Focus Markets Review Australia 2026

Focus Markets quick facts

Trading costs and pricing

The two accounts

Focus Markets runs a two-account line-up and the split is the standard one. The Standard account is spread-only with no commission, advertised from 1.0 pips. The Raw account narrows the spread, advertised from 0.0 pips, and charges $3.50 per side per standard lot instead. Both accounts reach the full instrument range and both run on the same platform, so the decision is purely about which pricing shape suits your volume.

Neither figure is attached to a currency pair. That matters more than it sounds.

What Focus Markets does not publish

Most brokers on this site publish a spread table: EUR/USD at this many pips, AUD/USD at that many, usually with a capture window beside it. Focus Markets publishes a single headline “from” figure per account and stops there.

We checked all thirteen of its Australian pages, the June 2025 Product Disclosure Statement, the Financial Services Guide and the Client Agreement on 26 July 2026. There is no spreads table, no per-instrument schedule and no PDF. The following are all absent:

• A EUR/USD spread, on either account
• A spread for AUD/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY or EUR/GBP
• Any statement of which currency the $3.50 commission is billed in
• A round-turn commission figure
• A swap rate schedule; the AU FAQ says rates “are calculated automatically in the trading platform”, so they are visible only after you have an account
• The size of the conversion fee that PDS clause 13.10 reserves the right to charge

Focus Markets is not part of our May to June 2026 spread capture, so we hold no measured figure of our own either. Where this review quotes a cost, it is the broker’s published figure on the date given, not something we recorded. Our guide to how Australian brokers price their accounts sets out what the disclosed end of the field looks like.

Other fees AU traders should check

• Overnight financing applies to positions held past the New York close, at 00:00 platform time, with the platform set to GMT+3. Triple swap falls on Wednesday for forex and Friday for other classes.
• Currency conversion: PDS clause 13.10 reserves “an additional fee or spread” on the conversion rate. The quantum is not disclosed.
• Deposits and withdrawals carry no broker-side fee, though intermediary bank fees can apply on transfers.
• No inactivity fee appears in the June 2025 PDS. Clause 13.7 does allow exchange fees to be passed on, or CFD access to be removed, when an account sits idle.
• Guaranteed stop-loss orders are not offered. The Australian FAQ states it outright: “We do not offer guaranteed stop-losses.”
• Swap-free accounts are available at the broker’s discretion with an administration fee, and can be withdrawn at any time (PDS 13.5).

Trading platforms

MetaTrader 5

MetaTrader 5 is the whole platform story here. There is no proprietary terminal, no second option and no charting partner. Australian clients get the Windows build, which is white-labelled as focusmarkets5setup.exe, the generic MetaQuotes packages for Mac, iOS and Android, and a browser terminal at livetrader.focusmarkets.com.

Expert advisors and one-click trading work on both account types. Minimum trade size is 0.01 lots and maximum is 100, with no cap on the number of open positions or pending orders. For a broker with nothing of its own to add, leaning entirely on MetaQuotes is a defensible choice: MT5 is mature, it is what most systematic traders already run, and the economic calendar built into it is the only research tool a Focus Markets client gets.

Mobile access

There is no Focus Markets app. We searched the Australian Apple App Store across five terms and 211 results on 26 July 2026, and the Australian Google Play storefront, and found no branded application. Mobile trading happens through MetaQuotes’ own MT5 app, which is capable but carries none of the account tools a proprietary app usually adds.

What is not available

Worth stating plainly, because the absences are the platform story:

One documented inconsistency: the /au/support-legal/ page still describes the broker as offering “MetaTrader 5 and cTrader trading platforms”. No cTrader page, download or account option exists anywhere else in the Australian section, the platforms menu lists MT5 alone, and the accounts page gives the platform as MT5. Treat the legal page as stale drafting. Readers comparing cTrader brokers in Australia should look elsewhere.

Trust and safety

Trust score: 5.0/10.

ASIC regulation and the licence record

Focus Markets Pty Ltd holds AFSL 514425 with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The licence commenced on 7 March 2019 and its conditions are recorded as at that date, meaning nothing has been added since.

The licence authorises advice, dealing and market making in derivatives and foreign exchange contracts, to retail and wholesale clients. It carries no securities authorisation, which is why everything Focus Markets offers, shares included, is a contract for difference rather than the underlying asset.

Australian residents are contracted to that entity and cannot choose otherwise. We ran the registration portal from an Australian connection on 26 July 2026: the country field pre-filled to Australia, the entity field read Focus Markets Pty Ltd, and opening the entity dropdown showed exactly one option. Switching the country to Indonesia flipped the entity to Focus Markets Ltd of Saint Lucia, so the field responds to what you tell it instead of defaulting to one answer. No form was submitted.

