DeFi reportlighter.xyz

Lighter restricted countries: where Lighter works in 2026

Lighter is restricted in 15 of the 195 countries we cover, limited in 4 and available in 176. Restricted countries include Myanmar, United Kingdom, Syria, United States, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, North Korea and 7 more.

Research by CryptoRestrictions Research Desk
Fact-checked by CryptoRestrictions Editorial Review
Data verified 07 Nov 2026
Page updated 17 Oct 2026
How we verify

World map of Lighter across 195 countries: restricted in 15 (Belarus, Canada, China, Cuba, Iran, Ireland, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, UK, US and Venezuela); limited in 4 (Singapore, South Sudan, Switzerland and UAE), for Robinhood Chain only; available in 176.

Key findings

Lighter's terms name all but one of the countries where it is restricted; the last, Ireland, comes from our own test.
In our geo-access test of 16 October 2026 the trading app blocked 13 places by IP address, including all 12 restricted countries we could reach. That is the tightest door of the four perps DEXs we compare: Hyperliquid blocked 5 places, Aster 2 and Jupiter none.
Lighter's terms disagree with themselves. The availability notice now names 14 countries, Sudan, Belarus and Myanmar added in 2026 without a new date, while the access clause still names the original 11.
Singapore, Switzerland, the UAE and South Sudan can use the main app, but Lighter on Robinhood Chain bars its perpetuals and points there, so we record them as limited.
Lighter asks for no identity documents and holds no licence anywhere, though Elliot Technologies, the US company behind the app, runs the location check from its own servers.

Where is Lighter restricted?

Lighter is restricted in 15 of the 195 countries we cover: United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, North Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Sudan, Belarus, Myanmar and Ireland.

The rules come from the Lighter terms of service, which Elliot Technologies, Inc. publishes for the app at app.lighter.xyz, and they appear twice. The availability notice at the top says the services are not available to people or companies that live, are located or are incorporated in 14 countries. The access clause further down still names the original 11 and adds places under comprehensive sanctions or designated as terrorist-supporting. The page has said “last updated 29 December 2025” throughout, but the archived copy of 8 October 2026 shows Sudan, Belarus and Myanmar added to the notice, which a copy from 1 January did not name.

The original 11 are word for word the list Aster still uses in its own terms, dated February 2026, so Lighter has moved further than its closest look-alike. Ireland is the one we added from our test: no Lighter document names it, yet the app refused an Irish IP address with the same banner it shows in the US. Every restricted country we could reach was blocked, so for Lighter the written list and the door match. The full list, grouped by reason, is below.

Category	Countries	Context	Last verified
Geographic block9 countries	Canada China Cuba Russia Syria Ukraine United Kingdom United States Venezuela	Named in the terms, and the trading app refused our IP address with its restricted-jurisdiction banner.	17 Oct 2026
Geographic block2 countries	Iran North Korea	Named in the terms as a country the services are not available to.	17 Oct 2026
Geographic block2 countries	Belarus Sudan	Named in the terms' availability notice, though not in its access clause, and the trading app refused our IP address.	17 Oct 2026
Geographic block1 country	Puerto Rico	A US territory, so covered by the terms' US exclusion; the trading app refused our Puerto Rican IP address.	07 Nov 2026
Geographic block1 country	Myanmar	Named in the terms' availability notice, though not in its access clause; also barred on Robinhood Chain.	17 Oct 2026
Geographic block1 country	Ireland	Not named in the terms, but the trading app refused our Irish IP address with its restricted-jurisdiction banner.	17 Oct 2026

Where is Lighter limited?

Lighter is limited in 4 countries: Singapore, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and South Sudan, where the main app is open but Lighter on Robinhood Chain is not.

Lighter runs a second deployment on Robinhood Chain, with its own perpetuals and points program. Its rules, effective 10 August 2026, bar 18 countries from both. Fourteen are the countries of the main notice; the other four are served by the main app, and our test loaded it in full in each. Under our product-cut rule each of those four is limited.

Lighter gives no reason for the extra four. The countries and what applies in each are below.

Category	Countries	Context	Last verified
Partial service4 countries	Singapore South Sudan Switzerland United Arab Emirates	Barred from Lighter on Robinhood Chain and its points program; the main app loaded in our test.	17 Oct 2026

Where is Lighter available?

Lighter is available in the other 176 of the 195 countries we cover, among them Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, India and Brazil.

None of them rests on a licence, because Lighter holds none. In 113 the terms do not name the country and our test loaded the trading app with no banner; the other 63 are available under our coverage rule, since no Lighter document names them and we could not test them. We found no regulator that blocks Lighter in any of the 176.

Available means the Lighter app serves the country, not that local law allows leveraged crypto trading. Every EEA state we tested except Ireland is here. The countries we hold a written row for are below.

