One letter per firm, from A+ to F, earned against a fixed rubric. This page says what each band means, so a reader can tell an A- from a B+ without opening a single review.
What each band means
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A
Nothing in the firm's own documents works against the trader. The contract a buyer signs says what the marketing says, the rules that can end an account are stated plainly and on a stated basis before the buyer pays, and the company selling the account is the company named in the terms.
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B
Sound, with one thing worth knowing before you buy. Everything essential checks out and one thing is worth weighing: a rule tighter than the category, a condition attached to the payout route, or a term that favors the firm where others leave it alone. It is named plainly in the review.
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C
The documents hold together and something material is unresolved. A term the buyer cannot read before paying, a rule that reads two ways, or a company named in the terms that is not the one taking the money. A C reflects what the evidence we hold supports. Because payout reliability is unscored on every firm, a C says nothing either way about whether the firm pays.
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D
Documented problems a trader should weigh heavily. Something in the contract or the pricing works against the trader in a way we can quote, not infer, and every deduction behind a D is traceable to a clause quoted in the review.
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F
Disqualifying. Reserved for terms that permit the firm to keep money a trader has earned. An F is never a tone and never an impression: it requires at least one critical finding with a clause number and a quotation behind it.
NR
Not a grade at all. Not Rated means we have not assessed the firm, not that we assessed it and found it wanting. It is what a firm holds until enough of the rubric has been read to support a letter, and it is never sorted or styled as though it sat below F.
A plus or a minus is position within a band, not a band of its own. An A- is the bottom of A and a B+ is the top of B, and the letter is the claim. There is no E.
What the grade weighs
Six things, each with a fixed share of the total. The weights were ratified on 1 September 2026 by Krishi Chowdhary, our external grading expert, and they are published here so a reader can check our arithmetic instead of taking it on trust.
| What it weighs | Weight | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Payout reliability | 25% | Did the firm pay, on its published terms |
| Rule fairness | 20% | Whether the rules can be met as written |
| Trading conditions | 20% | The drawdown basis a buyer can end up holding |
| Company trust | 15% | Entity, jurisdiction, and who holds the money |
| Challenge value | 15% | Price, profit split and scaling together (scored today: price only) |
| Support and disputes | 5% | How the firm answers a trader, and the quality of the answer |
Why every letter currently reads Preliminary
Preliminary means this grade is based on the firm’s contracts, published rules and prices, all read firsthand from the firm’s own documents. It does not yet include a payout test. We have not bought an account, traded it and taken money out. Every grade on this site is Preliminary today. When we have tested a firm’s payouts, we re-rate it, and the label comes off once no other Preliminary condition remains, such as an unread funded-trader agreement.
Seventy of the hundred points are in play today, and thirty are not. Payout reliability, weighted 25, is unscored on every firm on this site, because no purchase-to-payout desk test has been completed anywhere. Support and disputes, weighted 5, is unscored on every firm as well, because no support test has been run.
So a letter you see today is built from rule fairness, trading conditions, company trust and challenge value. Each review states how much of the rubric its own letter rests on.
A missing input is left out of the average, never counted as zero. A firm is not marked down for evidence we have not gathered yet. That is why the word Preliminary sits beside the letter: it tells you the grade is honest about its own coverage rather than pretending to completeness it does not have.
A missing payout score does not hold a letter down. Only a scored payout result that comes back poor can cap a grade, which means a firm can reach A before we have tested a payout. What a high letter says is that the firm’s own documents and published surfaces hold up, not that we have watched the money arrive.
Where the thresholds sit
The cut points that turn a score out of 100 into a letter were set against the real distribution of all 36 firms, not guessed in advance, and ratified on 16 September 2026. Setting them moved no published letter.
| Letter | Score |
|---|---|
| A+ | From 95 |
| A | From 87 |
| A- | From 79 |
| B+ | From 77 |
| B | From 74 |
| B- | From 73 |
| C+ | From 67 |
| C | From 57 |
| C- | From 51 |
| D+ | From 45 |
| D | From 36 |
| D- | From 27 |
| F | Below 27 |
Any future change to these points is dated in the changelog, the same as any other change to how we grade.
How the firms we cover grade today
The distribution below renders from the live dataset and is not typed, so it is current whenever you read it.
36 firms are in the catalogue today. 36 of these grades are preliminary: the letters can move as verification of the records completes.
- 2 (6%)
- 8 (22%)
- 24 (67%)
- 2 (6%)
- 0 (0%)
- 0 (0%)
It clusters in the middle, and that is the honest outcome rather than a failure of the scale. Most firms are scored on the same four things so far, and a scheme that spread them across more letters would be inventing distinctions the evidence cannot support.