Methodology

A firm must pass all three checks below before it can appear anywhere on this site. They are pass-or-fail checks, not a score.

1. An identifiable legal entity. The firm's own website or terms name the company that sells the challenge and the country where that company is registered.
2. Public rules. The full rules of every programme we list, including profit targets, loss limits, payout terms and trading restrictions, can be read by anyone without buying or signing up.
3. Reachable support. The firm publishes at least one working support channel, such as an email address, a ticket form or live chat.

Eligibility never depends on a commercial relationship. A firm cannot pay to be listed, and a firm that has no commercial relationship with us is listed on exactly the same terms as one that does.

Every firm is described with the same set of fields. Each field stores its value together with the source it came from and the date we captured it.

• Entity and status. Legal entity name, country of registration, website and operating status.
• Pricing. Account sizes, the fee for each size, whether the fee is one-time or recurring, whether it is refunded, and the currency it is charged in.
• Trading rules. Profit target for each phase; the daily loss limit and whether it is measured on balance or equity; the maximum loss and whether it is static, trailing or end-of-day trailing; the daily reset time and its time zone; minimum trading days; any consistency rule; time limits; and the firm's policy on news trading, expert advisors and bots, copy trading, VPS use and weekend holding.
• Payout and offer terms. Profit split, when the first payout can be requested, payout frequency, minimum payout, payout methods and any scaling plan.
• Platforms and markets. The trading platforms offered and the asset classes that can be traded.
• Source and verification. For every field: the source URL, the date it was captured, the date it was last verified and who verified it.

When sources disagree, the source higher in this list wins.

1. The firm's own published terms. The firm's terms and conditions, help centre and pricing pages, recorded with their URL and the date we captured them. Where a firm's terms and its marketing pages disagree, we use the terms and note the difference.
2. Written statements from the firm. Official announcements or written answers from the firm. We keep a copy and cite the date. They can fill a gap, but they never override the published terms.
3. Public records. Company registers, regulator registers and reputable news reports, used for entity and status information only, and always cited.

We do not take prices or rules from affiliate sites, coupon sites, social media posts or user reviews.

Every field has a maximum age, counted from the date it was last verified against its source.

Core pricing and trading rules

30 days

Payout and offer terms

45 days

Entity and status

180 days

When a field passes its maximum age, we stop showing it in tables, filters and lists until it has been verified again, and the firm's profile shows the date it was last checked.

While a firm's core pricing or trading rules are out of date, it loses any commercial link or placement. It stays listed, with a plain unpaid link only.

Every list is ordered by one parameter, and that parameter is stated on the list itself. The one exception is the default order of the homepage firm table, which blends our editorial score with upvotes (see How the editorial score works). Readers can re-sort that table by any column.

• Price lists. Ordered by the lowest published fee for the account size shown, before discount codes, because codes are temporary and not available to everyone. Ties are listed alphabetically.
• Cost lists. Ordered by the lowest cost per $1,000 of funding: the list price of an account size divided by its funding amount and multiplied by 1,000, before discount codes. One-time fees are listed before monthly fees, and the two are never mixed into one figure. Rows without a figure come last, and ties are listed alphabetically.
• Filtered lists. Lists such as futures firms, forex firms or firms that allow expert advisors include every listed firm whose own published rules match the filter. They are ordered by the lowest published fee for the reference account size stated on the list, then alphabetically.
• Side-by-side comparisons. Show the same fields for each firm in a fixed order and declare no overall winner.
• Rules tables. Listed alphabetically by firm name.

Where a list offers filters, they work on the recorded fields described above, for example market (futures, forex and CFDs), trading platform, account size, drawdown type, payout frequency, and whether news trading, expert advisors or copy trading are allowed.

Sponsorship, affiliate status and any other payment never change whether a firm is listed, its position in any list, the data we show or the presets in our tools. Sponsored placements, when they exist, sit outside ranked lists and are labelled on the card itself.

Each firm in the homepage table has an editorial score from 1 to 100. It is our reading of what the firm publishes, plus our own testing. It is not advice, a prediction of results, or a statement that a firm is safe.

The score has seven parts. A part earns points only from a recorded fact that has a source link and a capture date inside its freshness window (see Freshness). A fact we have not checked, or that is out of date, earns no points and reads as not yet checked. We never estimate.

• Rule fairness: up to 25 points. The drawdown type (static scores highest, then end-of-day trailing, then intraday trailing), the consistency rule (none scores highest) and whether news or weekend trading is restricted.
• Payout terms: up to 20 points. The profit split, how often payouts can be requested, and whether the payout rules are stated in full.
• Price: up to 15 points. The lowest cost per $1,000 of funding, compared with the other firms in the same market and billing type (one-time or monthly), before discount codes.
• Transparency: up to 10 points. The legal entity is named, a restricted-country list is published, the terms carry a date, a public support contact exists and the rules can be read without an account.
• Track record: up to 10 points. Years since the firm began trading, taken from the firm's own site or the company registry. Five years or more scores highest.
• Legal jurisdiction: up to 10 points. The legal entity is found in a public company registry, the terms name a governing law and a court or arbitration forum, and that forum is in the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United States, Canada or Australia (tier 1). Every other place is tier 2 and earns the first two items but not the third.
• Hands-on testing: up to 10 points. Our own traders have tested the firm with a real account. A firm we have not tested scores 0 here: this is credit for evidence we hold, not a penalty.

The default order of the homepage table blends the editorial score (60%) with an upvote score (40%). Upvotes are the hearts traders give each firm on PropFirmMatch, copied for now and not our own measure. They are scaled so a very large count does not swamp the rest, and a firm with no upvote figure scores 0 on that half.

No firm pays for its score or its position. Affiliate, partner, sponsorship and promo-code data are not inputs. The score is not a safety rating and says nothing about whether any authority oversees a firm; the jurisdiction part only reflects whether a trader has a realistic route to enforce a firm's terms.

Some facts are still being sourced, so some scores are partial for now. A firm's score can only rise as its facts are checked.

We remove a firm from lists and comparisons when it stops meeting the inclusion checks, for example when:

• its legal entity cannot be identified from its own website or terms;
• its rules cannot be read publicly;
• we cannot reach it through any of its published support channels;
• it announces, or reliable public records show, that it has stopped operating.

Before removing a firm for any reason other than having stopped operating, we contact it through its published channels and allow 14 days for a reply. Its profile stays online with a dated note explaining why it was removed, and the removal is recorded in our corrections log.

A commercial relationship never prevents or delays a removal, and the end of one never causes it.

Some things matter to traders but cannot be checked from published documents. We say so instead of guessing.

• Whether a firm pays out as its terms describe. We do not have access to firms' payout records, so we report payout terms, not payout performance.
• Execution quality. We do not measure spreads, commissions, slippage or platform stability.
• A firm's finances or its ability to pay. We have no access to firms' accounts.
• Regulatory status beyond what public registers show. Where a firm claims a licence, we report the claim as the firm makes it and say whether we found it on a public register.
• Reviews and ratings on third-party sites. We do not use them as a source of facts.

If a field cannot be confirmed from the firm's own published documents, we show it as not published rather than estimating it.

• Version 1.1, 19 October 2026Added the editorial score (1 to 100) and the blended default order of the homepage firm table.
• Version 1.0, 4 October 2026First published version.