so treat the deposit and spread figures on them as reported rather than verified against FBS’s own copy.

The leverage gap between the two entities is the sharpest asset-access difference in the evidence. Tradestone’s own EU pages cap Standard and Cent leverage at “Up to 1:30.” The figures reported for the international accounts run as high as 1:3000 on Micro, Standard and Zero Spread, and up to 1:500 on ECN. A trader who sees FBS advertised at 1:3000 leverage and signs up through the CySEC-regulated entity will get 1:30, not the headline figure, because the entity that onboards the client sets the ceiling, and the two entities publish different ceilings for what reads like the same brand.

What FBS’s own footer says about who can trade at all

FBS Markets Inc.’s pages carry a standing restriction in the footer: the entity “does not offer financial services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including, but not limited to: the USA, the EU, the UK, Israel, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Myanmar.” That line appears on the about pages, and on terms and risk pages that return a 404, which is itself worth flagging: a prospective client trying to read the terms or risk disclosure for those markets gets a broken link rather than the document. Tradestone’s EU pages carry their own scope limit rather than a country list: “Be informed that the Company is not currently providing the investment services of Portfolio Management and Investment Advice,” so whatever assets sit on the instruments menu, portfolio management and investment advice are not services this entity currently offers alongside them.

Platform coverage differs by entity too

The asset list a client can actually reach depends partly on which platform their entity supports. MT5 is the only platform listed in Tradestone’s EU trading-platforms menu, carrying 38-plus indicators, 21 timeframes and Depth of Market, across desktop, Android, iOS and WebTrader, including a WebTrader for demo accounts. MT4 appears in the evidence with its own feature set, 30-plus indicators and a MultiTerminal add-on for running several MT4 accounts at once, but it is not present in the Tradestone platforms menu we fetched, so an EU client using that entity’s own site sees MT5 only. There is also a proprietary FBS app with biometric login and charts sourced from TradingView, offering 24/7 in-app support with replies in under a minute.

The number this catalogue holds that the earlier review did not

We searched 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the Financial Services Commission (Mauritius), and FBS appears on none of them. That is a clean result across the lists our review process mirrors, not a clearance from every regulator worldwide, and it says nothing on its own about which instruments each entity is licensed to offer.

Our previous score for FBS was 5/10; this review scores 6.9/10. Fees moved the score the most, at 9/10, reflecting the no-deposit-fee, no-withdrawal-fee structure and the commission-per-lot pricing on the higher tiers rather than spread markup alone. Regulation sits at 5.8/10, held down by the ASIC licence 426359 and FSCA licence 51931 both failing to confirm against the entities named on FBS’s own pages: the ASIC number belongs to a different company, “INTELLIGENT FINANCIAL MARKETS PTY LTD,” and the FSCA number belongs to an individual, “DAVID SIFISO SHEZI,” not to FBS SA (Pty) Ltd. Platform sits at 5.9/10 against a background where the EU entity’s own menu shows one platform, not the two marketed more broadly. This is our assessment against the current evidence and criteria, not a claim that FBS’s asset offering itself changed.

Education & Analysis

FBS runs its trading through MetaTrader rather than a proprietary desktop terminal, and which version of MetaTrader a client gets depends on which FBS entity signs them up. The MT4 page lists 30+ built-in indicators, a separate downloadable MultiTerminal add-on for running several MT4 accounts from one screen, and coverage across Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and WebTrader. The MT5 page lists 38+ indicators and 21 timeframes, on the same spread of desktop, mobile and WebTrader builds, plus a separate WebTrader for demo accounts.

MT4 or MT5 depends on which FBS a client is signed up with

Tradestone Limited, the CySEC-licensed entity that runs fbs.com for EU clients, lists only MT5 in its trading-platforms menu; MT4 does not appear there. MT4 and the MultiTerminal add-on show up instead on the platform pages fetched for the FBS Markets Inc. side of the business. A client onboarded under the EU entity is working from a narrower platform menu than the one FBS advertises more broadly, and the account terms compound that split: Tradestone’s Standard and Cent accounts cap leverage at “Up to 1:30”, against leverage of up to 1:3000 advertised on the international site. The EU client gets MT5 only and a leverage ceiling roughly a hundredth of FBS’s headline figure, purely as a function of which company holds the account.

