Why Trust CompareForexBrokers Australia

Since 2014, we’ve reviewed ASIC-regulated forex brokers in Australia. The live accounts behind today’s reviews were each funded with our own money, and every one of those deposits is dated August 2026 or later. Here’s how I keep the rankings honest for you.

We started in 2014. Our AFS Authorised Representative number is 001274082, under Bardin Capital Pty Ltd (AFSL 247858). We cover 33 ASIC-regulated brokers, and we’ve tested 29 of them with live accounts, so the shortlist you see here is already filtered by our own trading data. David Levy, our Head of Content, checks the live page shortly after it goes up and fixes any error he finds.

The commitments behind our broker reviews

The same pattern brings you here because you’ve seen it before: glowing reviews, vague methodology, bonus offers above the fold, and the same five brokers at the top no matter who’s testing. We’ve spent twelve years building the opposite. This page lays out the rules, so they can be held against us.

I founded CompareForexBrokers in October 2014, originally at compareforexbrokers.com.au. When we grew internationally, the main site moved to compareforexbrokers.com in 2019. We relaunched the .com.au domain in June 2026 as a dedicated Australian site, focused only on ASIC-regulated brokers.

This site was built to help Australian retail traders find the best forex brokers in Australia and steer clear of the ones that will burn them. We don’t try to cover every broker on earth. We stick to the 33 brokers that hold a current Australian Financial Services Licence and accept retail clients here. That narrow focus, not a global sweep, is what I would point to as the reason the rankings are useful.

Editorial independence

The single biggest question you probably have is whether the rankings can be bought. On this site, they can’t.

Three rules:

1. No broker pays for placement. A broker cannot rank higher by paying us. There is no “premium listing” tier, no sponsored review badge, so the ranking you see cannot be bought. The rankings are the output of our scoring model, and that model is described in full on the methodology page.
2. Affiliate relationships are disclosed and isolated. Some brokers we cover have an affiliate relationship with us. If you click through and open an account, the broker may pay us a commission. That commercial relationship has zero input into the score. The full advertiser disclosure explains how the firewall works.
3. The same model applies to brokers we love and brokers we don’t. Pepperstone and IC Markets have been at or near the top since the site started. The same model applies to every broker: in our current rankings IG Markets scores 71 and ranks 15 of 33, and CMC Markets scores 57 and ranks 25 of 33. Other brokers have moved up and down, dropped off, or rejoined. The model decides, so the ranking you see is the same one it produces for every broker. It isn’t bent because a broker is a long-standing partner or a new entrant we’re trying to support.

Our regulatory status

We operate as a Corporate Authorised Representative under Australian financial services law. Our AFS Rep number is 001274082, and we operate under the AFSL of Bardin Capital Pty Ltd (AFSL 247858).

What that means for you: we are authorised under the Corporations Act 2001 to provide general financial product information about CFDs and forex to Australian readers. We are not licensed to give personal financial advice. None of the content on this site considers your personal financial circumstances, and none of it should be treated as a recommendation to act.

If a broker review or guide ever crosses the line from general information into personal advice, that’s my error. The fastest way to flag it is through the contact page, and it will be fixed.

We’re a Certified B Corporation

We’ve been a Certified B Corporation since February 2026. B Corp certification, issued by the non-profit B Lab, is granted to companies that meet verified standards of accountability and transparency across governance, workers, community and customers. Our overall B Impact Score is 98.4, against a median of 50.9 for ordinary businesses completing the assessment. The relevant part for readers is the customer leg, and it is the part I would look at first: the assessment covered how we handle editorial independence, affiliate disclosure and reader outcomes. Our profile is in the B Corp directory.

How we test brokers on funded live accounts

A spread number counts only when it comes from a live account we’ve opened and funded with our own money at the broker’s Australian entity. Not a demo. Not a phone call to the broker’s BDM. In our broker reviews, 29 of the 33 ratings come from a real account at the broker’s Australian ASIC-regulated entity funded with our own money, none of them a demo.

The full testing protocol sits on the methodology page. The short version:

• 8 weighted criteria make up the score: trading costs (25%), trust and regulation (20%), trading experience (15%), platforms (15%), customer service (10%), range of markets (5%), education (5%) and funding (5%).
• Spreads are recorded continuously, across the Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York sessions, using our own CFB-SpreadLogger 1.1.0 on MetaTrader, and the latest published capture covers the full trading month of October 2026, from 2pm AEST on Thursday 1 October to 2pm AEST on Saturday 31 October 2026, a month of 22 trading days. The earlier IceFX SpreadMonitor tool on MT4 produced the dated May to June 2026 figures.
• Trading experience comes from our research desk’s judgement of each platform and its trading conditions, because we hold no execution log for any broker.
• Customer service is desk-assessed for every broker, with untimed one-off contacts logged on the individual reviews where they happened.
• Funding and withdrawals rest on the deposit recorded for each funded live account; other deposit methods were not used, so they remain untested. We have requested withdrawals at 10 of the 29 brokers where we hold a funded live account, and 9 have arrived in full; any whose arrival is not recorded is published as pending, with no time given.
• Verification records are published on every review since July 2026. Each record can hold a masked funded-account reference, the archived spread capture, the ASIC register check and the PDS version, all dated when last confirmed; not every record holds all four. Where we hold no record, the review says so in words, such as “Not tested”.

