Methodology

What we check and why

A review is only as good as the record behind it. So before we write about a brand, we look at what the brand says about itself on its own official site, and then we check some of those claims against public registers and outside signals.

Our current round of checks is dated November 2026. It covers 153 brands: 73 prop firms, 55 forex and CFD brokers, 17 banks and card issuers, 5 crypto exchanges and 3 crypto casinos. The work is done by our Data Research Team, and the desks that sign our reviews write from that record. You can read about each team on the authors page.

We focus on the things a careful reader needs before handing over money. What does it cost? What are the rules? Which legal entity is behind the site, and does a regulator actually list it? Each checked review carries a section titled “How we checked” followed by the brand name, written from this record, and the page shows the date of the check.

The site visit

We open each brand’s official site in a real browser, from a server in Tallinn, Estonia, in the EU. We view it at desktop and phone screen sizes, because some brands show different content to different devices.

During the visit we record what we opened and what we clicked. We keep the page text and screenshots. We also note the legal entity names and licence numbers that the site shows about itself, usually in the footer or the legal pages. Across all brands we have captured 1,238 official pages.

The location matters. A site seen from the EU may show different products, warnings or entities than the same site seen from elsewhere. What we record is what a visitor in Tallinn would have seen on the day of the check.

Prices and rules from official pages

Prices, rules and fees come from the brand’s own pages, not from third parties. A language model reads the captured text and pulls out each fact together with an exact quote. Code then accepts the fact only if that quote appears word for word in the captured page text. If the quote cannot be found, the fact is dropped.

This rule is strict on purpose. It means a number in a review can be traced to a sentence the brand actually published. So far 1,658 facts have been accepted this way, including 736 prop firm account prices.

Some brands only show a price after you log in or after you configure an account. In those cases we say so in the review and record no price. We do not guess.

Sign-up and checkout

Where a sign-up or checkout start can be reached without an account, we click through and record whether an account is required first. That tells you how much a brand reveals before asking for your details.

There is a clear line here. We do not open accounts, deposit money, buy challenges, trade, request withdrawals or contact support. Our pages never claim that we did.

Register checks

For the entities a brand names, we search the relevant regulator or company register in a browser and keep a screenshot of each step. We have run 235 lookups across 16 registers, listed in the tables below. Each lookup ends in one of four outcomes:

• Confirmed (169): the register shows the entity the brand names.
• Not returned (30): our search did not return the entity the brand names. This is not proof of wrongdoing. Names can be spelled differently, or an entity can sit on a register we did not search. It does mean we could not confirm the claim.
• Inactive or dissolved (3): the register lists the entity, but shows it as inactive or dissolved.
• Could not be searched (33): the register was not available at the time. For example, the FSCA search in South Africa was offline. We report these as unchecked rather than as a pass or a fail.

Outside signals

We add three signals that the brand does not control.

The first is the Trustpilot score and review count, which we have for 148 brands, each with the date we read it. The second is the Internet Archive. We find the first Wayback Machine capture for a domain, which we have for 151 domains, plus a snapshot from about a year earlier where one exists. That earlier snapshot helps show whether prices or rules have changed. The third is the domain registration date from the public registration record.

None of these is decisive alone. A long history does not make a firm safe, and a review score can be shaped by many things. Together they give context.

How scores and rankings are built

Prop firms and brokers each get a score from 0 to 10. The inputs and their weights are shown in the tables below. Crypto exchange pages show the CoinGecko trust score as published. Banks have no numeric score.

Scores are computed by code from the recorded data. Editors do not adjust them by hand. If an input is missing, it counts as neutral, meaning half marks, never as zero, and the review says the figure was not found. We chose this so that a brand is not punished for hiding a number, and not rewarded for it either.

Rankings are ordered by score, or by the criterion named in the list’s title, such as profit split or price. No brand can pay for a review, a score or a position. We currently have no paid partnerships and no affiliate links. Details are on the advertising disclosure page.

How often things are rechecked

Different data moves at different speeds. Market data pages rebuild about every five minutes from live data feeds. Trustpilot scores refresh weekly. Brand checks carry their own date, and that date changes when we run the check again.

Articles and reviews show the date they were published and the date their text last changed. Those dates move only when the text changes, not when the site is rebuilt. If we fix an error, we explain how on the corrections page.

Limits of the method

We want to be plain about what this method cannot tell you.

We do not hold funded accounts, so we cannot report how a firm treats a trader who passes a challenge. We do not request withdrawals, so we cannot confirm how fast or how reliably anyone gets paid. We do not test support. Payout speeds in our data are what the brand publishes, not what we measured.

Some registers were offline when we searched, which left 33 lookups unchecked. Some prices sit behind a login, so we recorded none. Our visit shows one location and one day. Terms can change the next morning.

Use our record as a starting point, then confirm prices, rules and licences on the brand’s own site before acting. For how we write and review text, see our editorial policy. If you spot something wrong, tell us through the contact form.

Score formulas

Each score runs from 0 to 10 and is computed by code from the recorded data. When an input is missing, that criterion counts as neutral (half marks) instead of zero, and the review says the figure was not found.

Prop firms

Forex and CFD brokers

Crypto exchanges

Exchange pages show the CoinGecko trust score as published, next to our own checks of the exchange's licences.

Our data in numbers

Brands checked

153

Official pages captured

1,238

Facts with a source quote

1,658

Account prices recorded

736

Register lookups

235

Confirmed in a register

169

Trustpilot profiles read

148

Archive histories read

151

Registers we search

Updated Nov 14, 2026 · Report a correction