Is Plus500 safe? Regulation, fees and the CFD small print

The short answer

Plus500 is a legitimate, regulated broker. UK clients are served by Plus500UK Ltd, authorised by the FCA under firm reference 509909, with client money held in segregated accounts and covered by the FSCS up to £85,000 per person if the firm fails. The parent, Plus500 Ltd, is a FTSE 250 company on the London Stock Exchange that reported net profit of $151.9 million and more than $860 million in cash for the first half of 2026.

The caveats are about the product, not solvency. In the UK Plus500 sells only CFDs, it is the counterparty to your trades, and its own risk warning says 76% of retail CFD accounts lose money (as shown on its UK site in October 2026). It also has a 2012 FSA fine and a 2015 FCA-ordered account freeze in its history.

Who regulates Plus500?

Plus500 is a group, and the subsidiary that opens your account decides your regulator, your compensation scheme and your protections. The footer of Plus500’s UK website (checked October 2026) lists these entities:

The group says in its 2026 interim results that it now holds 17 regulatory licences. Its US futures and prediction-market business is separate and is not covered here.

Plus500UK’s registered office is 8 Angel Court, Copthall Avenue, London EC2R 7HJ, according to the same footer. Check the licence yourself: search the FCA register for 509909 and confirm the status reads “authorised”. If you are in the EU, your client agreement names the entity; look it up on that regulator’s register, not on Plus500’s website.

The entity to avoid as a UK or EU resident is the Seychelles one. It is a real subsidiary, but offshore regulation gives you none of the FCA or ESMA protections, including the retail leverage caps.

What does the FSCS cover for Plus500 clients?

If Plus500UK failed and could not return everything it holds for you, that is an investment claim, and the FSCS pays up to £85,000 per eligible person, per firm for firms failing after 1 April 2019, according to the FSCS’s own investment page.

Plus500’s UK client money page gets this wrong. It says clients “would fall under the ‘investments’ claim category, whereby the cover is £120,000 per person per firm”. £120,000 is the FSCS limit for bank deposits, which rose in December 2025. Plus500 is not a bank, and the investment limit has not changed. If Plus500UK itself fails, plan around £85,000.

In practice segregation does most of the work. If Plus500UK went into administration, its own page says clients would get their share of the segregated money pool back, less the administrator’s costs, with the FSCS covering any shortfall.

What about EU clients?

EU clients of Plus500CY are covered by Cyprus’s Investor Compensation Fund, which pays 90% of a valid claim up to a maximum of €20,000. That is a much smaller backstop than the UK’s, so for EU accounts segregation matters even more. Clients in Australia, Singapore and the other non-European regions should check what, if any, scheme applies to their entity; there is no equivalent of the FSCS in most of them.

How does Plus500 hold client money?

Plus500’s UK client money page states that all client money is held in segregated client bank accounts under the FCA’s client money rules, and adds several specific commitments for Plus500UK:

• it uses its own money for hedging, not client money;
• it does not pass client money to hedging counterparties;
• it does not invest retail clients’ money;
• it has no exposure to corporate or sovereign debt.

The group’s interim accounts for the six months to 30 June 2026 show the scale: customer deposits of $3.4 billion across the business, and a reported net excess of $12.9 million held in segregation above what the rules require. Those are group figures, not UK-only ones, but they are audited-standard disclosures rather than marketing claims.

Is Plus500 a market maker?

Yes, and this is the most important thing to understand about it. Plus500UK’s user agreement says plainly that trading “is not conducted on an Exchange” and that “we act as counterparty” to your trades: when you buy, Plus500 sells to you. It also states that its prices “might not be the best prices available”.

That is legal, regulated and disclosed, and Plus500 hedges some of its exposure. But it means Plus500’s main revenue line is tied to how its clients trade. In the first half of 2026 the group reported customer income of $460.8 million, against total revenue of $462.9 million, according to its trading update and interim results. Its newer non-OTC business, mainly US futures, made up about 15% of revenue.

How many Plus500 clients lose money on CFDs?

Plus500’s UK site states that 76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider (as shown in October 2026). Plus500CY shows its own, separate figure for EU clients, and each entity updates its number periodically, so you will see different percentages quoted around the web.

The figure says nothing about whether Plus500 is solvent. It describes what leveraged products do to most retail traders. If you are weighing CFDs against spread betting, which most UK CFD brokers also offer but Plus500 does not, see spread betting vs CFDs.

