The CMA Register Promises 20 Brokers Compared by Fee Structure. The Data Only Supports Five — Here's What Those Five Actually Cost.

This comparison was supposed to cover twenty brokers. It covers five.

The query assumed a clean CMA register cross-referenced against twenty fee schedules. We went looking for the dataset that would support that. What came back was verified pricing on five operators — AvaTrade, Exness, FBS, FXTM, and HF Markets — and not one of them carries a CMA license in the records we can stand behind. The regulators attached to these five are FCA, ASIC, CySEC, FSCA, DFSA, ADGM, and a handful of offshore authorities. No CMA Kuwait. No SAMA. The register the query points at and the brokers the data covers do not intersect.

That is not a failure of the comparison. That is the comparison.

A reader searching for "twenty brokers ranked by fee structure" wants a table. What that reader actually needs is a warning about what a fee table can prove and what it quietly assumes. The five operators below are the ones where the spread numbers are anchored to something. The other fifteen the query implied are not in front of us, and we are not going to invent them. Fabricated rows are how broker-comparison content dies.

The Spread Column Splits Into Two Numbers, and Only One Is Honest

Every broker here publishes two EUR/USD spreads. The standard-account figure and the pro-account figure. They are not the same product, and ranking by the lower one without saying which account it requires is the oldest trick in the category.

Exness lists a standard spread of 1.0 pip and a pro spread of 0.1 pip. FBS lists 0.7 standard and 0.0 pro. HF Markets lists 1.2 standard and 0.0 pro. FXTM lists 1.5 standard and 0.1 pro. AvaTrade lists 0.9 on both — its standard and pro figures are identical at 0.9 pip, which is itself a signal that AvaTrade is not competing on raw-spread compression the way the others are.

Sort that by the pro number and FBS and HF Markets tie at zero. Sort by the standard number and FBS wins at 0.7 while FXTM sits last at 1.5. The ranking inverts depending on which account tier you read, and the marketing always quotes the tier that flatters the broker. A zero-pip pro spread is real, but it sits behind a commission and an account minimum the spread column never shows. The honest comparison is the standard-account number, because that is what the median deposit actually trades on.

Leverage and Minimum Deposit Tell You Who the Broker Is Actually For

The fee structure is not just the spread. It is the whole entry surface, and on that surface these five operators are not selling to the same person.

FBS offers 1:3000 maximum leverage on a $1 minimum deposit. Exness offers 1:2000 on a $1 minimum. FXTM matches the 1:2000 leverage but raises the floor to $10. HF Markets caps at 1:1000 with a $5 minimum. AvaTrade is the outlier in the other direction — 1:400 maximum leverage, $100 minimum deposit.

Read those two columns together and the segmentation is obvious. FBS and Exness are built for the under-funded, high-leverage retail account — the trader putting in pocket money and reaching for 1:2000 or more. AvaTrade, with a hundred-dollar floor and leverage capped at 1:400, is built for someone the firm expects to behave more conservatively. The fee structure is downstream of that decision. A broker that wants high-leverage, low-balance accounts compresses the spread to win the click; a broker targeting a different client tolerates a 0.9 pip spread because its customer is not optimizing for it.

The withdrawal speed lands the same way. Exness lists instant withdrawals. FBS lists instant to one day. HF Markets is one day. AvaTrade and FXTM both sit at one to three days. Withdrawal latency is a cost the spread table never prices, and it is the cost a trader feels most sharply the first time they try to take money out.

The Regulator Column Is Where the CMA Question Actually Dies

Here is the part the original query cannot survive. Fee structure means very little without knowing who supervises the fee.

Of the five, exactly one — Exness — pairs a tier-1 regulator with instant withdrawals and a 0.1 pip pro spread, and its tier-1 standing rests on the FCA. FXTM and HF Markets also carry FCA. AvaTrade's tier-1 anchor is ASIC, not its European or Gulf licenses. FBS lists ASIC as its only tier-1 authority alongside CySEC and FSCA. HF Markets is the only one of the five carrying a DFSA license — the Gulf-relevant credential, and the closest any of these brokers comes to the regional regulatory posture the query was reaching for.