The offshore side of the business is also unreachable from here. Every non-Australian path on the domain, including the global home page, redirects silently to the Australian site from an Australian connection. Several brokers we have reviewed leak an offshore offer to Australian readers through an unguarded link; this one does not.

A licence that hosts other brands

Set the offshore entity aside. Where this broker differs from its peers is the history of the licence itself.

AFSL 514425 operates as a licensing host. Seven corporate authorised representatives have been appointed under it since 2019, of which one is current:

Anzo Capital was appointed six days after the licence commenced. Alongside those appointments, six registered business names have sat on ABN 96 167 517 544: RGM Forex, Anzo Capital Group, Finesse Markets Group, Place a Trade Group, Guru One Group and the current DNA Markets Group.

None of this is a breach and none of it appears as a licence condition. It is, though, a materially different profile from a broker that has run one brand under one licence for ten years, and a reader weighing counterparty risk is entitled to see it. Our ranking of the safest forex brokers in Australia sets out how the rest of the field looks on the same measure.

Client money and negative balance protection

Retail client money sits in a dedicated client trust account under the Corporations Act, co-mingled with other clients’ funds, which is the standard arrangement. Focus Markets does not name the authorised deposit-taking institution in its PDS, where several competitors do.

Negative balance protection applies under PDS clause 6.3, as ASIC requires on retail CFD accounts, though the clause carries a cross-account net-off provision worth reading if you hold more than one account. Margin call fires at 80% and liquidation at or below 50%.

Focus Markets’ Financial Services Guide of June 2025 names AFCA as its external dispute resolution scheme. AFCA can hear claims up to $1,263,000 and award compensation up to $631,500. The Compensation Scheme of Last Resort sits behind that with a $150,000 cap, but excludes CFD trading losses, so it covers unpaid awards for misconduct rather than losing trades.

We are not publishing an AFCA membership number. A record exists under the Focus Markets name, but the ACN and licence number attached to it do not match the ones ASIC and the Australian Business Register hold for this company, and we would rather show nothing than a number we cannot stand behind.

Entity history and ownership

Five dates matter here and they are easy to run together, so take them separately. The company was registered on 3 March 2014 as RGM FX Pty Ltd. AFSL 514425 commenced on 7 March 2019. The company was renamed Focus Markets Pty Ltd on 5 July 2019, four months after the licence was granted. Design and distribution obligations began on 5 October 2021, and the current Target Market Determination was published on 4 July 2025.

Focus Markets publishes no founding year and discloses no parent, owner or group. It is a private Australian company whose shareholders are not free-searchable. Ernst and Young was appointed as licensee auditor on 18 May 2026.

Public reviews

Focus Markets holds a Trustpilot rating of 3.3 out of 5 from 6 reviews, which Trustpilot labels average, captured July 2026. The profile has been claimed by the broker since January 2026.

Read that number with two qualifications. Six reviews is a sample rather than a rating, which is why it stays out of this page’s structured data, and Trustpilot itself notes the company has not invited customers recently, so the handful it has are self-selected. The profile also covers the global focusmarkets.com domain rather than the Australian entity, so it mixes AU and overseas clients.

No TradingView broker profile exists for Focus Markets, which follows from the platform decision: those profiles attach to brokers integrated with TradingView.

Account types and minimum deposit

Account options for AU clients

Two accounts, one platform, no tiering by deposit size:

The Australian FAQ confirms there is no product split between them: “Both accounts provide access to our full range of markets and platforms.” Share CFD leverage is capped at 5:1 on both, but that is an ASIC product rule rather than an account restriction.

Wholesale accounts are a gap in the public record. The PDS points readers who want wholesale classification to “speak to a representative”, and no wholesale leverage, eligibility test or issuing entity is published anywhere on the Australian site. If wholesale terms matter to you, ask which entity issues the account before you apply, and compare against the disclosed offers in our guide to brokers with wholesale leverage tiers.

Minimum deposit

$100 in the account base currency, on both accounts. AUD is among the base currencies offered, so an Australian opening an AUD account funds it with AUD 100. Focus Markets publishes two slightly different base-currency lists on different Australian pages, so we are not reproducing the full set here; AUD availability is on both.

Funding and withdrawals

Deposit methods (AU)

BPAY and AUD bank transfer are the useful pair for Australian traders, and neither carries a broker-side fee. Missing from the list: PayID, Osko and POLi, all of which the faster-funding brokers in this market support.