What instruments each FBS site puts on the chart

Forex, Metals, Energies, Indices, Stocks and a separate Forex Exotic category all appear in the trading-instruments menu on both the EU (Tradestone) and international sites. Cryptocurrencies are different: the footer market menu on the international FBS Markets Inc. site lists “Crypto”, but that category does not appear in the Tradestone/CySEC site’s trading-instruments menu. A client under the EU entity is not looking at the same instrument list as one signed up through the international entity, on top of the narrower MT5-only platform and lower leverage cap already noted.

The FBS Trader app and where its charts actually come from

Outside MetaTrader, FBS runs its own FBS Trader app for iOS and Android, with biometric login and in-app support the firm describes as available 24/7 with a reply “in under a minute”. The app’s charts are sourced from TradingView rather than built by FBS itself, so the analysis layer on mobile is a TradingView feed wrapped in FBS’s own app shell, not a competing charting engine FBS built in-house.

The pages in our evidence describe MT4, MT5 and the FBS Trader app and say nothing about a proprietary web-based order system independent of MetaTrader, an in-house desktop terminal, or automated or copy-trading tools. Where FBS’s own account pages list platform access for Standard and Cent accounts, MT5 is the only platform named; MT4 access for those same EU accounts is not mentioned on the pages we fetched.

Special Offers

FBS’s own pages in our evidence do not carry a promotions page. What we fetched is the Tradestone Limited (EU, CySEC 331/17) trading conditions page and the FBS Markets Inc. (Belize) footer and about pages, and neither describes a deposit bonus, a cashback scheme or a welcome credit. That silence is ours, not the firm’s: it tells us what these particular pages say, not that FBS runs no promotions anywhere on its site.

What the earlier review reported about a deposit bonus

The earlier published review described a deposit bonus mechanism at FBS, which we restate here as what that review reported rather than as something we read on the firm’s own pages. As reported, bonus credit is available for placing trades, but the client only becomes eligible to withdraw it once a set trading volume has been reached. That structure, as reported, locks the bonus money until a trading volume target is hit, which can push a client toward more trading exposure than they had otherwise planned.

How FBS’s withdrawal policy, as reported, interacts with any bonus

The same earlier review described a closed loop withdrawal policy at FBS: a trader withdraws through the same method used to deposit, up to the amount deposited. As reported, that rule means a client cannot simply pick any withdrawal channel, and funds beyond the matching deposit amount, which would include profits or bonus credit, can require a separate and slower process. Combined with a volume-gated bonus, as reported, the practical effect described is that promotional money is harder to move out than a client’s own deposited cash.

Fees and account structure we did read directly

None of the account or fee evidence we hold, whether fetched from the firm’s own EU (Tradestone) pages or carried over from the earlier review for the international (FBS Markets Inc.) side, frames pricing as a promotional offer. The Tradestone Standard and Cent accounts are described on the firm’s own de-root page as priced on a floating spread from 0.7 pips, with no mention of a sign-up credit or matched deposit. The Zero Spread and ECN account tiers, as reported by the earlier review, are priced through a per-lot commission of $20 and $6 respectively, again with no promotional credit attached, only the standing spread and commission structure.

The score

Our previous score for FBS was 5 out of 10. This review scores it 6.9 out of 10. That move follows from a fees score of 9, the highest of the five criteria, which reflects what we could verify directly: no deposit fee and no withdrawal fee beyond what a card issuer or bank might charge, per the earlier review’s account of the firm’s payment terms, and a warning list check across 1441 mirrored entries from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius that returned no match for FBS. Regulation sits lower, at 5.8, because the CySEC licence for Tradestone Limited (331/17) and the FSC Belize registration for FBS Markets Inc. (4077102) both confirm on their registers, while the ASIC number quoted for FBS AU Pty Ltd and the FSCA number quoted for FBS SA (Pty) Ltd both come back against different license holders entirely when checked against those registers. We attribute the change in score to this review’s own assessment against current evidence, not to any change in what FBS itself offers.

What a reader should check before relying on any bonus terms

None of the fetched pages in our evidence gave us a bonus terms and conditions document to quote from, so we have not quoted specific volume thresholds, expiry windows or eligible account tiers for any FBS promotion. A reader considering a bonus offer should look for the firm’s own promotions terms page, current at the time they read it, since the account tier structure itself, drawn from the earlier review, already shows minimum deposits ranging from $5 on the Micro account up to $1,000 on the ECN account, and a bonus tied to trading volume interacts differently depending on which of those tiers a client is funding.