Our latest spread capture, run by Noam Korbl across the full month of October 2026, measured raw and standard accounts across the brokers we captured, and we rank 20 brokers from it on all-in cost, including Pepperstone, IC Markets, IG and OANDA. The first full re-rating of every broker is due by June 2027, so the score you see is refreshed, not inherited.

Fact-check workflow

Every page moves through four stages in this order: a written brief, an automated check before publication, publication itself, and David Levy’s check of the live page.

Stage 1: Drafting. Each draft starts from a written factual brief. Where we hold a funded account, the brief carries our capture records, and for every broker it carries the dated ASIC register read and the broker’s own published documents, each labelled as the broker’s own with the date read.

Stage 2: Automated pre-publication check. Every figure, AFSL number and regulatory claim is checked against its primary source, with the source URL and date logged. Spread claims are cross-checked against our capture logs, and AFSL numbers against ASIC’s Professional Registers Search. A second AI model, from a provider different from the drafting model’s, reviews the body, title, meta description, structured data and image alt text. House style and Australian spelling are checked here too. A number that cannot be verified is removed or flagged.

Stage 3: Publication. The page goes live. No page waits for David Levy’s check before it goes live.

Stage 4: David Levy’s check. David, our Head of Content, reads the live page soon after publication. His remit spans the wider CompareForexBrokers group, which brings an outside perspective to the AU content. An error he finds is fixed on the page, recorded in our internal change log, and the page’s Last updated date moves to the fix date.

When you flag an error through the contact page, it follows the same path as stage 4: the correction is made in place, recorded in the internal change log, and the page’s Last updated date is brought forward.

How often we update

Static facts like a broker’s AFSL number, founding date, or headquarters are updated when they change. ASIC has a feed for AFSL register changes, and we watch it so you don’t have to.

Live trading data is on a rolling schedule:

• Spreads: captured on our live MT4 and MT5 accounts, in May to June 2026, in September 2026, in our 5 to 9 October 2026 capture, and again across the full month of October 2026, the latest of the four. Every published spread carries a date stamp.
• Pricing changes: when a broker amends their PDS. We track the pricing-change announcements and re-rate any broker whose costs move materially.
• Full broker rating: the first complete top-to-bottom re-rating is due by June 2027, and it then runs once a year.

The “Last updated” date at the top of every page is the real date of the most recent edit, not a template variable that auto-bumps. A January 2024 stamp on a review means the page hasn’t been touched since January 2024, and the trading data should be treated accordingly.

ASIC and AFCA protections for Australian clients

We’re based in Melbourne and we write for Australians. That has practical consequences for the trust signals you see on this site.

ASIC is the regulator we cite. Every broker’s AFSL number on the site comes from ASIC’s register, and you can check any of them on the Professional Registers Search. The leverage limits we quote (30:1 majors, 20:1 minors and gold, 10:1 other commodities, 5:1 shares, 2:1 crypto) trace back to ASIC’s Product Intervention Order. We don’t quote FCA, ESMA or CySEC rules unless we’re explicitly contrasting jurisdictions.

AFCA is the dispute-resolution body we point to. If a broker on this site mistreats a reader and won’t fix it, the free path is through the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. Every ASIC AFSL holder offering retail CFDs must be an AFCA member. We confirm that membership before listing a broker. If a broker drops AFCA membership, they come off the site.

We mention the CSLR where relevant. The Compensation Scheme of Last Resort, operational since April 2024, pays unpaid AFCA determinations in personal advice, securities dealing and credit only. It does not cover forex or derivatives trading, trading losses or general broker insolvency, and we flag that where it matters. The common comparison to the UK’s compensation scheme is a misreading, and I would not want readers to treat it as an equivalent. It is not.

The ATO is cited on tax content. I’m not licensed to give tax advice, so every page that touches CFD or forex tax treatment links to ATO TR 2005/15 and recommends a registered tax agent.

Founders of CompareForexBrokers

I founded CompareForexBrokers in 2014 with Noam Korbl from a small office in Melbourne.

The site is operated by The Trustee for Compare Forex Brokers Unit Trust (ABN 49909258897), our Corporate Authorised Representative (No. 001274082) of Bardin Capital Pty Ltd (AFSL 247858). Our Australian office is at Flat 1/650 Inkerman Rd, Caulfield North VIC 3161, and our contact phone is 0412 156 618.

• Justin Grossbard, Co-Founder and CEO. Trading since 1998. Full bio.
• David Levy, Head of Content and Fact-Checker. Reviews the live page once it is published and corrects anything wrong there.
• Research contributors. Live-account testing across 29 of the 33 brokers on the shortlist.

How to push back

We get things wrong. Spreads change without notice, an AFSL gets surrendered between our checks, a broker rolls out a platform update we miss for a week. When something needs flagging, the fastest way is through the contact page, and I’ll get on it for you.

A correction is acknowledged within one business day, and the fix is published within 72 hours. The confirmed figure or sentence is fixed on the page itself, the change is recorded in our internal change log, and the “Last updated” date moves to that day.