Bybit vs FP Markets — which broker is better?

Pros

• USDT perpetual contracts at 0.0200% maker and 0.0550% taker, with a deep book that makes Bybit the strongest derivatives alternative to Binance
• Spot at 0.1000% maker and taker for non-VIP accounts — three to four times cheaper than Bitstamp's entry tier and well under Kraken's
• MiCA Crypto-Asset Service Provider authorisation from the Austrian FMA since 28 May 2025, passported across the EEA, plus an Austrian e-money licence from 4 August 2026 giving EEA clients dedicated IBANs
• Absorbed the largest theft in crypto history — about USD 1.46 billion in February 2025 — without passing a cent of it to customers, restoring 1:1 reserves within roughly 72 hours and publishing a third-party audit five days later
• A unified v5 API covering spot, margin, perpetuals and options under one account model, with a public testnet and broad third-party bot support
• One of the largest copy-trading marketplaces in crypto, with verified lead-trader histories and published drawdown statistics rather than cherry-picked returns
• TradFi perpetuals since April 2026 give leveraged exposure to US stocks, global ETFs, gold, silver and crude oil from the same collateral pool as crypto

Cons

• EEA residents get spot and spot margin only. Perpetuals, options and TradFi contracts require the global platform, which Bybit EU customers may not use, because those products need a MiFID II licence Bybit has applied for but not obtained
• The February 2025 breach was the largest crypto theft on record and stemmed from a compromised multisig signing interface — the response was exemplary, the underlying control failure was not
• Bybit Fintech Limited is registered in the British Virgin Islands, is not publicly traded and publishes no audited financial statements; transparency rests on third-party proof-of-reserves attestations
• A pattern of entering markets before securing permission: a EUR 2,250,000 fine from the Dutch central bank in 2024, formal warnings and then a full exit in Japan, and a penalty from India's financial intelligence unit
• No compensation scheme applies to crypto assets at Bybit anywhere, including under the Austrian MiCA authorisation
• Support is chat and ticket only, with no published retail phone line, and the product surface — perpetuals, options, Earn, Copy Trading, Card, launch products, tokenised IPOs — is large enough that risk disclosures are easy to skim past

Pros

• Raw account at USD 3 per lot per side with EUR/USD measured at 0.1 pips and GBP/USD at 0.1 — competitive across the majors
• The widest platform lineup in its peer group: MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView, Iress Trader/ViewPoint, Iress Investor and WebTrader on one account
• Iress gives genuine direct market access with full depth on seven exchanges and published per-exchange commissions from 0.06% on the ASX
• No custody fee, and no account fee at all on MetaTrader or Iress Investor; the CySEC entity currently charges no dormant fee and the Australian terms list no inactivity fee
• Twelve base currencies including CHF, plus sub-accounts so you can hold USD, EUR and GBP ledgers separately and avoid conversion
• 24/7 multilingual support that aggregated user feedback consistently describes as quick, helpful and patient
• ASIC licence 286354 held since 2005 alongside CySEC 371/18 — a genuinely long operating record for a CFD broker
• Account opening takes 10–15 minutes and is usually approved the same day, from an AUD 100 minimum on MetaTrader

Cons

• No options of any kind — exchange-traded, OTC or CFD — so options traders need a second broker
• Investor compensation exists only for EEA clients under CySEC (EUR 20,000); ASIC, FSCA and Seychelles clients get none, and the international site is run by a Saint Lucia-registered company with no prudential supervision
• The Iress side carries costs MetaTrader clients never see: AUD 85 per month for Iress Trader/ViewPoint unless you trade enough, AUD 25 per month for ASX live data, and card deposit surcharges of 1.6%–3.18%
• Fixed income and commodities are token: two bond CFDs and twelve commodity CFDs, well behind competitors listing dozens
• Privately held with no public financials, no banking licence and no exchange listing, so the group's capital position cannot be independently verified
• Recurring public complaints through mid-2026 about withdrawal friction, profit disputes and opacity around account restrictions