Our Review Methodology

What We Assessed

The assessment covers entity identification, regulatory status, product legality, cost transparency, client-money arrangements and complaint patterns — the dimensions a reader can act on before funding an account.

An evaluation is only useful if its scope is stated before its conclusions. Six dimensions were assessed, chosen because each one either changes a reader's decision or can be independently re-checked. Anything that failed both tests was left out.

The six assessed dimensions

1. Entity identification. Is there a named legal entity, with an address and a company registration number, standing behind the European client relationship?
2. Regulatory status. Is there a licence number and a current status on a regulator's public register?
3. Product legality in the EU. Does the retail product line match the product rules currently in force in Europe?
4. Cost transparency. Are the cost types disclosed by the platform, and can a reader find the live figures?
5. Client-money arrangements. Can segregation, negative-balance protection and compensation coverage be confirmed for this specific firm?
6. Complaint patterns. Do public complaints form a describable pattern, and what does that pattern actually indicate?

What was explicitly out of scope

• Execution quality. No orders were placed, so nothing about fills, slippage or latency is claimed.
• Withdrawal speed. No withdrawal was requested. The sequence is described; no timing is measured.
• Pricing levels. No spread, commission or payout figure is published, because none was verified.
• Support responsiveness. No support ticket was opened, so no response time is asserted.
• Profitability of any strategy. Out of scope on principle, not merely unverified.

Stating the exclusions is the part most review pages skip, and it is the part that lets a reader judge how much weight the conclusions deserve. The conclusions themselves sit in the main review.

Six checkable dimensions were assessed and five common review claims were excluded outright — the scope is the first thing worth reading.

Sources We Used

The primary source is the CySEC public register entry for the Cypriot investment firm. Secondary material — the official site and public review venues — is used only for context, never as proof.

Sources are graded rather than listed. A register entry and a forum thread are not the same kind of evidence, and treating them as interchangeable is how confident-sounding misinformation gets written.

Source tiers

What the register gave us

The public register entry supplies the facts this site is willing to state without hedging: the registered name IQBroker Europe Ltd (ex IQOption Europe Ltd), CIF licence number 247/14, licence date 30 July 2014, Authorised status at the check date, the registered office at 82nd road, 4 Kato Polemidia, 4153, Limassol, Cyprus, and company registration number 327751. Licence and company details were checked against the CySEC public register on September 3, 2026.

A known limitation of the official site

The brand's own site renders its legal and product pages in the browser, so a plain fetch returns the marketing shell rather than the underlying text. That is a practical constraint, and it is the reason no figure on this site is attributed to a page we could not read in full. Where a live number matters, the reader is sent to the platform's own screens instead of being handed a copy that may already be stale.

How review venues are read

• Volume and recency before averages — a score built from old entries describes an older product.
• The split between complaint types, which separates verification friction from trading losses.
• Whether the company replies, and whether replies resolve anything.
• Forum threads treated as anecdote and pattern, never as measurement.

A regulator’s register is evidence; a screenshot or a forum thread is context — this framework never promotes one to the other.

How We Verify

Each candidate claim is graded: verified against a readable public document, described as a mechanism, or dropped. Nothing is filled in with a plausible figure to make a page look complete.

Verification here is a routing decision rather than a research project. Every claim that could appear on the site passes through the same sequence, and where it exits determines how it is written.

The grading sequence

1. Is there a public document a reader can open? If yes, the claim is stated with the source detail attached — this is how the register facts are handled.
2. Is it a rule rather than a fact about this firm? EU requirements such as client-money segregation and retail negative-balance protection are written as the rules applying to regulated retail accounts, never as audited facts about this broker and never as a guarantee against loss.
3. Is it volatile? Minimums, spreads, payout percentages, processing times and review scores change. The mechanism is explained and the reader is pointed at the live source. No figure is published.
4. Is it a pattern rather than a measurement? Complaint themes are described as patterns, without counts or rates.
5. Is it unverified and consequential? Then it is dropped. Founding years, user counts, non-EU entities, ownership chains and historical penalty amounts all exit here.

