How we evaluate and rank prop firms

Every firm on the site has a structured profile built from primary sources: the firm's own public rulebooks, evaluation terms, pricing pages, FAQ, official announcements, and public regulatory filings where applicable. Where a firm publishes conflicting information across surfaces (e.g. a landing page contradicting the rulebook), we record the rulebook as authoritative and note the conflict.

Community ratings aggregate signals from a curated set of third-party review sources. We deliberately exclude sources with documented fraudulent listings. The full source set behind any rating is disclosed on that rating's detail view.

Firm profiles are re-verified against the firm's live public pages on a rolling schedule. When automated checks detect a change in a firm's rulebook, pricing, drawdown type, or program availability, the change is logged and — for material changes — surfaced in our Rule Events feed.

Firms that go dormant, close, or become unreachable are moved to a separate archive and excluded from the main directory. We keep the historical profile visible so traders can research past firms and confirm what actually happened, rather than seeing them silently disappear.

Structured profile fields (rules, drawdown type, supported assets, platforms, funding model) are re-checked on a rolling weekly cadence, with priority given to firms that have recently posted changes. Ratings recalculate whenever a new review source is ingested. Firm status (active / dormant / closed) is monitored continuously.

The main directory lists every active firm. Collection pages under /directory/… group firms by a single attribute (funding model, rule, platform, asset class, country). A firm qualifies for a collection only when the underlying data explicitly supports it — for example, a firm appears on Copy Trading Allowed only when its rulebook explicitly permits copy trading. We do not list firms in a collection by inference.

Within a collection or ranking, firms are ordered by community rating (weighted by source count and confidence), with alphabetical tie-breaking. Rankings are never pay-to-place. Sponsored placements, if and when they exist, will be clearly labeled and visually separated from ranked results.

A firm's position can change without an editorial decision: new ratings, new sources, or a change in the firm's rules can move it up or down automatically. This is deliberate — the goal is that rankings reflect current reality, not a snapshot from when the page was last hand-edited.

The community rating on each firm is a weighted aggregate of public reviews across a curated set of third-party sources. Trustpilot is the only active trader-review source in production today; additional sources are only added after passing our quality review. Employer reviews (e.g. Glassdoor) are tracked as a separate signal and are never blended into the trader rating.

We prioritize source quality over source quantity. A weak second source is worse than one strong source — it adds noise and gives readers false confidence that they're seeing a broad cross-platform consensus when they aren't. Sources with documented fraudulent listings (e.g. Reviews.io) are permanently excluded.

For firms with data from active trader sources, we use a Bayesian-weighted average so that small samples cannot dominate the rankings.

weighted_rating = (C × m + Σ(rating_i × review_count_i × source_weight_i))
                  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
                       (C + Σ(review_count_i × source_weight_i))

where:
  C = 50      (prior strength — how many "neutral votes" to assume)
  m = 3.5     (industry mean prior — neutral baseline rating)
  i           iterates over every (firm × active source) data point

In plain English: a firm with very few reviews stays close to the neutral prior of 3.5. As real reviews accumulate, the rating moves toward the actual community score. The prior (C = 50, m = 3.5) applies uniformly to every firm — never adjusted per firm.

Every firm's rating is paired with a confidence tier based on its effective review weight — the sum of (review_count × source_weight) across active sources.

• Low — effective weight < 25. Rating is mostly the prior; treat as preliminary.
• Medium — 25–149. Signal is emerging; useful as a directional indicator.
• High — 150–499. Robust enough to compare firms with confidence.
• Very high — 500+. Industry-leading sample size; very stable.

Prop firm rulebooks change frequently, and a rule change mid-evaluation or mid-payout can materially affect a trader's outcome. We monitor rulebook and program pages for eligible firms and record material changes in a Rule Events feed. This signal is meant to inform, not to score — a firm that iterates responsibly should not be penalized against a firm that never publishes changes at all.

Our Match tool asks a short set of questions about your trading style, capital goals, country, and constraints. It then filters the firm database to firms that structurally fit those constraints and ranks the remainder using the same rating logic as the directory. Match does not surface firms that fail your hard constraints (e.g. country restrictions, forbidden asset classes) even when they rank highly overall.

proprietarytrading.com is operated independently of the firms it covers. Firms cannot pay to be added, removed, re-ranked, or hidden. Firms can — and are encouraged to — submit corrections and updates to their own profiles, which we review against primary sources before publishing.

ProprietaryTrading.com is owned and operated by participants in the proprietary trading industry, including the operator of Integra Trade. The site may maintain commercial relationships — advertising, sponsorship, referral, affiliate, or other business arrangements — with firms and other organizations featured across the site. Any such relationship is disclosed in-context on the relevant page and does not influence rankings, ratings, verification status, or inclusion in the directory.

Any commercial relationship with a firm (referral link, sponsored placement, employer subscription, or paid promotion) is disclosed in-context on the relevant page. Commercial relationships do not guarantee coverage, inclusion, rankings, favorable treatment, or editorial endorsement. We do not adjust rankings, ratings, or verification status based on any commercial relationship.

If you spot inaccurate information about a firm, an outdated rule, or a missing source we should be tracking, tell us. Corrections are reviewed against primary sources and applied promptly.

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