Which Countries Does Robinhood Restrict?
Robinhood publishes no restricted-country list because it never needed one. The company licenses a handful of markets, opens accounts only to verified residents, and leaves the rest of the world closed by default, shutting out roughly 160 countries without naming a single one.
The exclusions sort into a few distinct groups:
- Sanctioned jurisdictions: Comprehensive OFAC programmes cover Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea region of Ukraine. Robinhood cannot serve anyone located there, and its eligibility policy warns that customers who travel there lose account access and attempted log-ins can place an account under restriction.
- Citizens of sanctioned countries: Applicants holding passports from sanctioned states may be refused a US account even with a valid visa, since OFAC rules attach to the person as well as the location.
- Everywhere without a local licence: Australia, Japan, India, all of Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East sit outside every Robinhood entity's permission set. Residents there cannot open any account type, for shares or crypto.
- Product-level carve-outs inside supported markets: Geography decides the product menu too. UK customers cannot yet trade crypto, EU customers cannot buy conventional US shares, and Canadian customers currently get crypto alone.
A VPN changes none of this. Verification demands a residential address and tax identifiers from a supported market, so masking an IP address fails at the first document check rather than the login screen.
Which Countries Does Robinhood Support?
The supported map covers North America, Britain, and most of Europe. The United States is the only market with the complete product suite, spanning stocks, ETFs, options, futures, prediction markets, and crypto in every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
The United Kingdom came next in March 2024, followed by a crypto app for the European Union that now operates across 30 EU and EEA countries under a single Lithuanian licence. Canada became the newest market on 1 July, when trading opened for customers inherited through the WonderFi acquisition.
Singapore is the bridgehead into Asia. Bitstamp, the exchange Robinhood bought in June 2025, already serves the city-state under a Monetary Authority of Singapore licence, and a retail brokerage entity has cleared in-principle approval on the way to a full launch. The company said this July it now serves nearly 28 million customers across 38 countries, counting each European market individually.
How Equities and Crypto Access Splits by Region
No two Robinhood markets receive the same products, and equities and crypto rarely arrive together. Each region runs on its own entity, licence, and asset menu.
The American and European offerings are near mirror images. US customers trade real shares but cannot touch the tokenised versions, while EU customers trade tokenised exposure but not the underlying stock. Canada inverts the usual sequence, opening with crypto because the WonderFi platforms came with digital asset registrations rather than securities dealer permissions.
Our Coinbase vs Robinhood comparison weighs the crypto product against a dedicated exchange, and our guide to buying crypto through Robinhood walks through the funding steps.
Robinhood Chain Opens Tokenised Stocks to 120 Countries
Tokenised equities have become Robinhood's answer to its own geographic limits. The product debuted in Cannes in June 2025 with more than 200 US stock and ETF tokens for users in 30 EU and EEA countries, issued as MiFID II derivatives by the Lithuanian entity and settled onchain rather than through a clearing house.
The launch drew immediate scrutiny. Giveaway tokens tied to OpenAI and SpaceX prompted a public disavowal from OpenAI and a review by the Bank of Lithuania, since neither private company had authorised any representation of its equity. The episode became a reference case for tokenisation, and Forbes notes the original app-bound tokens stayed confined to European users throughout.
The mainnet launch of Robinhood Chain on 1 July changed the distribution model. Stock tokens now trade around the clock on the company's own Arbitrum-based network and reach eligible self-custody wallet users in more than 120 countries. Uniswap supplies the main public liquidity protocol on the network. One market is absent. US residents are excluded for regulatory reasons, so Robinhood's home country cannot access its most globally available asset.
Robinhood Licences and Regulation
Each market runs on separate authorisations, and the permission set explains which products appear where.
- United States (SEC, FINRA, NYDFS): Robinhood Financial LLC is an SEC-registered broker-dealer and FINRA member, while Robinhood Crypto LLC holds a New York BitLicense alongside state money transmitter approvals, the combination behind the full-suite home offering.
- United Kingdom (FCA): Robinhood U.K. Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 823590, covering the equities, options, futures, and margin products live in Britain.
- Lithuania (Bank of Lithuania): Robinhood Europe, UAB holds a Category A brokerage licence, a MiCA crypto-asset service provider licence, and a payment institution licence granted in March 2026, all passportable across the EEA. The CASP approval was the first MiCA licence the Lithuanian regulator ever issued, placing Robinhood among the earliest MiCA-licensed platforms in the bloc.
- Canada (CIRO oversight): The Bitbuy and Coinsquare platforms acquired through WonderFi operate under Canadian securities regulation, and the takeover waited on Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization clearance before closing on 1 June.
