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Christina Sanchez
Christina Sanchez

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83% of Brokers Block US Clients — I Analyzed 345 Brokers to Find Out Why

#data #webdev #showdev

I built BrokerRank — a broker comparison platform with 345+ brokers in a PostgreSQL database. While adding geo-restriction data, I discovered something surprising: 83% of online brokers don't accept US clients.

That makes the US the most restricted non-sanctioned country for online trading.

The numbers

  • 345 brokers analyzed
  • 287 (83%) block US clients
  • Only 58 accept Americans
  • 100% block sanctioned countries (Iran, North Korea, Syria)

Why?

  1. Dodd-Frank Act — requires CFTC/NFA registration, $20M+ capital requirements
  2. FATCA — forces foreign brokers to report US clients to the IRS
  3. Leverage limits — CFTC caps at 1:50 vs 1:500 offshore
  4. Litigation risk — US fines are 10x higher than EU

The tech

I stored restrictedCountries as a PostgreSQL text array on each broker, then built a research page that queries this data in real-time with Prisma.

Country-specific ranking pages (/brokers/iraq, /brokers/usa) automatically filter out brokers that don't accept clients from that country.

Full interactive research page: brokerrank.net/research/us-broker-restrictions

Built with Next.js 16, PostgreSQL (Neon), Prisma, deployed on Vercel.

I also published 5 more data studies if you're curious:

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