DeFi reportpancakeswap.finance

PancakeSwap restricted countries: where PancakeSwap works in 2026

PancakeSwap is restricted in 3 of the 195 countries we cover, limited in 10 and available in 182. The restricted countries are Cuba, North Korea and Iran.

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 PancakeSwap across 195 countries: restricted in 3 (Cuba, Iran and North Korea); limited in 10, mostly where the app hides outcome markets, such as the UK, France and Japan, plus Ontario and occupied Ukraine; available in 182.

Key findings

The PancakeSwap terms name no country: they bar anyone under, or living in a place under, comprehensive US sanctions.
In our geo-access test of 16 October 2026 the swap page loaded in all 61 places, the United States, China and Turkey among them. The website has no IP gate that we could find; the country rules sit in the terms and in the perps product.
PCS Perps, the perpetuals product built on Aster, bars the US, Canada, the UK, China, South Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. We record eight countries as limited for that cut alone, since swaps, pools and staking are not excluded there.
The only regulator action we found is Turkey's. The Capital Markets Board ordered the website blocked in July 2025. PancakeSwap holds no licence, appears in no MiCA register and asks for no identity documents.
Visits are concentrated: Semrush put Bangladesh at 44% of pancakeswap.finance visits in September 2026 and the US at 8%. Similarweb blocked our browser, so Semrush is the only traffic estimate on this page.

Where is PancakeSwap restricted?

PancakeSwap is restricted in 3 of the 195 countries we cover: Cuba, Iran and North Korea.

The rule comes from the terms of service, last modified on 28 February 2023 and unchanged when we re-read them on 17 October 2026. They bar anyone who is the subject of sanctions, and anyone who is a citizen or resident of, or organised in, a place under comprehensive US sanctions. No country is named, so we apply the clause to the three countries that still fall under a US embargo. Syria used to be in this group and is not now: the US ended its comprehensive sanctions on 1 July 2025 (OFAC).

Table of the 3 countries where PancakeSwap is restricted: Cuba, Iran and North Korea. All three fall under the terms’ clause on comprehensive US sanctions, were on the 2022 reported IP block list, and are barred from the perps product. Our geo-access test could not reach them, so the website’s behaviour there is untested. Syria is now limited, not restricted.

All three were also on a list of ten places that PancakeSwap reportedly planned to block by IP address from 9 March 2022, according to crypto.news, which relied on a community message and had no confirmation. We could not reach the three through our VPN, so we cannot say whether the website still blocks them. The list is below.

PancakeSwap restricted countriesPick a country to see why PancakeSwap does not serve it

Country	Status	Cause	What applies	Since	Our IP test	Source
Cuba	Restricted	Sanctions clause of the terms	Under a US embargo; citizens and residents are barred, and perps are barred too	Feb 2023 (terms)	Not tested	PancakeSwap terms
Iran	Restricted	Sanctions clause of the terms	Under a US embargo; citizens and residents are barred, and perps are barred too	Feb 2023 (terms)	Not tested	PancakeSwap terms
North Korea	Restricted	Sanctions clause of the terms	Under a US embargo; citizens and residents are barred, and perps are barred too	Feb 2023 (terms)	Not tested	PancakeSwap terms

Source: CryptoRestrictions dataset, verified 17 October 2026. Document links are in the paragraphs above.

Where is PancakeSwap limited?

PancakeSwap is limited in 10 countries: 8 where its perps product is barred, among them the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China and South Korea, plus Ukraine and Turkey.

PCS Perps is PancakeSwap’s perpetual futures product, built on the order book of Aster. The perps FAQ says users located in, or accessing the service from, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela or Syria are not permitted to use the product. Three of those are restricted anyway. Under our product-cut rule each of the other nine has the whole platform limited, with perps restricted and swaps, pools and staking available.

Two countries are limited for other reasons. In Ukraine the terms’ sanctions clause reaches Crimea and the occupied regions, and perps are barred across the country. In Turkey the Capital Markets Board (SPK) listed PancakeSwap in its bulletin of 3 July 2025 and ordered access to the website blocked, reported by Forbes Türkiye for unauthorised crypto asset services. A Turkish VPN exit still loaded the swap page in our test, which a national block need not contradict. The groups are below.

