There are forex brokers in the industry offering very high leverage such as 1:1000, 1:2000, or even 1:3000. I’ve looked into more than 400 forex brokers in the industry to find the highest leverage among reputable forex brokers. After finding them, I examined their leverages from different angles.

Although you can find very high leverages such as 1:2000 or 1:3000 there are some limitations for such leverages. One of them is that the high leverage is limited to the size of your account; the larger size account is the lower leverage you get.

There are also some limitations for some countries regarding the regulation. Some regulatory bodies don’t allow brokers to offer high leverages.

Other than all that, very high leverages such as 1:1000 or above are not for all trading instruments and are mostly offered for major forex pairs.

So before introducing forex brokers offering the highest leverage, let’s talk about these limitations more.

Forex Brokers’ Limitations on High Leverage

As I mentioned earlier, offering high leverage by forex brokers doesn’t mean that Forex brokers give such high leverages to everyone or in all situations. There are some exceptions that I’ve categorized them based on my experience and of course an extra study that I’ve done.

These are the areas that forex brokers may not offer their highest leverage:

Account Size

When a broker offers 1:1000 or 1:2000 as leverage, it doesn’t mean that you can use such leverages with any size of accounts and there’s a leverage structure for that.

With larger size accounts, you receive lower leverage and the high leverage of brokers is offered to smaller size accounts.

For instance, up to $200, you can use a leverage of 1:3000. From $200 to $3000, a leverage of 1:2000 is available. From $3000 to $10000, you can use 1:1000 and so on.

This kind of structure is similar among all the highest leverage forex brokers to a great extent and you can’t find any broker that offers very high leverage to large size accounts, however, there are small differences.

For example, broker A offers a leverage of 1:2000 to the account size of up to $2000 while broker B offers the same leverage to traders who want to open an account of $3000 or less.

Given all that, you may want to check out the leverage structure of the brokers to pick the one that suits you the best.

Lot Size (Notional Value)

Some forex brokers don’t consider the size of accounts as a factor for offering high leverage. Instead, they put limits on the lot size or the amount of money that you use for trades. They calculate that based on notional value.

For instance, if the notional value is less than 50000, you can use 1:2000 as leverage; between 50000 and 2000000, you can use 1:1000; and etc.

The notional value is calculated by this formula:

Notional value = Contract size * Spot price

The contract size for one lot of forex pairs is 100000 — for mini lot is equal to 10000 and for micro lot, it’s 1000.

For CFD shares it’s normally 1 and for gold the contract size is usually 100.

Let’s clear that up with an example…

Let’s say that a forex broker offers a lever of 1:2000 if the notional value is up to 50000. You want to buy 2 mini lots (0.2 lots) of EUR/USD and the price of this pair is at 1.1755. According to the formula, the notional value here is:

1*10000*1.1755= 11755

Since 11755 < 50000, so we can use 1:2000 as leverage in this case.

Type of Account

As you might know, forex brokers offer different types of accounts such as micro, STP that has floating spread and no commission, fixed spread, ECN, and etc.

For example, a broker might offer 1:2000 as its maximum leverage to its STP or micro/cent account but the max leverage for its ECN type of account is 1:500.

So when you need very high leverage, you may want to choose the type of account that has the highest leverage.

Trading Instruments

As you probably know, forex brokers don’t just offer forex or currency pairs. There are other trading instruments such as indices, shares or stocks, metals, cryptocurrencies, and etc.

Every type of trading instrument comes with different max leverage. Forex brokers don’t offer the same leverage even for all forex pairs. For instance, you can use the highest leverage for the major currency pairs and minor or exotic pairs are offered with lower leverage.

As a rule of thumb the more liquid and less volatile the higher leverage. In other words, you are offered the highest leverage for the pairs that are traded the most and aren’t too volatile, which means they don’t make large moves in a short period of time.

For instance, crypto currencies, exotic pairs, and CFD stocks are too volatile and are traded less so brokers offer lower leverage for them — normally lower than 1:10 or 1:20.

As a result, you should consider the brokers with the highest leverage on the trading instruments that you trade.

Regulation

The factors that we’ve talked about so far are related to the terms and conditions that forex brokers set for their high leverage offers but there’s an external factor that makes brokers decrease leverage for retail traders in some areas or countries.

Some forex financial bodies that regulate and watch forex brokers don’t allow them to offer high leverage to retail traders. The simple reason behind that is since trading on leverage can potentially make people lose a lot of money quickly and a majority of retail traders are prone to do so, therefore, lower leverage is in their best interest.

As a result, retail traders can’t use high leverage if they register with a broker or a branch of a broker that is registered under an EU regulatory body such as FCA (the UK regulator), CySEC (The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission), or any other European regulators. It’s the same for US retail traders who want to open an account with a forex broker regulated in the USA by American regulatory bodies, CFTC and NFA.

The maximum leverage that you can get when you open an account with an EU regulated broker is 1:30 and it’s 1:50 if you’re an American retail trader using a US regulated broker.

