Our Methodology

Our research helps you narrow your choices. It does not establish that a provider is suitable for every trader, or guarantee a trading outcome.

Comparison data and editorial reviews

The comparison tool displays specific collected offers. A company review discusses the provider and its products more broadly. Review coverage is wider than comparison coverage, and a company can offer several programmes with different rules.

We keep source URLs, capture dates and offering context with the underlying comparison records. The collector attempts scheduled daily updates; publication to the website is a separate step. A successful page capture does not prove that every fact was extracted, and a failed capture does not prove that a product has disappeared.

The website checks its imported snapshot before building, including its age. That check is not a new verification of the provider's terms. Confirm the applicable plan, jurisdiction, billing and conditions on the provider's website before committing money.

What a review method means

• Documents reviewed: published provider pages, terms or other cited records were examined. This does not establish how the service performs in practice.
• Platform inspected: someone examined the product interface. This alone is not a test of order execution or withdrawals.
• Demo tested: the stated functions were tried in a demo or simulated environment. Results do not establish live execution quality.
• Live account tested: the reviewer used a live account for the activities explicitly described. The review should state its scope and limitations; one test does not establish typical outcomes.

A screenshot of a provider's website is evidence of the page captured, not evidence of a funded account, live trade, payout or performance benchmark. We only describe hands-on testing when the review identifies work actually performed.

Editorial scores

Scores summarise editorial assessments against category-specific criteria. They are not customer-review averages, measurements of trading success or guarantees of safety.

• Prop firms: evaluation rules, drawdown, restrictions, pricing structure, profit split, scaling, support, transparency, execution, firm safety and payout reliability.
• Trading software: charting, execution features, ease of use, mobile access, automation, data, value and support.
• VPS providers: latency considerations, hardware, uptime commitments, pricing, support, setup, platform support and value.
• CFD brokers: the written review examines entity and account scope, platform access, costs and limitations. Existing numerical scores use the trading-software criteria above; they are not a separate rating of regulation or client protection. A document review without a complete scored assessment shows an unassigned score.

Historical scores retain their original evidence dates. Editing a review or collecting new offer prices does not automatically revalidate its score. Provider claims about execution, uptime or payouts must not be read as our independent measurements. Trustpilot figures, where available, show the company profile’s TrustScore, review count and observation date with a link to that profile. They remain separate from BullTraders scores, are not our own customer survey and do not establish execution quality, withdrawal reliability or future trading results.

Which services we compare

Head-to-head pages require a matching reviewed service scope. Sharing a company category or some market names is insufficient: a journal is not an execution terminal, and a CFD evaluation is not a futures evaluation. A provider with several product lines must be scoped to the service discussed in its review.

A head-to-head page also needs sufficient sourced differences, current evidence and a meaningful editorial conclusion before we submit it for search indexing. A shared category or a recently edited date is not enough. Pages without that assessment remain available for navigation but are excluded from our search submissions.

Where a pair cannot support a meaningful comparison, we keep links to the individual reviews and available alternatives instead of presenting a winner.

Publication and update dates

The publication date records when an article was first published. An updated date records a substantive editorial revision. It is not changed merely because the site was rebuilt, a screenshot was refreshed or the calendar advanced. Source-check dates and customer-review dates describe their own evidence, rather than the age of the whole page.

Independence and corrections

Companies cannot purchase a better editorial score or comparison position. Read the evidence and limitations alongside any conclusion, and use our contact form to report a specific error with its supporting source.