Why one number isn't enough on its own
A single trust score is useful for comparing firms at a glance, but it can hide a lot if you don't know what goes into it. So this post breaks down exactly what the number is made of, and how each part is sourced.
Our score is a weighted composite of five factors: transparency, payout reliability, support quality, trader satisfaction, and rule fairness. No single factor can carry a firm to a high score by itself - a firm with fast payouts but confusing rule enforcement will still land in the middle of the pack.
The five factors, in plain terms
Transparency measures how openly a firm publishes its rules, payout terms, and any changes to them. Firms that quietly revise terms after a trader signs up score lower here, regardless of how fast they pay.
Payout reliability is the percentage of payout requests fulfilled within the timeframe the firm itself advertises - not our expectation, theirs. We track this from verified trader reports and firm-published data where available.
Support quality looks at response speed and, more importantly, whether a ticket actually gets resolved rather than closed. Trader satisfaction pulls from verified review sentiment and recurring themes we see across hundreds of reports, not a handful of five-star reviews.
Rule fairness is the most subjective factor, and we say so plainly: it reflects whether evaluation targets, drawdown rules, and edge-case enforcement feel reasonable relative to the rest of the industry, not just the firm's own marketing.
What we don't do
We don't accept payment to influence a score. Firms with affiliate partnerships on this site are still scored on the same rubric as firms with none - you can see this for yourself by comparing a partner firm's public red-flag history against its score.
We also don't treat a young firm's short track record as automatically suspicious, but we do disclose it. A firm founded 18 months ago simply has less data behind its score, and we say that directly on its review page rather than pretending otherwise.