No. AvaTrade has no FCA-authorised UK entity, so there is no UK spread betting account to open, checked on 22 Sep 2026. Its UK web address does not serve a UK site: it redirects to the global one. Spread betting is a product only an FCA-authorised firm can offer a UK retail client, and AvaTrade does not publish one.
Updated on 24 Sep 2026: the list of ranked brokers on this page now shows the scores and the order computed as the sum of each broker’s six criterion marks divided by 60 and multiplied by 100, rounded half up. Nothing we say about AvaTrade changed.
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What “No UK Entity” Actually Means
A UK spread betting account is a regulated product. The firm taking the other side of your bet has to hold Financial Conduct Authority authorisation to offer it to a UK retail client. A firm authorised in Ireland, Australia or Abu Dhabi is authorised to do business there, and that is not the same permission.
Read on 22 Sep 2026: AVA Trade EU Limited appears on the FCA register under firm reference number 504072, and not as a UK-authorised firm: it is an Irish company in supervised run-off since 31 December 2023, permitted to act in the UK only where necessary to perform a contract entered into before then, and barred from holding or controlling client money.
Two parts of that matter to a UK reader. A firm in supervised run-off is winding an existing book down rather than opening new accounts, and a firm barred from holding client money cannot take your deposit at all.
Who Regulates AvaTrade
AvaTrade publishes its own list. These are the regulated companies it names in its footer, with the licence number it gives for each.
Each regulated AvaTrade company named in its site footer, with the regulator and licence number AvaTrade gives for it.
Company
Regulator and licence
AVA Trade EU Ltd
Central Bank of Ireland, C53877
Ava Trade Markets Ltd
BVI Financial Services Commission, SIBA/L/13/1049
Ava Capital Markets Australia Pty Ltd
ASIC, 406684
Ava Capital Markets Pty
FSCA South Africa, 45984
Ava Trade Japan K.K.
Financial Services Agency Japan, 1662; Financial Futures Association of Japan, 1574
Ava Trade Middle East Ltd
ADGM FSRA, 190018
Ava Trade Kenya Limited
Capital Markets Authority Kenya, 262 (non-dealing online foreign exchange broker)
DT Direct Investment Hub Ltd.
CySEC, 347/17
The Financial Conduct Authority appears nowhere, and this is AvaTrade describing itself rather than us describing it.
AVA Trade EU Limited, FRN 504072, on the FCA Financial Services Register: status EEA Authorised - Supervised run-off, status date 23 Jul 2009. Captured 3 Sep 2026. Source: the firm’s register entry, Financial Conduct Authority.
The permissions panel is not in the capture, so this page makes no claim about which regulated activities the authorisation covers. Our regulation guide sets out the FCA register check, step by step.
What A UK Trader Gives Up
The absence of a UK entity is not a technicality about paperwork. It removes three specific protections a UK spread bettor otherwise has, and each one matters at the moment something goes wrong.
Compensation if the firm fails. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme covers clients of authorised UK firms.
A complaints route that binds. The Financial Ombudsman Service takes complaints about UK-authorised firms and a final decision binds the firm if you accept it. It has no jurisdiction over a broker that is not authorised here.
The FCA conduct rules themselves. Segregation of client money, retail leverage limits and negative balance protection are FCA requirements on FCA firms. A broker outside that perimeter may apply similar rules by choice, and choice is not the same as a rule you can enforce.
What Other Review Sites Say About AvaTrade
These are AvaTrade’s ratings on the platforms below, each read on the date shown and stated in that platform’s own scale.
AvaTrade rated on each third-party platform, with the rating scale, the volume of ratings and the date we read it.
AvaTrade’s Trustpilot profile, captured 3 Sep 2026. The figure in the table is the one the platform showed on that capture date.AvaTrade’s Apple App Store listing, captured 3 Sep 2026. The figure in the table is the one the platform showed on that capture date.AvaTrade’s Google Play listing, captured 3 Sep 2026. The figure in the table is the one the platform showed on that capture date.
