Ratings methodology

We collect public review data from independent platforms. Trustpilot is our only active source for trader reviews today. We do not host reviews ourselves, and we do not allow firms to submit their own scores. The table below lists the sources that are actually contributing data to firm profiles right now.

Counts are read live from our database. If a source appears here, it is actively contributing data to at least one firm profile. Sources we have configured but are not yet ingesting are listed in section 7.

We prioritize source quality over source quantity. A weak second source is worse than one strong source: it adds noise, dilutes a verified signal, and gives readers false confidence that they're seeing a broad cross-platform consensus when they aren't.

Before integrating any review platform, we evaluate it on anti-fraud controls, verification of the reviewer, evidence of paid or solicited reviews, sample size for the prop-firm category, and whether the platform's audience overlaps with actual funded traders. Several well-known options have not cleared that bar — for example, we have explicitly excluded one major review aggregator after finding fraudulent firm listings, and we do not treat employer reviews (Glassdoor) or generalized social sentiment (Reddit, Discord, YouTube comments) as a substitute for verified trader reviews.

Trustpilot is currently the only platform we are willing to publish as a trader rating. That may change. It will not change quickly.

The community rating is one input among many, not the headline score a firm is ranked by. A firm's full picture on this site is built from:

• Funding model, account sizes, and pricing
• Trading rules and rule stability over time (see our consistency rules research)
• Payout structure, frequency, and verified payout proof
• Platform and instrument coverage
• Operating status and risk flags
• Transparency of terms, ownership, and disclosures
• Community rating (this page)

A high Trustpilot score does not override a deteriorating rule set or an unresolved payout issue. A low Trustpilot score does not override a long, clean operating history. Ratings inform; they do not decide.

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. With only one active trader source today, the formula reduces to a single-source Bayesian average — the multi-source machinery is in place and will engage as soon as a second qualified source is added.

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.

Trustpilot data is refreshed by our collectors on a recurring schedule. When a new data point arrives, the affected firm's aggregate recalculates automatically — no manual intervention.

Each firm profile shows when the rating was last calculated, and each source row shows when that source was last scraped.

Our system is built to support multiple review sources. The following sources are configured in our database but are not currently aggregated into any firm rating. They are listed here for transparency, not as a claim that we use them today:

No additional sources are currently configured for evaluation.

A source is only promoted from "configured" to "live" after it passes our quality review. When that happens, every firm rating recalculates under the same rules and we update this page. If we decide to permanently exclude a source, we say so here rather than silently disabling it.

• No firm can pay to alter its rating, increase its weight, or remove individual reviews.
• We don't write reviews ourselves and we don't allow firm-submitted reviews into the aggregation.
• Source weights are set on industry-wide criteria (anti-fraud, verification, sample size, transparency) — never per firm.
• If we add or remove a source, every firm in the directory is recalculated under the same rules.
• The Bayesian prior (C = 50, m = 3.5) applies uniformly to every firm.
• If a source fails quality review, we will say so on this page rather than quietly using it anyway.

Questions or corrections: contact us.