DailyForexs Broker Review Methodology

Affiliate Disclosure
Affiliate Disclosure DailyForex.com adheres to strict guidelines to preserve editorial integrity to help you make decisions with confidence. Some of the reviews and content we feature on this site are supported by affiliate partnerships from which this website may receive money. This may impact how, where and which companies / services we review and write about. Our team of experts work to continually re-evaluate the reviews and information we provide on all the top Forex / CFD brokerages featured here. Our research focuses heavily on the broker’s custody of client deposits and the breadth of its client offering. Safety is evaluated by quality and length of the broker's track record, plus the scope of regulatory standing. Major factors in determining the quality of a broker’s offer include the cost of trading, the range of instruments available to trade, and general ease of use regarding execution and market information.

At DailyForex, our highest aim is to help you find the right online Forex broker for you. We do this by providing one of the largest collections of accurate, up to date, and exhaustive broker reviews which can be found online anywhere. Our reviews are based on factual, hard data retrieved through careful research: as part of the process, we often open a real money account with the broker being evaluated. We have been Forex broker analysts since 2008 during the early days of the industry, so we know how to give you, the customer, all the information you need to make an informed choice of broker. We also listen to the experiences of our readers, who provide us with real-time feedback about their brokers. We employ a dedicated team of expert traders and analysts to conduct detailed research and build assessment methodology for our Forex broker reviews, which we examine and update frequently.

Our Review Process

We conduct our reviews by examining each broker’s offering and performance across each of 9 key evaluation categories.

We check a suitably comprehensive and universally applied range of key data points pertaining to each, assigning scores within an algorithmic process to produce a final rating which we publish at the top of each review from a total of 73 data points. Our review process is not fully automated as we believe following a purely statistical logic would assign misleading headline results, so our team of expert traders and analysts adds a human factor when results seem to differ from the real “usability” of a broker which clients would tend to experience in the real world.

Evaluation Categories

The key categories we evaluate all our brokers for and their roles within our ranking process are:

  • Regulation and Security: we check the broker’s claims against the regulatory registers and include detailed information such as license numbers to verify the broker’s regulatory position.
  • Fees: we compile a list of all trading and non-trading fees from the broker’s website. In the case of trading fees, we check the claims against a range of assets representative of the asset classes offered by a broker (in addition to Forex, we typically cover commodities and major stock market indices) including spreads, commissions, and overnight fees, and verify them through a real money account. We publish the typical major benchmark fees offered in live market conditions and assess their competitiveness. We also dig deep into non-trading fees such as inactivity fees to alert readers to the real, full costs of trading with a broker.
  • What Can I Trade: we review each broker’s claimed list of tradable assets and verify it against what is being offered in a live real money account. We assess the offering and determine what kind of trader it will be most suitable for.
  • Account Types: we verify that the account types offered by a broker on their site match what is truly available in practice to anyone opening a new account. We assess the suitability of each account type for different trading styles.
  • Trading Platforms: we verify the choice of trading platforms, or lack of choice if only one platform is offered by a broker.
  • Unique Features: the best Forex brokers have something that differentiates them from the crowd. Our analysts determine what those features are and explain how they may be used to the greatest advantage.
  • Research and Education: we do not consider this an essential part of a good broker’s package, but we make sure beginner traders are kept informed of the quality of the broker’s offering here.
  • Customer Support: our reviewer contacts the broker’s customer support as an anonymous client and assesses the speed and quality of the support response.
  • Bonuses and Promotions: we assess the offering including the fine print and note that under some regulatory regimes these cannot be offered. We do not consider this an essential part of a good broker’s offering.
  • Opening an Account: we report upon the real experience of clients opening an account, including how long it took and any complications or difficulties which arose in the process.
  • Deposits and Withdrawals: as our reviewers open a live account with each broker and deposit real funds as part of the review process, we report upon the real experience of clients depositing funds and assess it against the industry standard. We verify the claimed deposit and withdrawal methods against the reality.

We selected these categories according to what we know are the most important things Forex traders want and need to know about brokers before making an informed choice. It is important to note that we do not give these key categories equal weighting in our assessment of a broker. For example, regulation and security are far more important concerns than whether a broker offers good research and education to its clients. Our team of expert analysts – all real Forex traders who got started trading their own money with a range of retail Forex brokers - conduct reviews by opening a live account with the broker under assessment, depositing real money, and taking care to report a “user’s experience” in addition to reporting detailed research into the entity which is included as background within each review. Additionally, our calls are backed up by evidence which is presented within the reviews.

On average, a broker review takes about 10 hours to research, test, compile and write. We may discuss the findings of our research with the broker under assessment to clarify issues of fact, and to made aware of aspects of their offering which we might have overlooked. We have the final say on all that we publish.

We scour the news and our industry contacts daily for any new developments which are worthy of being included in the review as an update. Where material new information is found, the review is updated accordingly within a few days. Our more popular Forex brokers are completely re-reviewed approximately once every six months. We also frequently receive updates directly from reviewed brokers and after checking the veracity of the update, we quickly amend the relevant review.

Resources Dedicated to Broker Reviews

What Does it Take for a Broker to be Featured on our Website?

We aim to provide a comprehensive review service rather than provide a limited and curated section of brokers, so we will review any Forex broker that has secured a sizable clientele. Sometimes we review a new broker at launch if we think they will be successful, although of course at this stage we will be very careful in making any assessment as there may be little to work with.

Why You Can Trust Us

DailyForex has been in the business of reviewing brokers since the early heyday of the retail Forex industry in 2008. We have seen it all and have watched brokers come and go. Our success as a website is based upon our authority, which we guard zealously. This is far more important to us than any inducements which could be offered by a broker.

We are transparent about our aims and review processes. We challenge anyone to identify materially misleading content within any of our reviews, which we would always be happy to correct if pointed out to us.

Our Team

We employ a dedicated team of eight experts – all of whom have extensive, years-long experience of using a range of retail Forex brokers and platforms to trade their own funds - to research and analyze the global retail Forex brokerage industry. Additionally, we bring in assistance on an ad hoc basis as needed. We are happy to tell you more about us upon request.

Of course, at DailyForex we are about far more than just broker reviews – we aim to be a one stop shop for the retail Forex / CFD trader. We publish in-depth educational articles, Forex signals, and technical analysis too.