IQ Option Binary Options FAQ

The Core Question

One question brings most people here: is this platform binary options? The accurate answer has two halves - what the label means, and what any particular account is actually offered.

The question is asked as though it had a yes-or-no answer about a brand. It does not, and the reason is worth twenty seconds: binary options are an instrument class, while a platform is a set of entities each offering a menu that depends on where an account sits. A single word cannot carry both.

Is it binary options

Binary options are a specific contract: a yes-or-no outcome on one condition, usually whether a price is above or below a level at a fixed expiry, with a fixed return known before entry and an all-or-nothing settlement. Whether a given account can trade that contract is a fact about the account, not about the brand name. For retail clients in the European Union, they are not part of the offer. Everywhere else, this review could not confirm what is offered, by which entity, or in which country, so this site asserts nothing in either direction. The broker-status page takes the same question apart at more length.

What is on offer now

The product families this site describes are forex, contracts for difference and digital options. Forex and CFDs track price movements without ownership of the underlying, can be taken in either direction, and carry costs as the spread plus financing while a position is held. Digital options are defined-outcome contracts with a strike chosen alongside the expiry. Which of those any individual account sees depends on the entity and the country, and the live product screen is where that resolves.

What changed in 2018

In 2018 ESMA introduced EU-wide product-intervention measures that prohibited the marketing, distribution and sale of binary options to retail clients across the European Union and restricted leverage on contracts for difference; national regulators later put equivalent measures in place permanently in their own jurisdictions. It was aimed at an instrument class across the whole market, not at any named firm. The practical consequence is that older articles, reviews and videos showing a binary product for European retail clients describe a market that no longer exists in that form.

Ask the question about an account rather than about a brand, and it becomes answerable in a few minutes by opening the terms and the product screen for your own country.

Digital Options

Among these products, the one most often mistaken for binary options is the digital option, and the confusion is structural rather than careless. The two are related, and they are not the same contract.

Anyone comparing the two will meet the same three questions in the same order, so here they are in that order.

How they differ from binary options

In a binary option the payout is one fixed figure attached to the contract, and you choose only direction and expiry. In a digital option you also choose a strike, and the potential return varies with how far that strike sits from the current price - so there is no single payout number to quote, and none is quoted anywhere on this site. Both are defined-outcome contracts in which the amount at risk is known before entry.

Where they exist

This review could not confirm in which countries or through which entities digital options are currently offered, so no availability list, whitelist or country table appears anywhere on this site. Availability depends on the entity your account is registered with and on local rules, and the current product list is shown on the official site, with your country selected. That is the whole answer; anything more specific would be invention.

Whether the distinction matters to a regulator

Regulators write rules around product definitions rather than around marketing names. The structural difference between a fixed single payout and a chosen strike with a variable payout is real, and this review could not confirm how any measure treats any other instrument, so nothing here claims the distinction places digital options inside or outside a specific rule in a specific country. This review could not confirm that any operator has renamed a product to sidestep a rule, and no such motive is attributed to anyone here.

If a screen lets you choose a strike as well as an expiry, you are not looking at a classic binary option, whatever the tab above it happens to be called.

Regional Availability

Regional questions get the shortest answers on this site, and one of them is a flat refusal. Only the European position is documented here; everything beyond it is left to primary sources.

Two regions, two very different epistemic situations. Keeping them separate is the whole discipline of this section.

Inside the European Union

Binary options are not part of the retail offer to EU clients, which follows from the 2018 EU-wide product-intervention measures rather than from anything specific to the firm. A European retail account is built around other product families, and material describing a binary product for those clients is out of date. That measure is also the only availability statement this site makes without qualification.

Outside the European Union

This review could not confirm what is offered outside the EU and EEA, by which entity, or in which country, so this site states neither that binary options are available there nor that they are not, names no non-EEA entity or licence, publishes no country list, and offers no workaround. What is available depends on the entity the account is registered with and on local rules; the current product list is shown on the official site once you select your country. The page on the region explains why the answer is entity-shaped and how to resolve it at sign-up.

