Contributor, Benzinga
May 3, 2024
Deriv
Overall Rating:
securely through Deriv's website

Deriv is a multi-asset and multi-regulated low-cost broker with over 2.5 million users worldwide. Deriv offers contract-for-difference (CFD)  trading on forex, derived or synthetic indices, stocks and indices, cryptocurrencies, commodities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Additionally, it provides multipliers trading on forex and derived indices. A contract for difference lets you trade on asset price movements without buying the underlying asset. CFDs are traded on margin, which boosts your market exposure, amplifying your potential profits and losses.

In contrast, the multiplier blends the benefits of leverage trading with the limited risk inherent in options trading. When the market moves in your favor, potential profits are multiplied; if it moves against you, losses are limited to your initial stake. Deriv is also a pioneer of synthetic indices, which simulate real-world market movements. Synthetic indices are available round-the-clock and are unaffected by regular market hours, global events or market and liquidity risks.

Deriv offers its proprietary charting software — Deriv Trader, and the globally renowned robust MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platform. The broker’s tight spread and low minimum deposit of $5 also make it appealing to diverse traders. Benzinga spotlights Deriv, examining its pros and cons, key features, trading conditions, customer support and overall user experience to help you decide whether it’s the ideal broker for your trading journey.

Best For
  • Beginner and experienced trader looking for a well-established broker facilitating trading of CFDs and multipliers on global financial markets, all in one place with round-the-clock trading and worldwide support
  • Beginner forex and CFD traders seeking a reputable broker with an interactive community, educational content and demo accounts to facilitate learning and growth before delving into live trading
  • Experienced traders seeking a straightforward and intuitive FX trading platform with fast order execution to help them maximize trading opportunities while advancing their trading strategies
  • Multi-asset traders seeking a well-regulated brokerage offering no commission, flexible leverages, competitive spreads, advanced MT5 trading platforms and responsive customer support
  • Scalpers, swing traders, day traders and those aiming to maximize profits through derivatives by using Deriv's multipliers features
Pros
  • Low minimum deposit, competitive leverage and tight spread, especially on major forex pairs
  • Lightning-fast trade execution with 99.95% uptime, ensuring uninterrupted market access
  • Multiple powerful trading platforms, including MT5 — the most reputable platform for CFD trading and the proprietary Deriv Trader — ideal for multipliers
  • Free demo account with no registration requirements — suitable for practicing short-term trading strategies
  • Interactive trading community and reliable round-the-clock customer support via multiple channels, including the convenient WhatsApp service
  • Excellent trading tools, including ranges of technical indicators (20+ in Deriv Trader versus 30+ in MT5), MT5 trading signals, margin, swap and pip calculators
  • Multiple fast deposit and withdrawal methods with low minimum and zero fees
  • Licensed and regulated in various jurisdictions, including the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC), the Labuan Financial Services Authority (LFSA) and the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (BVI FSC)
Cons
  • Unavailable for traders in the U.S., Alderney, Belarus, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Israel, Jersey, Jordan, Malaysia, Malta, Rwanda, Paraguay, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates and any country that has been identified by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as subject to a call for action.
  • Offers limited tradable assets compared to competitors
  • Trading conditions may vary based on the regulatory jurisdiction
  • Limited extra trading tools and educational resources

Deriv Ratings at a Glance

Customer Service
Security
Minimum Investment and Pricing
Mobile App
User Experience
Overall

Deriv Product Offering

In line with its commitment to making trading accessible to everyone, Deriv offers a comprehensive online brokerage service featuring seamless access to diverse assets, advanced trading platforms, impressive trading tools and excellent customer support. Here’s a breakdown of its core offerings. 

Tradable Assets

You can trade CFD on 200+ instruments across six asset classes. Among them are 38 forex pairs comprising major and minor currencies, giving you a better choice to trade and profit. The equity list is small, consisting of about 88 stocks and ETFs, including those of Apple Inc., Nvidia Corp, Microsoft Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. These represent some of the hottest stocks driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. However, you can also speculate on price movements across the most prominent U.S., Asian and European stock indices, including U.S. 500, Japan 225 and U.K. 100. 

