Eightcap

Eightcap is a CFD and forex broker founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 2009. Its main Australian entity, Eightcap Pty Ltd, holds an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL 391441) from ASIC. A UK entity, Eightcap Group Ltd, is authorised by the FCA. The group also contracts clients through offshore entities in the Bahamas, Seychelles and Mauritius, and through one unregulated entity.

Overall, Eightcap combines a long operating history, two Tier-1 licences and simple two-account pricing across MT4, MT5 and TradingView. The main trade-off is its group structure. Pricing and platforms are broadly the same across the group, but the protection you get depends on which company holds your account.

Who operates Eightcap

Eightcap Pty Ltd is the Australian company behind the brand. It is registered at The Rialto, South Tower, Level 37/525 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia, and its official website is eightcap.com. The Eightcap name has been used for retail CFD and forex trading in Australia since the broker was founded in 2009.

Regulation: which Eightcap entity you trade with

Eightcap is a group of companies that share a brand. Each one is licensed (or not) by a different authority. When you open an account, your client agreement names the specific entity you are contracting with, and that entity’s regulator determines the rules that protect your money.

ASIC and FCA entities

ASIC (the Australian Securities and Investments Commission) and the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) are regarded as Tier-1 regulators. For retail clients of firms they supervise, both apply a similar set of CFD rules:

• Leverage caps. ASIC’s product intervention order, in force since March 2021, limits retail leverage to 30:1 on major currency pairs, 20:1 on minor pairs, gold and major indices, 10:1 on other commodities and minor indices, 5:1 on shares and 2:1 on crypto CFDs. The FCA applies the same tiers on major pairs, other pairs, commodities, indices and shares under rules adopted from ESMA in 2019.
• Margin close-out. Positions are closed when account equity falls to 50% of the margin required to keep them open. The test uses equity (balance plus or minus open profit and loss), not balance. An account with a healthy cash balance can still be closed out if open positions are losing.
• Negative balance protection. Retail clients cannot lose more than the funds in their account.
• Client money segregation. Client funds must be held separately from the firm’s own money.

There are two differences between the two regimes that matter. The FCA has banned the sale of crypto derivatives, including crypto CFDs, to UK retail clients since January 2021. Eightcap’s crypto CFDs are therefore not a retail product under the UK entity, while ASIC permits them at 2:1. And eligible clients of an FCA-authorised firm can claim from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), up to £85,000, if the firm fails and cannot return client money. ASIC’s protection for derivatives clients rests on client money rules and the product intervention order rather than an equivalent compensation fund.

Clients who qualify as professional clients under either regime can opt out of retail protections. That removes the leverage caps but also removes negative balance protection and, under the FCA, may affect compensation eligibility.

Offshore entities

The Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB), the Financial Services Authority of Seychelles (FSA) and the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius (FSC) are offshore regulators. Brokers commonly use entities in these jurisdictions to serve clients in countries where they hold no local licence. Offshore regimes are not bound by the ASIC or FCA product intervention rules, so the leverage limits, close-out levels and negative balance policy for these accounts are set in the entity’s own client agreement rather than by a regulatory cap. None of these entities is covered by the FSCS.

CLMarkets Limited (unregulated)

One entity, CLMarkets Limited trading as Eightcap International, is unregulated. Its number, 24750 IBC 2018, is a company registration rather than a financial services licence. A client contracting with this company has no financial regulator overseeing how the firm handles their funds or executes their trades. Their recourse in a dispute would rest on the client agreement and the courts of the company’s jurisdiction.

This entity is the clearest risk in the group structure. It does not affect clients onboarded by Eightcap Pty Ltd or Eightcap Group Ltd.

How to verify Eightcap’s licences

1. Search AFSL 391441 on ASIC’s Professional Register and confirm the holder is Eightcap Pty Ltd, with the authorisation covering derivatives and foreign exchange for retail clients.
2. Search FRN 921296 on the FCA Register and confirm the firm name is Eightcap Group Ltd and its status is authorised.
3. Check that the website listed on each register entry matches eightcap.com. Clone sites using a real broker’s name and licence number are a known fraud pattern. A mismatched domain or a contact address that differs from the register is a warning sign.
4. For the offshore entities, check the licence numbers (SIA-F220, SD100, GB25204603) on each regulator’s public register.
5. Compare the entity named in your client agreement and Financial Services Guide with the register result.

Accounts and trading costs

Eightcap offers two account types. Both give access to the same platforms. They differ in how you pay for trades.

What “per side” means

The Raw commission is charged per side. You pay US$3.50 per standard lot when you open a position and another US$3.50 when you close it, so a complete round trip costs US$7.00 per standard lot. A standard lot in forex is 100,000 units of the base currency. Assuming commission scales with volume, a mini lot (0.10) would cost US$0.35 per side, or US$0.70 round trip.