PancakeSwap limited countriesPick a group to see what is cut back

Group	Status	Cause	Countries	What is closed	What still works	Since	Our IP test
Perps barred (8 countries)	Limited	Product cut	Canada, China, Russia, South Korea, Syria, United Kingdom, United States and Venezuela	PCS Perps (derivatives)	Swaps, pools and staking	2026 (docs, undated)	Swap page loaded in the five we tested
Ukraine	Limited	Regions excluded and perps barred	Ukraine	Crimea and the occupied regions; perps nationwide	Swaps, pools and staking in the rest of Ukraine	2026 (docs, undated)	No barrier
Turkey	Limited	Regulator block	Turkey	The website, by order of the Capital Markets Board	The protocol itself, through other front ends	Jul 2025	No barrier (a national block may not show through a VPN)

Source: CryptoRestrictions dataset, verified 17 October 2026, and our geo-access test of 16 October 2026. Document links are in the paragraphs above.

Which PancakeSwap products have their own country rules?

Four products carry country rules of their own, and only the first changes a status here.

PCS Perps: the twelve places above. Aster applies the same list but for South Korea, which Aster’s own terms do not bar, so South Korea is limited here and available there.
Tokenised stocks: the docs list countries per issuer: 57 for bStocks, 70 for rStocks, 21 for Ondo and for Reserve, 4 for xStocks (the US, Canada, the UK and Australia), 1 for Coinbase and none for St0X. Because one issuer has no restriction, no country is shut out of every stock token, and we record no status from these lists.
Initial Farm Offerings: the terms exclude thirteen named countries or regions, among them Belarus, Iraq, New Zealand, Sudan and the United States. This is a legacy clause. The CAKE.PAD launchpad FAQ names no countries and says anyone holding CAKE can take part, so we record no rows for it.
Prediction and lottery: the terms and docs we read name no countries for them.

Set against peers, PancakeSwap keeps its website open more widely than most platforms that bar by country. Uniswap, the other large spot DEX, names no country in its terms either and restricts only the same three sanctioned countries. Jupiter names the United States and Singapore among its prohibited localities and restricts seven of the thirteen countries above. Aster restricts eleven and Hyperliquid six. PancakeSwap’s difference is that the website stays open nearly everywhere and the cut falls on the product that needs it.

Where is PancakeSwap available?

PancakeSwap is available in the other 182 of the 195 countries we cover, from Germany and Japan to Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico.

None of them rests on a licence, because PancakeSwap holds none. In 52 the terms do not exclude the country and our test loaded the swap page; the other 130 are available under our coverage rule, since no document restricts them and we could not test them. We found no regulator that blocks PancakeSwap in any of the 182 besides Turkey, which is limited above.

Available means PancakeSwap’s own rules leave the country open, not that local law allows decentralised trading. Belarus and Myanmar are in this group under the coverage rule although both are under other sanctions regimes, because the terms’ clause does not reach them; their country pages carry the local picture.

Where do PancakeSwap’s visitors come from?

Bangladesh is the largest source of visits to pancakeswap.finance by a wide margin, ahead of the United States, Japan and Brazil.

Semrush counts 1.59 million visits in September 2026, 0.94% more than in August. Bangladesh accounts for 44.43% of them, the US for 8.35%, Japan for 3.71%, Brazil for 3.39% and Russia for 2.8%. Similarweb returned an error to our browser, so Semrush is the only traffic estimator on this page.

Ranked bar list of the top countries visiting pancakeswap.finance. Semrush September 2026: Bangladesh 44.43%, United States 8.35%, Japan 3.71%, Brazil 3.39%, Russia 2.8%, from 1.59 million visits. Bangladesh, Japan and Brazil are available; the United States and Russia are limited. Similarweb blocked our browser, so Semrush is the only estimator shown.

The US and Russia are both limited, not closed: the terms leave the website open to them and only the perps product is barred. A visit to the website is not an account, and PancakeSwap has none, so treat each country share as an estimate of curiosity rather than of traders.

PancakeSwap geo-access test: what we saw from 61 places

The swap page loaded with no block, banner or notice in all 61 places we tested, including the United States, China, Turkey and Ukraine.

