Where is KuCoin restricted?
KuCoin is restricted in 11 of the 195 countries we cover: 
Belarus, 
China, 
France, 
Kazakhstan, 
Malaysia, the 
Netherlands, 
Russia, 
Singapore, 
South Korea, the 
United States and 
Uzbekistan.
Ten of them are on the restricted-locations list in KuCoin’s terms of use (updated 29 October 2026). The same list names 
Hong Kong, every US territory, the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, and five Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, and KuCoin says it can change the list at its own discretion. It gives no reason for any entry. Russia and Belarus joined the list on 29 October 2026, when a KuCoin notice ended all services there with immediate effect, citing legal and regulatory requirements; affected users are sent their own deadlines to close positions and withdraw. South Korea is the eleventh and is not on the list: South Korea’s FIU had KuCoin’s app pulled from app stores in 2025, and on 13 October 2026 News1 reported that it had blocked the websites of 27 unregistered exchanges, KuCoin among them, with withdrawals guided through DAXA.
For the United States there is a court record behind the entry. KuCoin’s operator, Peken Global, pleaded guilty in January 2025 and agreed to leave the US market for at least two years, and a CFTC consent order of March 2026 bars it from letting US participants trade unless it registers. France and the Netherlands are also covered by KuCoin EU’s MiCA passport, but that arm is not trading (see the MiCA section). On 14 October 2026 we loaded KuCoin’s home and sign-up pages from every country we could reach, to see which entries are enforced at the door.
Only China and the United States refused our visit by IP address; France got a prompt to switch to KuCoin EU, and the other seven loaded as if nothing were wrong, Russia and Belarus because our test ran two weeks before KuCoin left them. The full list is below: pick a country to see the cause, what applies and what our test saw.
Where is KuCoin limited?
KuCoin is limited in 33 countries: the 28 EEA countries outside France and the Netherlands, plus 
Canada, 
Japan, 
the Philippines, 
Ukraine and the 
United Arab Emirates.
The EEA rests on KuCoin’s own pages and Austria’s regulator. KuCoin EU’s site says its trading and deposit services were suspended on 4 February 2026, and its update of 30 June 2026 gives no restart date but says assets on KuCoin EU stay available for withdrawal. When the licence was granted, KuCoin said EEA users could no longer register on its global platform, and that licence never covered 
Malta. Under our rule for the EEA, a country without a working MiCA platform where existing users can still withdraw is limited, not restricted. Binance lands in the same place from the other side: it has no MiCA licence at all.
The other five come from KuCoin’s list and from regulators. The terms restrict Ontario and British Columbia but no other Canadian province, and only the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine. Dubai’s VARA issued an investor alert in March 2026 telling KuCoin’s entities to stop unlicensed activity there. Japan’s FSA warned KuCoin in November 2024 for serving residents while unregistered, and its app is not offered there. In the Philippines, the SEC named KuCoin in its August 2025 advisory on unregistered exchanges, after which PLDT and Globe blocked access; the same advisory named Kraken, which we record the same way.
Limited means KuCoin still serves the country, but something is cut back. The groups are below: pick one to see what is closed, what still works and when it changed.
Where is KuCoin available?
KuCoin is available in the other 151 of the 195 countries we cover, from 
Turkey, 
Brazil and 
Nigeria to most of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Four of them host a KuCoin registration, licence or transitional listing (listed in the licences section below): 
Australia, 
India, 
Thailand and Turkey. The other 147 are available under our coverage rule: KuCoin’s restricted list does not name them and we found no regulator order against KuCoin there, so we record them as available rather than unknown. Our geo-access test backs this up where it reached: the home and sign-up pages loaded without a block or notice in 87 of the 151.
Available means KuCoin serves the country, not that local law allows crypto trading. 
Iran, 
Cuba and 
North Korea are on this list because KuCoin’s list does not name them; its terms instead bar anyone on a sanctions list, and how a country’s own rules treat an offshore exchange is a question for its country page.
Where do KuCoin’s visitors come from?
In Similarweb’s estimate for September 2026, kucoin.com’s top visitors come from Singapore, the Philippines, Ukraine, the United States and Turkey, so two of the top five are countries KuCoin restricts.
We compared two traffic estimators. Similarweb counts 17 million visits over the three months to September 2026, with Singapore first at 8.63%, and its May 2026 figures, published by BitRSS, had the Philippines first and Singapore fifth. Semrush counts 26.2 million visits for September alone and puts 
Bangladesh first at 23.61%, followed by Thailand, Russia, the United States and 
Iraq.
