top5brokers is an online broker comparison platform. We review top-tier regulated well-established players in the financial industry focusing on brokers. We cover more than 100 financial service providers globally, by checking each of them through over 500 data points.

Table of contents

2. Our values

3. Methodology

4. Weight of areas in the methodology

5. About our broker analysts

6. FAQ

Our values

Our mission is to help people invest, focusing on finding the broker that meets their needs best.

We are independent which means that we are operating with total integrity. Brokers or other financial service providers do not influence our scoring by paying or pressuring us.
Our website reviews brands based on the same methodology and presents unbiased recommendations for our users.
We work transparently to ensure that our scores and recommendations are solely the result of our analysts’ work and are independent of our agreements with the brands on our website.
Our in-depth analysis builds on real information: we open a live account and test all products hands-on.

Methodology

Our methodology ensures that we can review all brokers by checking them through the same data points and aspects making it possible to compare them independently. Our data points come from hands-on experience: we opened an account and tested all providers with our real money.

Area	Why is it essential for the client?	Number of collected data points
Fees	The cost of trading and investing is the most important aspect when it comes to choosing a broker. We gather all fees related to the service: trading fees, non-trading fees, deposit, and withdrawal-related fees, and also inactivity charges. Our trading fee section covers all asset types available for the given provider.	289
Safety	top5brokers maps out the brokers' legal background, and checks if they are overseen by a trusted regulator and if they offer investor protection. We only feature top-tier regulated brokers on the website. This score signals what additional layer there is ensuring the safety of the provider.	33
Deposit and withdrawal	We make sure you are aware of the costs, the different methods, and the time it takes to deposit and withdraw your money at the broker.	11
Trading platforms	We test each trading platform, focusing on the general user experience and specific features like placing orders, authentication options, and customizability.	43
Account opening	We open real accounts with brokers and take a hard look at how easy the account opening process is, what account types are available, and whether a minimum deposit is required. We also map and list out the required documentation necessary.	15
Markets and products	Overall broker scores are also based on the number of markets they give you access to, and the products they offer. A broker that has more product types will get a higher score than a broker that only offers CFDs, for example.	62
Customer Service	Each customer support channel is tested personally through 8 meaningful interactions with their customer support staff, trying all their available channels at different times, be it live chat, email, or phone.	12
Customer Support	Brokers with useful, information-packed education tools earn higher ratings. These tools may include webinars, videos, podcasts, articles, you name it.	6
Research	Higher brokerage costs can be justified by a range of in-depth, unique, and useful research tools. These allow you to get information on market sentiment, trends, tickers, and companies. We look at all of the research tools the broker provides.	9
+1 General information	It covers areas like country of origin, which is not included in the scoring.	17

Our data-driven methodology is based on industry standards and is always evolving based on customer insights and feedback. Some sub-scores might become more important than before (like safety during a time of distrust in the market), therefore we execute small changes in the weights when it is necessary. Our users contribute to the methodology via multiple channels, we made 75 surveys and 45 user interviews last year.

About our broker analysts

Our 10-member broker analyst team covers and rates broker services provided on the market. Our experts come from a financial background and have various experiences in the fields of trading, investing, brokerage, and banking.

It takes our team 7-10 days to research, write and double-check each of the reviews you see on top5brokers using approximately 90 working hours per broker to achieve the quality output of every single review. In order to keep the reviews and our tools completely up to date, the whole portfolio is regularly updated multiple times a year.

FAQ

Are the brokers on your website safe?

We only feature brokers that have at least one top-tier regulator as a financial authority. We think this is one of the most important aspects of safety. Nevertheless, there are other factors that we check, like the legal background, investment protection services, and financial health of a given company - this will give you even more detailed information on their safety.

Do you treat brokers that pay differently?

No, and we never will. We feature more than 100 brokers on our website and only half of them are contracted partners. Our goal is to build a user-first product and be 100% transparent - the scores on our website strictly come from the methodology discussed above.

How many people are working on this?

Our team of 10 experts is working on our reviews on a daily basis.

How often do you refresh the data?

We update our content throughout the year continuously. We keep tabs on all of the brokers during the year, so we can incorporate any changes as soon as possible. If needed, we hold annual update work sessions to focus on improving our content.