No welcome bonus, no deposit-match offer, no cash-back promotion — for a properly regulated CFD broker, that's the rule, not an oversight.
All brokers on CompareFX are regulated. No unregulated offshore promotions.
If you've compared a couple of brokers on this site, you've probably noticed the same answer showing up again and again: "no, this broker cannot offer a deposit bonus." That's not a coincidence, and it's not a weakness of any single broker. It's a hard legal restriction that applies to every CFD provider holding a genuine retail licence across the EU and the UK — brokers as different as eToro, Plus500, IG, CMC Markets, Exness, XM, IC Markets, Pepperstone, FxPro and FXTM are all bound by the same rule when they onboard EU or UK retail clients.
Outside the EU and UK, "$500 welcome bonus" and "100% deposit match" offers are still common marketing tools for offshore CFD brokers. Inside the EU and UK, they are illegal for retail business. Understanding why helps you read broker marketing correctly — and spot the brokers that are quietly operating outside the protections you'd expect.
In 2018, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) used its EU-wide product intervention powers to restrict how CFDs — including retail forex, indices and crypto CFDs — could be marketed, distributed and sold to retail clients. The measures, which came into force from August 2018, covered several areas at once:
National regulators across the EU — CySEC (Cyprus), BaFin (Germany), AMF (France), CNMV (Spain), and others — carried these measures into their own permanent national rules once ESMA's temporary EU-wide intervention expired. The bonus ban has stayed in force ever since. It is why a CySEC-regulated broker cannot legally run a deposit-bonus campaign targeting EU retail clients, no matter how the marketing is worded.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) initially mirrored ESMA's temporary EU measures for UK clients, then — following the UK's departure from the EU — made its own permanent version of the same restrictions. These sit in the FCA Handbook under COBS 22.5, the chapter covering the restriction on the sale, marketing and distribution of CFDs to retail clients.
The FCA's permanent rules track the ESMA framework closely: the same leverage caps, the same negative balance protection, the same standardised risk warning, and the same prohibition on monetary and non-monetary benefits used to market CFDs to retail clients. In practice, this means a broker regulated by the FCA is under exactly the same bonus restriction as one regulated by CySEC or BaFin — UK retail clients get no deposit-bonus offers either, regardless of how the broker markets itself outside the UK.
The restriction covers any monetary or non-monetary benefit offered as an incentive tied to opening an account, depositing, or trading — not every form of broker marketing. In practice:
Because the ban is a hard legal floor for EU and UK retail business, a prominent "$500 welcome bonus" advertised to you personally should trigger one question before anything else: which entity, under which licence, is actually onboarding me?
Two things are usually true when a deposit bonus appears:
Every broker featured in our comparisons on this site is reviewed specifically for its EU or UK retail entity and licence — not a lookalike offshore arm. That's a deliberate choice, and it's the reason none of them will ever show up here with a bonus offer attached.
The same bonus-ban answer applies to every regulated broker pairing we cover. See it explained in context for each match-up, plus the full regulatory, spread, and platform breakdown:
Individual broker reviews, including full regulatory breakdowns:
| What you might be promised offshore | What's legal for EU/UK retail clients here |
|---|---|
| "100% deposit match up to $1,000" | Not available — banned incentive |
| "Get $500 free when you sign up" | Not available — banned incentive |
| "Trading credit rebates by volume" | Not available — banned incentive |
| Free charting tools and market research | Generally available |
| Standardised spreads/commissions for all retail clients | Available (not a targeted bonus) |
| Negative balance protection | Guaranteed by law |
Every broker on CompareFX is reviewed on its actual EU or UK retail entity — regulation, spreads, platforms, and fees, with no offshore bonus gimmicks.
Compare EU-regulated brokersBecause it is illegal for them to do so when dealing with retail clients. ESMA's 2018 product intervention measures — carried into permanent CySEC, BaFin, AMF and other national-regulator rules — ban any monetary or non-monetary benefit offered as an incentive to trade CFDs. The FCA introduced its own aligned permanent rules (COBS 22.5) after Brexit. A broker holding a genuine EU or UK retail licence cannot legally run a deposit-match or welcome-bonus promotion for those clients.
Both brokers hold FCA (UK) and CySEC (Cyprus, EU) licences. Both regulators ban cash and deposit-match bonuses for retail CFD clients — CySEC under ESMA's EU-wide product intervention rules, and the FCA under its own aligned COBS restrictions. So neither eToro nor Plus500 can legally offer deposit bonuses to clients onboarded under their EU or UK entities.
It usually means one of two things: either the entity onboarding you is not regulated under ESMA or the FCA — commonly an offshore entity in a jurisdiction with weaker retail protections — or the offer is not a genuine cash bonus but a marketing claim that will come with hidden trading-volume conditions. Either way, treat a prominent deposit bonus as a reason to check the broker's actual regulator and entity name before signing up, not as a reason to trust them more.
Yes, within limits. Brokers can still offer things that are not monetary or non-monetary trading incentives — for example, free access to charting tools, educational webinars, market research, or reduced spreads that apply to all clients rather than being tied to a specific deposit or trading-volume target. What they cannot do is give you cash, credit, or prizes for depositing or trading a certain amount.
The ESMA and FCA bonus ban specifically targets retail clients — the vast majority of individual traders. Clients who qualify for and elect professional status lose several retail protections, including this bonus ban, negative balance protection, and the leverage caps. Professional status has strict qualifying criteria and most beginner traders do not meet it — nor should they seek it out purely to access bonuses.