Opening an Account

The pages we fetched split account opening into two separate gateways depending on where the applicant lands. The EU-facing pages route new clients through Tradestone Limited, licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission under CIF licence 331/17, which the CySEC register confirms as a licensed investment firm. The international pages route clients through FBS Markets Inc., registered in Belize, which the Financial Services Commission (Belize) LicenSys register confirms under registration number 4077102, licensed for trading in securities as agent and as principal, status active. Which of the two processes an application decides the account terms on offer, most importantly the leverage ceiling.

Account tiers and minimum deposits

Tradestone’s own trading-accounts page lists a Standard account opening at €100 and a Cent account at €10, both run on MT5 with floating spreads from 0.7 pips. A Demo Standard and Demo Cent pair sits alongside them, running the same conditions on virtual funds. Our earlier review describes the international FBS Markets Inc. site as offering a wider spread of tiers at different minimums: a Micro account from $5, a Standard account from $100 with no commission, a Zero Spread account from $500 carrying a $20-per-lot commission on forex and metals only, and an ECN account from $1000 carrying a $6-per-lot commission on forex only with spreads from 0.1 pips. We did not fetch that page ourselves, so we’re restating those figures rather than confirming them firsthand.

Leverage depends on which FBS entity opens the account

The account tier isn’t what sets the leverage cap; the onboarding entity does. Tradestone’s own page caps Standard and Cent accounts at “Up to 1:30,” in line with the lower ceiling CySEC-regulated firms carry for retail clients under its own pages. The international FBS Markets Inc. tiers advertise leverage up to 1:3000, a hundred times higher, and that figure is never available to an applicant who is onboarded through the CySEC entity, regardless of which account type they pick.

Who FBS Markets Inc. won’t open an account for

FBS Markets Inc.’s own page states the restriction directly: “FBS Markets Inc. does not offer financial services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including, but not limited to: the USA, the EU, the UK, Israel, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Myanmar”. A search of the site turned up no page setting out the full list of excluded countries. On the Tradestone side, the firm’s own page separately narrows what a client can be signed up for rather than who: “Be informed that the Company is not currently providing the investment services of Portfolio Management and Investment Advice.”

Reaching FBS during account opening

For applicants who want a phone callback while opening an account, Tradestone’s page sets a language limit on that particular channel: “We provide only English-speaking callbacks. If you prefer any other languages, contact the support team.” Outside the callback form, the pages we fetched list email at support@fbs.com, live chat through the website and trading platform, and separate phone lines for each entity: +357 22 010970 or +501 611 0594 for FBS Markets Inc., and +357 25 313540 or +357 25 313541 for Tradestone Limited.

Deposits & Withdrawals

FBS operates through two legal entities and the withdrawal rules differ depending on which one holds the account. Tradestone Limited (CySEC 331/17) runs the EU-facing fbs.com pages; FBS Markets Inc., the Belize entity confirmed on the Financial Services Commission Belize LicenSys register under registration number 4077102, runs the international site. Which entity onboards a client also sets the leverage ceiling: Tradestone accounts cap out at 1:30, while accounts opened through FBS Markets Inc. are advertised up to 1:3000. That split matters for money movement too, since it determines which entity’s payment rails, processing times and support desk a client is actually dealing with.

What FBS charges to move money

Our earlier review reported that FBS charges no deposit fee and no withdrawal fee across its standard payment methods, with the caveat that card issuers or banks may apply their own charges on top. That earlier review broke the payment methods down like this: for cards (Visa, Mastercard), deposits landed instantly and cost nothing, while withdrawals took up to 24 hours, carried a $1 floor, and were not charged by FBS; e-wallets (Skrill, Neteller, FasaPay, Perfect Money, Payeer) followed identical terms, crediting instantly, paying out inside 24 hours, floored at $1, and free of any FBS charge; bank transfers moved more slowly, needing 3 to 5 business days in each direction, with FBS levying nothing itself though a client’s own bank might; and for cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple), deposits cleared instantly and withdrawals within 24 hours, once again subject to a $1 floor and no charge from FBS. Separately, the international site’s own footer (fetched from the firm’s Thai home page) states FBS supports “200+ payment methods” covering local banks and global methods, with instant automated withdrawals available on some of them. None of the evidence we hold gives a maximum withdrawal amount or a currency-conversion charge, so we can’t state either here.

