It used to work like this: a broker credited your account with twenty-five or a hundred dollars just for signing up, and you could trade with it without depositing money of your own. It was called a no deposit bonus, and it was the most tempting offer the forex market had.
Today you will not get such an offer from a broker licensed here. Not because it stopped being worth taking — it is banned.
Who introduced the ban and who keeps it in place
This gets confused often, including in articles written about bonuses. ESMA adopted its restrictions on contracts for difference on 22 May 2018 and they applied to CFD from 1 August 2018 (it had banned binary options a month earlier). Part of the package was a ban on any payment and on any monetary or non-monetary benefit for retail clients.
Under European rules, however, ESMA may only issue temporary measures, renewed every three months. It extended them three times and then let them lapse on 31 July 2019 — not because the rules had softened, but because national regulators had taken them over in the meantime, and those regulators may impose them permanently.
- In the European Union, national regulators adopted their own permanent measures in 2019: the German BaFin from 1 August 2019, the French AMF by a decision of 1 August 2019, the Italian CONSOB from 1 August 2019.
- In the United Kingdom, the FCA published policy statement PS19/18 on 1 July 2019 and its rule COBS 22.5.20R has applied since 1 August 2019; it is domestic British regulation, so it stayed in force after Brexit.
In practice this means two things. The ban still applies, so “ESMA scrapped the bonuses” is only half the story. And when you want to complain about a broker, you write to the national authority — ESMA never supervised individual brokers, and today it has no CFD measure of its own in force.
Why the regulator banned bonuses
Regulators say it outright in the reasoning behind their measures: trading benefits tend to be tied to further conditions — the client has to deposit a certain amount and place a certain number of trades — and they distract from how risky the product being bought is. So they pull in people who would not have bought CFD otherwise.
The second point is even plainer. When ESMA set out how brokers must calculate the share of winning and losing clients, it explicitly ordered that bonuses be excluded from the calculation — because they do not correspond to funds the client can withdraw. The regulator itself, in other words, does not treat a bonus as real money in the account.
A licence from elsewhere does not save a broker
An argument surfaces now and then that a broker licensed in Cyprus or Bulgaria is outside the reach of a local measure. It is not. According to the interpretation given by ESMA, a broker providing services across borders has to comply with the rules of the country where it is licensed and those of the country where the client is — and where the two differ, the stricter one applies.
A firm entirely outside the European Union does not fall under these measures. What it may not do is approach EU citizens at all: without a European authorisation it may serve them only if the client makes contact purely on their own initiative. And a bonus offer is advertising, so there is no client initiative to speak of in such a case.
What fell outside the ban and is still legal
The rule has one explicit exception: information and analytical tools. A broker may not credit you with money, but it may give you research, news, charting tools or webinars for free. That is exactly where broker marketing has moved.
A lower price for everyone is legal too. What is banned is tying a benefit to trading volume or to opening an account; across-the-board lower fees that everyone gets are ordinary price competition.
Then there is the demo account — the only way left to try trading without money of your own. No European rule limits it, because the measures target real trades, not simulation. At regulated brokers it is opened free of charge, but the terms differ: how much virtual money you get and how long the account lasts is set by each broker.
One thing about demos worth knowing in advance: an opened demo account is not proof that you understand the risk. ESMA lists it among poor practices when a broker treats opening a demo as evidence of knowledge without establishing whether the client ever used it.
Free shares yes, CFD bonus no
Promotions along the lines of “a free share for signing up” still appear and do not conflict with the ban — as long as they are tied exclusively to an account holding real shares. The measures cover contracts for difference, and buying a real share into a portfolio does not fall under the definition of a CFD. The moment the same gift hung on CFD trading, it would be banned.
Legal does not mean insignificant, though. The British regulator tested on more than nine thousand people what rewards inside apps do to behaviour: points and prize draws lifted the number of trades by 12 percent and the share of risky trades by 6 percent, phone notifications by 11 and 8 percent. Younger people and people with lower financial literacy reacted more strongly.
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
What passes for a bonus but is not one
Cashback and spread rebates. With CFD this falls under the ban: ESMA counts volume-linked fee discounts among the prohibited monetary benefits.
Funded accounts and prop firms. The model is simple: you pay for an entry test, trade in a simulation, and the firm promises to repeat your trades with its own capital and split the profit. The Belgian regulator points out that prop firms hold no authorisation at all and therefore may not provide investment services — the client trades on a demo with them. The Italian CONSOB issued a warning in July 2024 mentioning complaints about tests set up so that people pay repeatedly, and about profits that went unpaid. What a funded account in prop trading actually involves is a topic of its own.
If you come across a bonus anyway
A no deposit bonus offer aimed at a client here today means one of two things: either the broker sits outside European Union supervision, or someone is breaking the rules. Either way you lose protections that are otherwise taken for granted.
- A national regulator supervises only firms it has authorised — its oversight does not reach a company without a licence.
- A national investor compensation scheme covers only firms that take part in it; a client cannot reach an unauthorised firm through it.
- Out-of-court dispute resolution works only against providers that hold an authorisation.
On top of that, leverage limits, closing positions at low margin, negative balance protection and the mandatory warning about the share of losing clients are obligations of European licensed firms. A broker without them is not offering a bonus on top — it is offering trading without a safety net. Whether a particular firm holds an authorisation at all is something you can check before opening an account.
What to take away
Free money for forex is not something you get in Europe today, and that is for the better — bonuses worked as bait with conditions that could only be met by trading for far more than the bonus was worth. What is left is more honest: a demo account for practice, free research and lower fees at a broker that competes on price.
The regulatory position is verified as of August 2026 against the measures of national regulators and statements from ESMA.