Category	Countries	Context	Last verified
No restriction65 countries	Argentina Australia Austria Bahrain Bangladesh Belgium Brazil Bulgaria Chile Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cyprus Czechia Denmark Egypt El Salvador Estonia Finland France Germany Ghana Greece Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Israel Italy Japan Kazakhstan Kenya Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Malaysia Mexico Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria Norway Pakistan Panama Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Saudi Arabia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Taiwan Thailand Turkey Uruguay Vietnam	Not named in the terms, and the trading app loaded in our test.	07 Nov 2026
No restriction1 country	Dominican Republic	Not named in the terms, and the trading app loaded in our geo-access test.	07 Nov 2026
No restriction1 country	Malta	Not named in the terms.	17 Oct 2026
No restriction1 country	Georgia	Not on Lighter's restricted list (terms of 29 December 2025), and the trading app loaded in our geo-access test.	19 Oct 2026

Where do Lighter’s visitors come from?

Bangladesh sends half of all visits to lighter.xyz in Semrush’s estimate, and none of the top five is a country Lighter restricts.

Semrush counts 2.32 million visits in September 2026, 11% more than in August, with Bangladesh at 49.86%, then India, Germany, Japan and Brazil. Similarweb, the second estimator we use, refused our requests for its lighter.xyz page, so we show one estimate only.

Ranked bar list of the top countries visiting lighter.xyz in Semrush’s estimate for September 2026 (2.32M visits, up 11% on August): Bangladesh 49.86%, India 5.61%, Germany 4.08%, Japan 3.4%, Brazil 3.25%. All five are countries where Lighter is available; Bangladesh alone accounts for half of all visits, and the other 33.8% is spread over other countries.

A share this lopsided is one estimate, not a count of traders, and we could not check it against a second source. Semrush measures the home page, which loads everywhere; the block sits in the trading app.

Lighter geo-access test: what we saw from 133 places

The trading app blocked 13 of the 133 places we tested by IP address, including every restricted country we could reach and one country no Lighter document names: Ireland.

We ran the test ourselves on 16 October 2026. A browser with a VPN connected to one place at a time and loaded the lighter.xyz home page and the trading app at app.lighter.xyz, each time in a fresh private window with no cookies and no wallet connected. Banners were never accepted and bot checks never solved, and every run saved the page text and a screenshot.

Of the 133 places, 129 are among our 195 countries and four are territories: Hong Kong, Macau, Puerto Rico and Taiwan. 61 runs used servers in the country and 72 used virtual locations, IP addresses registered to a country but hosted elsewhere. The app places visitors by where their IP address is registered: a US address was blocked, a Dominican one hosted in Miami was not, so the virtual runs test Lighter’s own location check.

Trading app of Lighter loaded from United States: A US address: the trading app loads behind a red restricted-jurisdiction banner and a Geo Blocked flag — **What the Lighter app showed us, place by place**Screenshots from our geo-access test, 16 Oct 2026. Scroll sideways or use the arrows.

The check is Lighter’s own, and it runs on its servers rather than in the page. The app asks Lighter’s API for the visitor’s location on every visit; from a blocked place the API answers with an error named “geo_restriction_not_allowed”, and the app shows a red banner and a Geo Blocked flag in its status bar. Prices and the order book still load. The terms say Lighter may log IP addresses to enforce these limits.

The written status and the test line up almost exactly: all 12 restricted countries we reached were blocked, and no available or limited country was. Ireland is the exception, and it rests on a single in-country run through a Dublin server that three IP databases place in Ireland. The full result for every place is below.

"You’re accessing Lighter from a restricted jurisdiction."
Trading app · 13 countries: Belarus, Canada, China, Cuba, Ireland and 8 more

Source: CryptoRestrictions geo-access test, 16 Oct 2026. Every other country loaded both pages with no restriction message.

