How we rate firms

Every firm carries a trust score from 0 to 100. It is deliberately not just the star average — a firm with four glowing reviews should not outrank one with eight hundred, and a firm that does not pay out should not score well no matter how good its marketing looks.

The five components

• Trader rating (35%) — the published star average, normalised to 100.
• Review volume (15%) — a confidence factor on a logarithmic curve, so the first 25 reviews move the score far more than reviews 200 to 250.
• Payout evidence (20%) — approved payout proofs submitted by traders. This is the hardest evidence available and the component we weight most heavily per data point.
• Platform verification (15%) — whether we have confirmed the company is real and whether it discloses its broker, jurisdiction, refund policy and payment methods.
• Complaint ratio (15%) — upheld abuse reports against the firm's reviews, scaled against review volume so a large firm is not punished for a constant small percentage.

Scam flags

A firm under active investigation has its trust score capped at 25, regardless of every other input. We only raise that flag with documented evidence — usually a cluster of unresolved payout complaints — and we always give the firm a chance to respond first.

What does not affect the score

Affiliate commission rate. Featured placement. Advertising spend. Whether a firm has asked us to change something. None of these are inputs to any score on this site.