Methodology

Where the order comes from

From observed trader demand: Best Sellers orders firms by evaluation purchase activity, Favorites by community saves — two different signals kept on separate pages. Both are stored in src/data/rankings/ with the date each order was last refreshed, and rendered without editorial reordering.

What we could not do on 2026-07-31

Demand data cannot be re-checked on an automated schedule, so the order on this site is a hand-refreshed snapshot from 2026-07-31. Every ranking row carries orderVerified: false until a person re-confirms it, and the homepage prints the snapshot date instead of implying a live feed.

What standard a fact has to meet

A number appears on a firm page only if we read it on that firm's own published rules and recorded the URL and date. Not a comparison site, not a review aggregator, not our own recollection. Where a figure applies to one product tier and not the whole firm, we say which tier.

This rule cost us most of our data. On 2026-07-31 we removed every profit split, starting fee, account-size list, payout cadence and Trustpilot score that could not be traced to a primary source, along with the community save counts on the favorites page. Several of the deleted figures were simply wrong — the site described FTMO as offering only a 2-Step Challenge when FTMO publishes both a 1-Step and a 2-Step route with different drawdown mechanics, and listed The5ers as forex-only when they run a futures program.

Current verification status

FirmStatusCheckedSource
FundingPipsNot verified2026-07-31fundingpips.com
FTMOVerified on firm site2026-07-31ftmo.com/en/trading-objectives
FundedNextPartly verified2026-07-31fundednext.com
The5ersPartly verified2026-07-31the5ers.com
Apex Trader FundingNot verified2026-07-31apextraderfunding.com
TopstepPartly verified2026-07-31www.topstep.com
E8 MarketsNot verified2026-07-31e8markets.com
Alpha Capital GroupNot verified2026-07-31alphacapitalgroup.uk
Blue GuardianNot verified2026-07-31blueguardian.com
Goat Funded TraderNot verified2026-07-31goatfundedtrader.com
Lucid TradingNot verified2026-07-31lucidtrading.com
My Funded FuturesPartly verified2026-07-31myfundedfutures.com
TradeifyPartly verified2026-07-31tradeify.co
Top One FuturesPartly verified2026-07-31www.toponefutures.com
FundedNext FuturesPartly verified2026-07-31fundednext.com/futures
Funded Futures FamilyPartly verified2026-07-31www.fundedfuturesfamily.com
Traders LaunchVerified on firm site2026-07-31traderslaunch.com
E8 FuturesNot verified2026-07-31e8markets.com

That is 2 firms verified against primary sources, 8 partly verified, and 8 with nothing confirmed. Three of the unconfirmed firms block automated requests to their own marketing pages, so closing those gaps means reading the sites by hand.

What we do not do

Refresh process

Run npx tsx scripts/sync-rankings.ts after re-checking current demand by hand. Set orderVerified: true and update mirroredOn only once you have actually compared the two lists. For firm facts, update the verification block in src/data/firms.json with the source URL and the date you read it.

Affiliate links

Outbound evaluation links go to the firms and may carry affiliate tracking that earns us a commission, which is disclosed on the disclosure page. Read the risk page before paying for any evaluation.

Questions about our method

Do you score prop firms yourselves?

No. The homepage orders firms by trader purchase demand and the favorites page by community saves. We add profile pages and rule citations on top of those signals, but we never reorder them and we do not publish a weighted score of our own.

Can a firm pay to rank higher?

No, because we do not control the order. We earn affiliate commission on some outbound links and those rates differ between firms, but since the sequence comes from someone else's published list, commission cannot move a firm up it.

Why is so much data missing from the firm pages?

On 2026-07-31 we deleted every fee, profit split, drawdown figure and Trustpilot score that we could not trace to the firm's own published rules. Most of them failed that test. The gaps are the honest state of what we have verified, and they close as we confirm figures firm by firm.