Tickmill

Tickmill was founded in 2014 in Seychelles by brothers Ingmar and Illimar Mattus, and began offering retail brokerage services in 2015. The brand has since grown into a group of separately licensed entities rather than one single company, which is the structure most multi-regulator brokers use to serve different regions under local rules.

The group holds licenses with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (Tickmill UK Ltd, 717270), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (Tickmill Europe Ltd, 278/15), South Africa's FSCA (Tickmill South Africa (Pty) Ltd, FSP 49464) and the Seychelles FSA (Tickmill Ltd, SD008), plus a Dubai representative office under the DFSA. Tickmill states plainly that it does not serve the United States, Singapore, Iran or India.

Tickmill covers forex, precious metals, stock indices, commodities, bonds and cryptocurrency CFDs. Trading is available through MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, the proprietary browser-based Tickmill Trader, and TradingView in select regions.

There are two core retail account types. The Classic account is commission-free with spreads from 1.6 pips. The Raw account has spreads from 0.0 pips with a $3 per lot per side commission. Both require a $100 minimum deposit and offer leverage up to 1:1000 through the offshore entity, with swap-free Islamic options available.

Tickmill's Welcome Account gives new clients a $30 credit on a Raw-equivalent account with no deposit required, valid for 60 days of trading. The $30 itself can never be withdrawn. Only profit generated with it can be transferred, and that transfer is capped between $30 and $100, paid out as a single request within 14 days after the trading window closes.

To actually receive that money you must open a full live Tickmill account under the same identity, pass ID and address verification, and deposit at least $100 into your wallet. In practice this means turning $30 into at least $60 of balance through trading, then funding a real account with your own money before any profit becomes payable.

This offer runs through Tickmill's Seychelles entity and is restricted by country. EU citizens, UK residents, existing clients, and a long list of other markets including Japan are excluded, alongside the broader US, Singapore, Iran and India exclusion that applies to Tickmill generally. Expert advisors and cross-account hedging are not allowed on the Welcome Account.

Tickmill also ran a deposit bonus through the Seychelles entity, matching a live-account deposit of at least $200 up to a $1,000 cap and locking the bonus credit until one standard lot was traded for every $3 of bonus. It has been removed: the promotion page now returns an error and the promotions list no longer shows a deposit bonus. The written terms that are still online only committed to a match starting at 10%, not the 20% once advertised.

A monthly Trader of the Month contest pays one live-account client a flat $1,000 cash prize, chosen on profit percentage, drawdown, risk management and risk-to-reward ratio rather than raw returns alone. The prize is fully withdrawable with no turnover requirement, but only one trader wins per month and each participant can win only once. Winners must complete an interview and agree to Tickmill publishing their trading history before the prize is paid. Residents of the US, Iran, India, Japan and Singapore cannot take part.

Withdrawals require identity verification in line with standard AML rules. Tickmill's own FAQ states crypto withdrawals are usually processed within a few minutes to 24 hours; the site does not publish a single stated processing time for bank or card withdrawals.

Which promotions and account terms apply depends on which Tickmill entity holds your account. The Seychelles entity carries the Welcome Account and the Trader of the Month contest, as it did the now-removed deposit bonus; the FCA and CySEC entities, as tier-1 regulated firms, do not offer deposit-linked or no-deposit bonuses to retail clients, which is standard under UK and EU conduct rules.