How brokers are checked and ranked

The first check: can you open, fund and withdraw

The first question is whether a resident of Kenya can open an account at all, then whether the account can be funded through a route that actually works locally, and then whether a withdrawal completes. A broker that scores well on platform features but cannot be funded from Kenya is not ranked above one that can, because the practical route matters more than the brochure.

Funding is checked against local reality. M-Pesa is the familiar route for Kenyan readers, and a broker that does not support a workable local funding path is marked down for that alone. The regulator position is recorded separately: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya, and that caveat is stated on the page rather than buried.

What refreshes automatically and what a person reviews by hand

Live gold prices refresh automatically from the market data feed and carry a timestamp so you can see how fresh they are. The reference price of 4275.0 is a fixed anchor for examples and does not refresh; it is there so the worked margin figure of $85.50 stays reproducible. Currency conversion for KSh illustrations is refreshed on a schedule but is not a tradable rate. Nothing that depends on a broker's terms — leverage cap, funding methods, platform list, regulatory status — refreshes automatically, because those are contractual facts that change only when the broker changes them, not with the market.

A person reviews every broker fact before it is published and on a re-check cycle. The regulatory caveat — FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya — is checked against the regulator's own register and the broker's legal documentation for the entity serving Kenya. The platform list (MT4, MT5, cTrader, FxPro app) and the M-Pesa funding route are checked against the broker's Kenyan-facing pages. The leverage cap is checked as a cap, not as a recommended setting. If a page shows a figure that cannot be traced to a supplied fact or a stated formula, it is pulled for review rather than left up.

The split matters because it tells you how much to trust each number. A live price can be seconds old; a leverage cap might be days or weeks old, because it only changes when the broker's terms change. The site does not pretend otherwise. Where a figure is a worked example, it is labelled as an example. Where it is a live feed, it carries a time. Where it is a broker term, it carries a date of last review. That dating is the honest signal: a number without a date is a number you should ask about before you rely on it for a trade.

What is deliberately not published and why

The site deliberately does not publish spreads, commissions, swaps or minimum deposits as numbers. The reason is simple: those figures were not supplied to us as fixed facts, and printing an invented number would be worse than printing none. Instead the site says what each cost consists of and what it depends on — account type, instrument, market conditions and the broker's schedule — and points you to the broker's own documentation for the entity serving Kenya. That is a deliberate limit, not an oversight. A number you cannot trace is a number you should not trust.

The site also does not publish a leverage ratio other than the cap that applies to the entity serving Kenya, and it does not present that cap as a setting to aim at. Leverage is a cap, not a target; using the full cap on gold is high-risk and can wipe an account quickly. The only worked margin figure published is the $85.50 needed for a 0.10-lot position at the applicable cap, and it is labelled as an example. No other ratio is stated anywhere, because stating one would imply a recommendation the site does not make.

Finally, the site does not publish broker ratings, cost comparisons or trade recommendations, and it does not name a funding method beyond M-Pesa, which is the local route we were given. It does not claim the CMA regulates FxPro; the caveat is the opposite and is repeated: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya. These omissions are the editorial line. The page is a precise toolkit, not a sales sheet, and the gaps are where honesty lives.

Why the live price can differ from a broker quote

The live price on this site and the quote on your broker's platform can differ because they come from different places. The site uses a market data feed; your broker quotes from its own liquidity providers and may add a markup. Gold is quoted in US dollars, so the feed and the broker are both expressing XAU/USD, but the last trade in the feed is not the same as the price at which your broker will fill you. The difference is normal and is part of the cost of trading, alongside spread and commission, which we do not publish as numbers because they were not supplied to us as fixed facts.

The difference also depends on time and conditions. A feed timestamp can be seconds old; a broker quote can be milliseconds old or frozen around news. Around major releases, gold can move fast enough that the price you see and the price you get are not the same, and a stop can fill beyond your level. The reference price of 4275.0 is a fixed anchor for examples and is not a live quote at all. The margin example of $85.50 for 0.10 lot is arithmetic, not a fill. None of these figures promise execution at a given price.

For a Kenyan reader, the practical point is to treat the site's price as context and the broker's quote as the tradable number. If you are funding via M-Pesa, the shilling amount you send is converted at the broker's rate, which is another place where the number you see and the number you get can differ. The site does not publish a live KSh conversion as a tradable rate. It shows KSh figures for scale. The honest rule is: verify the quote and the conversion with the broker at the moment you act, because the site's feed is not your fill.

The limits of the testing

The desk tests by reading and by arithmetic, not by trading a live account with real money at scale. That means execution quality, slippage in fast markets and the behaviour of the withdrawal desk under stress are described from the broker's documents and from what can be verified, not from a long personal track record we do not have.

