Our method

This page explains how the ranking on this site is produced. Nothing on it is hand-placed: every position is calculated from facts we can point to, using the criteria and weights below. They are the same across all our sites, so a platform cannot be moved up by adjusting them for one page.

Criteria and weights

How a score is calculated

For each criterion, platforms are compared against each other rather than against an invented ideal: the best value in the column scores 1, the worst scores 0, the rest fall in between. Those values are multiplied by the weights above and divided by the total weight of the criteria we actually know for that platform. The result is shown as a score out of five.

What happens when data is missing

A platform with fewer than 3 known criteria is not given a position at all. It is listed separately as insufficient data. This matters: without that rule, a platform we simply know little about would sink to the bottom and appear to be the worst one, which would say more about our research than about the platform.

Where a value is unknown it shows as a dash rather than a guess, and the criterion is left out of that platform's score instead of being counted as zero.

Sources and dates

Every value in the ranking comes from a named source with the date we checked it. Values taken from independent reviews rather than from a platform's own pages are marked as such in our records and are re-checked before anything is published.

We earn a commission if you open an account through links on this site. That does not move anyone up the table: the weights above are fixed, and the calculation runs the same way regardless of which platform pays us.