Deriv offers 31 crypto pairs, providing crypto enthusiasts an excellent opportunity to trade popular tokens like Bitcoin against the U.S. dollar (USD). You also can trade commodities like gold, silver and platinum against USD. Deriv's collection of ETFs for CFD trading is also impressive and includes AGG.US, DIA.US and ARRK.US. It is one of the few brokers that offers CFD trading on ETFs. However, Deriv's most innovative assets are the derived or synthetic indices. These are typically randomly generated indices that are based on real-world market conditions. Synthetic indices are available to trade 24/7 and are unaffected by regular market hours, global events or market and liquidity risks. 

It encompasses volatility indices such as the Volatility 150 (1s) Index, which simulates markets with constant volatilities of 150%, and Crash/Boom Indices like the Crash 300 Index. Besides CFDs, Deriv supports multipliers trading on its forex and synthetic indices asset classes. Multipliers let you trade on leverage to increase positions, often taking several positions to enhance potential returns. It is similar to margin trading in CFD because it aims to amplify potential returns by giving you more market exposure. However, unlike margin trading in CFD, you can only lose up to your initial deposit in multipliers. 

This limited risk potential makes multipliers very appealing. Your profit is multiplied by the multiplier value, which ranges from one to 30, depending on the asset you trade. Essentially, Deriv offers you three flexible approaches to trading its relatively limited instruments. You can either take straightforward positions on the market's direction via option trading, take larger position sizes with borrowed capital for increased returns via margin trading or trade on leverage and maximize profit potential by taking multiple positions via multiplier trading.

Trading Platforms 

Deriv offers 7 primary trading platforms — Deriv MT5 and Deriv Trader, Deriv X, Deriv cTrader, SmartTrader, Deriv GO and Deriv Bot.

MT5 is the top global retail platform for online CFD trading. It is a very versatile and powerful platform with robust technical analysis tools and a fully customizable interface designed to meet the needs of well-established multi-asset traders. The platform boasts advanced charting capabilities, 21 timeframes, a live news feed, an inbuilt economic calendar and market depth. Deriv elevates the MT5 experience for traders of all levels, from beginners to seasoned professionals. 

You can customize charts and trading areas according to your preferences, set up multiple windows simultaneously or detach and rearrange specific windows as needed. The asset lists are readily accessible and easy to navigate, with over 150 assets available. Deriv MT5 platform offers zero commission on all asset classes, tight spread on major forex pairs, flexible competitive leverage of up to 1:1000 and a range of trading sizes (from micro-lots up to 1 standard lot). It is lightning-fast, reliable and compatible with Mac, Windows and Mobile devices. The platform's numerous analytical tools and calculators position you to manage your capital and trading positions better. 

Deriv Trader is the broker's proprietary trading platform, ideal for multipliers trading on forex and synthetic indices. Deriv MT5 offers a customizable and clean interface with technical indicators and widgets that let you tailor charts to your trading needs. It also allows you to customize your trade types with position sizes starting from less than 1 USD and flexible trade durations. The minimum stake is $1, with the potential for profits, depending on the asset. 

Typically, potential profits can surpass 30 times your stake. Overall, the Deriv Trader enables you to trade what you want, when and how you want to. You can seamlessly choose a multiplier value that can go beyond 30 times your stake, fine-tune your trade with optional features (take profit, stop loss and deal cancellation), and start trading with a stake as low as $5. However, the platform offers fewer assets, with 70-plus available in Deriv Trader compared to over 200 in Deriv MT5.

