We only score what we can verify, and the strongest verification is spending our own money. This page describes the protocol — what we actually do before a firm gets a number. The scoring grid itself, weights and every sub-score live on the ranking page: Trust Score.
We are a disclosed affiliate of Propr.xyz and Hypernova. Holding ourselves to a public, recomputable methodology — and publishing our corrections — is what keeps that compatible with independence. Scores are never for sale.
The protocol
1. We pay out of our own pocket. Challenges are bought at the public price, through the public checkout, like any trader. No press accounts where a purchase is possible — and when a firm issues us an account instead (as Hypernova did in its beta), we say so on the page and cap what that account can prove.
2. We trade the account and document it live. Real positions, dated screenshots, the full journey — including the failures. Four failed challenges taught us more about rules enforcement than any rulebook.
3. We request payouts and verify them on-chain. A payout claim becomes a finding only when we have the receipt: transaction hash, amount reconciled against the promised split by arithmetic — to the cent — and published.
4. Every claim carries its reading date. Rulebooks change. Prices change. Reserves move both ways. We re-read the sources and each figure on this site states when it was read, so you can tell a fresh fact from an archived one.
5. We monitor continuously. Daily DNS + HTTP checks on every tracked firm, on-chain reserve readings, and a public graveyard for the ones that go dark.
6. We publish our mistakes. Corrections go to a public, dated changelog — including the ones that embarrass us. A verdict issued against the wrong domain in August 2026 is still there, with the lesson it added to this protocol.
The grid this protocol feeds
Five weighted criteria — rendered here from the same data file that computes every score on this site, so this page can never contradict the ranking:
- Rules & transparency — 25% weight. Is the full rulebook published before you pay, with limits you can recompute? Hidden consistency rules or post-payment reveals lose most of these points.
- Payouts & verifiability — 25% weight. How fast you actually get paid, in what, and whether you can prove it. On-chain settlement scores highest because anyone can check the transaction.
- Survival & track record — 20% weight. Operating history, funding, infrastructure that responds today (DNS + HTTP), and since August 2026 solvency you can check yourself — a payout reserve readable on-chain beats a balance sheet taken on trust.
- Trading freedom — 15% weight. Bots, copy trading, news, weekends, leverage caps, market breadth. The absence of restrictive rules is worth more than a slightly higher split.
- Cost & value — 15% weight. Entry price against account size, the real split, refundable fees, the cost of a second attempt.
The full ranking and every sub-score → Trust Score
The arithmetic, criterion by criterion → Scoring
Traded vs. docs-only — and the cap
We distinguish firms we traded with real money from firms scored on documents alone. Docs-only firms are capped at 85/100, whatever their paperwork says: a rulebook can be perfect and the payout still never arrive. The cap is written into the grid, not applied quietly.
Affiliation, disclosed
Some links on this site are affiliate links, always disclosed, and the commission never changes what you pay — it funds the cashback we hand back. Sponsored placements are labelled as such. Neither buys a point on the grid.
Check us
Every dataset behind this site is public and reusable (CC-BY 4.0): the status registry, the verified payouts with their hashes, the reserve readings. If a number here doesn't recompute, tell us — the changelog is where it will be fixed, publicly.
The registry, changelog and data files → Prop Firm Graveyard