How we score a prop firm

What the TrustScore actually measures

A firm's TrustScore is a weighted average on a 1.0 to 5.0 scale, rounded to one decimal. It is not a star count. It is a trader-weighted number.

The weighting leans on four inputs: evaluation outcomes (did the challenge rules match what was advertised), payout speed (requested-to-paid in days), open disputes against the firm, and the volume of trader-sourced reviews in the last 180 days. Older reviews stay visible but decay in weight. A firm with ten recent payouts outranks a firm with one glowing writeup from 2023.

The five trust labels

Every firm page shows a label alongside the number. The band is the number; the label is the shorthand.

• Excellent — 4.5 to 5.0. Clean payouts, few open disputes, consistent evaluation rules.
• Great — 4.0 to 4.4. Mostly reliable. Minor friction on payout or scaling plan.
• Good — 3.0 to 3.9. Mixed trader experience. Read the recent reviews before you pay.
• Mixed — 2.0 to 2.9. Repeated complaints about one specific area (payout delays, drawdown accounting, rule changes mid-challenge).
• Poor — below 2.0. Pattern of unresolved payouts or structural problems. Treat as a warning.

Where the reviews come from

Every review on RateThePropFirm is written by a trader who says they paid for a challenge or holds a funded account with the firm. We ask for proof of funded account at submission — a dashboard screenshot with the account ID masked, a payout confirmation, or an evaluation pass certificate. Proof is checked by a human before the review goes live.

Unverified submissions are tagged Unverified and carry less weight in the TrustScore. They are not hidden. You should see what unverified traders are saying, you should just know it is unverified.

How we fight fake reviews

Prop firms are a magnet for both astroturfing and revenge posting. We run four defences:

• Report this review — a button on every review. Anyone can flag. We read every flag within 72 hours.
• Rate limiting — one review per trader per firm. Edits are versioned; the firm sees the edit history.
• Firm replies — the firm can reply once per review, on-record and public. No deletion by the firm, ever.
• Takedown process — a review comes down only if it breaches a specific written rule (doxxing, threats, no trading relationship, paid promotion). Negative but true is not a breach. We publish the reason for every takedown on the firm's page.

What we will not do

No firm pays us to rank higher. No firm pays us to remove a critical review. There is no sponsored tier dressed as trader opinion. Affiliate links, where they exist, are labelled Affiliate on the link itself and do not touch the TrustScore math.

If a firm pushes for a review to come down because it is unflattering, the answer is no. If a firm pushes for a review to come down because the trader never passed their evaluation and we can see no account history, we investigate and publish the outcome.

Corrections

Mistakes happen. If a payout time, a drawdown rule, a consistency rule, or a scaling plan is described wrongly on a firm page, email desk@ratethepropfirm.com with the correction and a source. We fix the page, timestamp the edit, and keep the old version linked at the bottom. Traders see what changed and when.

If you believe your own review was mislabelled Unverified, resend your proof. We recheck within five business days.

Cookies and accounts

The site uses two cookies tied to your trader account: rtpf_session for login and rtpf_user for your display name on reviews. No cross-site tracking. No ad tags. We do not sell trader data to prop firms, period.