Can you buy real shares on Plus500 in the UK?

No. On the UK site everything is a CFD: you hold a contract on a price, not the share, ETF or commodity itself. Cryptocurrency CFDs are not available to UK retail clients at all, in line with the FCA’s ban.

The group does run a share dealing platform, Plus500 Invest, with exchange-traded shares and a per-trade commission (for example $0.006 per US share and 0.045% on London shares, minimum £2, on its German site). It is offered only in some regions. Plus500’s UK site has no Invest section, and several EU country pages say it is unavailable there too. If you want to own shares, a CFD-only account is the wrong tool; brokers such as XTB or Trading 212 offer real stocks to UK clients.

What does Plus500 charge?

Plus500 does not charge dealing commissions on CFDs. Its UK fees page says it is “mainly compensated” through the buy/sell spread, which is built into its quotes. The other charges, from that page and the Plus500UK user agreement (September 2026 version):

Two of these catch people. The currency conversion fee applies to a large share of the instrument list, since most share and index CFDs are not priced in sterling, and it scales with your profit or loss rather than your trade size. The inactivity fee is easy to avoid: logging in once every three months stops it, and the agreement says it is never more than your remaining balance. Overnight funding is what makes CFDs expensive to hold for months; Plus500 shows the daily rate for each instrument in the platform rather than in a public table.

What is a guaranteed stop, and is it worth it?

An ordinary stop-loss closes your position at the next available price, which can be far worse than your stop level if the market gaps overnight or on news. A guaranteed stop closes at exactly the level you set. According to Plus500’s user agreement, the price of that guarantee is a wider spread, displayed in the instrument details before you place the order, and it is available only on eligible instruments.

For a retail client the guaranteed stop is one of the few tools that genuinely caps the loss on a single position. Negative balance protection stops your account going below zero; a guaranteed stop stops one trade taking most of the balance.

Can you withdraw from Plus500?

Yes. The UK user agreement says withdrawals are carried out within one to three business days of the request, with extra time depending on your bank or payment provider. Money returns to the method you deposited with, and the request status is shown in the platform until it is settled. The usual reason for delays is incomplete identity verification, which every FCA-regulated broker must finish before paying out.

Has Plus500 been in trouble with regulators?

Yes, twice in the UK, both more than a decade ago.

2012: £205,128 FSA fine. The Financial Services Authority, the FCA’s predecessor, fined Plus500UK for failing to submit accurate and timely transaction reports between June 2010 and November 2011, according to the regulator’s press release and final notice. The fine included a 30% discount for settling early.

2015: FCA-ordered account restrictions. During an FCA review of its anti-money laundering controls, Plus500UK restricted existing accounts and paused new client onboarding until more customer due-diligence documents had been supplied and checked, as reported by Bloomberg in May 2015. Clients were affected for weeks, and Playtech’s planned takeover of Plus500 later collapsed because the deal’s FCA conditions could not be met in time. No client money was reported lost, but it is the episode most “Plus500 froze my account” stories trace back to.

Neither case involved insolvency or a loss of client funds. Both were failures of systems and controls.

What is not protected?

• Trading losses. No compensation scheme pays out because a CFD moved against you.
• Your whole balance. Negative balance protection stops you owing money, but losses up to your balance are yours.
• Anything above £85,000 with Plus500UK, or above €20,000 with Plus500CY, if segregation fails.
• Elective professional client accounts, which lose negative balance protection and the retail leverage caps.
• Accounts with Plus500SEY (Seychelles), which sit outside UK and EU protection.

Verdict

Plus500 is safe in the sense most people mean: it is authorised by the FCA, holds UK client money apart from its own, has the FSCS behind it, and as a listed company it publishes its finances. Our trust score of 9.2 reflects that. The reservations are that it is a market maker selling a product most retail clients lose money on, that its UK page overstates the FSCS limit, and that its regulatory record, while old, is not clean. The full assessment, including the platform and spreads, is in our Plus500 review.

If you are comparing on safety, see eToro vs Plus500 (and is eToro safe?), Plus500 vs XTB (and is XTB safe?), Plus500 vs Trading 212, or the full list of FCA-regulated trading platforms.

Ready to try Plus500?

Visit Plus500

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.