XTB Review 2026: Fined PLN 20 Million Over How It Sold CFDs
Quick facts
| Legal entity | XTB Limited (UK, FCA, holds and controls client money), XTB S.A. (Poland, KNF-supervised, listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2016, the group parent), XTB International Limited (Belize, Financial Services Commission of Belize, for clients outside the licensed markets). Cypriot, UAE, Spanish, German, Brazilian and Chilean entities not checked at source. |
|---|---|
| Regulator | Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) |
| Licence number | FCA 522157; KNF-supervised in Poland; Belize company 153,939 with FSC Belize registration 6442514 |
| Founded | Over two decades of operation on XTB's own account. UK entity FCA authorised 17 January 2011; group listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2016 |
| Headquarters | Warsaw, Poland. UK entity at Level 9, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AA |
| Spread from | EUR/USD 0.8 pips, GBP/USD 0.9, USD/JPY 1.1, no forex commission. Stocks and ETFs free to EUR 100,000 monthly turnover then 0.2% min GBP 10. Currency conversion fee 0.5% |
| Maximum leverage | 30:1 on major FX pairs for UK retail clients, 3.33% margin on EUR/USD |
| Platforms | xStation 5 (web, desktop, mobile) |
| Instruments | Forex, indices, commodities, stocks, ETFs, crypto and CFDs across more than 12 countries |
| Withdrawal time | Free, processed within up to 3 business days; bank wires up to 3 further business days |
| Segregated funds | UK clients are with XTB Limited, which the FCA register records can hold and can control client money, covered by the FSCS to GBP 85,000. Polish clients are with XTB S.A. under the Polish investor compensation scheme. Clients taken on by XTB International Limited in Belize have no compensation scheme. |
| Website | xtb.comVisit → |
XTB is a real, listed, properly licensed broker. It is also the only broker on this site carrying a live regulatory finding that it let people into CFDs without properly checking whether they understood them. Poland’s KNF fined it PLN 20 million on 30 March 2026. XTB has asked for the decision to be reconsidered, so it is not final. It scores 6.8 and we rate it Neutral, and this review is mostly about why a well-regulated broker can still land there.
What the Polish regulator actually found
The Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego, XTB’s home regulator, published its decision on its own website. The fine is PLN 20,000,000 against XTB S.A. of Warsaw, and it rests on four separate breaches. Taking them in the order KNF lists them:
- Between 1 January 2022 and 16 August 2023, improperly establishing whether a client had the knowledge and experience needed to be aware of the risk of the services and instruments being provided. A breach of Article 56(1) of Regulation 2017/565.
- Between 1 January 2022 and 17 September 2023, failing to define the target market in a way that was appropriate and proportionate to the nature and complexity of the instrument.
- Over the same period, the “HOT list” published to clients, which in relation to executing client orders on the firm’s own account could give rise to a conflict of interest under Article 33(a) of Regulation 2017/565.
- Over the same period, providing clients and potential clients with unreliable and misleading information about the instruments and about all the risks attached to CFDs, in enough detail for a client to make an informed decision. A breach of Article 83c of the Polish Trading Act read with Article 48 of Regulation 2017/565.
KNF’s own summary of the first two is the sentence that matters:
“The Company assessed the appropriateness of risky and complex instruments, which CFDs are, on the basis of clients’ knowledge and experience of non-complex instruments.”
In plain terms: the appropriateness test asked people about shares and funds, and passed them for contracts for difference. The regulator concluded that XTB had conducted its business “in an unreliable and unprofessional manner”.
The third finding is the one most likely to surprise a client. A “HOT list” of instruments was being shown to customers by a firm that executes their orders on its own account, which is to say that it takes the other side. KNF did not find that XTB traded against the list. It found that publishing it created a conflict of interest that XTB failed to manage as the rules require.
The decision is not final. On 11 May 2026 KNF published a second notice confirming that XTB had filed a request for reconsideration and stating that, because of it, the decision of 30 March 2026 is not final. We are reporting a regulator’s finding at first instance, not a settled fact, and this review will be updated when the outcome is published.
It is the second KNF fine, and the first one stuck
In September 2018 KNF fined XTB PLN 9.9 million, about $2.2 million, over the asymmetric setting of the deviation parameter in order execution between January 2014 and May 2015. The effect of an asymmetric deviation setting is that price movement against the client is passed through and movement in the client’s favour is not. XTB appealed to the Voivodship Administrative Court in Warsaw and then to the Supreme Administrative Court. The final appeal was dismissed on 1 March 2023.