Comparing the two accounts on EUR/USD

The spreads shown are “from” figures, meaning they are the lowest quoted spreads, not averages. Real spreads widen during low-liquidity hours, around major news releases and at the daily rollover. A fair comparison therefore uses the spread you actually expect to pay.

For EUR/USD in a USD-denominated account, one pip on a standard lot is worth US$10. Cost per round trip on a standard lot:

• Standard: spread in pips × US$10
• Raw: (spread in pips × US$10) + US$7.00 commission

Hypothetical example (assumed spreads for illustration, not Eightcap quotes):

The break-even point is simple. Raw costs less whenever its spread is more than 0.7 pips tighter than the Standard spread on the same trade, because the commission is worth 0.7 pips at US$10 per pip.

Commission is a fixed cost per lot, so it weighs more on short-term strategies that aim for a few pips per trade. A scalper targeting 5 pips gives up 0.7 pips of that target to commission before spread. A swing trader holding for 100 pips barely notices it. To see how cost scales with trade size, size positions first with a position size calculator and then apply the per-lot commission.

Other costs to account for

Spread and commission are the costs of opening and closing a trade. CFD positions held past the daily rollover also incur overnight financing (swap), which can be a charge or a credit depending on the instrument, direction and interest rate differential. On index, commodity and crypto CFDs, financing is usually based on a benchmark rate plus a broker markup. On a position held for weeks, it can outweigh the spread. Eightcap publishes trading hours by market, which also determine when rollover is applied.

If your account currency differs from the currency of the instrument’s profit and loss, a currency conversion is applied to realised results.

Two terms need confirming before you trade. Eightcap quotes the Raw commission for the account as a whole, so check its cost pages for the rate on gold, indices, crypto CFDs or any other instrument you plan to trade. Deposit and withdrawal methods and any fees are on Eightcap’s payments page and can vary by entity.

Markets

Eightcap’s website states access to more than 800 CFD markets, covering forex pairs, gold and other commodities, stock indices, individual share CFDs and crypto CFDs. With a CFD you trade the price movement of an asset without owning it, and the broker, not an exchange, is your counterparty or intermediary.

Crypto CFDs are available to ASIC retail clients but not to FCA retail clients, as covered above. Eightcap’s educational content pitches crypto CFDs to traders concerned about exchange risk. A crypto CFD gives price exposure without holding coins on an exchange, but you never own the underlying asset and cannot withdraw it to a wallet.

Gold (XAUUSD) is available alongside the major forex pairs, with contract size and margin set per instrument in the platform’s specifications.

Trading platforms

Both accounts give access to five ways of trading:

• MetaTrader 4. The long-established forex platform, with a large ecosystem of Expert Advisors (automated strategies written in MQL4) and custom indicators. It remains widely used for forex and gold.
• MetaTrader 5. The successor to MT4, with more timeframes, a built-in economic calendar, depth of market, and support for both hedging and netting position modes. It runs MQL5 programs. MT4 Expert Advisors do not run on MT5 without being rewritten.
• TradingView. A charting platform that Eightcap integrates for direct order placement, with browser-based charting, a large library of Pine Script community scripts, and drawing and alert tools. Eightcap has used TradingView subscription access in UK promotions.
• Web platform. Browser-based trading with no installation.
• Mobile app. For monitoring positions and placing trades on a phone.

Offering TradingView alongside both MetaTrader versions suits traders who analyze on TradingView and want to place trades from the same charts. Traders who rely on Expert Advisors will usually stay on MT4 or MT5, since automated strategies run there.

Execution model: ECN and STP

Eightcap describes its execution as ECN and STP. In general broker usage, STP (straight-through processing) means client orders are passed to liquidity providers rather than offset internally. ECN (electronic communication network) describes pricing aggregated from multiple liquidity sources, typically with raw spreads plus a commission. Eightcap’s Raw account fits that commission-based structure.

These labels describe the model the broker operates. They do not specify which liquidity providers are used or how often orders are filled at the requested price. Slippage, where the fill price differs from the price shown when you click, can happen in any execution model during fast markets. For pending orders, the trigger price and fill price can differ: a stop-loss set at a given level becomes a market order once triggered and may fill beyond that level if the price gaps.

Leverage

Maximum leverage depends on the entity holding your account, not on the Eightcap brand.

• Eightcap Pty Ltd (ASIC) and Eightcap Group Ltd (FCA) retail clients are bound by the regulatory caps above: 30:1 on major forex pairs and lower on other assets.
• Clients of the offshore entities are not subject to those caps. The leverage available is set in that entity’s terms.

