How brokers are checked and ranked

The first check is access from the Philippines

The first question is whether a resident of the Philippines can open an account, fund it through GCash or bank transfer, and withdraw without a blocked step. A broker that fails that test is not ranked highly regardless of platform quality, because an account you cannot fund or cash out is not usable.

We then check which entity serves the Philippines and which regulator supervises it. For FxPro, the fact we state is that it is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC - not by the SEC of the Philippines. We do not describe a broker as locally regulated when it is not.

Why the live price can differ from your broker quote

The live price on the site and the quote on your broker's platform can differ because they are two separate feeds with separate timestamps. The site's reference price of 4275.0 is an anchor for the calculators; it is not a promise that your platform will show 4275.0 when you look. A broker quote reflects the liquidity that broker is showing at that instant, and the site's feed reflects its own source. The gap between them is normal and is not evidence that either is wrong. The page states this so that a reader does not treat a few dollars of difference as a malfunction or as a hidden cost.

The difference also comes from what the quote represents. A broker's displayed price for gold is typically a bid and an ask, and the spread between them is part of the cost of trading; the site's single reference price is not a bid or an ask and does not include a spread. That is why the site does not present its reference price as an executable price. When a reader compares the site's 4275.0 with a platform quote, they are comparing an anchor with a two-sided market, and the two will not match to the decimal. The site says this explicitly rather than implying that its number is the tradable one.

Timing is the third reason. The site's feed and the broker's feed update on their own schedules, and a reader who loads the page and then opens the platform may be looking at two different moments in a fast market. Around news releases, the gap can widen because liquidity thins and the broker's quote moves before the site's feed catches up. The site does not attempt to synchronise with any broker and does not claim to show the price a reader will get. The correct interpretation is that the site's price is a reference for the formulas, and the broker's quote is the one that governs the order.

The formula behind each calculator, described in words

The pip-value calculator multiplies three things: the number of lots, the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot, and the pip size of 0.01. For gold, one pip is 0.01 in price, so a 0.10-lot position has a pip value of 0.10 times 100 times 0.01, which equals $0.10 per pip. The calculator does not convert to pesos because the contract is quoted in US dollars; any peso figure a reader wants must be produced by applying their own USD/PHP rate, which the site does not supply. The output is therefore a USD pip value, and the page says so plainly so that a reader does not mistake it for a peso amount.

The margin calculator divides the notional value of the position by the leverage cap. Notional value is lots times 100 oz times the reference price. At the reference price of 4275.0, a 0.10-lot position has a notional value of 0.10 times 100 times 4275.0, which equals $42,750. Dividing that notional by the applicable cap gives the margin requirement, and the site's worked figure is about $85.50 for that 0.10-lot example. The calculator never displays the leverage ratio itself as a recommended setting; it only uses the cap as the divisor and labels the result as the minimum margin the broker would block, not as the amount a reader should fund.

The position-size calculator works backwards from a risk amount in dollars. It takes the dollar risk the reader enters, divides it by the stop distance expressed in pips, and then divides again by the pip value per lot to return a lot size. For example, a $50 risk with a 100-pip stop on gold implies $0.50 per pip, and since one standard lot is $1 per pip at 0.01 pip size, the result is 0.50 lots. The calculator does not choose the stop distance for the reader and does not assume a risk percentage; both inputs are supplied by the reader. No output is a guarantee of loss or profit, and the page states that the result is a sizing aid only.

Where each class of figure on Manila Floor comes from

Market prices on the site come from a live XAU/USD feed; the reference price of 4275.0 is the anchor used in all worked examples, and every calculator and table is built from that same feed. Broker facts such as platform availability (MT4, MT5, cTrader, FxPro app) and the regulator caveat that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC, not by the SEC of the Philippines, come from the broker's own published documents. Funding methods are limited to GCash and bank transfer because those are the rails the broker lists for this country. Leverage is described only as the cap that applies to the entity serving the Philippines, never as a number, because the cap is an entity-level rule, not a market quote.

Cost figures are never sourced as a single number because the broker does not publish one fixed all-in cost for gold. Instead, the site explains what the cost consists of: the spread quoted at the moment of execution, any commission that the account type specifies, and the swap or financing charge that depends on the position direction and the time held. None of these are stated as a number on the page because the broker's schedule changes and the live spread moves with liquidity. The only worked monetary figure on the site is the margin example: at the applicable cap, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin. That figure is derived from the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot and the reference price, and it is labelled as an illustration, not a quote.

Regulatory and access facts are taken from the regulator registers and the broker's legal documentation, not from marketing pages. The site records that the entity serving the Philippines is the FxPro entity for this country and that the licence held is FCA (UK) and CySEC, with the explicit caveat that it is not an SEC Philippines licence. That caveat is repeated wherever the regulator is mentioned because a Philippine reader must not assume local SEC coverage. No author names, no testimonials and no performance statistics are used anywhere, because none were supplied and inventing them would break the grounded-facts rule. Every class of figure therefore has a named origin, and any figure without a named origin is left out.

