Is Quotex Legal in India?

No — Quotex is not authorised for use in India. It is not registered with SEBI, it appears on the Reserve Bank of India's Alert List of unauthorised trading platforms, and its core product (binary/fixed-time options) falls in the category SEBI has moved to prohibit. Trading through an unregulated offshore broker like Quotex can also breach the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). This page explains each of those points plainly so you can judge the risk for yourself.

The short answer

Three separate things make Quotex legally unsafe in India:

1. No SEBI registration. Quotex is not licensed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Any platform offering trading services to Indian residents is expected to be SEBI-registered; Quotex is not.
2. On the RBI Alert List. The Reserve Bank of India maintains an "Alert List" of electronic trading platforms not authorised to deal in foreign exchange or to solicit Indian residents. Quotex has been named among these unauthorised platforms.
3. Binary options are a prohibited category. SEBI treats binary options and similar fixed-outcome products as outside the legitimate securities market.

What FEMA says

Under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, Indian residents may trade foreign exchange only through channels and venues approved by the RBI and SEBI — in practice, recognised Indian exchanges and permitted currency pairs. Remitting money to an offshore trading platform for speculative forex or options trading is not a permitted transaction under FEMA. The RBI has repeatedly warned that both trading on unauthorised electronic platforms and using ordinary banking or card rails to fund them can amount to FEMA contraventions, which can carry penalties.

This is why the deposit "workarounds" for Quotex — P2P exchangers and crypto — exist in the first place: there is no compliant, direct way to fund it from India.

The RBI Alert List, in plain terms

The Alert List is the RBI's public naming of platforms that are not authorised to offer forex or trading services to Indian residents. Being on it does not mean the platform is a scam in the criminal sense — it means the RBI does not sanction it, and that residents dealing with it do so outside the regulated system and without protection. Quotex/qxbroker has been reported among the entities on this list.

What this means for you, practically

• No investor protection. If Quotex freezes your account, delays a withdrawal, or disappears, there is no SEBI or RBI mechanism to recover your money. You cannot escalate to an Indian regulator against an entity they do not recognise.
• Personal FEMA exposure. The act of funding an unauthorised offshore platform is itself the regulated behaviour — the risk is not only the platform's, it can be yours.
• Counterparty risk on deposits. Because you must route money through P2P exchangers, you also take on the risk of that middleman.

If you still choose to explore it

Some Indian traders decide to use the platform anyway, in full knowledge of the above. If that is you, the only genuinely low-risk step is the free demo — it uses $10,000 in virtual funds, involves no deposit, and lets you see the interface without putting real money (or yourself) at legal risk. You can open a free Quotex demo without depositing anything.

For the full platform picture, see our Quotex India review, and for the platform-safety angle, Is Quotex Safe?.

Sources used: - RBI — Alert List of unauthorised electronic trading platforms - SEBI — official website - Moneylife — Forex platforms not authorised by RBI - Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) — overview, RBI