The Capex Methodology: How We Actually Test a Broker

Every broker page on this site gets put through the same set of checks before it earns a place here, and Capex is no exception. We do not score brokers on marketing claims, we score them on what happens to your money when a trade goes wrong. License paperwork, leverage caps, spread behaviour, and whether an Indian resident can even legally fund the account all get weighed, in that order.

The Risk Lens First

Leverage is where retail accounts die, so it gets the first slot in our scoring, not the last. Capex has advertised offshore leverage up to roughly 1:300 historically.

A 1:300 account with USD 500 of margin behind it controls USD 150,000 of notional exposure. A 0.33% move against you wipes the entire margin. On AUD/USD that is not a bad day, it is a routine Tuesday.

Capex's account tiers are structured by deposit, not by demonstrated risk tolerance, which means a newer trader with USD 1,000 in the Original account faces the same leverage menu as someone with a decade of screen time. That is not unique to Capex, but it belongs in the scoring.

The Regulatory Picture in India

Capex operates without a SEBI authorisation for Indian residents, and its offshore entity is registered as Seychelles FSA SD020. That is a real license with real oversight, but the oversight stops at the Seychelles border.

Under FEMA and RBI rules, margin and leveraged forex trading with offshore platforms is not permitted, and remitting funds abroad for margin forex trading is not a permitted purpose under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme.

A broker's regulatory status gets assessed against the trader's own jurisdiction, not against a generic global standard. A Seychelles license is meaningful, but it means something different to a resident of India than to a resident of a jurisdiction where the same license is locally recognised. We mark that difference clearly instead of flattening it.

What Actually Got Measured

Our methodology runs every broker through the same six filters. Capex's results, at the time of review, are below.

The 0.3 pip headline applies to the higher-tier accounts. On the Essential tier, where most new deposits land, the realistic AUD/USD spread sits closer to 1.4 pips. That is still competitive against a lot of the market, but it is not the number a trader mentally anchors to when they read the marketing page, so our methodology uses the tier-specific figure, not the headline.

Account Tiers and What They Signal

Deposit tiers are a useful proxy for who a broker expects to be serving.

The gap between Essential and Original is tenfold, and the gap between Original and Signature is twenty-fivefold. That is a wide spread, and it means the experience of a Capex trader on the entry tier has very little in common with the experience on the top tier. When we score a broker, we score each tier separately rather than averaging, because averaging hides the tier most readers will actually use.

Capex accounts are denominated in USD or EUR, and an INR-denominated account was not verified at the time of review. For an Indian trader that means a currency conversion sits inside every deposit and every withdrawal, before any trading cost is considered.

Funding, Withdrawals, and the Friction Points

Payment rails are dull until they are not. This is where the methodology checks what depositing and withdrawing actually looks like, not what the funding page says it looks like.

Capex lists cards, bank wire, and e-wallets as funding methods. Indian rails like UPI were not verified for this brand, and the underlying reason is structural: remitting funds abroad for margin forex trading runs against the FEMA framework, so the domestic rails do not connect to this kind of account in a compliant way.

Our scoring treats payment friction as a real cost. A conversion from INR to USD, a wire that takes several business days, and the 20% TCS that applies on LRS remittances above Rs 10 lakh per financial year, all of that compounds. A trader comparing two brokers on spread alone will miss this entirely.

The Checks That Come Before Commitment

Exchange-traded INR currency derivatives on NSE, BSE, and MSE are margin-based with roughly 3-5% SPAN plus exposure margin, which works out to something in the 20x to 30x range on notional. That is a far more conservative exposure profile than a 1:300 offshore account, and it exists inside a framework with domestic settlement in INR and no cross-border conversion.

For traders who want meaningful leverage and instrument breadth, the offshore channel is where that lives. What our methodology recommends is that you apply the same leverage discipline offshore that an exchange margin system imposes domestically. Size as if your effective leverage were 20x, even if the platform permits 300x. The platform does not set your risk, you do.

Before funding any international broker, including Capex, check these against the entity's own disclosures:

• The exact regulator and license number listed on the entity you are opening with
• Whether client funds are held in segregated accounts
• The tier-specific spread, not the headline spread on the homepage
• The base currency of the account and the conversion cost on deposits and withdrawals
• Withdrawal timelines and any processing fees disclosed in writing
• Whether the broker appears on the RBI Alert List of unauthorised forex platforms, which stood at 95 entities as of the 19 November 2025 update

Where Capex Stands Today

Capex.com launched in 2016 and merged into the NAGA Group in August 2024. Onboarding through the Capex brand has closed, with new sign-ups redirected toward NAGA. For an Indian reader researching Capex specifically, this is the single most important practical fact on the page: the brand is winding down as a distinct onboarding path.

Swap-free accounts are available, no deposit bonus is offered as a matter of group policy, and the CapexTrader WebTrader sits alongside MT5 as the platform choice.

Final Take: Who This Framework Points To

The methodology exists to answer one question: does this fit the trader in front of it?

Works for: traders who already understand leverage, size positions conservatively, and want broad CFD instrument access on MT5 or a proprietary web platform with spread behaviour that is competitive in the higher tiers. If you are comfortable managing your own exposure and you know exactly which entity and license you are dealing with, the framework does not disqualify Capex on product grounds.

Falls short for: traders who want a broker whose regulatory status is locally recognised in their own jurisdiction, who need INR-denominated accounts and domestic payment rails, or who are still building their risk discipline and would benefit from the tighter leverage caps a stricter regulator imposes. For that trader, the offshore channel adds regulatory and currency complexity on top of market risk, and a more strictly regulated international broker with clearer jurisdiction coverage for India is the better starting point. The same six filters apply when you go looking.