Two fines from the same regulator, eight years apart, both about the mechanics of how retail clients were dealt with rather than about paperwork.
What is genuinely strong
The UK entity holds your money, which is not a given
XTB Limited, FCA reference 522157, has been Authorised since 17 January 2011 and the register records that it can hold and can control client money. Registered at Level 9, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, company number 07227848. No requirements, no restrictions.
That sounds unremarkable until you compare it. Interactive Brokers discloses that a UK client’s account is cleared and carried by its US entity and that the FSCS applies only “in limited circumstances”. XTB’s UK clients are with the FCA firm, under CASS, with the FSCS at £85,000. On the single question of who is holding the money, XTB is the more straightforward of the two.
Seven previous names, all its own
The FCA register shows XTB Limited has traded as X-Trade Brokers LLP, XTB UK Ltd, X Financial Solutions Limited, X Open Hub Limited and XTB Direct on the way to its current name. Seven previous entries, every one of them the group renaming itself. Nothing rented to a third-party brand, which is the opposite of IG‘s forty and CMC Markets‘ twenty-nine and thirty-five.
One of the three current trading names is worth knowing about: X Open Hub is XTB’s business-to-business arm, supplying platform technology and liquidity to other brokers. It sits on the same FCA licence as a declared trading name, which is the correct way to do it. It does mean that some brokers you encounter elsewhere are running on XTB’s infrastructure.
It is a listed company
XTB S.A. has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2016, so its accounts are public and audited on a schedule rather than published at the firm’s discretion. XTB says it has “more than 2.9 million customers worldwide” and operates in “over 12 countries, including the UK, Poland, Germany, Chile, and UAE”. Of the brokers on this site only Interactive Brokers, IG and CMC Markets are also listed, and it is a meaningful line between a firm whose numbers you can read and one whose numbers you cannot.
What holds the score down
The widest majors of any broker we would rank for the UK
XTB does not publish a forex spread table. The figures sit one pair at a time on each instrument’s own page, under “Minimal spread”, expressed in price units rather than pips. Read there on 20 September 2026:
| Pair | CMC | IG | Capital.com | Saxo | XTB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EUR/USD | 0.50 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 0.8 |
| GBP/USD | 0.90 | 0.9 | not published per pair | 0.8 | 0.9 |
| USD/JPY | 0.70 | 0.7 | not published per pair | 0.9 | 1.1 |
Widest on EUR/USD, widest on USD/JPY by a clear margin, level on GBP/USD. Margin on EUR/USD is 3.33%, the FCA’s 30:1 minimum, and no commission is charged on forex.
A note on the data, because it bears on transparency. XTB’s EUR/GBP page publishes a minimal spread of 0.000010, which would be 0.1 pips and would make it comfortably the tightest quote in the industry. That is not credible alongside 0.8 on EUR/USD, so we have treated it as a page error and left it out rather than print a number we do not believe.
“0% commission” costs 0.5% every time you change currency
XTB’s investing pricing is genuinely attractive at the headline: no commission on stocks and ETFs up to €100,000 of monthly turnover, then 0.2% with a £10 minimum. No custody fee below €250,000, then 0.02% a year. Minimum investment £1. Free deposits, free withdrawals, processed within three business days.
Then there is one line on the same page: currency conversion fee 0.5%.
A UK investor buying US shares converts on the way in and converts on the way out. On £10,000 that is £50 each way, £100 the round trip, on a product sold as zero commission. Interactive Brokers charges 0.20 basis points on the same conversion, which is 20 pence, subject to a $2.00 minimum, so roughly £1.50 each way and about £3 the round trip. XTB’s currency cost on that trade is more than thirty times what the cheapest venue on this site charges, and it is the fee a reader is least likely to have priced in.
None of this is hidden. It is on the fees page in a table. But a headline of zero and a real cost of one percent on a round trip is the kind of gap this site exists to point at.
74% of its retail accounts lose money
Every FCA-regulated CFD provider publishes this figure. Read on each firm’s own UK-facing site on 20 September 2026:
| Broker | Retail accounts losing money |
|---|---|
| Interactive Brokers | 57.9% |
| Saxo | 60% |
| Capital.com | 65% |
| CMC Markets | 68% |
| IG | 69% |
| XTB | 74% |
XTB is last, five points behind IG and sixteen behind Interactive Brokers. The number is noisy and reflects who a broker attracts as much as what happens to them once they arrive. But set it next to a regulatory finding that the appropriateness test was passing people for CFDs on the strength of their experience with simple products, and the two stop looking unrelated.