Rules applied without exception

• No number appears anywhere on this site unless it came from the register facts above or the 2018 EU measure.
• No claim of testing, trading, funding or measurement, because no evidence file exists to support one.
• No competitor is called a scam, and no competitor's payout, minimum, licence number or user count is published. Where a rival's register entry was not checked, the page says so.
• No third-party screenshot is presented as verified proof of anything.
• No statement that the platform is legal or illegal in a named country; availability and local rules are the reader's to check.

Why the gaps stay visible

A page reads as more authoritative when every field is filled. Filling them from memory or from another review is how errors propagate across an entire category of sites. Leaving a gap marked as a gap costs a little confidence and buys accuracy, which is the better trade for anyone about to move money. The same standard is applied to the brand's critics: the withdrawal complaints page describes patterns without inventing rates.

Verified, described as a mechanism, or dropped — no fourth option, and no plausible-looking figures used as filler.

Scoring Approach

There is no score out of ten. Each assessed dimension carries a plain status — verified, consistent, described or not verified — so the reader sees the evidence rather than a compressed number.

Numeric scores compress exactly the detail that matters, and they invite readers to skip the reasoning. A single decimal rating says nothing about which parts were checkable. So each dimension carries a status instead, and the statuses are defined in advance.

The status labels

How the six dimensions came out

• Entity identification — verified. Name, address and company number on the register.
• Regulatory status — verified. CIF licence 247/14, dated 30 July 2014, Authorised at the check date.
• Product legality in the EU — consistent. Binary options absent from the retail offer, in line with the 2018 measures.
• Cost transparency — described. Cost types explained; live figures left to the platform's fee page.
• Client-money arrangements — not verified. Written as EU rules rather than as facts about this firm.
• Complaint patterns — described. Recurring themes set out without counts or rates.

Reading the result

Two dimensions verified, one consistent, two described and one not verified is a informative profile — more informative than a decimal. It says the regulatory foundation is checkable, the product line matches current rules, and the money-handling detail is where the evidence runs out. A reader who cares most about that last dimension now knows to go and read the scheme terms directly rather than trust any summary. The regulation page is the place those questions are worked through.

A status per dimension shows where the evidence is strong and where it stops; a single score would hide both.

Limits And Updates

This framework has real limits: no funded account, no measured timings, no verified pricing. Register statuses change, so every regulatory statement carries a check date and should be re-checked before acting.

The most useful thing a methodology page can do is state where it stops. These limits are not caveats added at the end — they define what the review is.

The limits, stated plainly

• No hands-on use. No account was funded, no trade placed, no withdrawal requested, no support ticket opened.
• No pricing verification. Spreads, minimums, payout rates and financing costs were not confirmed and are not published.
• No firm-specific confirmation of client-money arrangements. Segregation, negative-balance protection and compensation coverage are described as EU rules only.
• No regulatory-history detail. Secondary sources describe past matters; no decision document was read, so no amounts, years or characterisations appear.
• No country-legality rulings. Availability and local rules are for the reader and their own regulator to establish.
• No measurement of sentiment. Public complaints yield patterns, not rates.

Point-in-time facts

Register status is a snapshot. It read Authorised at the check date, and firms can be restricted, suspended or withdrawn at any time. Every regulatory statement on this site is therefore written with its check date attached — licence and company details were checked against the CySEC public register on September 3, 2026 — and the correct use of that date is to re-run the check yourself on the day you act.

How this framework would change

1. A change to the register entry — name, licence, status or address — is a same-priority correction.
2. A change in EU product rules affecting what may be offered to retail clients gets reflected across the affected pages.
3. A shift in the pattern of public complaints is described when it is stable enough to describe, never on the strength of a single loud thread.
4. Anything that becomes verifiable against a readable document moves from described or not verified up to verified.

What you should still do yourself

Check the register entry before funding. Read the platform's own fee page rather than a review's summary of it. Complete verification early. Test a small withdrawal before trading. And treat any figure you find online about minimums, payouts or processing times — including on sites more confident than this one — as unverified until you see it on the platform. Trading with leveraged and expiry-based products can cost you the amount you commit, whatever the review says.

Every regulatory fact here carries a check date; re-run the register check yourself on the day you decide.