The two restricted countries show up for different reasons, and a visit is not an account. From a US address our test saw KuCoin’s home page ask us to use a non-restricted region, but the sign-up page still loaded, and anyone reading prices or news is counted. From Singapore both pages loaded with no warning, so the list is enforced later, at identity verification. Semrush’s Bangladesh share we could not confirm: it is absent from both Similarweb lists, and Semrush puts Bangladesh first for binance.com as well. Estimators model traffic from panels and samples, so treat any single country share as an estimate.
KuCoin geo-access test: what we saw from 127 countries
In our test KuCoin refused visitors by IP address in only 2 of the 127 countries we reached, China and the United States; in 26 EEA countries it showed a prompt to switch to KuCoin EU, and everywhere else the pages loaded.
We ran the test ourselves on 14 October 2026. A browser with a VPN connected to one country at a time and loaded KuCoin’s home page and its sign-up page, each time in a fresh private window with no cookies. Cookie banners were hidden but never accepted, and bot checks were waited out, never solved. Every run saved the page text and a screenshot.
Of the 131 places tested (127 of our 195 countries plus Hong Kong, Macao, Puerto Rico and Taiwan), 58 went through VPN servers located in the country. For the other 73 the VPN only offers virtual locations hosted elsewhere, which test KuCoin’s own geo-blocking but cannot see a national internet block. That matters for South Korea and the Philippines, where the blocks are ordered at internet providers.
BlockedChina · Home page
Blocked by IP from mainland China
“We've detected that your IP address or KYC region is from a restricted area.”
BlockedUnited States · Home page
Blocked from the United States on the home page
“To ensure a seamless experience, please access the platform from a non-restricted country/region using a supported IP address.”
Notice shown
Austria · Home page
EEA visitors are pointed to KuCoin EU, which is not trading
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shownFrance · Sign-up page
France is on the restricted list, yet gets the same KuCoin EU prompt
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
No barrierSingapore · Sign-up page
Restricted, yet sign-up loads with no warning
No barrierMalaysia · Sign-up page
Restricted, yet sign-up loads with no warning
No barrierHong Kong · Home page
Hong Kong is on the list, yet the home page loads
No barrierKazakhstan · Sign-up page
Kazakhstan is on the list, yet a virtual location loaded with no block
No barrierSouth Korea · Home page
South Korea, the day after the FIU site block was reported: the page loaded
No barrierTurkey · Sign-up page
Available: in the top five of both Similarweb counts
Notice shown
Spain · Sign-up page
Spain: sign-up suggests the KuCoin EU site
“Looks like you're in a different region”
Notice shown
Italy · Sign-up page
Italy gets the KuCoin EU prompt on the sign-up form, over a page that still loads
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Poland · Home page
Poland is pointed to the KuCoin EU site, which has had trading suspended since February 2026
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
No barrier
South Africa · Sign-up page
South Africa: the sign-up page loaded with no barrier
No barrierPhilippines · Home page
Loaded with no barrier; a virtual location cannot see the block philippine internet providers apply
No barrier
Vietnam · Home page
No barrier: the home page loads normally
No barrierNigeria · Home page
Nigeria: KuCoin loads, though its Nigerian entity may not yet onboard clients
No barrier
Mexico · Sign-up page
Mexico: the sign-up form loads with no barrier
“Create Account”
Notice shown
Belgium · Home page
Belgium: a prompt to switch to the KuCoin EU site
“recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience”
Notice shown
Portugal · Sign-up page
Portugal: sign-up suggests the KuCoin EU site
“Looks like you're in a different region”
Notice shown
Ireland · Home page
Ireland: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
No barrier
New Zealand · Home page
New Zealand: the page loads with no notice
No barrier
Kenya · Home page
Kenya: the KuCoin home page loads with no notice
Notice shown
Sweden · Sign-up page
Sweden: KuCoin recommends switching to its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site”
No barrier
Saudi Arabia · Home page
Saudi Arabia: the home page loads with no barrier
Notice shown
Norway · Home page
Norway: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Liechtenstein · Home page
Liechtenstein: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Luxembourg · Home page
Luxembourg: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Czechia · Home page
Czechia is pointed to the KuCoin EU site, which has had trading suspended since February 2026
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Romania · Home page
Romania is pointed to the KuCoin EU site, which has had trading suspended since February 2026
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Hungary · Home page
Hungary: a pop-up suggests switching to the KuCoin EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Finland · Home page
Finland: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Denmark · Sign-up page
Denmark: KuCoin recommends switching to its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site”
Notice shown
Greece · Home page
Greece: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
No barrier
Qatar · Home page
Qatar: the home page loads with no barrier
Notice shown
Bulgaria · Home page
Bulgaria: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Croatia · Home page
Croatia: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Latvia · Home page
Latvia: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Estonia · Home page
Estonia: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
No barrier
Egypt · Sign-up page
Egypt: sign-up loads with no notice
Notice shown
Lithuania · Home page
Lithuania: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Slovakia · Home page
Slovakia is pointed to the KuCoin EU site, which has had trading suspended since February 2026
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
No barrier
Morocco · Home page
Morocco: the KuCoin home page loads with no notice
Notice shown
Slovenia · Home page
Slovenia: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
Notice shown
Iceland · Home page
Iceland: KuCoin recommends its EU site
“Based on your location, we recommend switching to the KuCoin EU site for the best experience.”
