How We Review: Methodology & Quantitative Scoring Explained

By Richard Berry
Updated September 7, 2026

When we include providers on the Good Money Guide, you can be sure that we have full faith in their products and services. In this guide, we explain how we review, test and compare each provider and how our ratings are scored.

Review Methodology

When we review a provider, we aim to answer these key questions using this template:

Overview: A summary verdict of what they do, who they do it for, and if they are any good. (Short and sweet, around 75 words, so that readers get an instant summary of our opinion and if a provider is right for them).

Review: A more in-depth review of a provider’s services and how they compare to competitors that covers:

- Pricing
- Market Access
- Apps & Platforms
- Customer Service
- Research & Added Value

Each section can be between 100 – 200 words, as this is what we feel most engages readers. However, for broader providers with lots of products, this can be more.

Ratings: For each of these categories, we will also provide a rating score from 1-5 relative to peers based on pricing, market access, apps & platforms, customer service, and research and analysis.

Pros & Cons: We will summarise 3-5 key benefits and disadvantages of using a brand in 3-5 words. We find this helps users quickly identify if a brand or product is suitable for them

Our methodology for reviewing investing, trading and currency accounts, where possible, includes:

Our own experiences testing the platforms with real money – we always try to open real accounts and deposit funds to test functionality
A comparison of the features that make them stand out compared to alternatives.
Interviews with the company CEOs and senior management
We also take into account the feedback provided from over 40,000 user reviews in our annual awards survey

In each review, we also try to include recent relevant stats, original insights and our predictions of what may happen in the future.

The key to our reviews is to provide information that can only be gathered by actually using the product or speaking directly to a firm.

Categories vary slightly depending on what type of provider we are reviewing. You can see the specific tabs for different products below:

Investing & Trading

Currency Transfers

Travel Money

Wealth Management

Investing & Trading

Currency Transfers

Travel Money

Wealth Management

As a rule, our star ratings are ranked from 1-5 based on the principle that:

⭐ A poor offering that we would not recommend
⭐⭐ A basic offering that has below-average features and pricing
⭐⭐⭐A fairly standard offering that is neither good nor bad
⭐⭐⭐⭐A good offering with added value and low costs
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐An excellent offering with excellent features and low costs

"Our expert reviews look at the elements of an account that are most important to investors and traders include how much it costs, what products and services are offered, and if they are any good. We also include the findings of our survey over 30,000 clients which is designed to give our readers some insight into brokers and platforms they may decide to use for trading and investing. "

Richard Berry Good Money Guide, Founder

How are brands included and ranked in our comparison tables?

We incorporate three factors into how providers are ranked in our comparison tables:

Customer reviews: these are weighted based on score and amount depending on the size of a provider
Expert review: our methodology of reviewing providers gives an overall score out of ten
Conversion rates: we work under the assumption that the more clients who go on to open an account, the more appropriate that provider is

Providers can also opt to be featured higher up the comparison tables, when this is the case we will mark them as a featured provider.