None of them carries CMA. So a comparison titled "CMA register: twenty brokers by fee structure" is built on a premise the data refuses. You cannot rank brokers on a register they do not appear in. What you can do is read the tier-1 column honestly: the FCA and ASIC entities behind these names are the ones that constrain how the fee can be set and how a dispute gets resolved, and the entity a Gulf trader actually onboards into is frequently the offshore one — FSA, FSC — where the leverage is highest and the supervision thinnest. The 1:3000 leverage is not offered by the FCA-regulated entity. It is offered by the offshore arm. That gap between the regulator named in the marketing and the entity holding the account is the real fee no spread table prints.

This started as a twenty-broker fee ranking against a regulator register. It turned into a five-broker reading of why that ranking cannot be built — because the register named and the brokers verified do not overlap, and because the spread column most comparisons sort on is the one number these firms are most willing to manipulate. The next question is not "which of the twenty is cheapest." It is narrower and harder: which legal entity will hold your deposit, which regulator supervises that specific entity, and whether the 0.1 pip pro spread you were sold is offered by the licensed arm or the offshore one. Get the entity right first. The fee comparison only means something after that.

FAQ

Why does this article only cover five brokers when the query says twenty?

The verified pricing dataset we work from contains fee structures for five operators: AvaTrade, Exness, FBS, FXTM, and HF Markets. The other fifteen implied by the query were not present in the grounding with citable spread, leverage, or deposit figures. Rather than fabricate rows to fill a table — the standard failure mode of broker-comparison content — we report only what the data supports and treat the gap itself as the finding.

Do any of these five brokers actually appear on a CMA register?

No. Across all five, the regulators on record are FCA, ASIC, CySEC, FSCA, DFSA, ADGM, CBI, FSA, and FSC. None lists a CMA license — neither CMA Kuwait nor a Saudi authority. HF Markets is the only one carrying a Gulf-relevant credential, the DFSA license. A ranking against a CMA register therefore cannot be constructed from these firms; the register and the broker set do not intersect.

Which broker has the lowest EUR/USD spread?

It depends entirely on the account tier. On pro accounts, FBS and HF Markets both list 0.0 pip, with Exness and FXTM at 0.1 pip. On standard accounts, FBS leads at 0.7 pip and FXTM trails at 1.5 pip. The zero-pip pro spreads sit behind commissions and account minimums the spread figure alone does not disclose, so the standard-account number is the more honest basis for comparison.

What is the lowest minimum deposit among these brokers?

Exness and FBS both open accounts at a $1 minimum deposit. HF Markets requires $5, FXTM requires $10, and AvaTrade sets the highest floor at $100. The minimum deposit pairs with the leverage offering to reveal the target client: FBS combines its $1 floor with 1:3000 leverage, while AvaTrade's $100 floor sits with a conservative 1:400 cap.

How fast can I withdraw funds from each broker?

Exness lists instant withdrawals. FBS lists instant to one day. HF Markets processes in one day. AvaTrade and FXTM both quote one to three days. Withdrawal latency is a real cost that no spread table prices, and it is typically the first friction a trader encounters when moving money out rather than in.

Does the highest leverage come from the tier-1 regulated entity?

Generally no. The headline figures — FBS at 1:3000, Exness and FXTM at 1:2000 — are offered through offshore entities (FSA, FSC), not the FCA- or ASIC-regulated arms. The entity that supervises the fee and the entity that holds the account are frequently different. Confirming which legal entity your account actually sits under matters more than the leverage number quoted in the marketing.

Which of these five is the most relevant for a Gulf-based trader?

On the data here, HF Markets is the only one of the five holding a DFSA license, which is the credential most directly relevant to Gulf supervision. That does not make it cheapest — its standard EUR/USD spread of 1.2 pip is wider than FBS at 0.7 — but regulatory standing in the trader's own jurisdiction is a different axis from spread, and the DFSA license is the closest any of these five comes to it.