No barrier
Bahrain · Home page
Bahrain: the home page loads with no barrier
No barrier
Pakistan · Home page
Pakistan: the home page loads with no notice
No barrier
Ghana · Sign-up page
Ghana: the KuCoin sign-up form loads with no notice
No barrier
Georgia · Home page
Georgia: the home page loads with no notice
No barrier
Serbia · Sign-up page
Serbia: sign-up loads with no barrier
No barrierBangladesh · Home page
Bangladesh is not a restricted location in KuCoin terms, and its home page loads with no notice
CRYPTORESTRICTIONSThe test does not decide a country’s status on its own: official documents come first, and a page that loads is not permission to use KuCoin. What it shows is how KuCoin enforces its rules at the door.
Three patterns stand out. Only two of the 11 restricted countries are blocked at the door, and the US block sits on the home page while the sign-up page still loads; Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, South Korea and Uzbekistan load with no warning, so KuCoin applies its list at identity verification. In the EEA the prompt to switch to KuCoin EU appears in every limited country we reached, and also in France, which KuCoin restricts outright. Macao, reached through a virtual location, got the same prompt, which suggests KuCoin placed that exit in Europe. South Korea loaded the day after its website block was reported, through a server in the country, so the block had either not reached that network or not yet taken effect when we tested.
68 of our 195 countries were not tested, among them the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Malta, which the KuCoin run did not cover, and Iran and North Korea, where our VPN has no location. The full result for every country, with the exact message where there was one, is below.
All 131 test results, country by country
KuCoin licences and registrations
KuCoin holds 5 licences and registrations, all through local arms in Austria, Thailand, Australia, India and Türkiye; KuCoin Global, the exchange most users sign up to, holds none we could find.
The list comes from regulators and KuCoin’s own announcements. Austria’s FMA authorised KuCoin EU as a crypto-asset service provider on 27 November 2025, and ESMA’s MiCA register shows that licence passported to every EEA state except Malta. Two more are registrations for anti-money-laundering reporting, which let KuCoin operate but are not a full licence, the fourth is a Thai exchange licence that came with KuCoin’s purchase of ERX, and the fifth is a place on Türkiye’s transitional list of crypto-asset service providers, which the Capital Markets Board says is not an authorisation.
Europe
- Austria: KuCoin EU Exchange GmbH is authorised by the Financial Market Authority under MiCA, passported to 28 other EEA states. It is not trading: the FMA still bars it from starting business operations.
- Türkiye: Kucoın TR Kripto Varlık Alım Satım Platformu AŞ is on the Capital Markets Board’s transitional list of providers in operation, which lets it keep operating while it applies; the board says the listing is not an authorisation.
Asia-Pacific
- Thailand: ERX Company Limited, a digital asset exchange licensed in Thailand, runs as KuCoin Thailand since its launch in April 2025.
- Australia: a KuCoin subsidiary is registered with AUSTRAC as a digital currency exchange since November 2025.
- India: KuCoin is registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit as a reporting entity, after it won registration in 2024.
KuCoin and MiCA in the EU
KuCoin holds a MiCA licence, but its EU arm has not offered trading or deposits since 4 February 2026, and Austria’s regulator still bars it from starting business, so the EEA has no working KuCoin platform.
MiCA is the EU’s crypto rulebook, and from 30 December 2024 it required exchanges serving EU clients to hold an authorisation from one member state (our MiCA article covers the rules). Firms already operating under national law could carry on until 1 July 2026 at the latest. ESMA said in a statement of 17 April 2026 that any firm still serving EU clients without a licence after that date is in breach of EU law.
KuCoin got its licence early. The FMA authorised KuCoin EU on 27 November 2025, when its anti-money-laundering and sanctions officers were in place; when those posts were no longer filled, the FMA prohibited new business on 19 February 2026, and a separate decision of 18 February bars the start of business operations. The FMA lifted the new-business ban on 18 May 2026, once the posts were filled again, but said operations still may not start until governance requirements and further senior management roles are met. KuCoin EU’s own site dates the suspension of trading and deposits to 4 February 2026, and its June update promised only that further news would follow.
