Eightcap

Eightcap is a CFD and forex broker founded in Melbourne, Australia. The company's own materials date its founding to 2009, though the Eightcap brand as it operates today traces to a 2015 relaunch. The Melbourne entity, Eightcap Pty Ltd, remains the group's home base and its most heavily regulated arm.

Eightcap has grown into a multi-entity operation serving clients through separate legal entities depending on where the client is based. This structure is common among CFD brokers and directly affects which protections and which promotions a given trader can access.

Eightcap Pty Ltd is authorized and regulated by ASIC under license 391441. Eightcap Group Ltd is authorized by the UK FCA (921296). Eightcap EU Ltd is regulated by CySEC under license 246/14, covering the EEA. Clients outside these three jurisdictions are typically onboarded through Eightcap Global Limited, licensed by the Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SIA-F220), with affiliated entities registered in Seychelles and Mauritius.

ASIC has flagged past compliance issues: in 2023 the broker self-reported breaches of Australia's retail leverage limits, including cases of clients being misclassified as wholesale, and it agreed to remediate affected customers. That is materially relevant history for anyone weighing which entity to trade with. The offshore entities operate under lighter-touch regimes than the ASIC, FCA or CySEC arms, so confirm which entity you are actually opening an account with.

Eightcap offers more than 800 CFD markets spanning forex, indices, commodities, equities and crypto derivatives, including a notably large crypto CFD lineup of over 100 tokens. Platforms include MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, TradingView with direct in-chart execution, and TradeLocker.

Two core live account types are available: Standard and Raw. The Standard account has no commission with spreads from around 1.0 pips. The Raw account charges a per-lot commission (roughly $3.50 per side per standard lot for USD accounts) in exchange for spreads from 0.0 pips. Both share the same $100 minimum deposit and market access.

Eightcap's 20% deposit bonus is issued through Eightcap Global Limited, the Bahamas-regulated entity, not through the ASIC, FCA or CySEC entities. This matters because regulated brokers in those stricter jurisdictions are barred from offering deposit bonuses to retail clients, which is exactly why this promotion runs through the offshore entity. The bonus is explicitly excluded for clients in Australia and the United States.

The bonus credits up to $500 in trading credit against a qualifying deposit. Per Eightcap's own terms, the credit is not cash: it converts into withdrawable real equity in stages as the trader hits volume thresholds, and withdrawing the original deposit before meeting those thresholds cancels any unconverted bonus credit. The terms are governed under Vanuatu law, another marker that this sits outside Eightcap's core regulated entities.

Separately, Eightcap runs a monthly demo trading contest (recent editions had a $1,800 total prize pool split among the top three finishers) that is also excluded for Australian and US clients. Eightcap's Australian site runs its own distinct program, a refer-a-friend cash bonus paying AUD 100 per qualified referral, which requires the referred client to fund a live account and trade a minimum volume within 30 days. That program sits on the ASIC-regulated Australian site and is a flat cash referral reward rather than a deposit-matching bonus.

Account opening and verification follow standard KYC steps: government ID, proof of address and, depending on the entity, a suitability questionnaire. Which entity a new client is routed to depends on stated country of residence, and this determines both the regulatory protections available and eligibility for promotions.

Funding methods include cards, bank transfer, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller and crypto, with a $100 minimum deposit across the core account types. Check your account's regulating entity in the client portal before assuming any advertised bonus applies to you, since eligibility differs by entity and region.