Best High Leverage Forex Brokers for 2025

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In 2018, the European Securities and Markets Authority imposed leverage caps on all FX and CFD assets that are traded on brokerage platforms that are regulated within the EU and the United Kingdom. Despite Brexit, the UK regulator (FCA) adopted the same principles and applied leverage caps to UK-regulated brokers. At leverages that are capped at 1:30 for FX majors, 1:20 for FX minors and as low as 1:5 for cryptocurrency CFDs, many retail traders suddenly found themselves in a position where they could not afford the large margin requirements needed to support trading under such restrictive leverage conditions.

If you decided to trade with brokers in the UK and EU, ESMA's new leverage caps meant that you had to provide a margin of 3.33% to trade an FX major, 5% to trade an FX minor or as high as 10% of the total capital required to trade stocks CFDs. Crypto CFD trading required at least 50% of the total capital required to set up a position on BTC/USD or any other crypto pair.

It is a natural phenomenon that water will seek the area of least resistance to continue its flow. Similarly, retail traders who could largely not afford to trade under these low-leverage conditions ended up shifting in droves to offshore brokers with more generous leverage conditions. Statistics have shown that there has been a large migration of retail traders towards the high-leverage broker platforms.

The FX and CFD market is a leveraged market. Leverage in itself, is not a bad thing and is not the albatross in the room that it has been made out to be. The problem has been with irresponsible use of leverage. What this means is that traders can still work with high leverage brokers successfully as long as the rules are obeyed.

This piece presents insights into high leverage trading and provides a list of the high leverage FX and CFD brokers that are in the market today.

The Essence of High Leverage Trading

The price changes in forex are very small... in the order of four decimal units. To translate any profitable moves into reasonable earnings, you have to use substantial capital. That is why forex trading was exclusively done by banks in the early days as they were the only entities who could muster the capital to trade. But with the introduction of leverage, the space was opened to retail traders. The degree of leverage available to the trader multiplies the trading power of the trader's available capital.

To understand the impact of high leverage trading, picture this scenario. If you set up a Standard Lot position on EUR/USD, you will need $100,000 in trading capital to do so. Given a 3.33% margin requirement on a low-leverage broker platform, you will need at least $3,333 to set up this position. But if you were to trade with high leverage brokers, using a leverage of say 1:500 (i.e. 0.2% margin), you would only need as low as $200 to implement the same trade. The irony is that a profitable position delivers the same amount of cash to the trader using $3,333 on a low-leverage broker as the trader with $200 on a high-leverage broker using the 1:500 position size.

Another advantage is that the use of a high-leverage broker allows the trader to put up a second or even a third position to capture any profitable scenarios elsewhere. So if you had access to $10,000 in capital, would you rather commit a third of it into a low-leverage, high-margin platform where you may only be able to take one trade at a time with no recourse to hedge that trade using another position, or would you rather use a much lower portion of your capital on a high-leverage broker and have the ability to set up a second or third trade that provides a cover in the event the initial trade goes bad?

Case Study 1: Strategic capital allocation as a right way to use high Leverage

Bismarck is a trader who has chosen to use a 1:500 leverage to trade on a capital of $10,000. This gives him purchase power of $5,000,000. He chooses the option of strategic allocation of this buying power to positions based on his risk-reward analysis, and does not try to chase one big bumper trade on full margin. This approach is one that uses a high leverage facility on the back of proper risk control.

Case Study 2: Keeping risks low: a smart use of high leverage

Joan is an example of an experienced forex trader who uses a leverage of 1:1000 to trade a capital of $10,000 in trading capital. This gives her a buying power of $10m. But she opts to open a position that uses only 1% of this buying power into a low-volatility currency pair. Her strict control ensures that she never risks more than $100,000 of buying power in a trade, which actually uses only $100 of her $10,000 capital. Even if she loses the trade, she still has $9,900 to work with.

Case Study 3: Overexposure and poor risk management: the wrong use of high leverage

Tadic's inexperienced handling of the 1:1000 leverage he opted to use on his $2,000 capital is a classic example of how not to use high leverage. He had options to use 1:500, but he opted not to. With $2,000,000 buying power, he opted to use half of this buying power (and essentially half of his capital) in a trade. However, a news event caused the market to move contrary to his position and he lost half his account. His poor use of risk management and overexposure of his account were the reasons why his high leverage play failed him.

How to Use High Trading Leverage Correctly

Leverage can work in your favour or against you. It is a double-edged sword. You want that sword cutting your fish into tiny bits that can be cooked into a delicious meal and not causing you bodily injury. Similarly, you want high leverage to work in your favour and not against you. This is why you must know how to use high leverage properly.

