Start with who is answerable for the money
Exchange safety splits into two questions that are easy to confuse. The first is who is legally answerable for the firm holding your balance. The second is whether the brand can show the assets it claims to hold. A brand can answer one of these well and leave the other open, so weigh them in that order rather than treating any one check as a verdict.
The regulators listed for these brands range from European financial supervisors to a securities commission in Thailand and a central bank in Uzbekistan, and most arrive with a licence number attached. A named supervisor tells you who to complain to. A licence number tells you that the claim can be checked rather than taken on trust. Reserves tell you something narrower, about published evidence of holdings.
A shortlist built on the first two checks is harder to argue with. Start with the best places to buy crypto shortlist, then run each candidate through the sections below before you open an account.
The European entries and the numbers behind them
Five of these brands sit under European supervision. Anycoin Direct lists the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) with licence 41000015, and the Anycoin Direct review is the place to read how the account is described alongside that entry.
Backpack lists Latvijas Banka under licence MiCA CASP 6488C2PNI17093U2YA18, and bit.plus lists the Czech National Bank twice, once naming the MiCA regulation, with licence MiCA CASP 315700I7V6W7BLAI9Z32. Banxa lists the Dutch AFM in two languages, so read the whole entry rather than the first line, and use MiCA CASP 69940000HAL9ODW3IMO22 as the handle.
abarai works differently again. Its entry names SIA Paybis Europe as the Latvian crypto-asset service provider acting as the external partner that executes the exchange, which is a different arrangement from a firm that is itself supervised. The abarai review sets out how the terms describe the partner relationship, and the licence entry is 40203730951.
Asia, the Caribbean and everywhere else
Outside Europe the supervisors change character, and the terms in each jurisdiction mean something different. Ajaib lists Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) in Indonesia, so the Ajaib review is the sensible first stop for how the account is set up and what a trading day looks like there.
Agio Digital sits under the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, a regime built on its own rules rather than a European template. Treat a Caribbean registration as a reason to read the terms closely, not as a weaker or stronger version of a European licence, because the two are not interchangeable.
asterium's entry points to НАПП РУз (National Agency for Advanced Projects of Uzbekistan) with licence CS 0017, and bit2c lists the Israel Securities Authority with licence 72080. Both are single national supervisors, which makes them straightforward to verify.
Binance TH is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand under licence 210280120004, while Binance Australia carries a wider set of registrations listed as Autorite des marches financiers (AMF), Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa (CONSOB) and Banco de Espana. The wider list is a sign of a firm operating under several regimes rather than a stronger single one, and each entry deserves its own check.
Two entries that are not shaped like the rest
Binance.US does not point at one national supervisor. Its entry reads State money transmitter regulators money transmitter licences in 32 U.S. states and territories, and the identifier is NMLS ID 1906829. Licences of that kind mean the firm is authorised to move money in each place named, so the check applies where you are rather than everywhere at once.
Alpaca lists SIPC with SIPC member 69928. A membership body is a different kind of entry from a financial supervisor, so read what the membership actually covers before you count it as protection for a balance. The Alpaca review is the right place to weigh that against how you intend to use the account.
Proof of reserves, and who publishes it
Proof of reserves is a statement about assets held on customers' behalf. The entries here split cleanly on it. Anycoin Direct, Backpack, Binance Australia, Binance.US and BingX all publish proof of reserves, so that question is answered for you before you have to ask. bit2me-2 does not, and for a reader who ranks solvency evidence first, that gap is the fact to plan around.
A published attestation settles a narrow point. It says nothing about which supervisor holds the firm accountable, and an entry with a supervisor but no reserves still leaves a balance resting on the regulator alone. Keep the checks in the order you weigh them: regulator, licence, reserves.
Whichever side of that split a brand sits on, the account itself still carries custody questions. If you are weighing self-custody against leaving funds on an exchange, our decentralised exchange rankings and crypto futures exchange rankings cover the two most common alternatives.
How to compare the cost side
Regulation does not tell you what a trade costs, so keep the licence question and the fee question apart. What matters is the fee that attaches to the account type you would actually open, because a headline rate for the simplest account says little about what you pay once your usage settles into a pattern.
The practical routine is short. Pick a candidate, open its review, read the fee line against the account type you plan to use, and read the custody and withdrawal notes beside it rather than below it. Then repeat for two or three candidates so the comparison rests on the same account type each time.
Two brands that hold comparable positions on supervision can still diverge sharply on cost, and two brands with similar fees can differ in what sits behind them. Scoring regulation and fees on one scale hides that, which is why the sections above are kept separate.