Methodology

How Pipcompass Check works

• We match what you paste against 12 official warning or blocking lists from 11 regulators and 4 public licence registers (16 lists from 14 regulators in total), last refreshed 2026-10-20. The full list, with links, is shown under every result.
• Exact domain match is the strong signal: the website you entered (or its registrable domain) appears on the list. A name match is shown separately and labelled as possibly a different company with a similar name.
• Clone and impersonation records are matched only on the impostor’s website, never on the name of the firm being impersonated, so a genuine firm is not shown as warned because someone copied it.
• Licence-register matches are labelled by how they matched: website listed on the register, licence number, exact name, or similar name (which may be a different company).
• Domain registration dates come from RDAP, the registries’ public lookup service, at the time of the check. Lookalike notes compare the domain with the official websites of the brokers we track (character swaps, typos and added words such as “-pro” or “login-”).
• We publish facts with their source and date, using fixed wording. We never label a firm safe, legitimate or a scam. Not being on a list does not mean a firm is safe: many regulators’ lists are not in our data yet.
• Commercial relationships never change check results. Brokers that pay us commission are checked against the same lists with the same code, and their entries are shown in full.
• Also mentioned. When a record lists several websites, the ones matching the firm it names are its sites; other domains in the record (for example an e-mail address at another firm) are shown separately as “also mentioned in a warning about another firm” and never counted as a listing.
• Shared platforms (site builders, webmail, social and messaging apps, document-signing services, URL shorteners) host many unrelated sites, so we match only the exact address on them and publish no page for the platform itself. E-mail addresses are never treated as websites.
• A domain that regulator records list among a tracked broker’s own sites is shown as associated with that broker, not as a lookalike. Lookalike notes require the brand to be contained in the domain or to be a character-swap of it; a one-character difference is worded as “similar to”.
• Where a listed entity looks like a private individual, we withhold the name on our pages; the regulator’s record is linked.
• Brazil: the CVM’s declaratory acts (Atos Declaratórios) suspending irregular securities intermediation come from the CVM open-data portal (dados.cvm.gov.br), made available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Firms only; individuals and acts the CVM later withdrew are left out.
• We do not use the UK FCA warning list: its terms do not allow reuse in a data feed without written permission.
• Regulators’ lists can contain errors. Inclusion is the regulator’s statement. To correct a record, contact the regulator that published it; to report an error in how we show it, use the contact page.

Data collection

• Every value comes from the broker’s own website, legal documents or help centre, or a regulator’s public register. Each one stores its source URL and the date we checked it.
• If we can’t find a value in two attempts, we record it as unknown. We don’t fill gaps from review sites, memory or estimates.
• Spreads and commissions are the broker’s advertised “from” figures. We haven’t measured live spreads yet; those cells say “Not yet tested”.
• We don’t publish user reviews, star ratings or trader counts.

Score weights

A category without data is left out and the remaining weights are rescaled to 100. If less than 90% of the total weight has data, the score is marked provisional and the broker is ranked after every fully scored broker. A missing value never counts as zero and never counts in the broker’s favour.

Scoring rules

Regulator tiers

Tiering is our editorial judgement of retail protections. A broker group’s tier is its strongest entity, which is not necessarily the entity that will onboard you.

Strengths and drawbacks

The lists on each broker page are produced by fixed rules: for example, a Tier 1 licence, a minimum deposit of $50 or less, raw commission of $2.50 per side or less, four or more platforms, or confirmed copy trading. Drawbacks include offshore-only licensing, minimum deposits of $200 or more, raw commission of $3.50 per side or more, no MetaTrader, no published restricted-country list, and entities without a licence number.

Comparison pages

We generate a page for every pair of brokers. Only pairs among the 8 top-scored brokers and the brokers we have commercial agreements with, where both have at least 7 of 12 comparable fields verified, are open to search engines (45 pairs). Other pairs are still available to readers but marked noindex. The “key differences” list is computed from fields both brokers publish.

Country pages

A broker appears on a country page unless its own published restricted-country list names that country. Most lists are partial, so the table states whether a broker’s list is full, partial or missing.

Corrections

If a value is wrong or out of date, tell us through the contact page with the source and we’ll re-check it. Brokers can’t pay to change data, ranking or check results.