XTB signed up about 5% more new clients in October's first 27 days than a year earlier, despite running what it calls its biggest advertising campaign. Year-on-year growth had reached 51% in the third quarter.
The company reported more than 100,600 new clients for the period alongside its third-quarter results on Wednesday. In the same 27 days of 2025, it added 95,900, according to its results report from a year ago.
October's intake still runs above XTB's own target. At about 3,700 new clients a day, it compares with a 2026 goal of 250,000 to 290,000 a quarter, or roughly 2,700 to 3,200 a day, by FinanceMagnates.com's calculation. For 2025, the goal was 150,000 to 210,000 a quarter.
XTB ended September with 3.14 million clients, 1.57 million of them active, up 70.3% from a year earlier.
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October Kept the Third Quarter's Pace
Measured per day, October looks like the summer months, not the start of the year. XTB added 335,704 clients in the third quarter, or about 3,650 a day, after 333,292 in the second.
The first quarter was faster. XTB added about 370,000 clients between January and March, roughly 4,100 a day, and the first half as a whole brought a record 703,333.
That puts October's daily rate 2% above the third quarter's and about 9% below the first quarter's, by FinanceMagnates.com's calculation.
The annual comparison also got harder. In the third quarter of 2025, XTB signed up 221,762 clients, about 2,400 a day, before October last year lifted the rate to roughly 3,550. The 51% growth of the latest quarter was measured against that slower base.
A Campaign After a Marketing Pullback
Omar Arnaout, the chief executive, said at Thursday's results conference that advertising does not always bring more clients straight away. He was answering a question about why sign-ups flattened despite the campaign.
XTB ran almost no outdoor campaigns in the third quarter, apart from one in the United Arab Emirates, and toned down marketing elsewhere, Arnaout said. Sign-ups still stayed close to first-half levels, which he put down to work the company had done earlier.
"I wouldn't worry about that flattening," Arnaout said.
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He expects client numbers to rise as markets get busier and as the season approaches for tax-advantaged accounts, such as Poland's IKE retirement accounts. Markets were much quieter in the third quarter than in the first half, he added.
Marketing spending reached PLN 187.3 million (about $47.7 million) in the third quarter, up PLN 45.8 million from a year earlier, though it fell from the second quarter as XTB cut online advertising. Total operating costs rose 23.2% to PLN 397.6 million.
Per new client, that is about PLN 558, down from about PLN 638 a year earlier, by FinanceMagnates.com's calculation.
The October push is larger. The campaign with footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic and boxer Tyson Fury started on October 1 and runs on four continents, and XTB expects 2026 marketing costs to rise about 50% from last year.
Polish Accounts Had Already Slowed
XTB drew 5.5 million organic visits to its websites from Europe in the third quarter, third among brokers behind OANDA and eToro, FM Intelligence's heat map shows.
At home, the slowdown started earlier in the year. XTB opened 68,300 Polish accounts in January and just over 51,000 in February, according to depository data, before monthly additions fell below 50,000 in April.
It added 48,226 in May, taking its domestic total to 1,087,740 accounts. That is more than double the 560,967 held by second-placed mBank's brokerage arm.