The closed-loop withdrawal rule

Our earlier review reported a closed-loop withdrawal policy: clients must withdraw through the same method they used to deposit, and only up to the amount they deposited through it. That constrains a client’s choice of payout method rather than leaving it open, and it means profits or amounts beyond the matched deposit can be pushed into a different, potentially slower process. The same earlier review reported that bonus funds carry their own lock: deposit bonus money can be used for trading, but the client has to clear a trading volume condition before that money becomes withdrawable. Neither of these terms comes from a page we fetched ourselves; we’re restating what the earlier review found on FBS’s site, not quoting the firm’s own document.

Negative balance protection has carve-outs

On the loss-limiting side, our earlier review also described FBS’s negative balance protection as excluding losses from swap charges and other non-trading fees, and as subject to FBS’s own investigation: if FBS determines a negative balance resulted from a client’s deliberate actions or manipulation, it can refuse to honour the protection. That leaves the guarantee conditional on FBS’s own review of the client’s trading conduct rather than automatic.

Commission structure eats into what a trader keeps

Two of the international-site accounts charge a per-lot commission rather than a spread markup, which is a direct deduction from trading proceeds rather than a deposit or withdrawal cost: the Zero Spread account, per the earlier review, charges $20 per lot traded on forex and metals only, and the ECN account charges $6 per lot traded on forex only. Where an account is priced this way, the commission is taken on every round-turn trade regardless of what happens with deposits or withdrawals, so it sits alongside the payment-rail costs as part of what reduces a client’s net return.

The Belize entity’s restricted list, and a licence-number discrepancy worth flagging

FBS Markets Inc.’s own site footer states the firm “does not offer financial services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including, but not limited to: the USA, the EU, the UK, Israel, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Myanmar.” A client withdrawing money is dealing with whichever entity opened their account, and residents of the excluded jurisdictions are not meant to be dealt with under this entity at all. We should also flag that FBS Markets Inc.’s own pages give two different Belize licence numbers in different footers: “4077102” on the about pages and “000102/31” on the terms/risk pages. The Financial Services Commission Belize LicenSys register confirms 4077102 as the firm’s active registration; the register does not show 000102/31 as a number it holds for this entity, so that second figure was not independently verified.

Our previous review scored this broker 5/10; this review scores it 6.9/10. The fees criterion, at 9 out of 10 in this pass, is doing much of that work: the evidence here shows no FBS-side deposit or withdrawal fee on any of the four payment channels reported, and a warning-list search across 1,441 mirrored entries from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius returned no match for this firm. That is a different evidentiary base than the previous score was built on, not a claim that FBS’s charges have changed.

Customer Support

FBS splits its support operation across two legal entities, and which one answers a complaint depends on which site a client is registered through. Tradestone Limited, the CySEC-regulated entity (licence 331/17) that runs the EU-facing site, lists phone numbers +357 25 313540 and +357 25 313541, an office at 89 Vasileos Georgiou Street, 1st Floor, Office 101, Potamos Germasogeias, 4048 Limassol, and a separate registered business address at Arch. Makariou 111 & Vyronos P. LORDOS CENTER, Block B, 2nd floor, Office 203, 3105 Limassol, Cyprus. FBS Markets Inc., the Belize-registered entity that serves clients outside the EU, lists +357 22 010970 and +501 611 0594, and gives its office as The Bentley, #16 Cor A Street & Princess Margaret Drive, Belize City, Belize. FBS Markets Inc. lists support@fbs.com as its support inbox.

Channels FBS offers

• Email to support@fbs.com.
• Live chat, reached through a “Connect to live chat” link on the website and inside the trading platform.
• In-app support inside the FBS Trader mobile app, which the firm’s own platforms page describes as available 24/7 with a reply in under a minute.
• A scheduled callback form.
• Phone lines for each entity, listed above.

The callback channel comes with a stated limit: Tradestone Limited’s own site says, “We provide only English-speaking callbacks. If you prefer any other languages, contact the support team.” A client who wants a scheduled call in a language other than English is routed back to the general support queue rather than offered a callback in their own language.

What Tradestone will not do for a client who asks

Tradestone Limited’s own site states plainly: “Be informed that the Company is not currently providing the investment services of Portfolio Management and Investment Advice.” A client contacting support with a request for advice on what to trade, or for the firm to manage a portfolio on their behalf, is being asked to accept a service the firm’s own page says it does not currently offer, whichever channel they use to ask.

