Comparing prop firms shouldn't take a research degree. This page explains exactly how we build our comparisons, how we rate firms, and how we make money doing it - in plain language, without a stack of different ranking systems to decode first.
Instead of one overall score, every firm is broken down into the same categories traders actually need to evaluate before paying for a challenge: profit targets and loss limits, drawdown type (static or trailing, balance- or equity-based), consistency rules and how they're enforced, payout policy and eligibility conditions, scaling plans, and prohibited trading strategies. These are the same categories covered in our Rules section — so a firm's comparison page and our explainer articles always describe the same thing the same way.
Each firm gets a trust tier instead of a single number out of 100. A tier is built from things that are independently checkable: how long the firm has operated, whether its payout timelines and amounts match what traders actually report, how clearly its rules are written and whether they match what the firm actually enforces, and the pattern — not the raw volume — of complaints we can verify. A handful of honest tiers tells you more than a leaderboard number that implies precision the data doesn't support.
We read each firm's own published terms and rule documents directly, rather than relying on press releases or marketing pages. We cross-check that against payout evidence traders share publicly, and we reach out to firms directly when something in their terms needs clarification. When a firm updates its rules, we update its page — that's also how our Rules section stays current.
We earn a commission when a trader signs up with a firm through a link on this site. That relationship never determines a firm's trust tier, where it appears in a comparison, or what we write about a firm's rules — a firm cannot pay to rank higher or to have an unfavorable detail left out. If that policy ever changes, this page will say so first.
We're not a regulator, and a trust tier isn't a guarantee about how a firm will behave going forward — only what we could verify as of our last review. Rules change, sometimes with little notice, which is exactly why we maintain a separate Rules section explaining how to read any firm's terms yourself rather than relying on our summary alone.
Firm pages are reviewed on a regular cycle and carry a last-checked date, so you can see how current the information is. If a firm believes something on its page is inaccurate or out of date, we welcome a correction request — and we'd rather fix an error than defend it.