Ten clone firms, the most we have counted
The FCA register entry for XTB Limited lists ten operations using its details:
- TBFX Limited, 2 August 2019
- Bluebird Options Limited, 1 October 2020
- Capital24 Option, 21 October 2020
- XTB GROUP, 15 March 2021
- House24 Trades Limited, 25 March 2021
- XTB Coin Trading, 19 May 2022
- XTB Global, 22 September 2022
- XTB-USDT, 7 February 2023
- XTB Trading World, 28 December 2023
- XTB Limited, 13 August 2024
Six of the ten use the XTB name outright. This is not XTB’s fault and it does not affect the score, but it is the highest count we have recorded against any firm, ahead of Interactive Brokers at six, and four of the ten appeared in the last three years. If you are opening an XTB account, check the register first: the genuine entry and the clone warnings sit on the same page.
There is a Belize entity
Clients outside XTB’s licensed markets are taken by XTB International Limited, a Belize company, registration 153,939, authorised by the Financial Services Commission of Belize under registration 6442514, at 35 Barrack Road, Belize City. XTB’s own corporate timeline dates it: “2017 The first non-European offices are established, in Chile and Belize.”
It is properly disclosed and it is not unusual. It is still an offshore arm with no compensation scheme behind it, and neither Saxo, Interactive Brokers, CMC Markets nor IG runs one. If you reach XTB through a page that routes you to the international entity rather than the UK or EU one, you are buying a different product with the same logo on it.
The entity map
Three entities verified at the regulator’s own source on 20 September 2026, plus one verified from XTB’s own registration details.
| Where you sign up | Company | Licence | If it fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | XTB Limited | FCA FRN 522157, Authorised 17/01/2011, holds and controls client money | FSCS, £85,000 |
| Poland, and the group parent | XTB S.A. | KNF-supervised, listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2016. Fined PLN 20m on 30 Mar 2026, not final | Polish investor compensation scheme |
| Outside the licensed markets | XTB International Limited | Belize company 153,939, FSC Belize registration 6442514 | Nothing. No compensation scheme |
| South Africa | No XTB entity appears on the FSCA OTC Derivative Providers register. All 94 entries read. XTB does not appear to market there, so this is an absence rather than a gap | ||
Not checked at source: XTB’s Cypriot entity and CySEC licence, the UAE operation, CNMV Spain, BaFin Germany, Brazil and Chile, and XTB S.A.’s published financial statements.
Who this suits
Someone buying and holding shares and ETFs in their own currency, in reasonable size, who values a clean platform and will never touch a CFD. On that use the pricing is good, the UK entity holds the money under the FSCS, and xStation is a better piece of software than most of what the industry ships.
Change any of those variables and the case weakens. Buy US shares and the 0.5% conversion fee is the largest line on your statement. Trade forex and you are paying the widest majors of the six brokers we would rank for the UK. Trade CFDs at all and you are with the firm whose regulator has just found, subject to appeal, that its appropriateness testing was not doing its job, and whose own published figure says 74% of retail accounts lose money.
Regulation and fund safety carry 55% of the weight in our scoring method, and XTB does well on both, which is why it lands at 6.8 and not lower. Complaints carries 10%, and a 4.0 there against two regulator fines is what keeps it out of the Trusted band. A Neutral verdict on this site means exactly what it says: a legitimate broker with real problems, not a firm to avoid.
Frequently asked questions
Is XTB safe?
It is a genuinely licensed broker and a listed company. XTB Limited has been FCA authorised since January 2011, holds and controls client money itself, and UK clients are covered by the FSCS to £85,000. XTB S.A. has been on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2016, so its accounts are public. The concern is conduct rather than solvency: Poland’s KNF fined the group PLN 20 million on 30 March 2026 over how it sold CFDs, a decision XTB has asked to be reconsidered and which is therefore not final, and fined it PLN 9.9 million in 2018 over asymmetric slippage, upheld on final appeal in 2023.
What was XTB fined 20 million zloty for?
Four things, all between January 2022 and September 2023. Improperly establishing whether clients had the knowledge and experience to understand the risks. Failing to define the target market proportionately to the complexity of the instrument. Publishing a “HOT list” to clients while executing their orders on its own account, which KNF found created an unmanaged conflict of interest. And giving clients unreliable and misleading information about CFDs and their risks. KNF’s summary was that XTB assessed the appropriateness of CFDs using clients’ experience of non-complex instruments. XTB has requested reconsideration and the decision is not final.
Is XTB really commission free?
