The number that matters more than the headline stat
A firm advertising '98% payout success rate' sounds reassuring, but that number is meaningless without knowing the denominator. Is that 98% of requests from funded traders, or 98% of requests that passed an internal review first?
Look for the sample size. A firm reporting on 300 payout requests in a month gives you a much more reliable picture than one reporting on 20.
Average days to pay vs. worst-case days to pay
An average masks outliers. A firm that pays most traders in 1 day but has a long tail of 30-day delays for larger accounts will still report an attractive average. Where firms publish it, check the distribution, not just the mean.
This is part of why we publish month-by-month payout data on every review page rather than a single lifetime average - trends matter more than snapshots.
What we cross-check before publishing a firm's numbers
We compare a firm's self-reported payout data against verified trader submissions and public complaint patterns. When the two diverge meaningfully, we say so in the review rather than defaulting to the firm's own figures.