Advertiser Disclosure

Plain English: how we make money, why it doesn’t drive the broker rankings, and what to do if you spot a conflict.

At a glance. Operating company: Compare Forex Brokers Pty Ltd. AFS Authorised Representative No. 001274082 (under Bardin Capital Pty Ltd, AFSL 247858). Founded 2014.

The short version

CompareForexBrokers earns money two ways. Most of our revenue comes from affiliate commissions paid by brokers when readers open and fund a trading account through a referral link on this site. A smaller portion comes from a handful of direct partnerships where we provide editorial content to brokers’ own learning hubs, with the work clearly disclosed at point of publication.

Neither revenue stream affects the broker rankings on this site. The rankings come from the methodology, which scores each broker on 100+ data points across 8 weighted criteria. We’ve published the same methodology since 2018. We don’t change the weights to favour partners.

If you’ve ever wondered “is this site just an affiliate funnel?”, the answer is no, but you don’t have to take our word for it. The next sections lay out exactly how the affiliate model works on this site and where we’ve drawn the firewall between commercial and editorial.

How affiliate income works

Most brokers in our shortlist run an affiliate programme. When a reader clicks a referral link on a review page or comparison table on this site, opens a trading account, deposits funds and trades, the broker pays us a commission. The commission structure varies by broker. The most common model is a one-off cost-per-acquisition (CPA) payment of a few hundred dollars. Some brokers run a revenue share where we receive a small percentage of the spread or commission they earn from the referred client over time.

What this means in practice:

• You don’t pay extra for clicking a referral link. The commission comes from the broker’s own marketing budget, not from your account.
• The trading conditions you receive are the same as if you’d opened the account directly with the broker. No “premium link” advantage. No “discount link” disadvantage.
• We disclose the commercial relationship. Every review with an active affiliate link carries this disclosure or a link to it.

How we keep affiliates out of the rankings

Three structural rules separate the commercial side from the editorial side:

Rule 1: The methodology weights are fixed. The 8 weighted criteria (trading costs 25%, trust 20%, trading experience 15%, platforms 15%, customer service 10%, range of markets 5%, education 5%, funding 5%) have been in place since 2018. They are published on the methodology page. We don’t change them mid-year.

Rule 2: The data inputs come from our own testing. Spreads come from IceFX SpreadMonitor logs. Execution comes from our MT4 expert advisors. AFSL standing comes from ASIC Connect. None of those data points are supplied by the broker. A broker cannot raise their score by submitting friendlier numbers.

Rule 3: Affiliate-paying brokers and non-affiliate brokers are scored on the same model. Several brokers on the shortlist do not run affiliate programmes (Interactive Brokers, for example, has historically run a much smaller programme than the OTC CFD brokers on this site). They are tested, scored and ranked using the same model. Some non-affiliate brokers rank in our top tier. Some affiliate-paying brokers rank toward the bottom of the shortlist.

If you sort the shortlist by affiliate revenue, you don’t get the same order as the published rankings. That’s the point.

What we will and won’t do for a broker

Things we will do for any broker on the shortlist:

• Test their platform and pricing through a live AUD account, regardless of whether they pay us anything
• Update the published spread and execution numbers as part of our regular re-test cycle
• Speak to their compliance and product teams to understand upcoming changes
• Cross-check claims they make in their PDS or marketing material against our test results

Things we will not do:

• Move a broker up the rankings in exchange for affiliate revenue
• Add or remove brokers from the shortlist based on payment
• Publish content the broker has written without disclosing it as sponsored
• Quote a spread from the broker’s marketing copy as if it were our own measurement
• Take down a critical line in a review because the broker objects to it (we may correct factual errors; we do not edit out fair critique)

Sponsored content and direct partnerships

A small portion of our revenue comes from direct content partnerships, where a broker commissions an educational article or guide that we write for their learning hub. These are clearly labelled as commissioned work at the point of publication on the partner’s site, and the work is firewalled from the editorial reviews on this site.

If a broker partner runs a sponsored campaign on CompareForexBrokers.com.au itself (a banner, a sponsored tile, a promoted comparison), it carries an explicit “Sponsored” or “Advertisement” label. Sponsored content does not appear in the editorial review or comparison-table rankings.

Our regulatory status

CompareForexBrokers operates under the Corporations Act 2001 as a Corporate Authorised Representative.

• Operating company: Compare Forex Brokers Pty Ltd
• AFS Authorised Representative number: 001274082
• AFSL holder we operate under: Bardin Capital Pty Ltd, AFSL 247858

What this allows us to do: provide general financial product information about CFDs, forex and related products to Australian readers. What it does not allow us to do: provide personal financial advice to any individual reader.

Every page on this site is general in nature and does not take any reader’s personal circumstances into account. None of it is a recommendation to act on a specific broker, platform or strategy. If you need personal advice, speak to a licensed financial adviser. If you need tax advice, speak to a registered tax agent.

How to verify our claims

You don’t have to trust us on any of the above. Three sources let you check independently:

• AFSL register: The Bardin Capital Pty Ltd AFSL (247858) and the Compare Forex Brokers Authorised Representative number (001274082) can both be verified on the ASIC Connect register.
• Methodology: The full scoring breakdown is published on the methodology page. The weights and data sources are spelled out.
• AFCA: Every ASIC AFSL holder offering retail CFDs must be a member of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. If you have a complaint about how we’ve behaved as a Corporate Authorised Representative, AFCA is the free dispute resolution path.

How to flag a conflict

If you spot a review where you think the rating doesn’t match the data, or a comparison table where the order looks off given the underlying methodology, the fastest path is the contact page. We aim to respond within 24 hours and to publish any correction within 72 hours.

Material edits get a dated correction note at the bottom of the affected page. Reader corrections that change a published rating get a credit line where the reader is comfortable being named.