On stocks and ETFs, up to €100,000 of turnover a month, yes, and after that it is 0.2% with a £10 minimum. There is no custody fee below €250,000. The cost most people miss is the 0.5% currency conversion fee, which applies every time you move between currencies. Buying and later selling £10,000 of US shares costs £100 in conversion alone. Forex CFDs carry no commission but the spread is the widest of the brokers we rank for the UK.
Does the FSCS cover XTB?
Yes, for clients of XTB Limited, the FCA-authorised UK entity, at £85,000. The FCA register records that it can hold and can control client money, so the money is at the UK firm rather than somewhere else in the group. Clients taken on by XTB International Limited, the Belize company, have no compensation scheme at all.
What are XTB’s spreads?
Read from XTB’s own instrument pages on 20 September 2026: EUR/USD 0.8 pips, GBP/USD 0.9, USD/JPY 1.1, with 3.33% margin and no commission. XTB does not publish these as a table; each pair sits on its own page under “Minimal spread”, quoted in price units. Against the other brokers’ own published minimums, XTB is the widest on EUR/USD and USD/JPY.
Sources
Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego, “Nałożenie kary pieniężnej na XTB SA”, knf.gov.pl, updated 13 April 2026: decision of 30 March 2026 imposing a fine of PLN 20,000,000 on XTB S.A. of Warsaw, the four grounds and their date ranges, the breaches of Article 56(1), Article 34(2)(a) and Article 48 of Regulation 2017/565 and Article 83c of the Trading Act, and KNF’s finding that the company assessed the appropriateness of CFDs on the basis of clients’ knowledge and experience of non-complex instruments. Checked 20 September 2026.
Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego, “Złożenie przez XTB SA wniosku o ponowne rozpatrzenie sprawy”, knf.gov.pl, updated 11 May 2026: XTB has filed a request for reconsideration and the decision of 30 March 2026 is not final. Checked 20 September 2026.
The 2018 fine of PLN 9.9 million over the asymmetric deviation parameter, covering 1 January 2014 to 31 May 2015, and the dismissal of XTB’s final appeal by the Supreme Administrative Court on 1 March 2023, are reported from trade press rather than read on KNF’s own site this pass, and are marked accordingly.
Financial Conduct Authority register, XTB Limited, FRN 522157: Authorised since 17/01/2011, can hold and can control client money, Companies House number 07227848, Level 9 One Canada Square Canary Wharf London E14 5AA, no requirements or restrictions, three current names including the trading name X Open Hub, seven previous names all within the group, and ten clone firm entries dated 02 Aug 2019, 01 Oct 2020, 21 Oct 2020, 15 Mar 2021, 25 Mar 2021, 19 May 2022, 22 Sept 2022, 07 Feb 2023, 28 Dec 2023 and 13 Aug 2024. Checked 20 September 2026.
xtb.com/en legal information for the XTB Limited FCA disclosure and the 74% risk warning; xtb.com/en/about-us for “more than 2.9 million customers worldwide”, the Warsaw Stock Exchange listing since 2016, operation in over 12 countries, and the 2017 establishment of offices in Chile and Belize; xtb.com/int account and fees page for XTB International Limited, Belize registration 153,939 and Financial Services Commission of Belize registration 6442514. Checked 20 September 2026.
xtb.com/en/account-and-fees for zero commission on stocks and ETFs up to EUR 100,000 monthly turnover then 0.2% with a GBP 10 minimum, no custody fee below EUR 250,000 then 0.02% a year, the 0.5% currency conversion fee, the GBP 1.00 minimum investment and free deposits and withdrawals processed within three business days. Checked 20 September 2026.
xtb.com/en/forex/eur-usd, /gbp-usd and /usd-jpy, field “Minimal spread”: 0.00008, 0.00009 and 0.011 respectively, with EUR/USD margin 3.33%, leverage 1:30 and no commission. The EUR/GBP page publishes 0.000010, which would be 0.1 pips; treated as a page error and excluded. Checked 20 September 2026.
Financial Sector Conduct Authority OTC Derivative Providers register: all 94 entries read through the pagination control on 20 September 2026. No XTB entity appears.
Competitor spreads and risk warnings are each firm’s own published figures, recorded in our CMC Markets, IG, Capital.com, Saxo and Interactive Brokers reviews and read on their own UK sites on 20 September 2026.
Not checked at source: XTB’s CySEC entity, the UAE operation, CNMV Spain, BaFin Germany, Brazil and Chile, and XTB S.A.’s published financial statements.
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