Our Trust Score methodology

Every broker, crypto exchange and prop firm gets a score from 0 to 10 on the same five factors. We publish the exact formula, the weights and what happens when data is missing, so you can see there is no pay-to-rank. Scores are recomputed whenever the underlying data changes and on every scheduled scoring run.

weighted total =
   0.50 × Regulation
  + 0.10 × Reviews
  + 0.20 × Transparency
  + 0.15 × Footprint
  + 0.05 × Complaints

TrustScore (0–10) = weighted total × (0.5 + 0.5 × data completeness)

Both steps are shown on every broker page, worked through on that broker's own numbers, so you can check our arithmetic against the sub-scores we display.

Regulation

50%

Scaled by the best regulator tier the firm holds a verified licence with: tier-1 scores 10, mid-tier 8, offshore 6. A clone licence caps this at 0.5, and no licence at all caps it at 1.0 — no amount of other data lifts an unlicensed firm above that ceiling.

Reviews

10%

Average rating, weighted toward verified traders and time-decayed so recent experience counts more. Fewer than ten reviews are blended back toward the no-evidence anchor of 3.0, because a handful of ratings cannot carry a broker.

Transparency

20%

How much of the trading offer the firm actually publishes, across five disclosures: spreads, maximum leverage, minimum deposit, platforms and demo account. Each undisclosed item costs a fifth of this component.

Footprint

15%

Years active plus ownership clarity. A parent company the firm states but that no licence or licensed entity corroborates is a claim, not a fact, and caps this component at 4.0.

Complaints

Penalty for unresolved or upheld complaints. A clean record scores 10 only where we hold a verified licence for the firm; where we have verified nothing, it scores 5.0 — absence of complaints against a firm we have not checked is not proof of good conduct, only of absent information.

When data is missing

A field we cannot verify never scores as if it were good news. Absence of evidence is not evidence of safety: a firm with no licence, no published terms and no track record has not earned a high score, it has simply given us nothing to check.

What is missing	What it scores
No regulatory licence on record	Regulation capped at 1.0 / 10
Clone, expired or withdrawn licence	Regulation capped at 0.5 / 10
No trader reviews	Reviews scores 3.0 / 10
No trading conditions published	Transparency scores 0 / 10
Ownership not corroborated	Footprint capped at 4.0 / 10
No complaint history, firm not verified by us	Complaints scores 5.0 / 10
No complaint history, verified licence held	Complaints scores 10 / 10

The data-completeness gate

After the weighted total, we scale the score by how much of the firm we could actually verify. A firm we know almost nothing about keeps roughly half of what its sub-scores earned; a fully documented one keeps all of it. This is what stops an opaque, brand-new firm from out-ranking a long-established regulated one simply because we have nothing bad on file. We check these facts:

✓Regulatory licence or registration on record
✓Licence / registration number on record
✓Minimum deposit disclosed
✓Maximum leverage disclosed
✓Spreads disclosed
✓Trading platforms disclosed
✓Demo account disclosed
✓Founding year known
✓Parent company / licensed entity known
✓Trader reviews on record

We only count what a category can actually carry, so the total differs by type: Forex / CFD brokers 10 facts; Crypto exchanges 5 facts; Prop firms 4 facts. An exchange is not marked down for a disclosure our exchange feed has never carried. Each broker page shows how many of these we hold for that firm.

Crypto exchanges and prop firms

These are scored on the same five components and the same weights as brokers. Only the evidence source differs, because a crypto exchange does not hold a broker licence and a prop firm is not licensed to hold client funds at all.

Regulation

Forex / CFD: Verified licence records, scaled by regulator tier
Crypto: Published regulatory status. A "Regulated" status is a third-party claim we have not checked against a register, so it scores 7.0, below a verified tier-1 licence
Prop firm: Prop firms are not licensed to hold client funds, so they take the same 1.0 unregulated ceiling as any unlicensed firm

Reviews

Forex / CFD: Our own verified trader reviews
Crypto: Our own verified trader reviews
Prop firm: Third-party aggregator ratings, confidence-weighted by review count and capped at 7.0 because we did not collect or verify them

Transparency

Forex / CFD: Published trading conditions
Crypto: We hold no trading-terms feed for exchanges, so this scores 0 until an exchange's conditions are recorded. It is not counted against an exchange's data completeness
Prop firm: Published programme terms: programme type, platforms, assets, currency and maximum allocation

Footprint

Forex / CFD: Years active and ownership clarity
Crypto: Years active and ownership clarity
Prop firm: Years active and ownership clarity

Complaints

Forex / CFD: Complaints filed with us
Crypto: Complaints filed with us
Prop firm: Complaints filed with us

Transparency note: Clone or expired licences incur heavy penalties. Manual score overrides are possible but rare, always logged with a reason, visible in our internal audit trail, and labelled as an override on the broker's own page alongside the score the formula computed.