This page sets out how the ranking on the home page is produced: what is measured, what each measure is worth, where the numbers come from, and what we are unable to check. It is written so that a reader can disagree with the result and still see exactly how it was reached.
What is being ranked
Not firms in general. Firms on one axis: what happens to your money between the moment you decide to withdraw and the moment it lands. Everything scored below is part of that chain. A firm can have an excellent platform, generous account sizes and a well-run support desk and still place low here, because none of those things affect the chain.
That narrowness is deliberate. A single ranking that tries to score platform quality, rule fairness, pricing and payout behaviour at once ends up scoring nothing in particular. Readers comparing payout behaviour are better served by a page that only measures payout behaviour.
The four measures and what each is worth
| Measure | Weight | What earns points |
|---|---|---|
| Enforceable commitment | 40% | A stated processing window with a written consequence attached when it is missed |
| Time to first eligibility | 25% | How soon after the first funded trade a request can legitimately be made |
| Net of conditions | 20% | The split read together with its cycle, its add-on requirements and any deduction |
| Documentation | 15% | Whether the terms appear somewhere durable rather than only on a sales banner |
Why the enforceable commitment carries the most weight
Almost every firm in this sector advertises a fast payout. Very few write down what happens if they are late. The difference between the two is the difference between an intention and an obligation, and it is the only part of a payout promise that has a cost attached to breaking it.
A written consequence also has a second property that matters more than its size: it forces the firm to define the window precisely. A firm that owes something for missing twelve hours has to say whether the clock runs on business hours, whether weekends pause it, and when it starts. Firms with no consequence rarely define any of that, which is why their advertised number is usually the least informative one on the page.
The weight does not assume the penalty will ever be paid. It assumes that a firm which has committed in writing has accepted a form of accountability the others have not.
Why eligibility is scored as part of payout speed
Processing time is measured from the request. If the request cannot be made for fourteen days, a twelve-hour processing window describes the last half-day of a two-week wait. Reporting the twelve hours without the fourteen days would be accurate and misleading at the same time.
Eligibility is therefore scored in the same ranking rather than treated as a separate topic, and firms with an unusually long gate are marked down even where their post-request handling is fast.
How the split is read
A percentage on its own is not scored. What is scored is the percentage that a trader on a standard plan, without buying anything additional, on the cycle they would normally choose, actually receives after any published deduction.
Three adjustments follow from that. A split available only on a monthly cycle is scored on the monthly terms, with the weekly figure noted. A split reachable only by purchasing an add-on is scored at the base rate, with the add-on noted. A split quoted before a published processing fee is scored net of the fee.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure on the home page comes from material the firm has published itself: its own site, its own help centre, its own terms document. Nothing is taken from an affiliate directory, a review aggregator, a screenshot posted to social media, or another comparison site.
Where a firm publishes nothing on a criterion, the cell reads that nothing is published. It is never filled with an estimate, an industry average or a figure carried over from a similar firm. A blank is information; a guess is not.
What cannot be verified here
Four things, stated plainly.
Whether a firm honours its published terms in practice. This page reads documents. It cannot audit a payment ledger, and no comparison page can.
How often payouts are refused, and on what grounds. Firms do not publish denial rates, and the ones that would look worst are the least likely to start.
How long the review stage takes. Most firms state a processing window that begins at approval and say nothing about how long approval itself takes.
Whether the terms have changed since the last review. Terms change without announcement. The review date on the home page is the honest boundary of what this page knows.
Commercial relationships
Some links on this site are commercial. There is a direct commercial relationship with Meridian Funded, Tiger Funded and FXP; other outbound links may also earn a commission. All outbound links to third-party firms carry rel="nofollow sponsored".
No firm has bought a position, and no firm has been shown its placement before publication. Meridian Funded ranks first on the weighting above: the shortest published processing window in the comparison, the only penalty clause that scales with the payout rather than sitting at a flat amount, a 150% refund structure, and no consistency requirement at all on one of its account types. A reader who disagrees with the weighting has everything needed on this page to reorder the table themselves, and that is the point of publishing it.
Corrections and review cadence
The full table is rechecked against source material at each review, and the date shown on the home page is the date of the last full pass rather than the date of the last edit anywhere on the site.
If a figure here is wrong or out of date — particularly if you are a firm whose terms have changed — write to the contact address in the footer with a link to the published page that shows the current position. Corrections are made against published sources only, and a corrected figure is updated on the page rather than annotated at the bottom.