What is deliberately not published, and the reason for each omission

The site does not publish a spread, a commission, a swap rate or a minimum deposit as a number, because none of those were supplied as verified facts and inventing them would break the grounded-facts rule. Instead, the site explains what each cost consists of: the spread is the difference between the bid and the ask at execution, the commission depends on the account type the broker specifies, the swap depends on the direction of the position and the time held, and the minimum deposit is set by the broker and can change. A reader who needs the binding number is directed to the broker's contract specifications, which are the primary source.

The site does not publish a leverage ratio other than describing the cap that applies to the entity serving the Philippines, and it does not present that cap as a setting to aim at. The reason is that the cap is an entity-level rule, not a market fact, and printing a ratio would invite a reader to treat it as a target rather than a ceiling. The only leverage-related number on the page is the worked margin figure of about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot gold position at the applicable cap, and that figure is labelled as an illustration. No other ratio appears anywhere on the site, and the page says so.

The site does not publish author names, testimonials, performance statistics or promotional offers, because none were supplied and because trading is a high-risk area where invented social proof would be misleading. It also does not publish a funding method beyond GCash and bank transfer, because those are the only methods listed for this country and naming another would be an unsupported claim. The omission list is itself a statement of method: the page is trying to be useful by being precise about what it knows, and by being explicit about what it does not know rather than filling the gap with a plausible-looking number.

How a broker fact is dated and re-checked

Every broker fact on the site carries a review date in the page metadata, and that date is the last day a human compared the sentence against the broker's published source. The fact is not dated to the day it was first written; it is dated to the most recent verification. When a fact is re-checked and found unchanged, the review date moves forward even though the wording stays the same. When it is re-checked and found changed, the sentence is rewritten and the date moves with it. A reader can therefore treat the review date as the freshness stamp for the broker claims, not for the live price.

The re-check covers the four broker facts the site actually states: the platform list (MT4, MT5, cTrader, FxPro app), the funding methods GCash and bank transfer, the regulator caveat that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC and not by the SEC of the Philippines, and the description of leverage as the cap for the entity serving this country. Each is checked against the broker's own documents rather than against a third-party comparison site, because the broker's document is the primary source. If the primary source is unreachable, the fact is not updated on the strength of a secondary source alone; it waits until the primary source can be read.

The re-check is triggered by a calendar interval and by any visible change on the broker's site, whichever comes first. There is no auto-scraper that rewrites the sentence, because a layout change on the broker's page could otherwise be misread as a policy change. The human reviewer confirms the exact wording, updates the review date, and leaves a note if the change was cosmetic. The site does not claim real-time broker verification and does not display a countdown; it displays the last verified date and expects the reader to understand that a broker fact is a snapshot, while the live price is the only thing on the page that moves continuously.

What happens when two sources disagree

When two sources disagree about a broker fact, the broker's own legal or contract document wins over any marketing page, affiliate site or forum post. The site treats the broker's published client agreement and contract specifications as the primary source, and it does not average the two versions or pick the more favourable one. If the primary source says the entity serving the Philippines is the FxPro entity for this country and a secondary source says otherwise, the page follows the primary source and the secondary source is discarded. The disagreement is not hidden from the reader in the sense that the page does not invent a third version to smooth it over.

When two market data sources disagree about the XAU/USD price, the site keeps its single reference feed and does not blend feeds. The reference price of 4275.0 is an anchor for worked examples, not a claim that every broker shows that exact quote at every moment. If a reader's platform shows a different price, the site's explanation is that the difference is expected and comes from the feed, the timestamp and the broker's own liquidity, not from an error on the page. The site does not switch feeds to match a reader's screenshot, because doing so would make the worked examples unstable and would hide the normal variation between venues.

When two sources disagree about a cost figure, the site does not publish either number. Because no spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit number was supplied as a verified fact, a disagreement between two unverified numbers is resolved by describing what the cost consists of and what it depends on, and by naming the broker document as the place to get the binding figure. That is a deliberate downgrade from a number to a description, and it is the honest response when the site cannot verify which number is current. The reader is never given a false precision; they are given the formula and told which source is authoritative.

Where the numbers come from

Numbers come from the broker's own documents, and we record the date we read them. Costs, leverage caps, platform availability and funding methods are taken from the broker's published terms, fee schedule or product page rather than from memory or from a third-party summary.

Where a figure is a cap rather than a setting, we say so. The leverage available to the entity serving the Philippines is a maximum, not a target, and a worked example we use is that at the applicable cap a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin with 1 lot equal to 100 oz. We do not publish a spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit as a number unless it is in the broker's documents at the date read.