Additional Trading Tools and Resources 

Deriv offers a handful of extra trading tools to help you optimize trading efficiency. For instance, the margin calculator can help you estimate the margin you need to hold your positions. The result typically depends on leverage, volume lot and your Deriv MT5 account balance. There's also a swap calculator for estimating overnight fees on open positions and a pip calculator for determining pip values in trades. 

The pip calculator specifically enables efficient risk management. You can also calculate the stop-loss or take-profit levels and the pip value for your contract to mitigate risk when buying or selling a position using the profit and loss (PnL) calculator. Additionally, using the multiplier calculator, you can estimate the stop-loss and take-profit amounts for your contract to mitigate risk if the market price moves against your prediction. Deriv also offers an MT5 trading signal that lets you replicate or copy the trades of more experienced traders to your Deriv MT5 account. 

You can receive real-time trade signals and decide whether to execute the trades in your account. The best part is that the copying process is fully automated. Upon subscribing to a signal, your provider's trades are automatically replicated on your Deriv MT5 trading account each time they place a trade. This makes it ideal if you're a beginner seeking a hands-off, time-efficient, low-risk trading approach. Expert traders can also sign up as signal providers to generate extra income from their winning trades. 

Educational Resources & Deriv Academy

Deriv does not offer diverse educational resources like some well-established competitors. However, the broker provides comprehensive educational content via its blog. Deriv's blog is well organized with content menus encompassing trading, trading platforms, news and updates and videos. The menus are broken down into sub-content categories. 

For instance, under trading, you have markets and trade types from which novice traders can learn about specific markets (forex and synthetic indices) and trade types (options, CFD and multiplier). Overall, the blog is content-rich, and beginner and experienced traders can benefit significantly from its expert insights. You can gain vital insights into the available trading platforms, trading strategies, market news, the broker's update and payment methods. The video tutorials are equally compelling and insightful. 

Deriv is currently preparing the release of Deriv Academy which will include educational content available for all non EU clients. 

Partnership Opportunities 

Deriv offers multiple partnership opportunities for both individuals and institutional investors. You also can launch a trading app using Deriv's application programming interface (API) technology. Deriv's powerful and flexible API boasts seamless automation, easy integration and fast execution. 

You can customize the app to suit your potential clients’ needs, delivering an excellent trading experience. Subsequently, you'll earn from every trade your clients execute. Deriv also provides specialized institutional and prime brokerage solutions designed for popular financial assets worldwide via Deriv Prime. The service targets financial institutions, corporate clients, professional traders, asset managers and prime brokerage users involved in trading popular financial assets.

Affiliate and IB partnerships are intended for marketers, influencers and brokers who want to monetize within their networks. You get quality commissions and excellent promotional materials. 

API partnerships allow you to leverage Deriv’s technology capacities to launch a trading app of your own to offer your users a better experience. 

Customer Service

You can contact Deriv via LiveChat and WhatsApp to ask questions about its products, address queries or lodge complaints. Both channels are available round-the-clock, streamlining immediate assistance. Before seeking direct assistance, the broker recommends that you first visit the Help Center for quick answers. This is like a repository of carefully crafted and accessible answers to various potential questions, ensuring quick and efficient assistance. You can search questions by keyword to further streamline efficiency.

Additionally, you can seek assistance via the Deriv Community, which offers an interactive platform for engaging discussions and learning among traders who can help you find answers to your questions. Alternatively, you can connect with Deriv's team on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and LinkedIn, where the broker maintains an active presence. You can join the broker's Telegram channel for the latest updates and insights. Deriv has an excellent rating of 4.5 out of 5 on Trustpilot. Comments were overwhelmingly positive, reflecting a fantastic customer service experience and product offerings. 

Security

As a globally reputed and one of the best online CFD brokers, Deriv is well-established and has an excellent track record of protecting traders' funds and private data. The broker is licensed and regulated by multiple entities across various jurisdictions, including the Malta Financial Services Authority, the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission, the Labuan Financial Services Authority and the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission. The implication is that Deriv maintains strict regulatory and compliance standards regarding the protection of clients' funds in every jurisdiction in which it operates. 

