Darwinex review and ratings

Company information

Darwinex is a forex broker located in the UK, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Be aware, the company has some trading restrictions because of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) influence.

Availability

Darwinex refused to provide the information regarding which clients (from which countries) they accept and not.

Distinctive features

• Authorised and regulated by a credible government agency.
• Own advanced Social Trading Network.
• Tight spreads on major currency pairs.

Trading instruments

Forex broker offers the following underlying assets for trading.

Comprehensive review

In some ways similar to eToro, Darwinex also brands itself as a “social trading” broker, offering retail traders tools that let them examine other trader’s strategies and risk profiles, and then choose whether or not to follow that trader’s strategy.

However, Darwinex differentiates itself from eToro and other “social trading” brokers by focusing on identifying and copying good trading strategies, and not on copying other people’s trades. Traders who already have a profitable trading strategy can choose to list their strategy on Darwinex and receive a 20% success fee from the profits made by other traders who used one’s own strategy.

The Darwinex brokerage brand first got registered in 2014 and is owned by Tradeslide Trading Tech Limited, a UK-based company regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under license number 586466. The broker is present with office locations in London and Madrid.

Darwinex is a standard straight-through processing (STP) and no-dealing desk (NDD) broker, fully compliant with the new EU regulations from 2018. As a consequence of that, leverage for EU-based traders is limited to 1:30 unless you qualify as a professional trader.

The trading platforms offered by Darwinex are the widely used MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platforms, with the main difference between them being that share trading is only available on MT5.

A unique feature of Darwinex is their “hedge fund as a service” model that lets profitable traders trade with the broker’s own capital – up to EUR 24 million – and earn 20% of the profits he generates for the firm.

Further, the broker has an interesting “Scout” program that is set up to bring more experienced and profitable traders into the Darwinex ecosystem. Under this program, eligible traders can earn up to USD 10,000 for referring what the broker calls “a good trader.”

In terms of instruments available for trading, Darwinex pretty much has it all covered, with choices including all popular currency pairs, and CFDs based on equity indices, commodities, stocks, and cryptocurrencies. Spreads are generally low and transparent, with a live spread table for major FX pairs available on the website. At the time of this writing, spreads on the EUR/USD were as low as 0.1.

Deposits and withdrawals on Darwinex are carried out as you would expect from any broker. For retail clients, a minimum initial deposit of 500 EUR/USD/GBP applies, and for corporate clients the minimum is 10,000 EUR/USD/GBP. Subsequent deposits can be of any amount, but be aware that Darwinex charges a 5 EUR/USD/GBP fee for any deposit lower than 500 EUR/USD/GBP. Deposits can be made with major debit and credit cards or bank wire from an account in the name of the Darwinex customer.

Lastly, Darwinex’s customer service is available through email and phone, in addition to an “emergency contact form” on its website for use only in cases when there are problems with live orders or prices on trading instruments.

The website further features a large FAQ section that answers most questions a trader might have about deposits, withdrawals, and trading on the Meta Trader platform. The broker also has an active community forum where traders help each other with everything from developing a portfolio, creating trading strategies, and even tips on how to use the trading platform.