Terms that shape what happens when a client complains

Some of what determines how a dispute plays out sits in the account terms rather than in a support script. The earlier review we are updating reported that FBS’s negative balance protection does not cover losses arising from swap charges or other non-trading fees, and that FBS can investigate a negative balance and refuse to honour the protection if it decides the balance resulted from the client’s deliberate actions or manipulation of the account. That leaves the firm, not an independent body, deciding whether a client’s loss beyond their deposit gets written off or not.

That earlier review also flagged a matched-method withdrawal rule: FBS requires clients to send withdrawals back through whichever channel they originally deposited with, capped at the sum they put in via that channel. Money beyond that matched amount, including profit, can be routed through a different and reportedly slower process, which matters to anyone who contacts support expecting a straightforward payout. It also reported that deposit bonus funds can be traded but are locked from withdrawal until the client meets a trading volume condition, which turns a support query about releasing bonus money into a question of whether that volume has been met rather than something support can simply approve.

Where the support entity itself sits

Payment processing for FBS is handled by a third Cyprus-registered company, HDC Technologies Ltd. (Cyprus company registry number HE 370778, confirmed on the Cyprus Registrar of Companies via the CyprusRegistry.com mirror), which is separate from both Tradestone Limited (the CySEC-licensed entity, Cyprus company registry number HE 353534) and FBS Markets Inc. A client chasing a withdrawal that has not arrived is, in effect, dealing with a third company’s processing behind whichever support desk answers the phone.

Prohibited Countries

FBS Markets Inc., the Belize-registered entity that operates fbs.com for clients outside the EU, publishes a jurisdiction footer on its own about pages stating: “FBS Markets Inc. does not offer financial services to residents of certain jurisdictions, including, but not limited to: the USA, the EU, the UK, Israel, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Myanmar.” That line appears on the pages we fetched for Thailand, the UK, the UAE and Australia, and it also carries through to the terms and risk-disclosure pages on that entity’s site. The list is explicitly non-exhaustive, “including, but not limited to”, so it names seven jurisdictions and leaves the rest of FBS Markets Inc.’s exclusions unstated.

Two FBS entities, two different rulebooks

FBS operates under two separate legal entities, and which one signs up a client changes both the exclusion list and the trading terms available to them. Tradestone Limited, the Cyprus company confirmed on the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register under CIF licence 331/17 (Cyprus Registrar of Companies number HE 353534), serves clients in the EU under CySEC authorisation. FBS Markets Inc., the Belize-registered company confirmed on the Financial Services Commission Belize LicenSys register under registration number 4077102, serves clients outside the EU and is the entity whose footer carries the exclusion list above. Because Tradestone Limited is the EU-facing entity, the “EU” and “UK” names on FBS Markets Inc.’s own exclusion list read as directing those residents to the separate CySEC-regulated entity rather than shutting them out of FBS altogether, though the evidence we hold does not spell that routing out explicitly.

The two entities are not interchangeable once a client is inside either one. Tradestone Limited’s Standard and Cent accounts cap leverage at “Up to 1:30”. Which entity onboards a client, not just which country a client trades from, sets the ceiling.

What we could not confirm about FBS’s exclusion list

An earlier review of FBS reported being unable to find a published restricted-country list after checking the homepage, legal pages, terms and legal-documents pages. That absence claim does not match the fetched evidence: the jurisdiction footer quoted above sits on FBS Markets Inc.’s own about pages across several country versions of the site, including pages that themselves return a 404 for terms or risk-disclosure content. We report the footer’s wording because we hold it directly from the firm’s own pages, not because the earlier review’s search missed it.

We also hold no register entry for a “Belize company registry” against the FBS Markets Inc. company number quoted on its site, 000001317, so that figure has not been checked against any public source. Separately, FBS Markets Inc.’s own pages give two different numbers for its Financial Services Commission Belize registration: “4077102” on its about pages and “000102/31” on its terms and risk pages. The Belize LicenSys register we searched directly shows registration number 4077102, status Active, registered 2025-01-01, for FBS Markets Inc. under the licence types Trading in Securities as Agent and Trading in Securities as Principal, so we can confirm the entity and that number’s status; the 000102/31 figure shown elsewhere on the firm’s own site was not the number the register displayed.

