Trust & Transparency
The exact process behind every award, ranking and verdict
◆ In one paragraph
Every broker earns a 0–10 editorial score across five weighted pillars — regulation & safety, trading costs, execution, client protections, and platforms. All data is sourced, dated and re-checked quarterly; licences are verified in official registers before scoring. A layer of verified, fraud-screened user reviews adds the star rating. Rankings are set by this evidence alone — never by affiliate relationships.
A broker's score is the weighted sum of five pillars. The weights reflect what protects and serves a retail trader most, with regulation and cost carrying the most weight.
| Pillar | Weight | What we measure |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation & safety | 30% | Licences (verified in register), segregation of funds, compensation schemes, track record |
| Trading costs | 25% | Spreads + commissions measured live on major pairs; swaps; non-trading fees |
| Execution quality | 20% | Fill speed, slippage, requote rate, order-type support |
| Client protections | 15% | Negative-balance protection, leverage caps, complaints handling |
| Platforms & range | 10% | MT4/MT5/cTrader/proprietary, mobile quality, instrument range |
Every data point on a broker page carries a source and a date. Costs are measured on live accounts, not marketing pages. Regulatory facts come from the regulator's own register. No data is supplied by the brokers, and no broker sees or approves its score before publication.
Before a broker is scored at all, we confirm its legal entity and licence number in the official regulator register — for example ASIC Connect, the FCA Register or CySEC's public list — and show the number on the broker page so you can repeat the check.
User reviews add a star rating but never decide a broker's position alone. To count, a review must come from a verified account holder and pass an anti-fraud screen. In line with Google's 2026 rules, we do not permit incentivised or undisclosed reviews. Where a broker has too few verified reviews, we show no rating rather than a misleading one.
Forex Awards earns affiliate commissions when readers open accounts through some links; this funds the site and has no influence on scores, rankings, awards or verdicts. A broker cannot pay for a higher position, a better score, or an award.