Is eToro safe? FCA and CySEC licences, FSCS cover, crypto and the CFD small print

The short answer

eToro is a regulated, legitimate broker. UK clients are covered by the FCA (firm reference 583263) and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £85,000; EU clients are covered by CySEC (licence 109/10) and the Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund up to €20,000. Its parent has been listed on Nasdaq as ETOR since May 2025 and reported a $53 million profit for the second quarter of 2026.

The protection stops at three places people tend to assume it reaches: crypto is not covered by any compensation scheme, losses from copying another investor are your losses, and on CFDs the risk is the product, not the broker. The rest of this guide goes through each, in the order they are likely to cost you money.

Which eToro entity holds your account?

eToro is a group of separately licensed companies, and the one you sign with decides which regulator, which rules and which compensation scheme apply. The table below is taken from eToro’s regulation and licence page, checked on 23 October 2026.

If you live in the UK you should land on eToro (UK) Ltd, and if you live in the EU, on eToro (Europe) Ltd. The registration flow names the entity, and so do your account terms. It is worth checking, because the Seychelles entity offers far weaker protection than the other two, and this is the main reason our trust score in the eToro review is 9.0 rather than higher.

To check the UK licence yourself, search the FCA register for 583263 and confirm that the status reads “authorised”. For the EU entity, CySEC’s register of investment firms lists eToro (Europe) Ltd under 109/10.

How much does the FSCS cover at eToro?

For UK clients, £85,000 per person. That is the FSCS investment protection limit, and it applies if eToro (UK) Ltd failed and there turned out to be a shortfall in the client money or assets it held for you.

One detail matters here. eToro’s own FSCS disclosure says money deposited with eToro UK is treated as an investment for FSCS purposes. So uninvested cash in your eToro account counts towards the £85,000 investment limit. It is not the £120,000 bank deposit limit (raised from £85,000 on 1 December 2025) that applies to money in a current or savings account. If you hold large cash balances at a broker, that difference is worth knowing.

The limit is a backstop, not the amount at risk. Under the FCA’s client asset rules (CASS), eToro UK has to keep client money and investments separate from its own, so if it failed, your assets would be identified and returned or moved to another broker. The FSCS pays out only if something turns out to be missing.

For EU clients of eToro (Europe) Ltd, the Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund covers up to €20,000 per eligible client. That is the EU minimum, and it is well below the UK limit. eToro’s regulation page adds that where client cash is held with partner banks, a national deposit guarantee scheme may separately cover up to €100,000.

Does eToro have extra insurance?

Yes, but probably not for you. eToro’s insurance page describes a Lloyd’s of London policy covering cash, CFD positions and securities of up to €1 million (or AUD/USD, depending on the region) in the event of insolvency or misconduct. Three conditions narrow it down:

• It applies to clients of eToro (Europe), eToro AUS Capital, eToro (ME) and eToro (Seychelles). eToro (UK) Ltd is not on the list.
• Only Platinum, Platinum+ and Diamond Club members qualify, which are eToro’s higher-balance tiers.
• It pays only above an initial €20,000, so it starts where the Cyprus scheme stops, and it excludes real crypto positions.

For a typical UK account, the FSCS is the only scheme that applies.

Real stocks vs CFDs: what do you actually own?

On eToro, the same “buy” button can buy you two very different things, and they are protected differently.

Real stocks and ETFs. If you buy without leverage and without going short, you own the underlying shares. eToro holds them for you as nominee, so they are registered in eToro’s or a custodian’s name and recorded as yours. Under CASS they are client assets: if the company failed, its creditors could not claim them. This is the part of eToro that works like any regulated stock broker, and it is the part the FSCS backstop is designed for. Fractional shares are held the same way, as an entitlement recorded by eToro.

CFDs. If you add leverage or open a short position, you are holding a contract with eToro that tracks the price, not the asset. Your margin is client money and protected as such, but the position itself is a bet, and the losses it can generate are not something any compensation scheme covers. eToro’s order ticket shows which one you are buying, and our spread betting vs CFDs guide explains how the two leveraged products differ for UK traders.

What percentage of eToro CFD accounts lose money?

The risk warning on etoro.com read “55% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider” when we checked on 23 October 2026. Brokers in the UK and EU must publish this figure and update it regularly, and the number can differ between eToro entities and over time; in 2023, ASIC quoted 77% from eToro’s website. Whichever number your entity shows, it says the same thing: more than half of the retail accounts that use the product lose money. That has nothing to do with whether eToro is solvent. It is the product working as leverage works.

Is crypto on eToro protected?