Withdrawals

Requests go through a finance review of one to two business days, then settle in one to three business days by card or bank transfer, or one business day through Neteller or Skrill. Funds return to the original deposit method, cards first.

Account opening

Applications run five to ten minutes online, with identification and proof of address uploaded during the process. Focus Markets states a live account can be set up within 24 hours of submission during business hours. Demo accounts open in under a minute and run for 30 days.

Product range

Focus Markets publishes three instrument figures for its Australian entity and all three are ranges: 800+ instruments in total, 140+ crypto assets, and 500+ global stock CFDs. It does not publish a per-class breakdown, so this review does not print one.

The July 2025 Target Market Determination defines the set exhaustively, and it runs to five classes:

Two classes are absent, and their absence is confirmed rather than assumed. ETFs and treasury or bond CFDs appear nowhere in the TMD, nowhere in the PDS, and on none of the thirteen Australian pages. If you want fixed income exposure, our guide to treasury and bond CFDs covers the brokers that issue them.

Share CFDs

The 500+ share CFD list spans Australian and international names, and it is worth being precise about what you are buying: these are share CFDs, not shares. AFSL 514425 carries derivatives and foreign exchange authorisations only, with no securities authorisation, so Focus Markets cannot sell you the underlying stock even if it wanted to.

Crypto, indices and commodities

Crypto is the standout number in the range. A 140+ list runs genuinely wide for an ASIC-licensed broker, where 2:1 retail leverage and conservative listing policies usually keep the count low. Our guide to crypto CFDs in Australia shows where that sits against the field. Indices and commodities are conventional, and the commodity set includes precious metals; see our coverage of commodity CFDs for how the class trades locally.

Leverage for AU traders

Focus Markets publishes 30:1 on forex, 20:1 on indices, 20:1 on commodities, 5:1 on shares and 2:1 on crypto. Every one of those figures is the ASIC retail cap, which each licensed broker has to apply.

ASIC caps retail CFD leverage at 30:1 on major forex pairs, 20:1 on minor pairs, gold and major indices, 10:1 on commodities other than gold, 5:1 on share CFDs and 2:1 on crypto assets. The caps come from a product intervention order extended to 23 May 2027, so they apply at every ASIC broker. Every issuer must also close out a retail client’s positions once account equity falls below 50 percent of total initial margin, and positions cannot be netted against each other to avoid it. If you want the mechanics first, start with our explainer on leverage in Australian forex trading.

Customer service

Support runs 24 hours a day, five days a week, across phone, email and live chat. The Australian contact number is (03) 8376 1322 and the desk is Melbourne-based, so local business hours are properly covered rather than handed to an overseas night shift.

We have not measured response times. Focus Markets publishes no supported-language list either.

Research and education

There is nothing to review. Focus Markets’ Australian section runs to thirteen pages: five market pages, one platform page, one about page and six support pages. No blog, no market analysis, no webinars, no written guides, no video library and no in-platform training exist. The only research-adjacent tool a client gets is MetaTrader 5’s built-in economic calendar, which is a MetaQuotes feature rather than a Focus Markets one.

Plenty of brokers have thin education. This one has none, and it is the single largest gap between Focus Markets and the rest of the ASIC field.

How Focus Markets compares to alternatives

No broker wins on every axis. The table points at who we would choose for a specific priority, and the full ranking sits in our guide to the leading Australian forex brokers.

Focus Markets versus Trading.com

Two mid-tier ASIC brokers built on MetaTrader 5 at a similar price point, which makes this the most useful head-to-head on the page. The Trading.com review covers that side in full.

Short version: Trading.com tells you what a trade will cost before you open an account, and hands you a platform and an app of its own. Once you are inside, Focus Markets gives you more markets, crypto among them.

Should you open an account with Focus Markets?

Open a Focus Markets account if you already trade on MetaTrader 5, want an ASIC-licensed counterparty, and value range over disclosure: 800+ instruments and a 140+ crypto list are real advantages, the entity you contract with is unambiguous, and the offshore arm is walled off from Australian clients properly.

Skip it if you need to know your cost before you deposit. No per-pair spread, no commission currency, no round-turn figure and no swap schedule is a lot to take on trust in a market where Fusion Markets and IC Markets publish all four. Skip it too if you are starting out, because the education shelf is bare, or if you want a broker with a longer single-brand history behind it.

The demo is free, runs MT5 and lasts 30 days, which is the cheapest way to see the spreads Focus Markets will not publish.

Open a Focus Markets demo → (affiliate link, see our advertiser disclosure)