Remember that the specific regulatory standards and framework may vary according to the entities involved. For instance, traders in some regions may enjoy negative balance protection. This protects your accounts from hitting a negative balance during widespread market volatility. All your funds are segregated and held in secure financial institutions where you can readily access or withdraw them when needed. Fund segregation ensures that your money won't be affected if the broker fails. 

To protect your account and data at rest or in traffic across its network, Deriv employs robust secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption. The company also encourages traders to implement additional security measures, including using strong and varied passwords, enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) and using antivirus and firewalls for enhanced device security. Deriv will not sell or share your data with a third party except if given consent or in compliance with judicial orders. 

Minimum Investment and Pricing

Deriv offers one of the lowest and most affordable account minimums. You can start trading with as little as $5. Deriv offers a tight spread on major currency pairs, including EUR/USD and GBP/USD. However, the spread is slightly higher for cross-currency pairs and other CFD products. There are no commission charges and no withdrawal and deposit fees. Inactivity fees may apply if your account stays inactive or dormant for 12 months. Deriv offers flexible and competitive leverage of up to 1:1000. 

This lets you take larger positions using a small deposit, known as margin, to increase returns. The margin requirement and leverages may vary depending on your account type and the jurisdiction where you registered your account. For instance, EU regulations limit retail traders' leverage on major currency pairs to 1:30. You can review the trading specifications to see the applicable spread and leverages for various instruments. Deriv offers the most diverse deposit and withdrawal options with varying minimum deposit amounts for each method. 

For instance, the minimum can be as low as $5 via bank wire transfers and are typically processed within one working day. When you deposit money, your payments are immediately converted to the base currency you choose when setting up the account. Withdrawal is via the same deposit options. In most cases, the minimum and maximum amounts are the same. However, the withdrawal processing is typically at least one working day. All the deposit and withdrawal options attract zero charges, making Deriv one of the most cost-efficient and accessible brokers to deposit to and withdraw from. 

The table below shows the various deposit and withdrawal options. 

Deposit & Withdrawal MethodMin - Max Deposit(USD, EUR, AUD, GBP)Deposit Processing Time Min - Max Withdrawal(USD, EUR,AUD, GBP) Withdrawal Processing Time
Credit/Debit Card (Visa, Maestro & Mastercard)10 - 5,000Instant10 - 10,000 for Visa
Not applicable for Maestro and Mastercard
1 working day for Visa
Not applicable for Maestro and Mastercard
E-Wallet (Skrill, NETELLER & Jeton)10 - 10,000
5 - 1,000 EUR for Jeton
Instant 10 - 10,000
5 - 1,000 EUR for Jeton
1 working day
Online Banking (EPS, Giropay, Przelewy, Rapid Transfer & iDeal)25 - 100
10 - 10,000 for iDeal
InstantNot applicable to allNot applicable to all 
AirTM5 - 2.500 Instant5 - 2.500 1 working day
Astropay5 - 1.000 Instant5 - 1.0001 working day
Sticpay5 - 10.000Instant5 - 10.000 1 working day
Perfect Money5 - 10.000Instant5 - 10.0001 working day
10 coins20 - 500 Instant10 - 2.0001 working day
Dogecoin10 - 1.000Instant10 - 1.0001 working day
Solana - SOL15 - 1.000Instant15 - 1.0001 working day
Polygon - MATIC15 - 1.000Instant15 - 1.0001 working day

Mobile App

You can enjoy an on-the-go and hassle-free mobile trading experience via the DMT5 mobile app. The app is available for free download on both Android and iOS devices, making it accessible to a wide range of users. It essentially mirrors the core functionality of the MT5 web application but in a mobile-friendly interface. For instance, the app boasts many helpful trading tools, including instant and pending order types, market depth and various built-in indicators and analytical tools. Deriv offers hedging type of accounts only, with one-click trading available. Additionally, it lets you monitor your account and track your trade history. Benzinga finds the app reliable and easy to navigate. 

