The nine criteria and their weights
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Withdrawal speed The single most common complaint about trading platforms is slow or blocked withdrawals. We weight it highest because it is the only criterion that decides whether you ever see your money. |
22% |
| Cost of getting started Minimum deposit, minimum trade size and how much paperwork stands between registration and your first trade. |
15% |
| Payouts and fees Maximum payout on a winning trade, plus deposit, withdrawal and inactivity fees. |
15% |
| Platform and apps Speed and stability of the web terminal, quality of the iOS and Android apps, charting tools. |
11% |
| Customer support Response time, availability around the clock, and whether support answers in your language. |
7% |
| Local deposits and withdrawals The only criterion scored separately for every country: whether you can pay in and cash out in your own currency with a method people actually use where you live, or whether cryptocurrency is the only route. |
8% |
| Markets and instruments How many assets you can actually trade, and whether the mix covers forex, commodities, indices, stocks and crypto. |
8% |
| Track record and oversight Years in operation, size of the user base, licences held and public complaint history. Newer platforms score lower here by definition, and we say so openly. |
9% |
| Education and demo Quality of the free demo account, tutorials, and whether a complete beginner can learn without risking money. |
5% |
Why the ranking changes by country
Two adjustments are applied per country. First, any platform that does not accept traders from that country is removed entirely. Second, the score for local deposits and withdrawals is recalculated: a platform gains points where it accepts deposits in the local currency through methods people actually use there, and loses them where cryptocurrency is the only way in and out. Nothing else changes — the underlying facts about a platform are the same everywhere.
How we are paid, and what it does not buy
This site earns commission when a reader opens an account through one of our links. Every platform in the ranking has such an arrangement, so there is no version of this page where one of them is free to us and the others are not. The weights above were fixed before the scores were assigned and are the same on every country page. No platform has the option to pay for a position, and we list the drawbacks of our top-ranked platform as plainly as the others — the newest platform in this ranking has the shortest track record and no financial licence, and it scores lowest of the three on that criterion.
Where the data comes from
Fees, minimums, payout ceilings and payment methods are taken from the platforms' own published terms and checked against public broker databases. Country availability is based on the platforms' published restricted-country lists. All of it changes without notice — if you find something out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Last full review: August 2026