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

Source: DEV Community
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? Dodd-Frank Act — requires CFTC/NFA registration, $20M+ capital requirements FATCA — forces foreign brokers to report US clients to the IRS Leverage limits — CFTC caps at 1:50 vs 1:500 offshore 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 res