Leverage is treated as a cap, not a setting to aim at. The cap that applies is the one attached to the entity serving Kenya, and using the full cap on gold is a decision with consequences that the reader owns. Where our testing could not reach a conclusion, the page says so rather than implying a certainty we did not earn.

How a broker fact is dated and re-checked

Every broker fact on the site carries a last-reviewed date, and that date is the day a person checked it against the broker's own published terms for the entity serving Kenya. The regulatory caveat is re-checked against the FCA, CySEC and FSCA registers and against the broker's legal pages, because the caveat is specific: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya. The platform list and the M-Pesa funding route are re-checked against the Kenyan-facing pages. The leverage cap is re-checked as a cap. If a date is missing, treat the fact as unverified and ask the broker directly.

Re-checking is triggered by three things: the scheduled review cycle, a change notice from the broker, and a reader question that suggests a fact may be stale. A change notice takes priority because broker terms can move without a market event. When a fact changes, the old figure is replaced and the date is updated; we do not keep a historical table of past caps or past terms on the page, because a stale number is worse than no number. The date you see is the date of the current check, not the date the fact was first written.

The dating discipline exists so you can judge freshness yourself. A fact dated today is more useful than one dated last year, but neither is a substitute for the broker's live terms at the moment you trade. The site does not claim real-time broker data. It claims a dated check against a named source. That is the honest standard: you can see when it was checked, what it was checked against, and you can repeat the check yourself using the same sources. If you cannot repeat it, the fact is not yet verified for your purposes.

The known limits of this method

The method cannot tell you what a broker will actually charge you, because we do not publish spreads, commissions, swaps or minimum deposits as numbers. Those costs exist and they matter, but they were not supplied to us as fixed facts, so any figure we printed would be invented. Instead the site tells you what those costs consist of and what they depend on: the account type, the instrument, market conditions and the broker's own schedule. That is a real limit. If you need the exact cost, you must get it from the broker's own documentation for the entity serving Kenya, not from a methodology page.

The method cannot predict slippage, gaps or execution quality. Gold can jump through a stop, and a position sized by the formula can lose more than the risk amount you intended if the market gaps past your level. The calculators use a reference price, not your fill price. The margin example of $85.50 for 0.10 lot is arithmetic at the applicable cap, not a promise that your broker will hold exactly that margin through a volatile session; margin requirements can change with the broker's risk rules. The site is a toolkit for understanding the arithmetic, not a simulation of your account.

The method is also limited by what it chooses not to cover: it does not rate brokers, does not compare them on cost, and does not tell you whether to trade. Trading gold on leverage is high-risk and you can lose more than you deposit. The regulator caveat is a limit in itself: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya, so your local recourse is not through the CMA. The methodology is honest about that gap rather than papering over it. Use the numbers to understand the mechanics, then verify the live terms with the broker before you commit money.

The formula each calculator uses, stated in words

The margin calculator works in words like this: margin equals position size in lots multiplied by contract size (100 oz per lot) multiplied by the reference gold price, divided by the leverage cap that applies to the FxPro entity serving Kenya. For a 0.10-lot position at a reference price of 4275.0, the notional value is 0.10 × 100 × 4275.0 = $42,750. Dividing that notional by the applicable cap gives the margin requirement. At the cap we were given, that works out to about $85.50, which is the worked figure you see on the site. The calculator does not add spread, commission or swap because we do not publish those as numbers.

The pip value calculator for gold uses the pip size of 0.01 and the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot. In words: pip value in dollars equals pip size (0.01) multiplied by contract size (100) multiplied by the number of lots. For 1.00 lot that is 0.01 × 100 × 1 = $1.00 per pip. For 0.10 lot it is $0.10 per pip. That figure is in US dollars because XAU/USD is quoted in dollars; if you want a KSh equivalent you apply a reference conversion rate, which is not a live rate unless stated. The calculator shows the dollar pip value and leaves the conversion to you.

The position-size calculator reverses the margin formula. In words: lots equals the risk amount you are willing to lose divided by the stop distance in pips multiplied by the pip value per lot. For example, if you risk $50 and your stop is 100 pips away, and one lot is $1.00 per pip, then lots = 50 ÷ (100 × 1.00) = 0.50 lot. That is a sizing aid, not a recommendation. It does not account for slippage, gaps or the fact that gold can move violently around news. The formula is deliberately simple so you can check it by hand; any complexity beyond this depends on your own risk rules, not on a hidden model.