- Singapore (MAS): Bitstamp Asia holds a Major Payment Institution licence for digital payment token services, and Robinhood Singapore received in-principle approval for a capital markets services licence in April.
Bitstamp adds a parallel regulatory footprint, spanning a Luxembourg MiCA authorisation, US and UK registrations, and a British Virgin Islands VASP registration added in February. Our separate guide to Bitstamp restricted countries maps that exchange's availability in full.
Does Robinhood Require KYC?
Yes, every entity in the group enforces full identity verification before a single trade, and the declared country of residence decides eligibility before any document is examined. No entity offers an unverified tier.
A US applicant must be 18 or older, supply a valid Social Security Number, hold a legal residential address in the 50 states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands, and be a citizen, permanent resident, or valid visa holder. UK and EU applicants verify against local identity documents and proof of residence, while Canadian customers migrating from Bitbuy or Coinsquare carry over accounts already verified under Canadian rules.
The residence requirement is what makes the approved-market model bite. A supported passport cannot rescue an unsupported address, so an American citizen living in Buenos Aires or a German living in Dubai fails onboarding despite holding documents Robinhood would otherwise accept.
Can I Use Robinhood in the UK?
Yes, Britain has been live since March 2024 and now carries the deepest product set outside America. UK customers trade thousands of US-listed stocks and ADRs commission-free, with options, futures, margin lending, share lending, and the Robinhood Legend desktop platform layered on since launch, plus a Stocks and Shares ISA added in February.
Crypto is the missing piece, though not for much longer. Robinhood confirmed this July that UK crypto trading is coming as it builds toward an all-in-one platform, a launch held back while the UK finalised its crypto regulatory framework.
British users face their own travel restrictions. The UK entity applies HM Treasury sanctions rules, which suspend account access from a longer list of jurisdictions than the US version, including Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. For local alternatives, see our guide to the best crypto exchanges in the UK.
Is Robinhood Available in Canada?
Yes, Canada opened on 1 July after Robinhood completed its roughly $250 million CAD acquisition of WonderFi, the parent of Bitbuy and Coinsquare and their roughly 300,000 funded customers.
The launch is deliberately crypto-first. Canadians get around 50 digital assets at a flat 0.5% fee per CAD trade. Staking is planned shortly after launch, and existing WonderFi customers are being invited into the Robinhood app in waves.
Equities, options, and the rest of the US product family have no announced Canadian timeline, so share traders still need a domestic brokerage. Our roundup of the best crypto exchanges in Canada shows how the new entrant stacks up against incumbents.
Can I Use Robinhood in Singapore?
Not yet as a retail investor, though the groundwork is nearly complete. Singapore serves as Robinhood's Asia-Pacific headquarters, and the in-principle approval granted to Robinhood Singapore Pte. Ltd. means a brokerage licence follows once the MAS conditions are met.
Institutional access is already live. Bitstamp Asia has operated under its Major Payment Institution licence since mid-2025 and added native Singapore dollar support with PayNow deposits and withdrawals, giving professional clients a regulated venue while the consumer app awaits sign-off. Retail traders in the city-state can compare options in our guide to the best crypto exchanges in Singapore.
About Robinhood
Robinhood was founded in 2013 by Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, listed on Nasdaq under the ticker HOOD in 2021, and built its name on commission-free US stock trading before expanding into options, crypto, retirement accounts, and event contracts. Prediction markets have become one of its fastest-growing lines, clearing roughly nine billion contracts from more than a million traders since launch.
The international push now defines the company's strategy. Two crypto acquisitions in consecutive years, Bitstamp for $200 million and WonderFi for about $180 million, bought regulated market entry rather than organic expansion, and the group crossed one million international funded customers when the Canadian deal closed. That expansion is running against a softer retail backdrop, with first-quarter crypto revenue falling 47% year on year to $134 million.
Final Thoughts
Robinhood's geography reads less like an exchange restriction list and more like a licensing ledger. The company serves five markets through five separate permission sets, and every gap on the map traces back to an authorisation it has not yet acquired rather than a ban it has suffered.
The equities and crypto split is the detail most coverage misses. America gets real shares and no stock tokens, Europe gets stock tokens and no real shares, Britain gets shares and no crypto, and Canada gets crypto and nothing else, so the useful question is which half of the platform reaches a given country.
Robinhood Chain complicates that picture. If tokenised equities in 120-plus countries keep scaling, the wallet product could reach markets the brokerage will never license, and the approved-market model that has defined Robinhood since 2013 would matter a little less each year.
