Binary options are accessible and easy to understand compared to other options. They also have the potential to change your life. It’s no wonder so many people are looking to find a top-tier binary options broker so they can start working on their own trades and earning some money.

Yet binary options are also somewhat risky despite their apparent transparency. For instance, many binary options brokers aren’t very well regulated or are outright scams. Fortunately, we’ve already figured out the best binary options brokers for you to consider. 

Binary Options Brokers Compared

Before jumping into a deep dive of each binary options trading platform, here’s a quick overview of the top three platforms compared:

Commodities, Crypto, Forex, Options, Indices, Stocks, CFDs, Binary Options

Forex, Stocks, Crypto, Commodities, ETFs, CFDs, Binary Options, Digital Options

Visa, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Altcoin, Perfect Money

AdvCash, Neteller, Perfect Money, Skrill, Visa / Mastercard, WebMoney WMZ

Forex, Stocks, Crypto, Commodities, ETFs, CFDs, Binary Options, Digital Options

CFDs, Forex, Crypto, Stocks, Commodities, Binary Options

AdvCash, Neteller, Perfect Money, Skrill, Visa / Mastercard, WebMoney WMZ

Bank Wire Transfer, Visa and MasterCard, Diners Club, PayPal, Sofort, Trustly, GiroPay, MyBank, EPS, iDEAL, Przelewy24

Commodities, Crypto, Forex, Options, Indices, Stocks, CFDs, Binary Options

Forex, Stocks, Crypto, Commodities, ETFs, CFDs, Binary Options, Digital Options

CFDs, Forex, Crypto, Stocks, Commodities, Binary Options

Visa, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Altcoin, Perfect Money

AdvCash, Neteller, Perfect Money, Skrill, Visa / Mastercard, WebMoney WMZ

Bank Wire Transfer, Visa and MasterCard, Diners Club, PayPal, Sofort, Trustly, GiroPay, MyBank, EPS, iDEAL, Przelewy24

Looking for more info? We’ve got you covered. The following explains everything you need to know about the leading binary options brokers. Let’s dive in! 🚀

Best Brokers for Binary Options Trading

1. IQ Option – Top-Notch Accessibility

This Cyprus-based binary options broker is one of the most successful online options you can find. They process over 1 million trades every day and have clients from over 213 countries, including 43 million registered users.

While they trade binary options, they also have over 250 assets to trade ranging from CFDs to commodities to EFTs. Thus, they’re a great platform if you want to start with binary options but maybe branch out into other choices later down the road.

They offer a platform through the web, or you can use one of the trading applications for desktop computers or mobile phones.

Furthermore, IQ Option offers demo accounts, including $10,000 in “virtual cash” in order for you to experiment. It’s very user-friendly all in all, especially since the interface is easy to understand. They include several layout systems and financial information panels.

Determining the right technical analysis or alert systems to use is relatively simple, but there’s a layer of complexity hidden beneath that you can use to personalize your experience with a platform. Additionally, they provide new and experienced traders with risk-management functions like stop-loss options, trailing stops, and negative balance protection.

Their market options are quite diverse, with over 10 million different digital options available for trading. They’re also fairly accessible, with low minimum investments of one dollar and maximum returns at about 95% profit on your stake. Our comprehensive IQ Option review goes in more detail on how these traits may benefit you.

Note that their client list is relatively limited: no clients from the US, Canada, Japan, Israel, Puerto Rico, Australia, and the European economic area are allowed. They do see a lot of business in South African markets, however.

2. BinaryCent – Low Fees and High Bonuses

This trading platform is primarily based on forex CFDs. You trade binary options with forex as the assets in question, which is a little unique compared to other trading platforms you can find. BinaryCent is seeing a lot of use because they have low minimum investment amounts; you only need about $.10 to make an investment.

They offer three account types depending on your starting capital, ranging from Bronze to Silver to Gold. Minimum deposits range from $250-$3000, and all accounts get 24/7 live video support, 20% bonus offers, and copy trading tools. The Silver account gets access to additional training tools, a 50% bonus, and three risk-free trades.

Finally, the Gold account gets a personal success manager (think of them as a training guru) and a 100% bonus. As you can see, the profits from BinaryCent are potentially quite high.

They also offer a demo account for beginning traders and maximum revenues up to 95% profit; this will help rookie traders develop trading strategies and better their trading skills. The platform is fairly accessible through most mobile phones or Windows or Mac browsers.

