Legal status by country
Who banned the product and when, who licenses it, and where it is simply unregulated. Twenty jurisdictions, each with the responsible authority named.
What remains is a small licensed remainder, a large unsupervised grey zone, and a successor product trading on regulated exchanges. This site is organised around that reality rather than around a broker table — start with your own jurisdiction.
Is it legal where you are?
Markets where it is still offered
The countries without a prohibition — and what the absence of a licensing regime actually means when a withdrawal stalls.
Prediction markets
Event contracts on CFTC-designated exchanges: the same payoff structure, on a supervised venue.
Markets without a prohibition
Available is not the same as supervised. Each page below leads with the regulator's position, not with a signup button.
South Africa
Binary options are not prohibited in South Africa.
Kenya
There is no licensing regime for binary options in Kenya.
Nigeria
Nigeria has no binary options licensing regime, and sources disagree on whether offshore providers are merely unrecognised or actually prohibited.
Philippines
Retail trading is not itself illegal, but the SEC licenses no binary options provider, so every platform serving Filipino clients is offshore and unsupervised.
Thailand
Not explicitly illegal for an individual, but a provider serving Thai residents without a Thai SEC licence is operating outside the framework.
United Arab Emirates
Trading is not prohibited, but no binary options product is licensed by the UAE CMA, the DFSA or the FSRA for retail clients.
Mexico
No Mexican licence covers binary options and the CNBV recognises no provider, leaving the product unsupervised rather than banned.
Colombia
The SFC does not authorise binary options, and offering them to Colombian residents is not permitted under Colombian law.
Peru
Unregulated rather than prohibited.
Before you deposit anywhere
Three checks are worth more than any review:
- Verify the licence at the regulator, not on the broker's own site. A number in a footer is not a licence, and an offshore company registration is not financial supervision.
- Identify the legal entity that would hold your money. Groups routinely run a licensed entity for one product and an unregulated offshore entity for binary options. The brand on the homepage tells you nothing about which one signs your client agreement.
- Check your own jurisdiction first — several regulators publish alert lists naming individual platforms.
Further reading: how regulation works, scam patterns and licence verification, brokers that closed, and why we drop brokers from this site.
Learning the mechanics
Our archive from 2012 onward covers the instrument itself — how it works, what the common strategies claim and why most of them do not survive contact with the payout structure, funding and withdrawal, and a glossary. Those pages are older than the bans and are labelled as archive material where that matters.
Frequently asked questions
What is a binary option?
A contract with two outcomes. You take a position on whether a market will be above or below a set level at a set time. If you are right you receive a fixed payout; if you are wrong you lose the amount staked. There is no partial outcome, which is what separates it from a CFD or a conventional option.
Are binary options legal?
It depends entirely on where you live. They are prohibited for retail clients across the EEA, the UK, Australia, Canada and Israel, and are banned or unrecognised in India, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam and Russia. Japan licenses them under strict conditions, and the United States permits them only on a CFTC-designated exchange. See legal status by country.
Why did so many regulators ban them?
Consistent findings across jurisdictions: a large majority of retail accounts lost money, the very short expiries made the product function as betting rather than investment, and the broker was usually the direct counterparty to the client — so the client’s loss was the broker’s revenue.
What replaced binary options?
In the United States, regulated event contracts on designated exchanges. Kalshi reported roughly $52 billion in cumulative contract volume by March 2026. Brazil’s B3 is introducing binary-structured prediction derivatives for professional investors. The payoff did not disappear; it moved onto exchanges. See prediction markets.
Does this site earn money from brokers?
Yes, on some pages. Links marked as sponsored pay us a commission if you open an account. We do not carry them on pages covering markets where the product is prohibited, or where we could not verify the legal position against a primary source.
Risk warning: binary options are high-risk speculative instruments and most retail accounts lose money. Nothing on this page is investment advice or a recommendation to trade.