KuCoin is the only authorised platform in our MiCA dataset that is not trading. Eight of the 14 centralised platforms we track hold an authorisation, from regulators in Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and Austria; OKX uses its Maltese licence to serve all 30 EEA countries, while KuCoin’s Austrian licence covers 29 and serves none.
KuCoin MiCA timeline
The licence came seven months before the end of the transition, and the standstill began just over two months after it. Between February and May 2026 the FMA moved twice against KuCoin EU over unfilled key posts, and by the 1 July deadline, when unlicensed firms had to stop, KuCoin’s licensed arm was itself still waiting to start. Until KuCoin EU resumes trading, we record Malta and the 27 EEA countries it would serve outside France and the Netherlands as limited.
Is KuCoin available in the US?
No: KuCoin is barred from serving the United States, and its terms list the US and all its territories as restricted.
KuCoin’s operator, Peken Global Limited, pleaded guilty on 27 January 2025 to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, the Justice Department said, after failing to run effective anti-money-laundering and identity checks. Between 2017 and 2024 KuCoin served about 1.5 million registered US users and earned at least $184.5 million in fees from them. As part of the plea it agreed to leave the US for at least two years, and its co-founders Chun Gan and Ke Tang agreed to have no role in its management. KuCoin set out its side in a statement on the settlement.
The bar is now open-ended. On 30 March 2026 a federal court in New York entered the CFTC’s consent order, which permanently bars Peken from letting US participants trade on KuCoin without registering as a foreign board of trade. New York acted first: in December 2023 the state Attorney General secured more than $22 million and prohibited KuCoin from making its platform available to New Yorkers. Our test showed the bar at the door: from a US address KuCoin’s home page asked us to use a non-restricted region, although the sign-up page still loaded.
KuCoin’s US penalties
Peken agreed to forfeit $184.5 million and pay a criminal fine of about $112.9 million, more than $297 million in all, and each co-founder agreed to forfeit about $2.7 million. The New York settlement refunds more than $16.7 million to over 150,000 investors and pays more than $5.3 million to the state. The CFTC took a $500,000 civil penalty and sought no disgorgement, citing Peken’s cooperation and the criminal judgment. Unlike Binance, which sends Americans to Binance.US, KuCoin runs no separate exchange for them.
KuCoin KYC and identity verification
KuCoin requires every new user to pass identity verification before using any of its products, and it publishes no fixed limits: verified accounts get higher withdrawal limits that each user sees on the withdrawal page.
KuCoin’s verification guide (updated 14 August 2026) names three account states: unverified, individual identity verified and institutional identity verified. The individual flow has five steps: choose the country or region that issued your ID, choose the ID type (an ID card, driver’s licence, passport or residence permit), photograph the front and back, complete face verification and confirm your name and ID number. Institutions are reviewed by a KuCoin officer by email.
An old unverified account is not frozen, but it can only wind down. Accounts registered before 31 August 2023 that never verified can sell, close futures and margin positions, redeem from KuCoin Earn and withdraw crypto up to a daily limit; they cannot deposit, buy, open positions or withdraw fiat.
KuCoin verification history
KuCoin started with withdrawal limits. Its announcement of 1 November 2018 capped unverified accounts at 2 BTC a day against 100 BTC for verified individuals, and said verification was not mandatory. On 13 October 2021 it cut the unverified limit to 1 BTC a day, with up to 200 BTC for verified accounts.
The decisive change came in 2023. KuCoin announced on 7 August 2023 that from 31 August new users must pass verification, with ID documents and face verification, to use any product, and that older unverified accounts would lose deposits. The current guide still applies that rule. For how KuCoin’s checks compare with other exchanges, see our guide to crypto exchange KYC.
What if KuCoin is restricted where you live?
It depends on the country: of the 21 other platforms we track, 16 are available in Uzbekistan and 14 in Kazakhstan and South Korea, but only nine in China and Belarus and four in Russia.
Getting around the block is not an option either. KuCoin’s terms forbid using a VPN or any other tool to get past its geographic restrictions, and the restrictions above are enforced at identity verification, where a VPN does not help. What is left is a platform that is allowed to serve you where you live.
The chart shows how much choice each restricted country has. In Malaysia, France, the Netherlands and Singapore 7 to 13 of the tracked platforms are open, including four or five centralised exchanges. In the United States one is open, Uniswap, which is not a centralised exchange. In China half the tracked platforms are restricted, and in Russia 15 of the 21, while Uzbekistan keeps 16 open, most of them centralised exchanges, and Kazakhstan and South Korea keep 14 each.
For a country-by-country comparison of what to use instead, see our guide to Binance alternatives by country, which covers the same restricted markets.