The only downside is that they don’t offer trade signals; you’ll need to rely on the analysis of your forex assets in order to successfully make a trade. This leaves you somewhat in the blind compared to other trading platforms. 

3. 24option – Excellent Analysis Tools

This online trading platform is based in Belize, and they’ve been around since 2010, giving them a good history of stable and reliable service and a decent reputation. Their trading is enabled by a third party called TechFinancials, and the brokerage is heavily regulated by CySec. Note that, unfortunately, 24option doesn’t accept any traders from the US, Australia, China, Europe, and more.

They have both a trading website and apps for Android or Apple phones. Their interface is pretty easy to grasp, and there are multiple filters you can use to control which CFD binary options you want to see or pursue.

The available commodities or assets you can trade are fairly diverse, affording you lots of options to experiment and find assets that work well with your trading strategy. The minimum deposit is a bit higher compared to other brokers you can find at $250, but it’s not exorbitant.

Maximum returns are 88% profit on your stake; this is a bit of a downer. Considering that some brokers give up to 95%. But they do allow bonuses up to 100%, which makes up for this minor downside. 

Experienced traders will also really appreciate that 24option uses the MT4 platform, which is arguably the most popular and used trading chart system and financial analysis tool suite available. The real-time information you can gather using these charts and tools shouldn’t be underestimated.

4. Nadex – The Safest Trading Experience

Nadex is an important platform to consider if you plan to trade binary options in the US. From a certain point of view, it’s the only real licensed broker in the USA where you can trade binary options (see our guide on trading binary options in the US for more information). This exchange platform lets you take positions on all kinds of options or contracts, but everything is well-regulated thanks to the guidelines of the CFTC.

Thus, it’s a great choice if you want to ensure that your money is safe when you’re trading.

This platform allows you to place your orders directly to the exchange using their special software. It’s fairly user-friendly and easy to grasp, and it allows you to filter over 5000 contracts every day by various aspects like price, expiry time, or asset class.

Binary options only result in a $1 trading fee for every contract on each side of the trade, and $.90 for the entry and exit. These low fees make it a great platform in terms of accessibility alone.

Nadex also gives you a demo trading account with $25,000 in virtual money; it’s a perfect arena for you to practice your binary options trading skills. Actual accounts require a $250 deposit, which is a little high but not out of the ordinary for many top binary trading platforms.

Nadex’s other big positive is that it gives you access to a wide number of assets and commodities with which to buy or sell binary options.

5. Finmax – Best Customer Support

This regulated binary options broker is owned and operated by Max Capital LTD, which is located in Bulgaria. It’s a relatively recent newcomer to the binary options brokerage scene, but they have a decent reputation and are regulated by the Russian regulatory body FMRRC.

They have an asset index across 70 markets and several favorable trading conditions/functions that you can use to execute your decisions in an instant. These range from no spread conditions, instant order execution, or 48-hour withdrawals.

Furthermore, Finmax gives you a free demo account that you can use without limits with lots of virtual cash. Once you get a taste for their software, you’ll find that they provide a variety of expiry times that range between 30 seconds all the way up to six months.

Thus, you’ll be able to rely on the news or other long-term predictions well when playing with binary options using this platform.

Their software is built in-house and works on most major platforms and mobile devices. They do also have a great customer support team that provides 24/7 support if necessary. All these positives being said, they have a relatively high minimum investment amount of $5, a minimum deposit of $250, and a max return of only 90%; some traders go up to 95%. 

6. RaceOption – Great Availability for Foreign Customers

This UK-based binary options broker was established in 2014 and currently processes well over 10,000 trades every day. More importantly, they’re one of the few binary options brokers that allow clients from Canada, the US, and Australia combined. They actually don’t have any restrictions based on your country of origin.

Other positive features include deposit bonuses up to 100%, weekend trading markets, and one-hour withdrawals.

Their platform is available for the web and mobile devices and they offer excellent CFD trading tools like life charts and instant trade execution.

Their downside is their high minimum deposit of $250 and 90% max payout. Still, given all the advantages, these are relatively small downsides to overlook.

7. Binary.com – Provides Multiple Trading Platforms

This aptly-named online brokerage offers both CFD trading and binary options. It was founded in 1999, so the company is one of the oldest players in this market and has a long reputation. They have over 1 million registered users worldwide and are spread out across the world.