All 133 test results, country by country

Lighter geo-access test results by country

Sortable; "Our status" is the verified dataset status, not the test result

Country	Location	Home page	Trading app	Our status
Afghanistan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Albania	In country	Open	Open	Available
Algeria	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Andorra	In country	Open	Open	Available
Angola	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Argentina	In country	Open	Open	Available
Australia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Austria	In country	Open	Open	Available
Azerbaijan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Bahrain	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Bangladesh	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Belarus	Virtual	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Belgium	In country	Open	Open	Available
Bhutan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Bosnia and Herzegovina	In country	Open	Open	Available
Brazil	In country	Open	Open	Available
Brunei	In country	Open	Open	Available
Bulgaria	In country	Open	Open	Available
Cambodia	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Cameroon	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Canada	In country	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Chad	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Chile	In country	Open	Open	Available
China	In country	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Colombia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Comoros	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
DR Congo	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Costa Rica	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Côte d'Ivoire	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Croatia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Cuba	Virtual	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Cyprus	In country	Open	Open	Available
Czechia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Denmark	In country	Open	Open	Available
Dominican Republic	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Ecuador	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Egypt	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
El Salvador	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Eritrea	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Estonia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Ethiopia	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Finland	In country	Open	Open	Available
France	In country	Open	Open	Available
Georgia	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Germany	In country	Open	Open	Available
Ghana	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Greece	In country	Open	Open	Available
Guatemala	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Guinea	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Honduras	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Hong Kong	In country	Open	Open	Available
Hungary	In country	Open	Open	Available
Iceland	In country	Open	Open	Available
India	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Indonesia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Iraq	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Ireland	In country	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Israel	In country	Open	Open	Available
Italy	In country	Open	Open	Available
Japan	In country	Open	Open	Available
Jordan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Kazakhstan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Kenya	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Kuwait	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Laos	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Latvia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Libya	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Liechtenstein	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Lithuania	In country	Open	Open	Available
Luxembourg	In country	Open	Open	Available
Macao	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Malaysia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Mauritania	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Mauritius	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Mexico	In country	Open	Open	Available
Moldova	In country	Open	Open	Available
Monaco	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Mongolia	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Montenegro	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Morocco	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Nepal	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Netherlands	In country	Open	Open	Available
New Zealand	In country	Open	Open	Available
Nicaragua	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Nigeria	In country	Open	Open	Available
North Macedonia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Norway	In country	Open	Open	Available
Oman	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Pakistan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Panama	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Peru	In country	Open	Open	Available
Philippines	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Poland	In country	Open	Open	Available
Portugal	In country	Open	Open	Available
Puerto Rico	Virtual	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Qatar	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Romania	In country	Open	Open	Available
Russia	Virtual	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Rwanda	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Saudi Arabia	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Senegal	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Serbia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Singapore	In country	Open	Open	Limited
Slovakia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Slovenia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Somalia	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
South Africa	In country	Open	Open	Available
South Korea	In country	Open	Open	Available
South Sudan	Virtual	Open	Open	Limited
Spain	In country	Open	Open	Available
Sri Lanka	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Sudan	Virtual	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Sweden	In country	Open	Open	Available
Switzerland	In country	Open	Open	Limited
Syria	Virtual	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Taiwan	In country	Open	Open	Available
Tajikistan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Tanzania	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Thailand	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Togo	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Tunisia	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Turkey	In country	Open	Open	Available
Turkmenistan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Uganda	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Ukraine	In country	Open	Blocked	Restricted
United Arab Emirates	In country	Open	Open	Limited
United Kingdom	In country	Open	Blocked	Restricted
United States	In country	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Uruguay	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Uzbekistan	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Venezuela	Virtual	Open	Blocked	Restricted
Vietnam	Virtual	Open	Open	Available
Yemen	Virtual	Open	Open	Available

Source: CryptoRestrictions geo-access test, 16 Oct 2026. Virtual: an IP address registered to the country, served from a server elsewhere.

Lighter against other perps DEXs

Lighter keeps the tightest door of the four on-chain perpetuals exchanges we compare: 13 places blocked by IP, against 5 for Hyperliquid, 2 for Aster and none for Jupiter.

The written lists say little about the door. Hyperliquid names only the US and Ontario but blocks five places and hides its outcome markets in 20 more. Aster names the same 11 countries Lighter once did, yet its app refused only the US and Syria in our test, telling visitors they can still close positions and withdraw funds. Where Aster is limited, as in Singapore and France, only its prediction markets are barred; its perps load. Jupiter names 19 places, the most of the four, and loaded everywhere we tried, the US included. Lighter is the only one that blocked every listed country we reached, and the only one to refuse an EU country.

Lighter licences and registrations

We found no licence or registration for Lighter anywhere: no Lighter or Elliot Technologies entity in ESMA’s MiCA register, and no other regulator’s register we searched.

The terms describe the Lighter protocol as autonomous software on a Layer 2 Ethereum blockchain, and Elliot Technologies, Inc. as the company that provides an interface and an API for it. They leave compliance with local law to the user and make no claim of any authorisation. We found no regulator warning that names Lighter, lighter.xyz or Elliot Technologies on the lists we searched, including those of the UK FCA, Singapore’s MAS, Ontario, Quebec, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, and no action by the CFTC or the SEC.

Lighter and MiCA in the EU

Lighter has no MiCA authorisation: neither Lighter nor Elliot Technologies appears in ESMA’s register of crypto-asset service providers, which we checked on 17 October 2026.