No. eToro says so itself: crypto trading is not a MiFID-regulated investment service, so neither the FSCS nor the Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund applies, and the Lloyd’s policy excludes real crypto positions.

What exists instead is a lighter form of regulation. In the UK, eToro (UK) Ltd is registered with the FCA as a cryptoasset firm under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. That registration covers anti-money-laundering controls; it does not give you compensation rights. In the EU, eToro (Europe) Ltd has held a MiCA licence since January 2025, which sets rules on custody and safeguarding but again is not a compensation scheme. If eToro failed, crypto held on the platform would rely on how well it had been segregated, not on a government-backed payout. Treat crypto on eToro, as anywhere, as the uncovered part of your portfolio.

Is copy trading on eToro safe?

The platform is the same regulated platform. The risk is the person you copy. CopyTrader mirrors another user’s trades in your account in proportion to the amount you allocate (from $200, according to eToro), so if they buy a leveraged CFD, so do you.

Four things to keep in mind:

• Popular Investors are not regulated advisers. They are eToro users who are paid by eToro under its Popular Investor programme. Their track records are real, but past returns do not predict future ones.
• Copied CFD positions are CFDs. The loss statistic above applies to them as much as to trades you place yourself.
• The risk score matters more than the return. eToro gives each investor a risk score from 1 to 10. A high return with a score of 7 or 8 usually means large drawdowns are coming.
• Losses from copying are not covered. The FSCS protects you against the broker failing, not against a copied investor making bad calls.

Set a copy stop-loss when you start copying. It is the one control that caps how much a bad run by someone else can cost you. Platforms compared on these controls are in our best copy trading platforms ranking.

How healthy is eToro as a company?

Better documented than most brokers, because it is listed. eToro Group Ltd priced its IPO at $52 a share on Nasdaq in May 2025, above its marketed $46 to $50 range, raising about $310 million for the company at a valuation of around $4.2 billion, according to CNBC. It trades under the ticker ETOR and publishes audited quarterly results.

Its most recent results, for the second quarter of 2026 (published 11 August 2026), reported:

Source: eToro’s Q2 2026 results press release. The company also announced an agreement to buy the US broker TradeZero for up to $231 million, expected to close in the first half of 2027. A profitable, growing, listed broker is not proof of safety, but it removes the most common reason brokers mishandle client money: running out of their own.

Has eToro been in trouble with regulators?

Two actions are worth knowing, neither involving clients losing money to the company itself.

ASIC (Australia), 2023 onwards. In August 2023 ASIC sued eToro AUS Capital in the Federal Court in its first case under the design and distribution obligations. It alleges that the target market eToro set for its CFDs was too broad for a high-risk product, and that the screening test meant to keep unsuitable clients out was very hard to fail: clients could change their answers without limit and were prompted when an answer would fail them. ASIC says almost 20,000 eToro clients lost money on CFDs between October 2021 and June 2023. It is seeking declarations and penalties. As of October 2026, ASIC’s case page lists the hearing as continuing on 27 and 28 April 2026, and we found no published judgment. The case concerns the Australian entity only, but it goes to how eToro sold its riskiest product.

SEC (United States), September 2024. eToro USA LLC paid $1.5 million to settle SEC charges that it had operated as an unregistered broker and clearing agency for crypto assets the SEC treats as securities. It neither admitted nor denied the findings and restricted US crypto trading to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ether. This does not affect UK or EU accounts.

What is not protected at eToro

In one list:

• Crypto, whether in the eToro app or the eToro Money wallet.
• Losses on CFDs, including copied CFD positions.
• Losses from copying another investor or from Smart Portfolios falling in value.
• Any investment that simply goes down.
• Amounts above £85,000 at eToro UK, or €20,000 at eToro Europe (unless you qualify for the Lloyd’s policy).
• Accounts with the Seychelles entity, which sit outside UK and EU compensation schemes.

Verdict

eToro is safe in the sense that matters most: it is licensed by the FCA and CySEC, holds your shares apart from its own money, sits behind a compensation scheme, and as a Nasdaq-listed company has to publish audited numbers. The weaker points are the ones the brand is built on. Crypto has no compensation cover, copy trading moves the risk onto someone else’s judgment, and the ASIC case shows eToro has been too willing to let retail clients into CFDs. Use it for real shares with confidence, keep crypto balances to what you could lose, and treat CFDs and copied leveraged trades as speculation.

If you are choosing between eToro and a UK-first broker, eToro vs Trading 212 sets them side by side, and Is Trading 212 safe? covers the same questions for that broker. For lower trading costs, see eToro vs XTB.

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