The tier score
Every listed firm carries two separate numbers. The quality baseline is the editorial assessment: payout-tracker behaviour, verified trust scores, review volume, and whether the firm's own help centre matches what aggregators claim about it. The sentiment score is what traders are actually saying this week across X, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Trustpilot and the firms' own community channels.
The displayed tier score blends them: the quality baseline anchors the number, and sentiment nudges it within a bounded range. A neutral week leaves a firm exactly where its fundamentals put it. A genuinely viral week — good or bad — moves it, but never far enough to turn a well-run firm into a failing one on chatter alone. Sentiment is never mapped directly onto the score.
Tier letters follow the score: the S–D ladder is thresholded, so a firm changes tier only when its score crosses a boundary — there is no hand-placement.
Update cadence
Scores re-run nightly; the board, firm pages, hubs and comparison pages re-render with that run. Deal codes are re-verified every morning, and the Daily Brief publishes each day with the moves, deltas and drama the run surfaced.
Paid placement: the one-tier cap
A firm can buy a placement boost. It lifts the firm by at most one tier above its earned rating — it cannot reach the top tier from anywhere, and it cannot stack. The cap is enforced in software, not by policy, so it cannot quietly grow. When disclosure mode is on, a boosted firm's profile says so and shows the base rating.
A boost cannot change the underlying assessment: payout speed, split, drawdown rules, trust score and review sentiment are all reported as observed. It cannot suppress drama coverage, and it cannot remove a warning. The full mechanism is published in how paid placement works on FirmTiers.
What we don't score
Marketing spend, influencer volume, or how loud a firm is. A firm with a large promotional footprint and unresolved payout complaints scores below a quiet firm that pays on time. Ratings shown from third parties (PropFirmMatch) are attributed as theirs — we never blend them into our own number.
Sources and receipts
Every drama story links its original post; every deal code carries its verification sweep; challenge parameters are checked against each firm's help centre. Corrections are handled per the editorial & corrections policy.