Methodology
Where our facts come from
Fees, leverage limits, margin rules, and program terms are taken from each platform's official documentation and verified on the date shown on the page. On-chain metrics (volume, open interest) come from public analytics sources, cited inline. When we cannot verify a claim, we say so rather than repeating it.
How our live data works
Pages with live numbers (the tools, market pages, and comparison tables) fetch them in your browser, directly from each venue's official public API — never from a third-party aggregator, and never through our servers. We only display a live figure after pinning down what it means from official sources: the period a funding rate covers, the units a fee tier is quoted in, which market an ID refers to. Where a venue's documentation doesn't define something, we exclude the figure and say why in place, rather than guessing. Venue-reported numbers (like vault APRs) are labeled as the venue's own, and shown as-is — including when they're negative. A scheduled automated check re-verifies every one of these API contracts daily, so if a venue changes its API, we find out the same day; if a fetch fails in your browser, the page shows the failure instead of a substitute number.
Hands-on: what "our own account" means
When a page shows a screenshot from "our own account," it is exactly that — a real, funded account we set up and used on the live platform, not a marketing image or a demo. We're deliberate about how far that evidence stretches. Setting up and navigating an account lets us describe the interface first-hand; it does not, by itself, let us claim "we traded" a venue. We only say we traded somewhere when a real position or trading volume is actually visible in our own screenshots — which today is the case for Hyperliquid (the volume run behind our referral) and dYdX (a small live position), and not yet a claim we make for the venues where we've set up and deposited but not executed a trade. Where a screenshot shows numbers, they were live on the capture date and move constantly. We'd rather show a small, honest, slightly-in-the-red account than a staged winning one.
What we weigh in reviews
- Security track record — audits, incidents, and how the team handled them.
- Real trading costs — taker/maker fees, funding, spreads, and gas.
- Liquidity — depth and volume, not marketing claims.
- Transparency — open-source components, proof of reserves, documentation quality.
- Usability — onboarding, deposits/withdrawals, platform stability.
Referral links
Some links are referral links, disclosed in the footer of every page. Ratings are determined before monetization is considered, and pages about platforms with no referral program follow the same template as pages about platforms with one.
Corrections
Found an error? Contact us via the imprint and we will review and correct the page, with the change date noted.