How many Forex & Binary Options brokers are there? Detailed industry snapshot

Brokers open up shop almost on a daily basis. A healthy combination of white labels, full service brokerages and those providing services as introducing brokers (IBs) make up the industry as a whole.

However, just how many brokerages are out there?

FinanceFeeds decided to find out. By utilizing a custom crawler / spider, we managed to pull up a list of active participants using certain relevant keywords to gauge how many results can be retrieved on search engines, our findings being very accurate indeed. We then cross-referenced these results with research that has been conducted from within the industry in order to validate it.

The list that we created was then refined in order to generate a comprehensive list of active websites (live at the time of crawling). This list does not include sites that have yet to be indexed by major search engines or sites that are in foreign languages that do not use English keywords. The list also does not include brokerages that do not offer MetaTrader 4 such as companies with their own proprietary platforms, for example Dukascopy Bank, IBFX, and Saxo Bank.

The results may actually surprise you and before you read further, it is worth considering how many active retail brokerages are indeed in existence today? The majority of industry participants that we have asked to estimate this in addition to the actual research that we have conducted have guessed that this figure runs into the thousands.

Certain websites and retail FX forums often provide lists of brokerages, for example Forex Peace Army has quite a long list of brokerages (currently listing around 823) with some of these no longer in service.

Forex Brokers

FinanceFeeds research shows that the total number of active MetaTrader 4 brokerages currently stands at 1,231 (one thousand two hundred and thirty one).

Points to note: the list is only comprised of retail FX brokerages which offer the MetaTrader 4 platform. Some of these included may be white labels, full service brokerages or IBs, however; all on the list offer MetaTrader 4 trading in some form or another.

FinanceFeeds has asked MetaQuotes for comment and or further figures and statistics and will update accordingly if MetaQuotes choose to comment or respond.

Binary Options Brokerages

The total number of active binary options brokerages currently stands at 501 (five hundred and one).

Points to note: The list includes those offering platform trading as well as standard binary options brands, IBs and white labels.

Who provides the technology?

With our list of binary options brands, where available; we were also able to gain approximate details of the market share by platform technology provider with the numbers as follows:

• SpotOption: 80 brands
• O-SYSTEMS: 37 brands
• TechFinancials: 47 brands
• Tradesmarter: 42 brands
• Tradologic: 55 brands
• MarketsPulse: 21 brands

SpotOption has the largest market share, with 80 brands of which approximately 20 brands are listed on SpotOption’s website, however; FinanceFeeds understands this to be a fraction of the true amount.

When approaching SpotOption to gain the full and accurate number, the company stated:

“Not all information is accessible to the public.” (sic)

We have asked the major binary options platform technology providers above for comment and verification of these figures and will update if and when they make comment.

FinanceFeeds will start making contact with those on the list and companies that are new to the scene in order to build statistics on how many survive the first six months through the first year to better understand the current and future landscape. Moreover, we are working on building a more comprehensive list to include non MT4 brokerages and will update accordingly.