Deriv Review UAE 2026

Is Deriv regulated in the UAE

We checked the CMA register on 21 August 2026. Deriv is regulated in the UAE by the Capital Market Authority, under the licensed entity Deriv Capital Contracts & Currencies L.L.C, a limited liability company registered in Dubai. The register reference is CP-0000999, and it holds a dealing licence tier. That licence means the firm can act as counterparty to your trades. I would review the register reference carefully before opening an account.

This licence tier means the broker deals on its own account, not by routing your orders to an external market. Deriv Capital Contracts & Currencies L.L.C says so directly in its general terms of use. The firm may be the counterparty to your trades, and it is responsible for setting the prices you see on its own platforms. In my view, that is a material point before trading.

The CMA register records CP-0000999, but Deriv’s website displays Financial Products Dealer Licence 20200000243 and Category 5 Financial Consultant Licence 20200000199. This mismatch needs reconciling against the CMA public register directly. Next, I will walk you through what trading with Deriv costs.

What other review sites say

Deriv holds a Trustpilot rating of 4.3 out of 5 from 72,994 reviews, which Trustpilot labels excellent, captured August 2026.

What trading with Deriv costs

Deriv offers three account types to UAE residents: MT5 Standard, MT5 Swap-free and MT5 Gold. All of them require a minimum deposit of just AED 15 and accept AED or USD as your account currency. None charges commission. But here is the catch: the EUR/USD spread is not stated for any account type. In my view, that is the single most important cost figure for a forex trader, and it is missing from Deriv’s published material. You will want to see that number before opening an account.

With the MT5 Standard account, you pay zero commission per lot per side, but the EUR/USD spread basis is not stated. The MT5 Swap-free account is identical: no commission, no stated EUR/USD spread, and a AED 15 minimum deposit. The MT5 Gold account adds a unit conflict. The account table quotes spreads in pips, but the precious-metals page uses points. The EUR/USD spread is not applicable to this account, and the unit mismatch is unresolved. Check that unit conflict before trading.

our team captured the broker’s published material on 21 August 2026, and all cost figures come from that capture. No typical spread is disclosed, only an advertised basis with no number attached. Without the spread values, you cannot tell which account is cheaper, so I would check the broker’s published material directly. The next section examines the leverage limits that apply.

Leverage limits that apply to Deriv

The CMA retail maximum for major forex pairs is 500:1 for onshore UAE brokers like Deriv Capital Contracts & Currencies L.L.C. Our team ran a full-text search of all 62 CMA regulations on 21 August 2026, pulling approximately 2.32 million characters of English text through the regulator’s own API. The search returned zero hits for the word ‘leverage’. No ratio of the form 1:N appears anywhere in that corpus. The Arabic Section 3 of the Rulebook also contains zero occurrences of the Arabic term. I read that as no numeric leverage ceiling at the CMA level.

You may have seen a 50:1 leverage ladder attributed to the SCA on aggregator sites. That ladder is actually the United States NFA and CFTC retail forex structure, verbatim from NFA reference pages. No CMA article or decision number is ever cited beside it, because none exists. The 30:1 figure on major pairs that circulates as ‘the UAE cap’ belongs to the DFSA and the FSRA, which are separate free-zone regulators. Applying either figure to an onshore CMA broker is incorrect. I would not rely on those aggregator figures.

Instead, Deriv publishes its own leverage maxima as a commercial decision. For major currency pairs, you can access up to 1000:1. Gold carries a broker-published maximum of 800:1, major indices 400:1, other commodities 50:1, single shares 10:1, and cryptocurrency 800:1. The maxima for minor currency pairs and minor indices are not stated in the broker’s published material. In my view, these are broker-published figures, not regulatory caps.

Every figure in this section is broker-published and captured on 21 August 2026. None is a regulatory cap, because the CMA imposes no numeric leverage ceiling. The table below restates each instrument class alongside its status in the rulebook and the broker’s published figure.

Deriv leverage maxima: rulebook status vs broker-published figures, captured 21 August 2026

Platforms and execution

Deriv offers one trading platform to UAE residents: MetaTrader 5. The broker’s UAE-regulated site shows just ‘Deriv MT5’ under its platform navigation. No MT4, cTrader, TradingView, Deriv X or SmartTrader appears anywhere on deriv.com/ae. The mobile option is the generic MetaQuotes MT5 app preconfigured with DerivUAE servers, not a dedicated Deriv-branded app. Missing MT4 or cTrader matters if you prefer those platforms, and I would miss them too.

We read the execution model in the general terms of use, captured on 21 August 2026. Deriv may deal on its own account and may be the counterparty to your trades. The firm sets the prices on its platforms, so the prices you see may differ from those of other brokers or the market. The terms don’t use labels like market maker, STP or ECN. It is a principal dealing model, consistent with the CMA dealing licence tier. In my view, that is important to know because the broker is the counterparty, not an exchange.

Instrument counts come from separate marketing pages. You get 50-plus forex pairs, 50-plus shares and 30-plus ETFs. Indices, commodities and cryptocurrency pages describe categories without giving a number. Futures and bonds were not found. A CFD trading specifications table could not be read across two scrape attempts, including a JavaScript-rendered pass. EA support, VPS, API access and copy trading are not mentioned on the UAE entity’s site. Deriv Group offers these at group level, but nothing on deriv.com/ae confirms they apply to CMA-regulated UAE clients. I would ask Deriv directly about EA support and VPS.

You can open a demo account funded with AED 10,000 virtual, resettable at any time. Under clause 11.5.1 of the general terms of use, your MT5 demo account is deleted after 30 days of inactivity. I would keep that in mind for long-term practice. The next section covers how a UAE resident funds a live account.