Unlike most other brokers, Binary.com provides you with multiple trading platforms to choose from, ranging between MT5 to Binary Bot to SmartTrader. This allows beginners and experts to take advantage of their network with the trading platform they prefer based on their experience level or ease-of-use.

They also provide attractive return rates that can go as high as 1000% on certain binary options trades. Binary. com also offers great market options; you can trade with most major indices, commodities, currencies, and more. They also allow you the rare opportunity to sell your contract before the expiry time to lock-in profit or minimize your loss. Be aware that this may not be seen as legal depending on your home country.

A Guide to Binary Options Brokers and Choosing One For You

What is Binary Trading?

To answer this, you first need to understand what a binary option is.

These are actually simple traded options that many low skilled traders can take advantage of. In a nutshell, binary options are financial options that come with either a fixed amount pay off or no pay off whatsoever. This is reflected in the name. On a deeper level, binary options ask the trader to bet on whether an underlying asset will be above a certain price at a particular time or not.

A binary options trader can place trades based on whether they think an asset will be higher or lower than a fixed price. Where things get a little complicated is that binary options are treated differently both inside and outside the US.

For a financial option to be a binary option, the expiration date, time, and strike price all need to be clearly stated so that there’s no wiggle room or confusion on the part of any trader. These options are attractive because of their simplicity, but they also come with relatively capped profits.

As an example, a trader can place a binary option for an asset that becomes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars… But if the binary option was set at $100, that’s all they’ll get. Of course, the reverse is also true, making these options relatively low risk compared to other options on the market. A trader that makes an unlucky trade will also only lose their investment.

It’s the job of binary options brokers (at least outside the US), to disclose the correct payouts, strike prices, and more. These “strike prices” are usually the current price of the underlying financial product (i.e. the actual perceived value of a thing).

One additional thing to note about binary options is that they are designed to be held until their expiration dates. Once you’re in, you’re in until the option expires.

Binary Options Traded Inside the US vs Outside

Binary options that are traded outside the US have fixed payouts and risks but can be offered by individual brokers instead of being offered directly on an exchange. As a result, brokers can profit directly from the difference between what they pay or collect on winning and losing trades.

US binary options can only be traded by a foreign broker that has been registered with the US regulatory body or on an exchange board, which is regulated by the SEC. The majority of US binary options are traded on Nadex, which is used by US residents looking to get into this particular stock market game.

Why People Use Binary Options: The Pros and Cons

Given that the reward you can possibly get from “winning” on a binary options trade is rather limited compared to the explosive profit that you can make with other options, why do people even bother with this type of trading?

There are indeed only two outcomes with a binary options trade: win or lose and always with a fixed amount. But there are also generally no commissions or fees, as binary options brokers make their profits through other methods. These types of trades are also super simple and there’s only a single decision to make: judging whether an asset will go up or down.

Furthermore, binary options are attractive to many because there aren’t any liquidity concerns about the asset itself. No trader in the deal on the underlying asset, as everyone is just betting on expiration dates and times or strike prices. This makes binary options trading rather accessible from almost anywhere in the world.

The obvious negative is that the reward is almost always less than the risk, especially when you play “high-low” options – these are binary options where you place an option with an amount greater than what you could profit on. For instance, if your profit for a trade was $70 but your potential loss was $100… you’d better be sure that you’re making a good trade!

All this means that losing costs you more than winning, if your win/loss rate is 50%.

Finally, one last negative is that OTC (over the counter) binary options markets aren’t regulated outside the US, so if there is a trade discrepancy, you might be out of luck.

How Do Binary Options Brokers Make Money?

There are three main ways in which binary options brokers can make money:

• Taking price differences based on the trading activities of traders who use their platform
• cashing in money placed on losing trades
• working on exchange models

Let’s explain these one by one.

Binary options brokers can earn money via cashing in on money placed on losing trades; they do this when you place a bid and predicted wrongly and lose the money you invest in that trade. The money then goes to your broker who might give you some percentage of the money back based on your agreement or their policy.

They can also gain money by trading activities from their traders. For instance, if you place a bid and make the correct prediction, you can get your original money back plus an additional 80%.

The broker gets the remaining 20%. In this way, binary options brokers get richer regardless of whether their clients win or lose.

The exchange model method of profit works by allowing traders to bet against one another. In essence, a binary options broker can take money lost by one trader and give it to another trader, charging commissions based on contracts purchased by both.

Naturally, most of these profits aren’t very large by themselves, but they can add up to a lot over time.

Minimum Deposits and Demo Accounts