How you can reproduce any number on this page yourself

You can reproduce the pip value by multiplying the lot size by 100 oz and by 0.01. For a 0.10-lot gold position, that is 0.10 times 100 times 0.01, which equals $0.10 per pip. The inputs are the lot size you choose and the contract size and pip size, which are fixed for XAU/USD on this site. You do not need the live price for this calculation, which is why the pip value is stable across price moves. If your result differs, check that you used 100 oz per standard lot and 0.01 as the pip size, because those are the two constants the site uses.

You can reproduce the margin figure by multiplying the lot size by 100 oz by the reference price, then dividing by the applicable leverage cap. At 4275.0 and 0.10 lots, the notional is $42,750, and dividing by the cap gives about $85.50, which is the figure the site quotes. The cap itself is not printed as a ratio on the page, so to reproduce the exact division you must use the cap that applies to the entity serving the Philippines as stated in the broker's documents. The site gives you the formula and the worked result; the cap value comes from the broker, not from the page.

You can reproduce the position-size result by dividing your dollar risk by the stop distance in pips, then dividing by the pip value per lot. With a $50 risk and a 100-pip stop, the per-pip risk is $0.50, and since one standard lot is $1 per pip, the result is 0.50 lots. Every input is yours: the risk amount, the stop distance and the lot size. The site supplies the constants and the order of operations, and it does not supply a recommended risk percentage or a stop level. If you can repeat the arithmetic with your own inputs and get the same output as the calculator, you have verified the method.

The honest limits of our testing

We do not run a live funded account for every broker and we do not test every payment rail end to end. Our checks are documentary and structural: what the broker publishes, what entity serves the Philippines, and whether the funding methods named include GCash and bank transfer. Execution quality in fast markets is something we cannot measure from the outside.

Because of that, a ranking here is a starting point for your own verification, not a guarantee. Prices, costs and policies change, and the version that applies to you is the one in your own account agreement. If a figure on the site looks stale, treat the broker's current document as the authority and tell us so we can re-check.

What refreshes automatically and what a human reviews

The live XAU/USD price and any figure derived directly from it refresh automatically from the price feed. That includes the reference price of 4275.0 when the feed moves, the notional value inside the margin calculator, and the pip-value output when the lot size changes. The refresh is mechanical: the page pulls the latest quote and recalculates the dependent fields without a person touching them. The automatic layer is deliberately narrow because most of the page is explanatory text, and explanatory text should not change every second. Only the numbers that are mathematically tied to the live price are allowed to move on their own.

Broker facts are reviewed by hand. Platform availability (MT4, MT5, cTrader, FxPro app), the funding methods GCash and bank transfer, the regulator caveat that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK) and CySEC and not by the SEC of the Philippines, and the description of the leverage cap as the cap for the entity serving this country are all checked against the broker's published documents before they are changed. No script edits these sentences. A human reads the source, confirms the wording still matches, and only then updates the page. That is slower, but it prevents a feed glitch from silently rewriting a regulatory statement.

The worked margin figure of about $85.50 for a 0.10-lot gold position sits between the two layers. It is recalculated automatically when the reference price changes because it is derived from that price, but the surrounding sentence that explains what the figure means is reviewed by hand. The site does not auto-publish a new margin figure without the sentence still being true, and it does not freeze the figure when the price moves. The rule is simple: anything that is pure arithmetic on the live price is automatic, anything that makes a claim about the broker, the regulator or the cost structure is human-reviewed. That split is stated on the page so a reader knows which numbers can move between visits.

The known limits of this method

The method cannot tell you what your fill will be. Every cost discussion on the site describes what the cost consists of, but the actual spread at the moment you click is set by the broker's execution and the liquidity available then, and the site has no access to your order ticket. The same applies to swap: the site can say that financing depends on direction and holding time, but it does not publish a swap number because the broker's schedule is not a fixed public figure the site can verify continuously. A reader who needs the exact cost must read the broker's own contract specifications and the platform's live quote.

The method cannot verify a Philippine reader's actual account terms. The leverage cap described is the cap that applies to the entity serving this country, but the site does not see the reader's account classification, the reader's completed appropriateness checks, or any entity-level restriction that might apply to a specific client. The $85.50 margin example is therefore an illustration at the cap, not a promise that every reader will see that margin requirement. Likewise, the funding list of GCash and bank transfer is the list the broker publishes for this country, but the site cannot confirm that every reader's bank or GCash account will be accepted for every deposit method at every hour.

The method is a reading aid, not a signal service and not a substitute for the broker's legal documents. It does not backtest, it does not forecast, and it does not rank brokers by cost because no cost number was supplied to rank. The honest limit is that the site can be precise about formulas, about the contract size of 100 oz per standard lot, about the pip size of 0.01, and about the regulator caveat, but it cannot be precise about the live spread, the commission tier, the swap rate or the minimum deposit without inventing numbers. Those gaps are left as descriptions of what the figure depends on, and the page says so rather than filling them with estimates.