How we rate providers
Every star rating on this site is the average of 3 scored axes, each 1–5 — never a single number typed in with nothing behind it.
The 3 axes
Beginner-friendliness
How easy the platform is for someone opening their first account — UI simplicity, how much jargon you hit before doing the thing you came to do, and how fast account opening actually is.
Cost simplicity
How easy the real cost is to understand up front — fewer fee types, clearer pricing, and (for investing platforms) whether direct plans are the default. Not "cheapest" in isolation — a platform with more features often has more fee types for a real reason.
Feature breadth
How much the platform actually does — one account covering more of what you might eventually want (stocks and funds, not just funds) scores higher here, even where that works against it on beginner-friendliness.
What this rating is NOT
- • Not based on how much a provider pays us — see our affiliate disclosure.
- • Not a live, auto-updating number pulled from the provider's API — each page shows when it was last checked by hand.
- • Not a substitute for checking current pricing and features on the provider's own site before you sign up.
Who writes these
The WellFiLab team, using publicly available information about each provider. Scores are editorial judgment applied consistently across every pick on a page, not an automated or crowdsourced number — exactly like most comparison content you'll find elsewhere, just with the rubric shown instead of hidden.