Transparency

Disclosure

FirmFax only works if you can check the ranking. This page states exactly how the site makes money, which links carry a commission, and what that money does and does not influence.

Last updated 2026-09-26

firms listed

pay us a commission

pay us nothing

How FirmFax makes money

FirmFax earns from 25 of the 71 firms on this site, and it happens two ways. With 24 of them we hold a commission link: a reader follows it, later buys an evaluation, and the firm pays us a share of that purchase. With one more there is no link at all, only our own discount code, and the credit comes from that code being typed at checkout. Both are commission and both are counted here. 8 of these arrangements pay on renewals as well as the first sale. The remaining 46 firms pay us nothing, and are listed on exactly the same terms.

That is the whole of the revenue. No firm pays to be listed, to be covered, to be ranked, to be featured in a guide, or to have a status note removed. We take no payment for coverage of any kind, and no firm sees a page before it publishes.

Which links carry a commission

A commission-bearing link goes to /go/{firm}/ and carries rel="sponsored nofollow". A firm we have no arrangement with links straight to its own website with rel="nofollow" and earns us nothing. Buttons for partner firms also read "Deal link" or "Open offer" where a non-partner reads "Visit firm", so the difference is visible before you click, not only in the status bar.

Two cases are easy to miss, so they are stated here. Citation links can be commercial: when a source we cite on the methodology page or a firm page sits on a partner firm’s own domain, that citation is routed through the same tracked redirect. And the "Live deals" strip that runs site-wide lists only firms we have a link with — it is an advertising rail, not a ranking, and it is ordered by whether a deal exists before it is ordered by score.

Data served to other software

FirmFax publishes this dataset through a machine interface as well as through this website. An assistant or other software can request firm records directly and present them inside a product that is not this one. The records are the same records: the same 71 firms, the same scores, the same dated sources.

Responses from that interface can carry commission-bearing links, on the same terms as the links here. The 25 firms that pay us are the same 25, the arrangement is the same arrangement, and no firm pays for its record to be served or for its link to be included in a response. Every commission-bearing link in a response carries this sentence with it, in the same record: “FirmFax may earn a commission if you sign up through this link. Ranking and scoring cannot read commercial terms: the scoring model has no access to the affiliate data.” A link that arrives without it is not a shape this interface can produce.

What that cannot do is put the disclosure in front of you. A product that receives our data decides how to render it, and it may show that statement, shorten it, or omit it entirely. That is a property of publishing to machines rather than to readers: this page is a surface we control and a third-party interface is not. Where our data reaches you inside another product, this page is the statement of record.

What commission does not touch

Scores are computed from firm data alone. The scoring code takes no affiliate input of any kind: not whether a firm pays us, not what it pays, not how long the cookie lasts. The same is true of the penalties and the status labels. Ranked tables order on the score or on a published figure such as price — never on whether a firm pays us. The one place partnership does decide what appears is the "Live deals" strip described above, which is why it is labelled as deals rather than as a ranking.

A firm cannot buy a higher score, a better placement, or the removal of a red flag, and paying us more does not soften how its rules are described. If any of that ever changes, this page changes first.

The same rule governs corrections. A firm that pays us a commission and one that pays us nothing get identical treatment when either tells us we have its rules wrong: the claim is checked against that firm’s own published pages, the outcome is published on the corrections log whichever way it goes, and every entry there is marked with whether we hold a commercial arrangement with the firm involved.

A firm can also tell us something we cannot find on any page it publishes. That claim is recorded with the firm named and the date it was made, shown as the firm’s own statement rather than a published term, and it never reaches the score. Where it conflicts with the firm’s own live pages, both are shown and neither is presented as the winner. In September 2026 one such document reached us from a partnerships contact, in the same message that asked us to join that firm’s commission program. It is recorded exactly as it would have been had the program never been mentioned, and if we ever do take that program, the count of firms that pay us at the top of this page changes on its own.

Gifts and anything else of value

1 firm has given FirmFax something of value that is not a commission. Every instance is listed below with the date it was received and whether the firm offered it or we asked. None of it is payment for coverage, none of it was conditional on anything, and none of it changes a score, a ranking, a status label or how a rule is described. It is listed anyway, because the point of a disclosure is that the reader decides what to make of it rather than us deciding for them.

Finotive Funding, 2026-09-07: A funded 25K evaluation account, provided on affiliate approval so the product can be described from use rather than from its marketing pages. Offered by the firm; we did not ask.

Entries here are never removed. A benefit that has ended is still a benefit that was held while pages were being written, so it stays on the record with its end date rather than disappearing.