The maximum leverage is a lot higher for the forex brokers regulated in other parts of the world. For instance, if you go with an ASIC (Australian regulator) regulated broker, you can use a maximum leverage of 1:400 and if brokers are regulated by one of the international regulatory bodies, you can receive a very high leverage of 1:3000 from some of them.

OK, now you’re telling me that I can’t use high leverage if I’m an EU or a US resident?!

Well, not exactly.

You can still use that kind of high leverage forx brokers in some conditions.

Let’s find out how…

How Can EU Forex Traders Use High Leverage?

As we already know, you can’t use higher than 1:30 as leverage if you are an EU resident having an account in a broker under an EU regulatory body.

The 1:30 is the maximum leverage that brokers can offer for major currency pairs (EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDCHF, USDJPY, NZDUSD, AUDUSD, and USDCAD) according to ESMA (The European Securities and Markets Authority) measures on the provision of contracts for differences (CFDs) and binary options to retail investors.

It’s even lower for non-major forex pairs or other trading instruments:

• 20:1 for non-major currency pairs, gold and major indices;        
• 10:1 for commodities other than gold and non-major equity indices ;    
• 5:1 for individual equities and other reference values;    
• 2:1 for cryptocurrencies;

More info on ESMA website

However, there are two ways that you can use very high leverage as an EU trader.

Become Qualified as EPC

First, all that we’ve said so far are related to retail traders so what if you’re a professional trader? Are you still limited to 1:30 if you’re a professional trader?

The answer is no. EU regulators allow forex brokers to offer higher leverage to their professional clients, however, the leverage is not the highest ones — the max that I’ve seen is 1:500.

The question here is how you can qualify as a professional trader or EPC (Elective professional clients)?

According to FCA, a trader is considered as EPC if he/she meets at least 2 of these 3 criteria:

1. the client has carried out transactions, in significant size, on the relevant market at an average frequency of 10 per quarter over the previous four quarters
2. the size of the client’s financial instrument portfolio, defined as including cash deposits and financial instruments, exceeds EUR 500,000
3. the client works or has worked in the financial sector for at least one year in a professional position, which requires knowledge of the transactions or services envisaged

It basically means that you need to have a statement of 40 trades with large lot sizes in the past year and your investment must be at least € 500000 whether in forex or out of it such as stocks or savings — property portfolios are not included.

Well, as you can see this is not a viable option for many EU traders who want to use high leverage so if you’re one of them, you can pick the next option.

Use an Offshore Forex Broker

The easiest way that you can apply to have access to high leverage as an EU or UK trader is to use an offshore forex broker or register under an offshore regulation of a broker.

Almost all the forex brokers that aren’t regulated or they have a regulation from agencies that have less strict regulations such as FSA (Seychelles), IFSC (Belize), BVIFSC (British Virgin Islands), and some others accept EU residents and allow them to use leverages like 1:1000, 2000, or even 3000.

There are even forex brokers that are regulated by some EU or UK regulators but since they are also regulated by offshore regulatory bodies, you can register with their offshore branch and use some offers such as the highest leverages.

For instance, you live in the UK and want to open an account with a forex broker that is regulated by both FCA and IFSC. If you register with their UK branch, you’re under the regulation of FCA so the maximum leverage that you can use is 1:30. On the other hand, if you open an account with their Belize branch, you’re under the rules and regulation of IFSC that allows high leverage so you can use very high leverage such as 1:1000 and higher.

How Can US Forex Traders Use High Leverage?

As it’s mentioned early on, the maximum leverage offered by US-regulated forex brokers, AKA NFA regulated brokers, is 1:50 which I think is more than enough for many traders. But you may want to need more leverage for any reason whether it’s because you open lots of positions at the same time or you use EAs such as grid or martingale strategies, and etc.

For whatever reason that you need more leverage, your options are the same as EU traders which means either you need to be a professional trader or go offshore; however, your choices for offshore forex brokers are limited and are not as wide as EU traders.

There are lots of reputable offshore brokers for EU residents but when it comes to US residents, a handful of them accept US clients.

I’ve done a broad search and a comprehensive study on offshore forex brokers accepting US clients that you can find in this post.

Which Forex Broker Has the Highest Leverage?

Alpari, and JustForex offer the highest leverage in the industry, which is 1:3000; however, this kind of leverage is limited to some conditions.

For instance, it’s available in Justforex for the accounts with the equity of $200 or lower — above that amount, it will be adjusted and lowered. In Alpari, you can use such a leverage with a maximum lot size of around one standard lot, more or less (see lot size section).

This condition is better when you want to use 1:2000 as leverage. Roboforex has the best situation in this case and you can use such a leverage for the accounts with the equity of up to $5000.

It’s worth noting that this kind of very high leverage is related to currency pairs, specifically major ones. For minor forex pairs or other trading instruments such as Indices, CFD stocks, Cryptos and etc.; the leverage is lower.

List of Forex Brokers with the Highest Leverage

In the following table, you can find all the reputable forex brokers offering the highest leverage in the industry.

There are some sections about the leverage of the brokers that we’ve talked about in detail in this article.

See the following sections for them:

• Max Leverage (Account Type)
• Max Leverage (Trading Instruments)
• Leverage Structure

FAQ