Payout Transparency Index 2026

Why this index exists

Prop firm comparison tables overwhelmingly rank on profit split, price and maximum allocation. None of those three tells you whether the firm will send money when you ask for it, and that is the only variable that determines whether a funded account is worth anything at all. The 2024 payout freeze at a major forex firm was invisible on every comparison table in the industry right up until it happened.

The Payout Transparency Index is our attempt to score the thing that actually matters, using inputs anyone can verify independently. It is deliberately unflattering to new firms and deliberately unimpressed by high profit splits. A firm advertising a 95% split with no published payout history scores below a firm advertising 80% with a decade of documented withdrawals, because that is the correct ordering of risk.

Across the 22 firms we track, the mean transparency score is 80/100. 13 firms score 80 or above; 2 score below 70.

The five scoring components

Each component is scored 0–100 and combined at the weights above. We publish the resulting number rather than a letter grade so that changes over time are legible: a firm dropping from 82 to 74 is a signal, and a grade band would have hidden it.

• Published payout evidence (35%) — does the firm publish cumulative payout totals, dated batches or verifiable certificates, with a denominator rather than a marketing headline?
• Cadence reliability (20%) — do withdrawals clear inside the stated window, consistently, including at larger sizes?
• Complaint outcomes (20%) — the ratio of unresolved to resolved cases in our public payout-complaint register, weighted by severity and recency.
• Rule stability (15%) — how often terms affecting live funded accounts have changed in the last twelve months. Retroactive changes are penalised heavily.
• Operating history (10%) — years of continuous operation without a payout interruption. Surviving a volatility event counts for more than calendar age.

Full ranking

How to read the bands

• 90–100 — Multi-year documented payout history with published totals. Suitable for your largest allocation.
• 80–89 — Strong evidence, shorter history or a thinner public trail. Fine for a primary account with regular withdrawals.
• 70–79 — Payouts are happening and verifiable, but the record is young or the evidence is community-sourced rather than published by the firm. Secondary account territory.
• 60–69 — Either a very young firm or one carrying a historical payout interruption. Small size, frequent withdrawals, never your main balance.
• Below 60 — Material unresolved evidence problems. We do not recommend holding unpaid profit here.

What the data shows in 2026

The spread is wide. The top of the table clears 90 on the strength of published cumulative payout totals — a disclosure practice that remains the exception rather than the norm. The bottom of the table is populated almost entirely by firms founded in 2023 and 2024, where the constraint is available evidence rather than observed misbehaviour.

The clearest structural finding is that price and transparency are barely correlated. Several of the cheapest evaluations we track sit in the 70s, while some mid-priced firms sit in the 60s. Traders who choose on entry price alone are not systematically buying more risk — but traders who choose on profit split alone often are, because the highest advertised splits cluster among the youngest firms.

The second finding concerns cadence marketing. Firms advertising the fastest payouts score, on average, slightly below the mean on evidence, because speed is the standard differentiator for new entrants who cannot compete on history. Fast and proven is available; fast and cheap and proven usually is not.

Methodology limits, stated plainly

• We score published and community-verifiable evidence. A firm paying reliably but publishing nothing will score lower than its behaviour deserves.
• Complaint data comes from our own register plus public forums, so it is skewed toward firms with larger, more vocal communities.
• We do not audit financial statements — no retail prop firm publishes them, and none is required to.
• Scores are point-in-time. A firm can go from 90 to a payout freeze faster than any monthly index can capture.
• Affiliate relationships exist across most firms listed and have no input into the score. The scoring components are published above precisely so the output can be checked against them.