Methodology v1.0 · 4 September 2026

How we score, and why it is a different question

Other sites score whether a firm is good. That requires judgement calls they cannot show you. We score whether a firm is legible — how much it publishes about its own rules. That is checkable, and you can recompute it.

Every weight below is published. One well-known competitor states in its own methodology that it does not publish a fixed numeric weight per category. That makes its scores impossible to reproduce or contest. Ours are nine numbers that sum to 100.

The source tiers

Tier	What it is	What we use it for
Tier A	Terms & Conditions, legal documents, regulator registers	Establishes fact
Tier B	The firm's own website and help centre	Establishes fact
Tier C	Aggregators, comparison sites, trade media	Tells us where to look. Never what is true.
Tier D	Reddit, Trustpilot, YouTube, X	Sentiment and problem detection only

We do not put Trustpilot scores in our rankings. A star rating is a popularity measure that can be bought, farmed and brigaded, and it tells you nothing about whether a drawdown rule is trailing or static.

The nine criteria

Criterion	Weight	Full marks requires
Daily loss limit fully specified	15	Percentage, basis, whether it is measured on balance or equity, and the reset time. All four, or partial credit.
Maximum loss limit fully specified	15	Percentage, static or trailing, and the reference point it trails from.
Consistency rule formula published	12	The formula, not just the percentage. An explicit “no consistency rule” scores full marks.
Payout terms fully specified	15	Split, frequency, profitable-day requirements and minimum amounts, for every cycle offered.
Soft-breach rules disclosed	10	Profit deductions, warning systems and split reductions that cost money without closing the account.
Legal entity identified	10	Entity name, jurisdiction and company registration number.
Regulator or licence disclosed	8	A named regulator and licence number, or a clear statement that there is none.
Restricted countries named	8	The actual list, not a generic clause about unlawful jurisdictions.
Rule changes dated and traceable	7	Changes carry effective dates and state whether existing accounts are affected.
Total	100

Score bands

90+

Fully documented

Every material rule is published, dated and unambiguous.

75+

Well documented

Most rules published; one or two areas need digging or are missing.

60+

Partially documented

Material gaps. You would have to contact support to trade safely.

Under 60

Poorly documented

Too many unknowns to evaluate the offer from public information.

What this score is not

A high score does not mean a firm is safe, generous, or that it will pay you. A firm can document a punitive rule set with perfect clarity and score 100. That is the point: you would then know exactly what you were buying.

Conversely, a low score is often our failure rather than the firm's. FTMO scores 62 mainly because its payout terms are not on the page we verified, not because they are secret. As we read more sources, scores rise. We show the source count on every review so you can see how much work has gone into it.

Current limitation, stated plainly. Zero firms have had their Terms & Conditions read. Every score on this site is built from Tier B pages. Until that changes, treat these as provisional and expect movement.

Editorial independence

No firm can pay for a score, a rank, or a place in the tracker. Where we use affiliate links we say so on the page. The scoring inputs are all public facts with a source URL next to them, which means a firm that dislikes its score can point to the exact criterion and the exact page, and we will correct it if they are right.