Whether it needs one is the open question for every decentralised exchange. MiCA says in recital 22 that services “provided in a fully decentralised manner without any intermediary” fall outside the regulation. Lighter’s app is run by a company that decides who may connect, but the trades settle on what its terms call a Layer 2 Ethereum blockchain, and no EU regulator has taken action against it that we found. That is why we record the EEA as available here, unlike the centralised exchanges that closed new EEA accounts at the MiCA deadline.

The exception is Ireland, an EU state the app refused in our test although no Lighter document names it. Lighter has said nothing about it, so we cannot tell whether the block is deliberate or a fault in its location data. Every other EEA state we tested, from Germany and France to Poland and the Nordic states, loaded the full app.

Is Lighter available in the US?

No, although Lighter is a US business. Anyone who lives in, is located in or is incorporated in the United States is excluded by the terms, the app blocked our US and Puerto Rican IP addresses, and the Robinhood Chain rules exclude the US too.

Lighter availability by US state

Restricted

The app is run by Elliot Technologies, Inc. under Florida law, with disputes settled by arbitration in Miami. Being a US company has not opened the US market: Lighter’s markets include perpetuals on US shares and funds such as Palantir, SPY and QQQ, and pre-IPO markets on companies such as SpaceX and OpenAI, none of them open to US persons. We found no US registration for Lighter and no US enforcement action against it.

Lighter access rules and launches: timeline

Lighter spent eight months in private beta, with invites and deposit caps that its announcements raised step by step to $1 million, before the public mainnet opened on 1 October 2025, as Forklog reported. Since then its access rules have tightened twice in writing, with the December 2025 terms and the August 2026 Robinhood Chain list, and once in practice, with blocks our test found beyond either list. No regulator has acted against it that we found.

Lighter KYC and identity verification

Lighter asks for no identity documents: you connect an Ethereum wallet, sign a message to register it and deposit.

The deposit docs set the minimum at 1 USDC sent straight to Lighter’s contract on Ethereum, or $5 to open an account through its deposit addresses on 12 chains, and a wallet can hold up to four sub-accounts. By using the service you confirm that you are not a Prohibited Person. The terms test where you live, are located or are incorporated; unlike Hyperliquid’s, they say nothing about citizenship.

So the only controls are the location check and your promise. Jupiter works the same way but writes a VPN ban into its terms and reserves the right to run identity checks; Lighter does neither.

Lighter verification history

We found no record that Lighter has ever asked for identity documents, and no announced plan to start. What has changed is who may connect: invites during the private beta, the 11-country terms of December 2025, three more names in the notice in 2026, and the Robinhood Chain list of August 2026.

What if Lighter is restricted where you live?

It depends on the country: of the 21 other platforms we track, 9 are available in Ireland, but only one each in Cuba, Iran, North Korea and the United States.

Lighter’s terms have no VPN clause, but they make you promise you are not a Prohibited Person, let Lighter monitor usage and cut off access without notice, and the app checks every visit. What is left is a platform allowed to serve you where you live, and the chart shows where the three other perps DEXs stand.

Ireland, blocked only by Lighter’s app, keeps Hyperliquid, Aster and Jupiter open. In the UK and Canada, Hyperliquid stays limited rather than closed, and Jupiter is available. In Cuba, Iran and North Korea none of the three is, and only one exchange is recorded as available.

For a country-by-country comparison of exchanges and on-chain alternatives, with residency rules side by side, see our guide to exchange alternatives by country.

Lighter funds, fees, tax and the terms

Questions the report above does not answer, from Lighter's terms, its docs and its own API.

What does trading on Lighter cost?

Nothing on a Standard account: Lighter charges no maker or taker fees on perpetuals or spot for the default account type. Premium accounts, which get lower latency, pay 0.004% as makers and 0.028% as takers, cut by up to 30% for staking 500,000 LIT.

Is money on Lighter insured?

No. The terms say assets are not bank deposits or insured by the FDIC, and list uninsured losses among the risks you accept. The LLP pool acts as Lighter's insurance fund for liquidations, taking up to a 1% liquidation fee, which protects the exchange, not your deposit.

Can Lighter recover my wallet if I lose the keys?

No. The terms require a non-custodial wallet and make you solely responsible for keeping your private keys confidential.

Who pays tax on Lighter trades and airdrops?

You do. The only tax clause in the terms covers the LIT airdrop, where users are solely responsible for all taxes, and the terms list token taxation among the risks of using the service.

Which law governs the Lighter terms?

Florida law. Disputes go to confidential JAMS arbitration in Miami before a single arbitrator, with a class action and jury waiver, and Elliot Technologies' liability is capped at the greater of what you paid it or $100.

How big is Lighter?

On 17 October 2026 Lighter's own API reported about $1.68 billion of trading over 24 hours across 213 active perpetual and 10 spot markets, and DefiLlama put the value locked at $728 million, $112 million of it on Robinhood Chain.

Answers cite the sources on this page; confirm with the platform before relying on them.

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