Funding and withdrawals

You cannot deposit or withdraw via bank transfer with Deriv. No local UAE bank transfer method appears on any captured page. No international bank transfer method appears either. The available deposit methods are Visa, Mastercard, Skrill, Neteller and Apple Pay. Deriv does not charge deposit fees, but some payment providers may charge their own fees, and those amounts are not quantified. I would find bank transfer useful here.

AED is supported as an account currency, and AED deposits are accepted. The deposit table shows a minimum of AED 15 and a maximum of AED 50,000. Deriv charges no additional conversion fee on AED transactions. A third-party payment provider may charge a conversion fee, and the amount is not stated. The withdrawal methods are the same as the deposit channels: Visa, Mastercard, Skrill, Neteller and Apple Pay.

The withdrawal minimum is USD 5 or AED 15. Deriv charges no withdrawal fee of its own. The amount may vary by payment method, and those amounts are not quantified. Deposits are described as typically instant. Withdrawal processing time varies by provider, and no fixed day count is given. The same-method return policy is not stated. You should check the withdrawal processing time before funding.

To verify your account, you will need a selfie or liveness check, proof of identity and proof of address. Proof of identity accepts passport, UAE government-issued ID such as driving licence or residence visa, or GCC national ID. Proof of address accepts utility bill, bank statement, government letter or ID with address, dated within the last three months. Emirates ID is not named by that specific term. UAE PASS integration was not found. I would confirm Emirates ID acceptance before signing up. The next section examines the Islamic and swap-free account offering.

Islamic and swap-free accounts

You can open a swap-free account called MT5 Swap-free at signup, with no documentation or religious attestation required. The governing terms document, version U26|01 dated 13 July 2026, uses no Islamic, Shari’ah or halal language anywhere. Clause 3.5 says the account is ‘aligned with the financial ethics upheld by Muslim communities’, which is an arm’s-length paraphrase, not a compliance claim. No Shari’ah board is named and no certification exists. This is a commercial swap-free account, not a certified Islamic product.

I would flag that contradiction before relying on any free-period claim. The free period carries a four-way contradiction across Deriv’s own documents. The UAE governing terms clause 3.6 states 15 days. The UAE glossary states 5 days. The UAE MT5 account table says ‘beyond 5 days’. The UAE precious-metals page says ‘Swap-free for 5 days’. The broker’s own marketing page understates the free period by 10 days against its governing document. The mechanism behind this gap is that the global terms split instruments into derived at 5 days and financial at 15 days. Deriv UAE sells no derived instruments, so every UAE instrument falls under the 15-day financial category. The marketing page publishes the derived-instrument figure for a product class not sold in the UAE.

After the free period, you will be charged a replacement fee as a percentage of the contract value. The exact percentage rate is never published. The governing terms state the broker reserves the right to charge the fee at its discretion. I would want the exact percentage published before choosing the account. The instrument scope covers forex majors and minors, commodities, stock indices, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, and US and Europe stocks. Forex exotics and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange stocks are excluded. The UAE’s local equity market is unavailable on the only swap-free account the UAE entity offers.

Remember, this swap-free account still carries leveraged CFDs, crypto CFDs and ETFs with no Shari’ah screening. You are contracting for a fee mechanic with a discretionary charge rate, not a certified Islamic product. The next section identifies which entity you contract with.

Which entity you contract with

The brand is Deriv, and the licensed UAE legal entity is Deriv Capital Contracts & Currencies L.L.C. The footer on every captured page confirms this entity is a limited liability company registered in Dubai, licensed and regulated by the UAE Capital Market Authority. The on-page CMA licence numbers are Financial Products Dealer Licence 20200000243 and Category 5 Financial Consultant Licence 20200000199. You should verify those against the CMA register.

Deriv’s register reference is CP-0000999. That does not match the licence numbers the entity publishes on its own regulatory page. The two numbering formats differ, and the discrepancy requires checking against the CMA public register directly. We read the register on 21 August 2026, and the mismatch remains unresolved at the date of capture. I would treat this as an open question until Deriv reconciles it.

The general terms of use state that Deriv may deal on its own account and may be the counterparty to trades a client enters into. The conflict-of-interest clause confirms a principal dealing arrangement consistent with the CMA dealing licence tier. The exact legal relationship you enter into at signup is not fully documented in a single clear statement on the site. The entity name appears in the footer, but the contracting party in the signup flow has not been independently verified. I would want that confirmed before opening an account. The final section lists what this review has not established.

What this review has not established

The exact entity you contract with at the point of signing up has not been independently verified. The footer names Deriv Capital Contracts & Currencies L.L.C, but the signup flow was not tested to confirm the contracting party. The register reference CP-0000999 does not match the two licence numbers the broker publishes on its own regulatory page. That discrepancy has not been resolved against the CMA public register. Checking that reference directly is advisable before proceeding.

As of the 21 August 2026 capture, the EUR/USD spread is unknown for every account type. The broker’s published material states no spread value for the MT5 Standard, MT5 Swap-free or MT5 Gold accounts. The CFD trading specifications table could not be read, so a full instrument-by-instrument cost picture is unavailable. The MT5 Gold account unit conflict between pips and points remains unresolved. You need the spread published before you can compare costs.

EA support, VPS hosting, API access and copy trading are offered by Deriv Group at the group level. Whether any of these services apply to you as a UAE resident contracting with the CMA-regulated entity is not stated anywhere on deriv.com/ae. I would ask Deriv directly about EA support and VPS. Emirates ID acceptance by that specific term is not confirmed. The withdrawal processing time in days is not published.