We ran the test ourselves on 16 October 2026. A browser with a VPN connected to one place at a time and loaded pancakeswap.finance/swap, 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 61 places, 59 are among our 195 countries and two are territories, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Every run used a server in the country, none a virtual location. We tested only the swap page, because PancakeSwap has no sign-up page, and not the perps product or the prediction and lottery pages, which sit behind the same website.

Trading app of PancakeSwap loaded from United States: A US address: the swap page loads with no banner or block, though the perps product bars the US — **What the PancakeSwap swap page showed us, place by place**Screenshots from our geo-access test, 16 Oct 2026. Scroll sideways or use the arrows.

Unlike the trading apps of Hyperliquid, which blocked US IP addresses in its own test, PancakeSwap’s swap page showed an American visitor the same screen as a German one. The country rules are in the terms and the perps product, not in an IP check on the swap page.

The “no barrier” cells mean only that the page loaded: with no account to verify, the swap page enforces nothing at the door, and the three restricted countries, which we could not reach, are the places where it matters most. The full result for every place is below.

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

All 61 test results, country by country

PancakeSwap geo-access test results by country

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

Country	Location	Home page	Swap page	Our status
Albania	In country	Open	Open	Available
Andorra	In country	Open	Open	Available
Argentina	In country	Open	Open	Available
Australia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Austria	In country	Open	Open	Available
Belgium	In country	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
Canada	In country	Open	Open	Limited
Chile	In country	Open	Open	Available
China	In country	Open	Open	Limited
Colombia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Croatia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Cyprus	In country	Open	Open	Available
Czechia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Denmark	In country	Open	Open	Available
Estonia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Finland	In country	Open	Open	Available
France	In country	Open	Open	Available
Germany	In country	Open	Open	Available
Greece	In country	Open	Open	Available
Hong Kong	In country	Open	Open	Available
Hungary	In country	Open	Open	Available
Iceland	In country	Open	Open	Available
Indonesia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Ireland	In country	Open	Open	Available
Israel	In country	Open	Open	Available
Italy	In country	Open	Open	Available
Japan	In country	Open	Open	Available
Latvia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Lithuania	In country	Open	Open	Available
Luxembourg	In country	Open	Open	Available
Malaysia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Mexico	In country	Open	Open	Available
Moldova	In country	Open	Open	Available
Netherlands	In country	Open	Open	Available
New Zealand	In country	Open	Open	Available
Nigeria	In country	Open	Open	Available
North Macedonia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Norway	In country	Open	Open	Available
Peru	In country	Open	Open	Available
Poland	In country	Open	Open	Available
Portugal	In country	Open	Open	Available
Romania	In country	Open	Open	Available
Serbia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Singapore	In country	Open	Open	Available
Slovakia	In country	Open	Open	Available
Slovenia	In country	Open	Open	Available
South Africa	In country	Open	Open	Available
South Korea	In country	Open	Open	Limited
Spain	In country	Open	Open	Available
Sweden	In country	Open	Open	Available
Switzerland	In country	Open	Open	Available
Taiwan	In country	Open	Open	Available
Turkey	In country	Open	Open	Limited
Ukraine	In country	Open	Open	Limited
United Arab Emirates	In country	Open	Open	Available
United Kingdom	In country	Open	Open	Limited
United States	In country	Open	Open	Limited

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

PancakeSwap licences and registrations

PancakeSwap holds no licence or registration anywhere that we could find, and its terms say it is not registered with the US SEC “or in any other capacity”.

The terms describe the website as one, but not the exclusive, way to reach the PancakeSwap protocol, which runs as smart contracts on BNB Chain and other networks, and they name no operating company. They say PancakeSwap does not broker orders: trades settle on the blockchains themselves. That is why our statuses describe the website, not every route to the contracts. We found no warning naming PancakeSwap from the FCA, MAS, the Thai SEC or the SEC in the US, though absence from our searches is not a clearance. The one block we found is Turkey’s.

PancakeSwap and MiCA in the EU

PancakeSwap has no MiCA authorisation: no PancakeSwap entity 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 crypto-asset services “provided in a fully decentralised manner without any intermediary” should fall outside the regulation. The terms name no company behind the website, and no EU regulator has taken action against PancakeSwap 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 swap page loaded in 28 of the 30 EEA states, every one we tested; Liechtenstein and Malta were not among them.

