Three rules we hold ourselves to
- We pay for every challenge Full price, our own money. No firm receives a free account, a preview of its score, or the opportunity to change one.
- Commission never touches the score The scoring formula below is fixed and applied before any commercial conversation. Firms with no affiliate programme are scored identically to firms that pay us.
- Every claim carries a date Rules in this industry change without notice. A review without a verification date is worth nothing, so every page carries one.
The scoring formula
Five criteria, weighted as below, applied identically to every firm. The weights are published so that you can disagree with them — if payout speed matters less to you than instrument breadth, you should read our ranking differently, and you can only do that if you know how it was built.
Scores are calculated to one decimal place. A firm cannot score above 8.0 overall if it scores below 7.0 on payout reliability, regardless of how well it performs elsewhere.
The payout log
The payout log is the evidence base for the 30% of the score that matters most. Each entry records:
- The firm, the account size and the date the withdrawal was requested
- The amount requested and the amount received
- The date the funds arrived, and the elapsed time
- The window the firm advertised at the time of the request
- Any conditions, delays or correspondence involved
Status of the log
Entries are published as each withdrawal cycle completes. Until a firm appears in the log with a delivered payout, the payout figure shown on its review is the firm's advertised window, not a measured result — and each review says so explicitly in its "what we still need to verify" section.
We would rather publish a smaller number of tested claims than a large number of borrowed ones.
When a firm is removed
A firm is delisted, and its review taken down, if any of the following occurs:
- A withdrawal we requested is not delivered, and the firm cannot evidence a rule breach
- Terms are changed retroactively on existing funded accounts
- A pattern of unresolved payout complaints appears across independent communities
- The firm stops responding to a documented dispute for more than 14 days
Delisting is published with the reason. We do not quietly remove firms, because a quiet removal is the single most useful piece of information a reader could have had.
Corrections
Firms change fees, splits and rules without notice, and we get things wrong. Corrections are made on the page itself with the date, not silently.
If you find an error — or you are a firm that believes a score is based on outdated terms — tell us. We will check it against the firm's published terms and update the page. What we will not do is remove criticism or change a score in exchange for anything. That is covered in our editorial policy.
What this methodology cannot tell you
Honest limits, because a methodology page that claims none is not a methodology page:
- Past payouts do not guarantee future ones. A firm that paid us in September can stop paying in December. Our score is evidence, not insurance.
- Our sample is small. We test a handful of withdrawals per firm, not hundreds. A firm that pays small withdrawals promptly may behave differently on a large one.
- We cannot audit a balance sheet. None of these firms publish audited accounts. Nobody outside them knows their capitalisation.
- Scores are judgements. The weights are ours. Reasonable people would weight differently and arrive at a different order.