How we research, score and stay current

Every ranking, radar and verdict on this site reduces to the same process: collect verifiable data, weight it by what matters to long-term retail investors, date it, and re-verify it on a schedule.

Data sources

Broker profiles are built from provider official pages — pricing schedules, regulator registers (FCA, CySEC, BaFin, CMVM and other EU/UK authorities), legal entity disclosures and investor-protection documentation. Where a value cannot be confirmed against a primary source, it is either omitted or explicitly marked as reported by secondary sources in our fee change log.

The four score dimensions

Each broker carries a 0–5 editorial score across four dimensions, blended into an overall rating:

Trust — regulator tier of the contracting entity, compensation scheme coverage, custody structure and disclosure quality.
Product range — real stocks, real ETFs, fractional shares, bonds, funds, options, futures, CFDs/forex routes and market coverage.
Costs — order commissions, FX conversion, custody, inactivity and funding friction, weighted toward a €200–€2,000 monthly ETF saver.
Platform — usability, order types, tax reporting quality and account-opening friction.

Scores are editorial judgements applied consistently across the catalog — not user votes, and never influenced by commercial relationships (see below).

Freshness & dating

Every review and guide carries a last-updated date. Fee-sensitive claims are re-verified on a monthly routine; material changes are recorded in the public change log with their source and effective date before reviews are updated. Rankings that depend on stale data are refreshed or annotated rather than left silent.

Independence policy

Some provider links may earn BrokerSearcher a commission. That relationship is never an input to scores, rankings or verdicts: brokers without commercial programs are scored on identical criteria, and negative findings are published regardless of relationship status. Provider terms remain the final source — always verify live pricing before investing.

The people behind it

Reviews are written and fact-checked by our named editorial team — see each analyst's profile and focus areas on the About page. Nothing on this site is personal investment advice.