If you read through the guidelines released by ESMA on the leverage caps and similar notices from the UK and Australian regulators, you would notice that the limitation on leverage to 1:30 for forex majors only applies to retail traders. Institutional traders are still allowed to use high leverage; sometimes as high as 1:300. The question is: if high leverage was an entirely bad thing, why was it not scrapped by ESMA entirely? Why are institutional traders allowed to use high leverage whereas retail traders are not?

The mere fact that high leverage is available on ESMA-regulated as well as UK/Australian-regulated platforms indicates that leverage in itself is not a bad thing. But what the regulators have done is to attempt to limit its availability to the category of traders they feel would be in a position to use it best.

By virtue of their circumstances, institutional traders usually receive professional training and real-life trading mentorship on position sizing and risk management as part of their work. The institutional trading firms where these professional traders cut their teeth also have internal risk control mechanisms that ensure that no trader within the institution goes beyond allowable risk. There is also considerable oversight from team leaders at every level. Furthermore, there is a great understanding of the concept of volatility, so any leverage used is deployed according to how volatile a market is, with the higher leverages being used to trade low-volatility markets.

This goes to show that the real problem here is not leverage itself but the propensity of retail traders to abuse leverage and take on too much risk. Traders naturally want to assume considerable risk, and restricting leverage will not change this instinct. Instead, leverage caps force traders to come up with more money to fund risky trades. Therefore, the emphasis on leverage, whether low or high, should shift to ensuring that traders obey the rules of position sizing and risk management to the letter.

Leverage can work in the trader's favour, or against the trader. Therefore, the following rules must be observed to get the best of high-leverage conditions when using the brokers.

• Deploy high leverages for low-volatility assets: High leverage is best suited for markets that have comparatively low volatility. For instance, forex majors have lower spreads, lower intraday trading ranges and have more predictable price movements than the cryptocurrencies, FX minors, metal assets (gold, silver), energy assets (crude oil) or exotic FX pairs. There are also some FX pairs that display lower volatility and do not trend in a wild manner (e.g. AUDNZD).
• Follow the 0.5 - 1% exposure rule: There was a time when 3% was regarded as the maximum exposure level for all trades placed on an account. Due to the dynamic nature of the market and the changes that have occurred since the pandemic, data from various brokerages and prop firms now indicate that the safest exposure is between 0.5% and 1% maximum. This means that all open trades should not exceed 3% of the account size. To illustrate this, let's say you are using a leverage of 1:1000 on a $5,000 account. You should not have more than $50 exposure on any trades on that account. This means you may have to reduce your lot sizes if you want to risk up to 100 pips on a trade.
• Seek trades with good risk-reward ratios: Trades that offer a 1:3 risk-reward ratio allow you to lose up to 60% of your trades and still end up profitable. This is because the pips gained from winning trades will exceed those lost from losing trades.
• Stick to a maximum of two simultaneous trades: Never take on too many simultaneous trades. Every trade you take gulps margin and expands the leverage risk. The more trades you take on, the more you expose your capital to the market and reduce the level of profit you can make. Look for one or two high probability trades, place them and stick to them.
• Stay away from volatile markets: Avoid using high leverage in highly volatile markets. These markets will subject your account to too much risk.
• Write down the reasons for your entries and exits: Eliminate any position you intend to assume that has no sound technical or fundamental basis.

High Leverage Brokers for You

Moving on, we present a list of brokers who offer leverage that can go as high as 1:3000. However, a clarification at this point would be in order. The leverage you see listed beside each broker is the maximum leverage available to you as a trader. The leverage provided by these brokers falls into a spectrum that starts at 1:2 and terminates at 1:500, or 1:2000 or 1:3000 as the case may be. This gives you the power to choose leverage amounts you are comfortable with. If you are more comfortable using a leverage of 1:200 (i.e., margin of 0.5%) and not the very high leverages (such as 1:3000), by all means, work with this. The best high-leverage brokerage companies put the power of choice in your hands without boxing you into a corner with very few leverage options.

Some of the brokers in this list are offshore branches of brokerages whose head offices are located in the UK or European Economic Area (EEA). These branches offer the same protections and trade conditions as the parent companies. They were created to cater to traders who had to exit the UK/EU platforms due to not being able to meet the steep margin requirements on those platforms. Under such scenarios, benefits are seen by both the brokers and traders: brokers are able to retain their clients, and traders can continue to work with the brands they are used to without having to make major adjustments that come with trading with new platforms.

Feel free to explore the various high leverage offerings of the brokers on this page, and start enjoying the benefits of working with a high leverage brokerage today.