About HNL Growth
We built HNL Growth to help traders cut through noisy marketing and compare two very different products with clear eyes: prop firm evaluations and live forex/CFD broker accounts. We translate dense rulebooks, fee schedules, and regulatory details into plain English — so you know what to check before paying for a challenge or funding a live account.
How We Help You Choose With Confidence
When you look at a prop firm, your biggest risks usually hide in the rulebook — trailing drawdowns, daily loss calculations, consistency caps, and payout restrictions. When you look at a forex or CFD broker, what matters most is which legal entity actually holds your deposit, which regulator oversees it, and what you'll really pay in spreads, commissions, and swap fees. Because these are two completely different services, we review them with separate methodologies and never mix them in the same ranking.
Every profile starts with primary sources: official provider rulebooks, published fee schedules, regulator registers where applicable, and clearly labeled community feedback such as Trustpilot. When a firm shares payout totals or processing times, we label those figures clearly as provider-reported rather than independently audited — and unless a review explicitly documents a dated real-account test, we never pretend to have run one. Firms update their terms often, so when rules shift, we revise our profiles. Spot something that changed overnight? Drop us a note and we'll check and update it right away.
To keep our calculators and research free for everyone, some links on this site are affiliate links that may earn us a commission if you sign up. Those partnerships never soften our coverage of restrictive rules or hidden costs — and no provider can ever pay for a higher rating.
Who Writes & Reviews Our Research
Transparency starts with knowing who is behind the work. We maintain a public authors and reviewers directory so readers can see which profiles belong to our editorial team and which review pages carry a named reviewer on-site.
We keep this straightforward too: we never invent fictional personas or quietly rewrite bylines across the site. A personal profile only appears where that contributor's identity is genuinely public on HNL Growth and verifiable from our project records.
Why We Built HNL Growth
If you've spent any time shopping for a prop firm challenge or a broker, you know how exhausting the marketing can be. Every banner promises tight spreads, generous profit splits, and effortless payouts. Meanwhile, the rules that actually make or break your account — whether drawdown trails your unrealized equity, whether holding a trade through a news release voids your profits, or which offshore entity your broker account is routed to — are tucked away on page 14 of a PDF or scattered across dozens of FAQ articles.
Most comparison sites don't make it any easier. Too often, the "number one" pick is simply whichever company offered the largest affiliate commission that month.
We built HNL Growth to be the resource we wished we had as traders: every provider scored on the same public formula, tricky rules translated into plain English, side-by-side comparison tools, and an honest explanation of how the site makes money. No hype, no paid rankings — just clear research you can verify for yourself.
How We Score Prop Firms
Every prop firm is evaluated using the exact same weighted scorecard — partners and non-partners alike. For live brokerages, we use our separate seven-criteria broker methodology.
Deep Rulebook Research
We dig through each firm’s official terms & conditions, FAQ articles, pricing tables, public payout disclosures, and Trustpilot history — cross-checking where marketing claims and fine-print rules disagree.
Consistent Weighted Scoring
Challenge Fairness (30%), Payout Reliability (25%), Pricing & Value (20%), Community Trust (15%), and Support & Platform (10%). Every firm is measured by the same yardstick.
Continuous Rule Tracking
Prop firms tweak drawdown limits, spreads, and payout rules frequently. Whenever a provider announces changes, we update the affected profile and note what shifted. Catch a change before we do? Email us and we’ll fix it.
How We Cover Forex & CFD Brokers
Alongside prop firms, we review regulated forex and CFD brokers (starting with Vantage Markets). Because a live broker holds your real trading capital rather than selling a simulated challenge, we score brokers on a dedicated 7-criteria system — regulation & legal entity safety, fees & spreads, trading platforms, deposits & withdrawals, execution conditions, customer support, and transparency — cross-checked against official financial regulator registers.
We are always upfront about the boundaries of our testing: where a review is built from regulatory records, fee schedules, and published account terms rather than a funded live-account test, we state that clearly so you know what our findings are based on.
How We Keep HNL Growth Free
Here is the straight answer: HNL Growth is reader-supported through affiliate links. If you click through one of our links and purchase a challenge or open a broker account, that provider may pay us a referral commission. It never adds a cent to what you pay — in fact, the promo codes we track often lower your checkout price compared with going direct.
Two non-negotiable rules keep our reviews honest:
- Commissions never touch our scores. Our scoring formula is fixed and public. A firm that pays us nothing can outrank an affiliate partner — and several do.
- We call out the deal-breakers. Every single review includes the downsides, the restrictive rules, and who the provider is not a good fit for.
You can read the full details anytime in our affiliate disclosure.
Work With Us
Run a prop firm or brokerage that isn't listed yet — or spotted a rule update we should reflect on your profile? Reach out anytime. Getting listed and keeping your factual data accurate is free, and commercial partnerships never change a review score.
Say Hello or Report an Update
Spotted a rule change, have a question about how we score firms, or want to suggest a provider for our next review? Send us a message — we usually reply within one to two business days.
Ready to Find Your Best Trading Fit?
Compare 20 detailed profiles side by side and check the rules that matter before you commit.
Compare Side by Side