Every broker site says its rankings are unbiased. Ours are too, but that’s not something to take on our word, it’s something you should be able to check. So here’s exactly what we look at, in what order, before a broker gets listed at all, let alone ranked near the top.

What “top” actually means here

A top broker isn’t the one with the flashiest homepage or the biggest sign-up bonus. It’s the one that’s genuinely regulated, charges you a fair and predictable amount to trade, and pays out your money without a fight when you ask for it. Everything else, the platform, the app, the educational videos, is worth having but doesn’t decide whether a broker makes this list. The three things above do.

How we actually compare brokers

Every broker goes through the same six-stage process before a score is published. Nothing is estimated, and nothing is taken from a broker’s own marketing page.

What we weight most

Every broker gets one score out of 100, built from ten weighted parameters. The weights aren’t arbitrary, they’re fixed for every broker and set by how much each factor actually affects your money and your day-to-day trading.

Safety, satisfaction, and cost make up 48 of the 100 points by design. Those are the three things most likely to catch out a new trader, so a polished app on an unregulated broker can never make up the difference. A few events override the scorecard entirely: an open regulatory investigation, a suspended licence, or any sign client funds aren’t held separately from company funds. When one of those is confirmed, the broker is capped, flagged, or pulled from our recommendations outright.