User Experience

Deriv provides a seamless trading experience that appeals to novice and experienced traders. Its broad asset classes, including the unique synthetic indices, mean you'll always find a tradable instrument that suits your trading style. Deriv's multiple trading platforms, including the cutting-edge DMT5, blend the right features that deliver a seamless trading experience across web and mobile platforms. The applicable trading types, including options, margin trading via CFD and multipliers, aim to optimize returns while minimizing risks. 

Account registration and onboarding, including documentation and know-your-customer (KYC) processes, are fast and hassle-free. Newbie traders can get started with the Demo account. This mirrors a “live” trading account but with unlimited fake money so that you can get a good feel for the real-money platform. The Demo account can help you backtest strategies, test the broker's suite of leveraged CFDs and multipliers and get familiar with trading conditions, spreads and commissions. 

And the best part is that the Demo is not time-constrained and is available on all Deriv platforms. So you can switch to live trading or real accounts whenever you feel comfortable. Deriv provides transparent pricing with no hidden fees and offers educational resources to help users learn and improve their trading skills. Deriv's responsive customer support also ensures users receive assistance whenever needed, enhancing their overall trading experience. Benzinga considers Deriv highly recommendable. 

Deriv vs. Competitors

Deriv has a few competitors, including XM, AvaTrade and Vantage, all offering multi-asset CFD trading. Deriv's low account minimum, flexible leverage and no commission charges are its core competitive advantage. In addition, Deriv charges zero withdrawal and deposit fees. Deriv's low trading cost is among its main attractions. 

The broker's unique synthetic indices, proprietary trading platforms and flexible multipliers are also noteworthy. While its tradable instruments and educational resources may not be as extensive as XM's, the broker provides a comprehensive and user-friendly platform with sufficient assets and markets to cater to diverse trading preferences. Plus, the available educational resources can significantly meet the learning needs of both beginners and experienced traders.

  • Deriv
    Best For:
    All Forex and CFD Traders
    securely through Deriv's website
  • XM Group
    Best For:
    Beginner forex and CFD traders
    securely through XM Group's website

    Risk Warning: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 72.89% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

  • AvaTrade
    Best For:
    Non U.S. Forex & CFD Traders
    securely through AvaTrade's website
  • Vantage Markets
    Best For:
    Long Term Traders
    securely through Vantage Markets's website

Overall

Whether you're an experienced trader or a beginner just starting your trading journey, Deriv is an excellent broker to consider. It is one of the oldest and most reputable online brokers worldwide. Deriv boasts multiple trading platforms, meaning you can choose whichever suits your trading styles and objectives. 

There are no commissions, the leverage is flexible, and the spread is reasonable; you can even scalp the market. Deriv's multiasset offering means you can trade cryptocurrencies and options without switching brokerages. Deposits and withdrawals are fast and easy. You can also use the live MT5 signal to copy expert traders and amplify your return via Deriv's flexible multipliers. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q

Is Deriv allowed in the U.S.?

A

No, Deriv is unavailable in the U.S., Alderney, Belarus, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Israel, Jersey, Jordan, Malaysia, Malta, Rwanda, Paraguay, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates and any country that has been identified by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as subject to a call for action. See entire list of countries here.

Q

What is Deriv used for?

A

Deriv is a well-established trading platform for accessing various financial markets. It offers multiple tools and features suitable for both beginners and experienced traders.

Disclaimers:

Trading conditions, payment methods, products and platforms may differ depending on your country of residence. 

The products offered on Deriv website are complex derivative products that carry a significant risk of potential loss. CFDs are complex instruments with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. You should consider whether you understand how these products work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

The information is considered accurate and correct at the date of publication. Changes in circumstances after the time of publication may impact the accuracy of the information.

For more information, visit www.deriv.com.

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