Which broker accepts clients from the most countries?

Interactive Brokers publishes IBKR Pro eligibility as open to all, against IBKR Lite which is restricted to US residents. We have not independently verified a country count, and we will not repeat one from a secondary source.

Does SIPC protect me if I live outside the US?

SIPC protects customers of the US broker-dealer, and it does cover cash denominated in non-US currency held at that broker. The question that decides your situation is which entity holds your account — check the account agreement, not the marketing page.

Draft ranking · Primary query: best brokers for international investors

Best Brokers for International Investors

Written by: Juan Manuel Gonzalez
Published: August 28, 2026
Data verified: August 28, 2026

Draft — not published

This ranking is blocked on the access and eligibility pillar, which is unscored in the current methodology. Access and eligibility is unscored in v1.0. It requires each firm's own onboarding terms read per country, plus the investor-protection scheme attached to the specific entity that would hold the account. Until that research is complete, any international ranking we published would be a guess dressed as a comparison.

The page is excluded from search engines and carries no ranking table. We publish it because the reasoning is worth reading even when the answer is not ready.

Quick verdict

We are not publishing a ranking here yet. Doing it properly means confirming, country by country, which legal entity would hold your account, whether that entity accepts residents of your country, what investor protection scheme covers it, and what documentation it requires. We have confirmed only fragments of that: Interactive Brokers publishes IBKR Pro eligibility as open to all and IBKR Lite as US residents only, and eToro's US fee page distinguishes US from non-US users. That is not enough to rank on.

Why this page exists as a draft

We built the page rather than leaving the URL empty, because the honest answer to this query is worth publishing even when the ranking is not. If you are outside the United States, the question that matters is not which broker is best in general — it is which entity would actually accept you and what protects your money there.

The single most consequential fact we can already state: the legal entity that holds a non-US client's account is frequently not the US broker-dealer whose name is on the app. SIPC coverage attaches to the US entity. If your account sits with a different subsidiary in another jurisdiction, a different scheme applies, with different limits — or none at all.

What we will verify before publishing

For each broker and each launch country: the exact legal entity that would hold the account, its regulator and licence number, the investor compensation scheme and its limit, the accepted residency and documentation requirements, deposit and withdrawal methods, base currency options and currency conversion cost, and the product restrictions that apply to residents of that country.

Until every one of those is read from a primary source, this page stays a draft and stays out of the search index.

How we evaluated

Safety and regulation30%: Evidence: FINRA BrokerCheck entity record — legal name, CRD number, SEC file number and registration status — SIPC membership, and public enforcement actions from the regulator or SRO that brought them.
Fees and total cost30%: Evidence: The firm's own published commission and fee schedule, read in full.
Investment selection22%: Evidence: The asset classes named on the firm's own published pricing or product pages.
Account types and features18%: Evidence: The account types named in the firm's own published account lineup.

Not scored, and why

Access and eligibility — Country-by-country onboarding terms confirmed against each firm's own account-opening documents.
Platform and usability — Hands-on use of a funded account on desktop, web and mobile.
Research and education — Logged-in access to each firm's research suite and education library.
Customer service — Timed contact tests across phone, chat and email, repeated over several weeks.
Execution quality — Analysis of SEC Rule 605 and Rule 606 order-execution and routing disclosures across a full quarter.

Researched but excluded

SoFi Invest (SOFI SECURITIES LLC, CRD 151717) — Legal entity confirmed via FINRA, but the fee page returned HTTP 403 when we attempted to read it. Re-attempted on 30 August 2026 against the published fee schedule PDF and the SoFi support articles: both returned 403 as well. Secondary summaries of SoFiâs pricing are available and we are not using them â we will not score a firm from anything but its own document.

Read the full methodology

Frequently asked questions

Which broker accepts clients from the most countries?: Interactive Brokers publishes IBKR Pro eligibility as open to all, against IBKR Lite which is restricted to US residents. We have not independently verified a country count, and we will not repeat one from a secondary source.
Does SIPC protect me if I live outside the US?: SIPC protects customers of the US broker-dealer, and it does cover cash denominated in non-US currency held at that broker. The question that decides your situation is which entity holds your account — check the account agreement, not the marketing page.

Affiliate disclosure

We currently have no affiliate or commercial relationship with any broker on this site, and every outbound link is a plain link. If that changes, it will be disclosed here and on the broker's row. Read the full disclosure.

Risk warning

Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Nothing on this site is personalized investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or a solicitation. Figures are read from public sources on the dates shown and can change without notice — verify anything you intend to act on with the provider directly. Read the full risk disclosure.