Where To Spread Bet Instead Of AvaTrade
These are the three highest-scoring accounts in our ranking that you can open today, in score order. The order is the ranking’s own and does not change from page to page. Our scores are set on the criteria we publish and are never influenced by what a broker pays us. The list below is therefore the same list you will find on our spread betting platforms we rank.
65% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.
Your capital is at risk. This page is not financial or tax advice.
How We Picked Those Three
Every one of them is authorised by the FCA, which is the first filter rather than a feature.
Each card states what that broker publishes about its spreads for spread betting, read from its own UK site: some publish an average, and some publish only a minimum "from" figure. Our spread betting broker reviews directory has the full list, including the brands that no longer offer the product and the brands that never did.
Between 61% and 76.6% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with the providers we compare.
Spread betting is leveraged and losses can exceed the amount you set out to risk on a bet. This page is not financial or tax advice.
AvaTrade Spread Betting: FAQs
Is AvaTrade regulated by the FCA?
The one AvaTrade company on the FCA register, read on 26 August 2026, is AVA Trade EU Limited, firm reference number 504072, an Irish firm whose UK permissions are run-off only, exercisable where necessary to perform contracts entered into before 31 December 2023, and it cannot hold or control client money. A firm in that position cannot open a UK spread betting account for a retail client.
Can a UK resident open an AvaTrade spread betting account?
No. Spread betting is a UK product offered by FCA-authorised firms, and AvaTrade publishes no UK entity and no spread betting product.
Is AvaTrade a scam?
No, and that is a different question from the one this page answers. AvaTrade is a licensed broker in several jurisdictions. What it does not have, on its own published evidence, is UK authorisation.
Justin Grossbard co-founded Spread-Bet.co.uk with Noam Korbl in 2024, and co-founded the broker comparison network CompareForexBrokers with him in 2014. He has written for Kiplinger, Entrepreneur, Finance Magnates and MoneyShow since 2022, with articles on forex and trading at MoneyShow, Finance Magnates and Kiplinger.
Change history: 5 earlier dated notes
Updated on 23 Sep 2026: Claims were checked against primary sources on 22 and 23 September 2026, and several passages that repeated what other pages own, or that we could not source, were removed, including the list of AvaTrade’s licence numbers by jurisdiction and part of the FSCS and Ombudsman explanation. The Ombudsman wording now says a final decision binds the firm if you accept it, and the note on the permissions panel was reworded to say the panel is not in the capture.
Updated on 22 Sep 2026: The check that AvaTrade has no FCA-authorised UK entity, and its FCA register entry for AVA Trade EU Limited, were re-read on 22 Sep 2026 and are dated so. The list of the group’s regulated entities now includes Ava Trade Japan K.K., Ava Trade Kenya Limited and DT Direct Investment Hub Ltd. In the list of FCA-regulated alternatives, Spreadex’s minimum deposit now reads £5, as Spreadex states, where it read £0.
Updated 19 Sep 2026. We have added a visible credit naming David Levy, Head of Content, as fact checker. This information was already recorded in the page’s structured data. Nothing else on the page has changed.
Updated 3 Sep 2026. The FCA register entry this page rests on was re-read and captured, and the capture now sits on the page under the sentences it supports.
Rebuilt on 26 Aug 2026, and two things it used to say have been retired. It priced AvaTrade spread bets in the present tense on a page arguing AvaTrade does not offer them, and it published an FCA firm reference number for AvaTrade that we had never verified against the register. The page now states only what AvaTrade publishes about itself: the regulators it names, the licence numbers it gives, and the UK domain that redirects to its global site. Later the same day the FCA register was read for the first time on this project, and it did not put the number back: the entry it holds is an Irish firm in supervised run-off rather than a UK authorisation, so the page states what the register says instead of what we could not find.
