Our methodology

We research each firm from its own authoritative pages — homepage, rules and trading-objectives pages, help centre articles, and scaling/payout documentation. We prefer the firm’s own words over second-hand summaries. Where a firm’s site blocks automated retrieval, we say so on the dossier and treat the affected figures with extra caution.

Every figure carries the date it was accessed, and every dossier lists its sources with those dates. Prop-firm pricing and promos change constantly, so a number is only as good as the day it was checked — we make that day explicit instead of implying figures are eternal.

We separate what a firm advertises (headline marketing and “up to” ceilings) from what we could verify against a primary source. A figure we could not confirm is marked unverified (verify before launch) rather than dropped or presented as fact. “Up to” numbers are explicitly ceilings, not the typical outcome.

Each rated firm gets an overall editorial rating out of 5, supported by a five-dimension scorecard. Scores reflect the verified facts in the dossier — not marketing, and never a firm’s willingness to partner with us:

• Pricing & valueEntry price and value for money relative to what the account actually offers.
• Profit splitThe headline split and, just as important, the realistic split most traders reach.
• Payout speedPayout cadence, first-payout conditions, and processing speed once requested.
• Rules flexibilityHow forgiving the rules are — static vs trailing drawdown, consistency/best-day gates, minimum days.
• TransparencyHow much of the firm's claims we could confirm from primary sources, vs what stayed unverified.

We deliberately do not publish a star-style AggregateRating built from user reviews we do not have. Our ratings are clearly editorial. Transparency is itself a scored dimension: the less a firm can be verified, the lower it scores there.

No firm can buy a higher rating, a softer verdict, or the removal of a con or a verify flag. Affiliate partnerships are disclosed on the page and never influence the editorial assessment. See our affiliate & independence disclosure→ for how we make money.

When pricing, promos, or rules change — or if we get something wrong — we re-verify against the primary source and update the dossier with a fresh access date. Spotted something off? Tell us via the contact page→ or at hello@propexaminer.com.

The full verified dataset behind these dossiers is available as clean JSON at download the firm dataset (JSON) — free to cite with attribution to The Prop Examiner.