IC Markets VPS —
the servers are in New York.

Sydney is the head office, not the datacentre

IC Markets is a Sydney firm and people reasonably assume the servers follow. They do not. Every live group we measured answers from New York. Not most of them — all sixteen.

This is the single most common mistake we see with IC Markets accounts: a trader in Australia takes a Sydney VPS to be near their broker, and ends up further from the server than they were at home. Check the group name before you choose a city.

The group name carries the datacentre

IC Markets label their server groups after the site they run in, which is more helpful than most brokers manage. DC_NY_L25 is New York, DC_LD_L22 is London, DC_Syd_L23 is Sydney, DC_FRANK_D04 is Frankfurt.

Groups named Access or Demo are shared entry points rather than fixed sites, and they move. If yours is one of those, send us the account number and we will measure what it actually resolves to.

Four entities, and yours changes the rules

ICMarketsSC is the Seychelles entity, ICMarketsEU is Cyprus under CySEC, ICMarketsAU is Australia under ASIC, and ICMarketsKE is Kenya. The prefix on your server name tells you which one holds your account.

It matters more than the latency does. Leverage caps, negative balance protection and what compensation scheme covers you all differ between them — the Australian entity is capped at 1:30 for retail clients while the Seychelles one goes far higher. Worth knowing which you signed up to.

Raw Spread or Standard changes the arithmetic, not the speed

Both account types reach the same liquidity and the same servers. What differs is how you pay: Raw Spread charges commission per lot with spreads near zero, Standard folds it into a wider spread.

For the free VPS that difference matters, because the rebate per lot is smaller where you are already paying commission. The lots needed are on this page for each type rather than as one figure with a footnote.