Discount codes and the FAX code

FAX is our own code and it is not universal: it is named at the 10 firms that hold it, and it is what we print there even when that firm also advertises a public code of its own. At those firms the two are worth the same discount and ours is the one that credits us, which is how the site is paid for. Everywhere else there is no code of ours to offer, so what you see is the firm’s own published code, or no code at all where the firm publishes none. Where a discount is already applied at checkout and needs no code, we say so rather than implying a code earned it.

Discount amounts are read from official promo pages, offer marketplaces and coupon monitors, and each one carries the source it came from and the date it was read. Promotions move quickly, so treat a dated figure as a dated figure and confirm the price at checkout.

What the data is, and is not

Firm records are compiled from public sources and re-checked in batches rather than on a fixed schedule. Each firm page shows its own last-reviewed date, its cited sources, and a confidence tag, verified or partial. Partial means some claims are still open. What verified requires, and how many firms currently hold it, is set out in the methodology. Read the date on the page rather than assuming today.

Source links are re-tested for reachability regularly, which confirms a page still answers, not that its contents still say what we recorded.

Not financial advice

Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Prop-firm evaluations carry real cost and real risk, and a high score does not guarantee a payout or that you will pass.

Rules change between account types and over time. Verify current terms on the firm’s official pages before you pay for anything.

The badge a firm can put on its own site

A firm that FirmFax can keep current is eligible to embed its FirmFax record. The badge is an image served from firmfax.com and drawn when it loads, so what it shows is the grade on record that day rather than the grade on the day it was pasted.

Four things a firm should know before embedding it, because none of them is reversible by us:

It is offered to every eligible firm, whatever the grade. A firm graded F can embed it on the same terms as a firm graded A. If only the highest grades were offered one, the badge would mean that we like a firm rather than that we grade it. Some firms are not eligible today for a different reason, named below, that has nothing to do with the grade.
It shows today’s grade, including a fall. There is no opt-out from a grade that drops and no stored copy of a better one. A firm that slips sees the badge on its own site change to say so.
Nothing is given in return. The scoring model cannot read who embeds the badge and never will. If embedding ever moved a grade, the badge would be withdrawn rather than disclosed.
It is only offered to a firm FirmFax can currently keep current. Two things stop that: a firm FirmFax records as wound down, and a firm whose cited pages FirmFax’s own tools can no longer read. Both are named below. 42 of 71 firms clear this today.

A firm FirmFax records as wound down is excluded. A badge is a claim that a record is current, and a firm no longer selling anything has no current terms for the badge to show. The record updates when a firm is selling again and FirmFax can see it on the firm’s own storefront, the same evidence a resumption needs as a closure did. The corrections page is where to point FirmFax at what to look at, not a request that changes the record on its own.

A firm whose cited pages FirmFax cannot currently read in full is excluded, because a record built from pages FirmFax cannot re-read could go stale with nobody able to tell. The pages in question are the ones already cited on that firm’s record, already public to any visitor. 29 of the 71 firms we track are excluded on this test today, and a firm can be excluded for more than one reason. 12 have a cited page that blocks FirmFax’s own tools; allowing its fetcher to read those pages is the firm’s part of clearing it. 12 have a cited page FirmFax has not yet read, or reads too little of to compare, and that part is ours. 9 have a cited page that no longer loads, and replacing it is ours. 2 have a cited page that returns an error to FirmFax’s fetcher.

Neither test reads a firm’s grade or its commercial relationship with FirmFax. A firm with no published letter, because its own pages do not support one, clears this test on the same terms as a firm graded top of its class: its record is still current and still readable, which is the only thing checked. Excluding firms with no letter would mean only a good number ever earned a badge, and the badge would come to mean approval rather than what it measures. Whether a firm has ever paid FirmFax a commission has no path into this check at all, the same wall the scoring model is built behind and states at firmfax.com/methodology/.

7 of the 71 firms we track carry no letter, because what we have recorded from their own pages does not yet support one, or because they have nothing on sale. Their badge says “Not graded” at the same size the letter would have been, with the reason beneath it, and it shows no score or range. It is not an error state and it is offered on the same terms.

Embed code

<a href="https://firmfax.com/firms/your-firm/">
  <img src="https://firmfax.com/badge/your-firm.svg"
       alt="FirmFax record for Your Firm, current on firmfax.com"
       width="360" height="112">
</a>

Replace your-firm with the last part of the firm’s address on this site, and Your Firm with its name. The alt text names the badge and points at the source; it deliberately states no grade, because a grade written into a firm’s own page would still say the old thing after the image had changed.

Think something on this site is wrong? The corrections page says what we act on and logs every claim we receive, accepted or not. The scoring rules themselves are written out in the published methodology. Every dated discount and its source is on the discount codes page, and the full dataset is in the comparison tracker.