By D. Scaglione · Updated September 5, 2026 · Methodology

Our Methodology: How We Score Every Prop Firm

Last updated 5 September 2026 · The Propfirmito Score is recalculated automatically whenever a firm’s verified data changes.

The Propfirmito Score is a single 0–100 rating we publish for every prop firm we list. It is built from 14 measurable factors grouped into six pillars — trust & legitimacy, trading conditions, payouts, cost, accessibility and ease of passing. Every input is a verifiable fact taken from the firm’s own published terms, scored against fixed anchors. It is not an editorial opinion, and no firm can pay to move its number. You can see every score live on the rankings page, with a full report for each firm.

What the number means

What a trader sees

One honest number, its grade, and the six pillars behind it — so an 86 that comes from world-class trust but a pricey challenge ladder is distinguishable from an 86 that comes from cheap challenges at a less-proven firm.

What makes it defensible

Every input is a verified fact — pricing ladders, rule flags, review volumes, restricted-country lists — scored against anchors that stay fixed as firms join or leave the list. Nothing is hand-tuned to favour a particular firm.

What it can’t hide

Firms that don’t publish their rules, restricted list or a verifiable review base get conservative scores plus a visible “data the firm doesn’t publish” list on their report. Opacity costs points here — it never earns them.

The six pillars and 14 factors

The pillar weights add up to 100. Within each pillar, individual factors carry the weights shown in brackets.

Pillar	Weight	What it measures
Trust & legitimacy	21	Trader reviews, Bayesian-shrunk (12) · company transparency — named CEO, public legal entity, published restricted list (5) · legal home base / jurisdiction tier (4)
Trading conditions	26	Trading freedom — news, robots, copy trading, weekend holding, hedging (10) · drawdown room, adjusted for trailing vs static (8) · time pressure — minimum days, deadlines, consistency rule (8)
Payouts	20	Starting profit split, with a bonus for a documented path to 100% (13) · verified payout track record (7)
Cost	15	List price per $10,000 of buying power, log-anchored (10) · refundable fee & free retries (5)
Accessibility	10	Country access, incl. US availability (5) · number of trading platforms (2) · program variety & scaling ceiling (3)
Ease of passing	8	Fastest evaluation path (instant → 3-step) combined with the profit target required (8)

Two terms in that table deserve a plain-language definition. Bayesian-shrunk: a firm’s Trustpilot rating is pulled toward the category average in proportion to how few reviews it has, so a 5.0 on 40 reviews does not beat a 4.8 on 47,000. Log-anchored: the price per $10,000 of buying power is scored on a base-10 logarithmic scale between two fixed anchors — $15 per $10,000 earns full marks, $150 per $10,000 earns zero, and subscription fees are counted at double — so the same dollar gap matters more between cheap programmes than between expensive ones.

How the score is calculated

1 · Verified inputs

Each factor is scored 0–1 from the firm’s own published data, re-checked continuously. Prices use the list price only — discounts are excluded.

2 · Weighted pillars & calibration

Factor scores are multiplied by their weights and summed into a raw points total on the published weights. That raw total is then multiplied by a fixed calibration factor of 1.2757, set once at launch so that the category leader sat at 93/100 — no firm starts at 100, because no firm is perfect. The factor has not been re-pinned since, so a firm’s number moves only when its own data moves; if the leader improves it can rise above 93, and every score is capped at 99.9. Pillar scores are shown on the same calibrated scale, each capped at 100. Terms inputs (starting split, targets, drawdown, minimum days, consistency, refund) are read from the firm’s standard evaluation route — the challenge most traders buy — not from its fastest or its most expensive route; the fastest route available is scored separately under Passability.

3 · Review shrinkage

Each firm’s Trustpilot rating is blended with the trimmed average rating of all rated firms. The weight on the firm’s own rating is log(1 + n) divided by log(1 + n) + log(1 + m), where n is its review count and m is the median review count across rated firms — a handful of reviews carries little weight, thousands carry a lot. The blended rating is then scored linearly from 3.5 (zero) to 5.0 (full marks). A firm with no verifiable review base scores zero on that factor.

4 · Conservative gaps

When a firm doesn’t publish something, the missing value is filled conservatively (never in the firm’s favour) and disclosed on the report: minimum days and the number of restricted countries are taken from the 75th percentile of firms that do publish them, undeclared trading-rule flags count as prohibited, and no Trustpilot presence scores zero.

5 · Per-asset-class ranking

Forex, Futures and Crypto firms are ranked only against their own class — but all sit on one shared 0–100 scale, so scores stay comparable.

Grades follow the score: A+ 90+ · A 84+ · A− 78+ · B+ 70+ · B 62+ · B− 54+ · C+ 46+. We deliberately do not score a firm’s age — a young firm that runs a good programme is not penalised for it. Track record enters the score only through earned, verifiable review volume.

Independence & affiliate disclosure

Propfirmito is reader-supported: we may earn a commission if you buy through some of our links, and every firm we rate is or may become an affiliate partner. Commissions never influence the score. Cost is scored on list prices only, the formula and the calibration factor are published on this page, and no single factor can be edited by hand for an individual firm. Because the inputs are public facts and the weights are fixed, anyone can recompute a firm’s score from its own website.

Worked example: how FTMO reaches 83.2

FTMO is a Forex firm. Here are the six pillar scores that build its number, with the weight each pillar carries.

Pillar	Pillar score (0–100)	Weight
Trust & legitimacy	99.7	21
Trading conditions	100	26
Payouts	89.4	20
Cost	52.2	15
Accessibility	44.2	10
Ease of passing	63.8	8

83.2

Propfirmito Score

A−

Grade (78+)

Forex rank

FTMO’s two most heavily weighted pillars — trading conditions and trust — sit at or next to the cap, and payouts stay strong at 89.4 even though the standard 2-Step route starts at an 80% split rather than the 1-Step route’s 90%; that is what carries it to 83.2. The arithmetic is simple: FTMO’s raw weighted total across the 14 factors is 65.2 points, and 65.2 × 1.2757 = 83.2. The pillar scores in the table are on the calibrated scale and capped at 100, which is why their weighted sum (82.2) is not exactly the score — FTMO’s trading-conditions pillar hits the cap. Its below-average cost and accessibility are what keep it outside the Forex top three. You can read this breakdown for any firm on its report page — for example, the full FTMO score report. Account-level scores work the same way: each individual challenge account inherits its firm’s trust record, while its own price, drawdown, profit target, time rules and profit split are scored on their own.

Corrections policy

When we identify a factual error after publication — whether we catch it or a reader flags it — we correct it promptly and log the change on our public Corrections Log with a date-stamped description. Each correction is also emitted as CorrectionComment structured data on the corrected page.