How we test
Our mission at The Pip Scout is to provide data-driven, unbiased results of online forex brokers and deliver accurate, in-depth guides covering the forex market to help traders pick an online forex broker they can trust. We spread this information trough blogposts and our mailinglist but mainly trough our annual broker awards.
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As the forex world evolves, so do we; our proprietary testing methodologies and algorithms are constantly being refined, and we fact-check and audit data for our guides, reviews, and articles dynamically to ensure that our readers are getting the best, most up-to-date information. Our team collects data, tests products, and conducts research on an ongoing basis. Your trust in us, as well as the trust we have earned from the industry as a whole, is of the utmost importance to our mission and our charter as a Certified B Corporation.
The Pip Scout Annual Awards:
A Short History
The Pip Scout was created in 2016 with a simple purpose in mind: to become the world’s leading provider of in-depth, unbiased reviews of online forex brokers. In April of 2017, The Pip Scout published its first Annual Review.
TPS Annual Review
Our editorial team produced the ThePipScout Annual Review of the top forex brokers in the industry for six years in a row. Each year, we gathered thousands of data points, crafted tens of thousands of thousands of words of research, and delivered dozens of awards to the best online forex brokers. We'd love for you to learn more about our story.
TPS Awards
In 2023, we announced the next stage in the evolution of the ThePipScout Annual Review: The TPS Annual Awards.
Our Editorial Principles
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If we love a service or company, we’ll tell you – no matter what.
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If we think a company or service has room to improve (or should be avoided altogether), we’ll let you know – no matter what.
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If we’ve determined that using a broker or service provider puts your money at risk, we’ll say so – no matter what.
Here are a few things that we’ll never do to make money:
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We never change our opinion of a product or service, or modify our evaluation process to gain or preserve an affiliate partnership.
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We never highlight (or deliberately conceal) a specific product or service to gain or maintain an affiliate relationship.
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We never alter our proprietary data-driven algorithms (like Trust Score) to favor an affiliate partner.
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We never share marketing revenue information or advertising campaign data with our researchers or our editorial team.
We are also determined to maintaining quality and will never use AI to create content for our website or anything else.
Testing
Methodology
Broker evaluations at The Pip Scout are based on our collected quantitative data as well as the qualitative observations and qualified opinions of our expert researchers.
Our evaluation process begins with a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the broker’s products and services. We examine any and all aspects of the broker’s offering that may be of interest to the broker’s customers. This includes a deep dive into all websites operated by the broker, all available content across a variety of mediums, and rigorous testing of the broker’s proprietary tools and/or software.
After we’ve completed our testing of the broker’s products, services, and tools (collecting and validating thousands of data points in the process), our expert researchers and writers begin the process of crafting opinion scores. Opinion scores are for those aspects of broker reviews that simply aren’t easily quantifiable (such as the relative complexity of a new mobile trading platform designed for beginner traders, for example).
With our quantitative and qualitative examinations of a broker’s product offerings complete, we turn our attention towards the broker’s regulatory status; this research helps us determine whether you should trust the broker to keep your money safe.
Testing Devices
All testing is conducted on modern devices that run the most up-to-date operating systems available. Our Desktop PCs run Windows 11, and we use MacBook Pro laptops running macOS 12.5 for trading on the go. For mobile testing, we use the Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra devices running Android OS 12.
All testing on mobile devices is conducted via an 802.11n wireless WiFi connection; 4G connections are used when WiFi is not available. All websites and web-based platforms are tested using the latest version of the Google Chrome browser.