How to read that refusal

Declining to answer is not a hint that the answer is bad news, and it is not a coded yes. It means no source available to this review supports a statement either way, and that publishing one anyway would put a guess where a reader expects a fact. The replacement is a method: select your country, read the terms, note the entity, look at the live product screen. That method stays correct after this page stops being current.

• Documented here: the 2018 EU measure and the CySEC register entry for the Cypriot firm.
• Not documented here: any country-level status for binary options, anywhere.
• Your move: check the official site, with your country selected and the pages of the authority that supervises accounts where you live.

An explicit refusal is information too - it tells you that anyone offering a confident country list for this product is working from something other than a source.

Regulation and Risk

Supervision and risk are separate subjects that readers usually merge. A licence describes who watches a firm; it says nothing about whether a contract can take your money.

Both halves are answerable, and both are frequently answered too generously elsewhere.

Who supervises what

The CySEC public register lists the Cypriot investment firm as IQBroker Europe Ltd (ex IQOption Europe Ltd), holding CIF licence 247/14 dated 30 July 2014, company registration number 327751, registered at 82nd road, 4 Kato Polemidia, 4153, Limassol, Cyprus, with status Authorised as of the check date. That is scoped to one entity, one regulator and the EU, and status can change, so the register itself is the thing to read. Arrangements outside the EEA are different and are disclosed in the terms of the entity your account is registered with. This site never describes the platform as regulated or unregulated without that scope. The licensing page shows how to check the entry.

What the products can do to you

Short-expiry, all-or-nothing contracts can lose the entire amount committed to a trade, and the compressed decision window is part of the design rather than an accident of it. Leveraged CFD and forex positions can move against you by more than the underlying's movement suggests, with costs accruing while they stay open. No payout percentage, win rate, success rate or profitability claim appears on this site in any language, because none was verified and none belongs in a decision like this one.

What protections actually are

Client-money segregation and retail negative-balance protection are rules that apply to regulated retail accounts in the EU, and an investor compensation scheme covers eligible clients of Cypriot investment firms under its own conditions. Those are descriptions of rules, not audited findings about any firm, and no coverage figure or eligibility test is published here because none was verified. None of them makes losing money impossible. A reader checking the firm's regulatory history should read CySEC's own announcements rather than a summary.

Licensing tells you where to complain and under whose rules; it never tells you that a contract is safe, and the two questions should be asked separately.

Comparisons

Three platform names come up constantly in this search, and the honest treatment of all three is identical: describe what each puts at the centre of its own marketing, then stop.

This review could not confirm any product, entity, licence, market or commercial term belonging to Quotex, Pocket Option or Binomo, so none of them is rated, ranked, endorsed or accused anywhere on this site. What can be said is what each platform's own marketing puts first, and what you should go and check for yourself.

Against Quotex

Quotex is a platform whose own marketing centres on fixed-return, short-expiry trading. This review could not confirm what Quotex offers, to whom, or under which entity, so this page states neither that it does nor that it does not offer any particular product. Confirm on that platform's own site which entity would serve you and what it offers there.

Against Pocket Option

The same applies with no softening. Pocket Option is a platform whose own marketing centres on fixed-return, short-expiry trading, and this review could not confirm any product, entity, licence, market or commercial term belonging to Pocket Option, so no page here characterises that platform, positively or negatively.

Against Binomo

Binomo also presents itself around fixed-return, short-expiry trading, and this review has checked no register, no entity and no commercial term for it. Where the three differ from a multi-asset arrangement is in structure rather than in merit: several instrument types under one account against a single contract repeated. Run the same checks on each - entity name in the terms, register entry, contract mechanics, cost types, your own regulator's pages - and the comparison becomes yours. The choosing page sets out that checklist in full, and a practice account lets you look at a live product screen before committing money. Start from the central question if you have not read it. Licence and company details here were checked against the CySEC public register on 7 September 2026; trading carries a risk of loss and nothing on this site is investment advice.

Every platform in this comparison should be measured with the same instrument - its own terms and a public register - rather than against a reviewer's preference.