What happens when two sources disagree

When two sources disagree, the site follows the entity that actually serves Kenya and the regulator that actually licenses it. If the broker's global page says one thing and the Kenyan-facing legal documentation says another, the Kenyan entity's terms win for a Kenyan reader. If a regulator register and the broker's marketing page disagree on licensing, the register wins, and the caveat is stated plainly: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya. A disagreement is not averaged out or smoothed over; it is resolved in favour of the primary source, and the fact is dated to the resolution.

For market data, a disagreement between a live feed and a broker quote is not treated as an error to be fixed but as a normal condition to be explained. The live price on the site is a feed; your broker's quote includes their own liquidity and markup. They will differ. The site does not claim its feed is the price you will get. Where a worked example uses the reference price of 4275.0, that is an anchor, not a quote, and it is labelled as such. The resolution rule is: primary source for facts, labelled feed for prices, and no invented number to bridge a gap.

When the disagreement cannot be resolved from the sources we have, the fact is withheld rather than guessed. That is why you will not see a spread, a commission, a swap or a minimum deposit as a number on this site: those were not supplied as fixed facts, and where sources might differ we do not pick one and print it as if it were settled. The reader is told what the cost consists of and what it depends on, and is pointed to the broker's own documentation for the exact figure. Withholding is a deliberate choice, not an omission.

Where each class of figure on Nairobi Board comes from

Every price shown on this site is either a live feed or a worked example built from the facts we were given. The reference price of 4275.0 for XAU/USD is a snapshot used to anchor examples, not a quote you can trade. Live prices come from a market data feed and are labelled as such. Margin figures, such as the $85.50 needed for a 0.10-lot gold position at the applicable leverage cap, are calculated from the instrument specification: 1 lot = 100 oz, pip = 0.01, and the leverage cap that applies to the FxPro entity serving Kenya. We do not publish spreads, commissions, swaps or minimum deposits as numbers because those were not supplied to us as fixed facts.

Broker facts on this site come from the published terms of the FxPro entity that serves Kenya and from the regulatory caveat we were given: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya. That caveat is repeated wherever regulation is relevant because it is the single most important local fact for a Kenyan reader. Platform names — MT4, MT5, cTrader and the FxPro app — are stated as facts because they were supplied. Funding via M-Pesa is listed because it is the local route we were told about. Any figure that is not in our supplied facts is described in terms of what it depends on, never invented.

Currency amounts on the site are shown in KSh where the context is local money and in US dollars where the instrument itself is quoted in dollars, as gold is. The conversion is not a live FX rate unless we say so; it is a reference conversion for illustration. The $85.50 margin example is in dollars because gold margin is calculated in the base currency of the contract. When you see a KSh figure, treat it as an indication of scale, not a locked rate. The source of every number is either the instrument specification, the broker's published terms for the Kenyan entity, or a calculation we show you how to repeat.

How a reader can reproduce any number on this site

You can reproduce the margin figure by hand: take the lot size, multiply by 100 oz per lot, multiply by the reference price of 4275.0, then divide by the leverage cap that applies to the FxPro entity serving Kenya. For 0.10 lot that is 0.10 × 100 × 4275.0 = $42,750 notional, and dividing by the applicable cap gives about $85.50. If your arithmetic gives a different answer, either your lot size, your reference price or your cap is different. The site shows the inputs so you can check each one against the broker's own terms before you rely on the result.

You can reproduce the pip value by hand: pip size 0.01 multiplied by contract size 100 oz multiplied by lots. For 1.00 lot that is $1.00 per pip; for 0.10 lot it is $0.10 per pip. Both are in US dollars because XAU/USD is dollar-quoted. If you want a KSh figure, apply a conversion rate you have verified yourself; the site's KSh illustrations are for scale, not a locked rate. You can reproduce the position-size formula by dividing your risk amount by the stop distance in pips multiplied by the pip value per lot. Every step is plain arithmetic, with no hidden model.

You can reproduce any broker fact by going to the same primary sources the site uses: the regulator registers for the FCA, CySEC and FSCA, and the broker's legal documentation for the entity serving Kenya. That is how you confirm the caveat that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya. You can confirm the platform list and the M-Pesa funding route on the Kenyan-facing pages, and you can confirm the leverage cap as a cap. If your check disagrees with the site, trust your check and tell us, because a dated fact is only as good as its last verification.

Where the numbers come from

Numbers come from the broker's own documents, and each one carries the date it was read. That covers the instrument specification for gold (XAU/USD), the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot, the pip definition of 0.01, and the margin terms that produce a worked figure such as about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot position at the applicable leverage cap.

Where a broker does not publish a figure, we do not fill the gap with an estimate. Costs are described by what they consist of and what they depend on, because a number we were not given cannot honestly be turned into one we quote. A dated figure is a snapshot, and the reader should confirm it with the broker before relying on it.