The HandelPruef desk

HandelPruef is an independent publisher covering offshore fixed-time and digital options brokers from the point of view of readers in Germany. This edition is dedicated to one brand — Pocket Option — because that is the brand people here search for most, and because the honest answer to most of those searches is a good deal more complicated than the marketing suggests.

We are not Pocket Option, we are not affiliated with whoever operates the platform, and we do not accept deposits, hold client money or place trades. Nothing here is a recommendation to invest.

How we work

Every page starts from a documented source: the operator's own public pages and public regulatory registers. Where a figure cannot be confirmed from one of those, we publish a range or leave it out rather than repeat a number found on a review blog. That is why you will not find amounts in euros or dollars here for the minimum deposit, the minimum withdrawal or the demo balance: none of those numbers is published in a verifiable form.

One point recurs across the relevant pages because it changes how everything else reads: the notice published by the operator itself states that the service is not provided to residents of the EEA countries, and Germany is an EEA member state. We do not assert that a resident of Germany can open an account, fund it or withdraw from it, and we give no guidance whatsoever on getting around a geographic restriction.

We keep two things carefully apart that are often blurred together. One is the European regime: binary options may not be marketed, distributed or sold to retail clients in the EU under the product-intervention regime led by ESMA, which BaFin applied through equivalent national measures. That is a fact about the product and the rules. The other is what a supervisor has done about this particular brand: we could not verify any BaFin or ESMA warning or action naming it, and we do not claim the opposite either.

A related point about registers, because it is easy to get backwards. A hit in BaFin's company database is strong positive evidence — it means a supervised firm with statutory duties and a real complaints route. Absence from a warning list proves nothing at all: warning lists are reactive and incomplete, and they lag the market badly. Check for authorisation, not for the absence of a warning.

We have not opened, funded or traded a live account with this broker, and we never claim to have done so. What you get instead is an evaluation framework: what to check, what the published record actually says, and where the gaps are. Terms, payout percentages, minimums and country restrictions change without notice — always confirm the live terms on the operator's own pages before acting on anything you read here.

Who edits this site

Editorial responsibility sits with Katrin Wieselhuber, Redakteurin für Broker. Corrections are welcome and handled quickly; if a page here is out of date or wrong, we would rather hear it from a reader than leave it standing.

Five languages, one market

We publish in German, English, Turkish, Russian and Arabic. All five editions describe the same market — Germany — and the same European regulatory frame. They are not machine translations of one another: each is written in its own language, for readers who live here. Searching in Turkish, Russian or Arabic from Berlin or Duisburg does not change which rules apply: the competent authority is BaFin, not a regulator in a country of origin.

How we are funded

Our funding model is affiliate partnerships. Today, though, no partner programme is connected to this site: there are no sign-up buttons, no referral links, and nothing you click here earns us a commission. When that changes, the funding page will be updated before any commercial link goes live.

A word on risk

Binary and digital options are high-risk, short-horizon speculation. Losing the full amount staked is a normal outcome, not an edge case, and no strategy, signal service or bot changes the structure of the product. Most retail accounts in this category lose money. Treat anything you put in as money you can afford to lose entirely.