Higher leverage reduces the margin needed to open a position, but it does not change the position’s profit or loss per pip. A one standard lot EUR/USD trade gains or loses US$10 per pip whether it uses 30:1 or a higher ratio. What changes is how much of the account the margin consumes, and therefore how far the price can move against you before equity drops to the close-out level. On an offshore account without negative balance protection written into the terms, a gap through that level could leave the balance negative.

US clients

Eightcap does not accept clients from the United States. Retail forex trading for US residents is restricted to firms registered with the CFTC and members of the NFA, and CFDs on any asset cannot be offered to US retail traders. None of Eightcap’s entities holds US registration. A US resident cannot open an account with Eightcap legally, whether the goal is forex, gold or any other market. Using a VPN or a foreign address to get around this violates the broker’s terms and leaves the account open to closure, including at the point of withdrawal.

Eightcap Challenges and partner programs

Alongside its brokerage, Eightcap runs a trading challenge brand, Eightcap Challenges, which the broker announced had joined a prop firm comparison listing. This is a separate product from the Standard and Raw brokerage accounts. Challenge accounts carry their own fees, profit targets, drawdown rules and payout terms, which differ from the account terms described in this review.

Eightcap also operates a partners program for introducing brokers and affiliates. Commission structures and eligibility are set out on its partner pages.

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

• Long operating history. Founded in 2009, with an ASIC licence held by the Australian operating company.
• Two Tier-1 licences. ASIC (AFSL 391441) and FCA (FRN 921296) entities give access to full retail protections for clients in those jurisdictions.
• Clear two-account pricing. Standard is spread only. Raw combines spreads from 0.0 pips with a fixed per-side commission.
• Broad platform choice. MT4, MT5 and TradingView on both accounts, plus web and mobile.
• Wide market range. More than 800 CFD markets according to the broker’s own website.

Trade-offs

• Entity-dependent protection. Three offshore entities and one unregulated entity mean that clients outside Australia and the UK may be onboarded under weaker or no regulatory oversight.
• “From” spreads only. Both spread figures are minimums. Typical spreads during your trading hours decide the real cost.
• Commission weighs on short-term trading. At US$7.00 round trip per standard lot, Raw needs consistently tight spreads to beat Standard.
• Not available in the US.
• CFDs only. You trade price exposure, not the underlying asset.

How we checked Eightcap

We visited eightcap.com on 13 November 2026 from Tallinn, Estonia. The site sent us to its European traders section. In the footer we found the company details: Eightcap EU Ltd, incorporated in Cyprus with Registration Number HE329922 and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) under license number 246/14. The risk warning near the top of the page read “77.97% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.” We also clicked through to the Legal Documents page, which repeated the same entity and licence.

Pricing was public. The account options page listed a Standard account with spreads from 1.0 pips and no commission, and a Raw account with spreads from 0.0 pips plus EUR2.75, GBP2.25 or USD3.50 each side per standard lot traded. Both showed a $100 minimum deposit. The payments page said “We do not charge any internal fees for deposits or withdrawals.” According to the withdrawal page, requests are reviewed within 1 to 2 business days. We read these terms without creating an account. We did not open one, deposit or trade.

The registers matched the group’s claims. CySEC’s list of Cypriot investment firms, dated 04 May 2026, shows Eightcap EU Ltd under 246/14, licensed 30/07/2014. ASIC shows Eightcap Pty Ltd, AFS licence 391441, status Current since 29/04/2011. The FCA register lists Eightcap Group Ltd, FRN 921296, as Authorised since 23/12/2020, and its website matches the broker’s. Companies House lists EIGHTCAP GROUP LTD, number 12448314, as Active, incorporated 7 February 2020. FSC Mauritius lists Eightcap International Trading as an investment dealer licensed 07/10/2025. FSA Seychelles lists Eightcap International Ltd. Its public list carries no licence numbers, so we could not match SD100.

On Trustpilot, which we read on 13 November 2026, Eightcap scored 4/5 from 3,911 reviews. The company had replied to none of the 8 newest. The Wayback Machine’s first capture of the domain dates from 2013-04-03, which may predate the current brand. We did not check the Bahamas or CLMarkets entries, and we cannot say what spreads look like in live trading.

Who Eightcap may suit

Based on its licences and account structure, Eightcap fits best for traders in Australia or the UK who will be onboarded under the ASIC or FCA entity and want MetaTrader or TradingView with a choice between spread-only and commission-based pricing. The Raw account fits traders with higher volume or short holding periods who can confirm that typical raw spreads on their instruments sit more than 0.7 pips below the Standard spread. The Standard account suits traders with fewer, longer trades who prefer a single all-in spread.

For traders elsewhere, the decision depends on the entity offered at signup, so compare the entity named in the client agreement with the regulation section above before funding.