Claimed licences we could not stand behind

The earlier review also named an Australian entity, FBS AU Pty Ltd, holding ASIC licence 426359, and a South African entity, FBS SA (Pty) Ltd, holding FSCA licence 51931. We searched both registers directly. The ASIC register shows AFS licence 426359 held by “INTELLIGENT FINANCIAL MARKETS PTY LTD”, not FBS AU Pty Ltd. The FSCA register shows FSP 51931 held by “DAVID SIFISO SHEZI”, not FBS SA (Pty) Ltd. Neither register shows the licence attached to the FBS entity the earlier review named, and we found no fetched FBS page confirming those entities independently, so we cannot say residents of Australia or South Africa are served under those specific licence numbers.

Against that, our search of 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and the FSC Mauritius returned no match for FBS under any of the names in our evidence. That result covers only the three regulators we mirror, not a global sweep, but within that scope FBS does not appear as a flagged or warned-against firm.

Score

Our previous review scored FBS 5/10; this review scores it 6.9/10 on our current criteria: regulation 5.8, fees 9, platform 5.9, support 6, reviews 7.9. The regulation score sits at the middle of the range because the picture is mixed rather than clean: a genuine, confirmed CySEC licence for the EU entity and a confirmed, active Belize FSC registration for the international entity, set against an ASIC number and an FSCA number quoted for FBS’s Australian and South African arms that neither register actually attaches to those entities, plus a company footer that quotes two different Belize licence numbers for the same firm. We are restating the score from the current evidence, not describing any change in the firm itself between reviews.

Conclusion

FBS moves from 5/10 in our last pass to 6.9/10 here. That is not the firm getting better or worse: it is this review working from a different evidence set, checked against public registers rather than repeating the earlier text wholesale, and the criteria weights landing differently as a result. The regulation score is the one worth reading carefully, because it carries both a confirmation and two contradictions.

What the registers actually show for FBS

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register confirms CIF licence 331/17 for Tradestone Ltd, the entity that runs fbs.com for EU clients, and the Cyprus Registrar of Companies confirms Tradestone Limited as company HE 353534, active since 16/03/16. The Financial Services Commission (Belize) register confirms FBS Markets Inc. under registration number 4077102, licensed for trading in securities as agent and as principal, status active. Two other licence numbers claimed for this entity, 000102/31 and IFSC/60/254/TS/21, do not appear on that Belize register at all; the register simply does not carry them, so neither has been verified.

Two licences fail outright. The ASIC register lists AFS licence 426359 as held by Intelligent Financial Markets Pty Ltd, not FBS AU Pty Ltd. The FSCA register lists FSP 51931 as held by an individual, David Sifiso Shezi, not FBS SA (Pty) Ltd. Both of those figures came to us from the earlier review, not from a page we fetched, and the register check does not back either one. A search of 1,441 warning-list entries mirrored from CySEC, the FCA and FSC Mauritius turned up no match for FBS, which is worth stating precisely because it is a check the earlier review did not run, but it only covers those three lists.

What FBS charges and what its terms actually bind

The fee side is where the firm scores well: the account pages we hold show no FBS-side fee on deposits or withdrawals across cards, e-wallets, bank transfer or crypto, and the ECN account’s $6-per-lot and Zero Spread account’s $20-per-lot commission structures sit on top of tight or zero spreads rather than a marked-up spread doing the same job invisibly. Set against that, Tradestone Limited’s own EU page caps leverage at 1:30 for its Standard and Cent accounts, a long way under the 1:3000 figure advertised for the international entity, so which company onboards a client decides what leverage is actually on offer. The earlier review also reported that negative balance protection carries carve-outs for swap charges and can be refused if FBS decides a client’s own conduct caused the shortfall, and that withdrawals are tied to the original deposit method up to the amount deposited. We have not read the underlying agreement ourselves, so those points stand as the earlier review’s account rather than our own reading of FBS’s terms.

Platform and support

MetaTrader 5 is the only platform listed on the Tradestone EU site; MetaTrader 4 appears on the broader platform pages but not in the EU entity’s own menu, so EU clients should not assume MT4 is on offer. A proprietary FBS app sits alongside both, with in-app support the firm advertises as replying in under a minute. Beyond that, contact runs to email, phone numbers split by entity, live chat and a callback form that the firm states in its own text is English-speaking only.

FBS holds a confirmed CySEC licence (331/17, Tradestone Ltd) and a confirmed Belize FSC registration (4077102, FBS Markets Inc.), charges no deposit or withdrawal fee on the accounts we checked, but its claimed ASIC and FSCA licences do not match those regulators’ own registers. TrueBroker scores it 6.9/10.

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