The Pledge
- Yes: We will never accept money from a broker — for placement, scoring, content, or anything else. Ever.
- Yes: No payment-provider, exchange, bank, or regulator money for editorial placement or scoring. Any sponsorship from these categories is disclosed by name and never moves a Trust Score, ranking, or Featured tag.
- Yes: No affiliate links. No referral codes. No CPA. On any broker, payment rail, or exchange.
- Yes: Sponsorships, where they exist, are clearly labelled and listed in full on the Sponsors page.
- No: If we ever break any of the above, we'll archive the violation publicly here.
Five signals. Weighted. Public.
Every score on this site is a weighted average of five public signals. Regulation carries the most weight — a Tier-1 license from FCA, ASIC, or MAS does more for a broker's score than any amount of polish. Here is exactly how much each signal moves the number.
- Regulation
- Price
- Accessibility
- Sentiment
- Transparency
Tier-1 licenses (FCA, ASIC, CySEC, MAS) carry the most weight — a Tier-1 license does more for a score than a glossy homepage ever could. Brokers are scored at the highest tier they actually hold for SEA clients, and sanctions decrement the score.
Average EUR/USD spread plus commission, normalized against the market median. Wider than median lowers the score; tighter raises it. Refreshed from hourly snapshots.
SEA country availability, count of supported local payment rails (PromptPay, GCash, FPX, DuitNow, USDT), and minimum-deposit accessibility. Lower minimums score better, capped.
Embedded Trustpilot and WikiFX scores, weighted by recency and review count. When sources disagree by more than 2 points, we flag it on the broker page rather than averaging through it.
Frequency of license cross-checks, freshness of spread data, and time since the last regulator action. Brokers we can't easily verify get penalized; brokers with rich public data get rewarded.
Live, typical, 30-day — three numbers, three meanings.
A broker's EUR/USD spread is not a single number. Pages on BrokerMap label which metric each value represents so you can tell a flickering live tick from a vendor-advertised average from a 30-day rollup.
The most recent hourly snapshot of the broker's actual offered spread. Ticks every few seconds on the spreads board to reflect the latest reading.
Vendor-published / advertised average spread on the broker's primary account type. Used as the per-broker anchor across the site.
Trailing 30-day window of hourly samples, rendered as the spread-history sparkline and inside the per-pair history chart on each broker profile.
When you see the same (broker, pair) show different values across surfaces, the metric labels tell you why: a live tick can diverge from typical by a fraction of a pip, and typical can sit above or below the 30-day mean depending on recent market behavior. If two numbers on the same metric disagree, that's a data bug — please flag it via the submit-a-tip flow on any broker profile.
How often we re-verify each thing.
| Data | Cadence | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Live spreads | Hourly snapshots | Manual + scraper |
| Spread history | Weekly aggregation | Snapshot rollups |
| Regulator filings | On regulator publication | Watcher cron + manual |
| Country availability | Monthly | Manual + broker page scraper |
| Payment methods | On change | Manual + broker page scraper |
| Composite Trust Score | Daily | Materialized view |
What the “Featured” tag means.
Some brokers carry a small Featured tag next to their name. Here's exactly what that is and what it isn't.
- An editorial selection by the BrokerMap team — brokers we've reviewed in depth and called out as solid choices for our SEA audience.
- Refreshed when our review queue moves. We re-evaluate at least once per quarter.
- Signaled inline with a
(?)tip on the leaderboard that links back to this section.
- Not paid. No broker can buy a Featured tag. See the pledge above.
- Not a ranking. For ranking, look at Trust Score — the weighted formula in this page's formula section.
- Not a recommendation. “Featured” means we've looked at it. Whether it's right for you depends on your country, payment method, and risk tolerance.
How we'll eventually make money.
None of these affect rankings. None involve money from brokers. Where sponsorships from adjacent financial categories exist, they're disclosed in full on the Sponsors page. We'd rather close the site than break that.
Audience build. Free newsletter as lead magnet.
Free tier scales. Paid tier piloted (~$15-25/mo).
Banks, exchanges, payment providers, regulators. Each disclosed by name on /sponsors. Never broker money. Never tied to scoring or ranking.
B2B tiers ($99-1k/mo) for fintechs and researchers.