Is PancakeSwap available in the US?

Yes, for the website. US residents are not barred from the swap page and no US state is excluded, but PCS Perps bars the United States, so we record the country as limited.

The terms add a US rule of their own: the prohibited-activity clause forbids using the website to offer “leveraged and margined commodity products to retail customers” in the United States. Initial Farm Offerings exclude the US and its territories, most of the stock-token issuers exclude it, and in the Buy Crypto docs MoonPay and Transak list BNB as non-US. Our test loaded the swap page from a US address with no banner.

PancakeSwap availability by US state

Limited

PancakeSwap regulators and access rules

We found no CFTC, SEC or Justice Department action against PancakeSwap, and no regulator warning outside Turkey. The sequence is short. In February 2022 PancakeSwap reportedly planned an IP block of ten places, described above. In February 2023 it published the current terms. In July 2025 Turkey’s SPK blocked the website, and the end of US sanctions on Syria took that country out of the terms’ clause. The 2026 additions are product rules in the docs: the perps list and the issuer lists for stock tokens, neither dated on the page.

PancakeSwap KYC and identity verification

PancakeSwap asks for no identity documents: you connect a self-custody wallet and, in the docs’ words, no registration or account is needed.

The docs overview gives that line for swaps, and the perps FAQ says PCS Perps needs no KYC either. What you give is a promise. By using the website you state that you are of age, not under sanctions, not a resident of a sanctioned place and that your use follows the laws that apply to you. The terms contain no clause on VPNs.

The one place an identity check can appear is the card on-ramp. The Buy Crypto page routes purchases through Mercuryo, MoonPay, Transak and Topper, adds PancakeSwap’s own 1% fee, and says the partners comply with all applicable regulations. It does not describe their identity checks, which are theirs to run.

PancakeSwap verification history

We found no record that PancakeSwap has ever asked for identity documents on the swap page, and no announced plan to. What has changed is the list of places: the 2022 IP block report, the Feb 2023 terms, and the 2026 perps and stock-token lists.

What if PancakeSwap is restricted where you live?

It depends on the country: of the 21 other platforms we track, 16 are available in Turkey, but only one in Cuba, Iran and North Korea.

The terms bar residents and citizens of sanctioned places, and the perps FAQ bars both living in and accessing the product from one of the twelve places. The terms say nothing about VPNs. Other front ends to the same contracts set their own rules. What is left is a platform allowed to serve you where you live.

Turkey, where only the website is blocked, keeps 17 platforms open, 12 of them centralised exchanges. In the United States the field narrows to one platform available and nine limited, and in Ukraine none is available. Canada and the United Kingdom, two of the perps exclusions, leave three and four.

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

PancakeSwap fees, tax, audits and the terms

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

How old do I need to be to use PancakeSwap?

The terms require you to be at least the age of majority where you live, and give 18 in the United States as the example. By using the website you state that you are.

What happens to my funds if I move to a place PancakeSwap bars?

The terms have no clause on moving abroad. They call the website purely non-custodial and say PancakeSwap never has custody, possession or control of your digital assets, so they stay in your own wallet. The perps FAQ bars anyone located in, or accessing the product from, the twelve places on its list, and says access may be restricted or blocked.

What does PancakeSwap charge?

The terms say you pay the network's gas fees. PCS Perps adds a 0.03% builder fee on all trades on top of Aster's own fee, according to its FAQ. Card purchases in the Buy Crypto flow go through Mercuryo, MoonPay, Transak or Topper, whose fees run from 0.99% to 5.5% by provider and method in the docs table, and PancakeSwap adds 1%.

Is money on PancakeSwap audited or insured?

The docs list audits of its contracts by PeckShield, SlowMist, BlockSec, Cyfrin, HashDit, Burrasec and Pashov, the latest for the CAKE token in 2026. The audits page mentions no insurance and we found none. The terms make you assume the risk of using the website.

Do I pay tax on PancakeSwap trades?

Possibly. The terms warn that transactions can carry taxes and make you responsible for working out whether they apply and for reporting and paying them.

Which law governs the PancakeSwap terms?

Hong Kong law. After sixty days of informal talks, disputes go to confidential arbitration under the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre's rules, before a single arbitrator, and the terms waive trial by jury.

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

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