How denialrate builds denial-rate estimates.

The denominator problem

Every denial-rate figure is a fraction: denied payouts over approved payouts. The hard truth of this market is that prop firms publish neither the numerator (how many payouts they denied) nor the denominator (how many payouts they approved). A firm that quotes “a 3% denial rate” without publishing both numbers is asking you to trust a fraction whose terms are invisible. We do not trust it, and we do not ask you to.

So we publish ranges, never false-precision point estimates. A range is the honest representation of what the evidence actually supports: a lower bound from verified reports, an upper bound from the same reports normalized against review volume and claimed trader counts, and a confidence band that widens with uncertainty instead of hiding it.

Where a denominator is needed, we use an alternative metric that does not require guessing one: verified denial reports per 1,000 claimed funded traders. The claim count is the firm’s own published number of funded traders; the numerator is our verified-report count. No denominator is invented. Payout Junction and TraderPayout publish on-chain verified-paid ledgers that could supply a real denominator in a later version; they are cited here as denominator suppliers, not scraped into our database in v0.1.

Three sources, three tiers

Every number on the leaderboard is traceable to one of three source layers, and each layer produces a labeled tier. The tier is shown next to the number, every time, in the same visual line.

Labeling tiers

Three labels, one rule: every number carries its tier and its source, on the same line, with a legend.

An Estimated figure is never shown on the same visual line as a Verified figure without a separator and a legend. If you see a number without a tier, it is a bug, not a feature.

The 12-category taxonomy

We categorize every denial by its stated reason. The taxonomy is adopted from the 12 denial categories published by hftarbitrageplatform.com, extended with our own definitions and mapped to upme’s five refusal grounds (process, risk, prohibited-conduct, kyc, discretionary). The category shares below are hftarbitrageplatform’s published industry estimates, not denialrate’s measurements; the categories overlap and the shares sum to more than 100%, which is why we adopt the taxonomy, not the shares, as our own measurement.

Each category’s category.hfSource label states exactly where the share came from: industry estimate, source: hftarbitrageplatform.com, accessed 2026-08-03. We never relabel that share as our own. When our dataset eventually supports a denialrate-measured share per category, it will appear as a separate, labeled field — never as a silent replacement of the hftarbitrage figure.

Cold-start honesty

The dataset is young. As of 2026-08-03, 8 firms are tracked, and the cold-start rule is absolute: a firm with no data is shown as “0 verified reports”, never as a “0% denial-rate” figure. Zero reports does not mean zero denials; it means we have not yet recorded a verified denial for that firm. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Firms without data are shown, not hidden. A firm does not get a cleaner leaderboard position by virtue of having no reports; it gets a dossier that says “no data” in plain text, next to the firms that do. Hiding the unreported would be the same as pretending the unreported is the unmeasurable, and we refuse both.

Update cadence

The dataset refreshes on a fixed cadence, and the cadence is published, not implied:

• Layer A — mined weekly. Public complaints are re-crawled and re-normalized every week; the leaderboard’s Reported and Estimated columns move with that cycle.
• Layer B — continuous, reviewed within 14 days. Trader submissions enter the queue on arrival and are reviewed on a rolling basis; a verified report lands on the relevant dossier as soon as it clears review.
• Layer C — mined monthly. Regulator and court filings are re-checked once a month; a new enforcement action or judgment lands on the relevant dossier in the next monthly cycle.

Once a month we publish an audit pledge at /audit/<YYYY-MM>/ that lists every number that changed, every tier upgrade or downgrade, and every retraction. The audit pages are a v0.2 pledge, not a v0.1 deliverable: the methodology is versioned, and a changelog from v0.1 to v0.2 will record the day the audit pages go live.

The NEVER list

Ten rules that govern every number on the site. They are short on purpose.

1. Never fabricate a denial-rate figure, a report count, or a source citation.
2. Never present a point estimate where only a range is supported by the evidence (no false precision).
3. Never accept payment to suppress, downgrade, or rank-up a firm’s denial-rate number.
4. Never present an Estimated figure as Verified, or a Reported figure as Verified.
5. Never publish an unverified trader claim as a stand-alone fact about a firm.
6. Never hide denominator uncertainty behind a clean-looking percentage.
7. Never silent-edit a published number — every revision is logged in the monthly audit.
8. Never present hftarbitrageplatform’s published category shares as our own measurements.
9. Never claim a “0% denial-rate” figure because a firm has 0 reports — 0 reports ≠ 0 denials.
10. Never stop showing the seams: every number carries its tier and its source, in line, on the same screen.

Corrections policy

Wrong numbers get fixed, and the fix is logged. Email reports@denialrate.com with the firm, the figure, and the source that contradicts us. We investigate, and if we are wrong we issue a retraction or a tier downgrade — recorded in the monthly audit, never silently edited. If you are right and we are wrong, the correction is free, and it stays free. There is no paid expedited track.

How we make money / conflict of interest

This is the load-bearing section. If we ever break the firewall below, the site is worthless. The firewall is the product.

denialrate.com earns affiliate CPA on some sign-up links — roughly $50–$150 per funded account, on the model of propfirmmatch. That revenue does not change the denial-rate numbers, and it never will. The affiliate layer is disclosed, separated, and structurally prevented from touching the data layer.

The firewall has three parts:

• (a) The data layer is incorruptible. A firm cannot pay to suppress, downgrade, or rank-up its denial-rate number. There is no “premium firm” tier, no “preferred placement” SKU, and no path from a payment to a leaderboard position. The leaderboard is ordered by the published denial-rate estimate, not by affiliate yield.
• (b) The affiliate layer is disclosed and separated. Perks, bonuses, and referral codes are rendered as a separate component with rel="nofollow sponsored noopener" and a CPA disclosure in line. Affiliate fields never enter leaderboard ranking or dossier ordering. A firm that pays no commission sits next to a firm that does, in the same order, on the same page.
• (c) The upme halo is honest. upme appears on the zero-payout-denial list because it actually publishes its own denial rate — an empty ledger plus a refusal-rate commitment — not because it paid for placement. upme is a sister property; the cross-link is honest, not sponsored, and it carries no affiliate commission.

If we ever break this firewall — by accepting payment to suppress a report, by sliding an affiliate field into the ranking, or by dressing a paid placement up as an earned one — the site is worthless. The firewall IS the product.

FAQ

Does a firm pay to be listed?

No. Listing on the leaderboard is free and unsolicited. A firm cannot pay to be added, and a firm cannot pay to be removed. Firms are tracked because traders trade with them, not because they pay us.

Can a firm pay to remove a denial report?

No. The data layer is incorruptible: a firm cannot pay to suppress, downgrade, or rank-up its denial-rate number. Trader-submitted reports with proof and regulator filings cannot be removed for payment. Corrections go through the corrections policy, not a checkout.

Why are denial rates ranges instead of exact percentages?

Because prop firms publish neither the numerator (denied payouts) nor the denominator (approved payouts). Without a verified denominator, a single point estimate would be false precision. We publish ranges and an alternative metric — verified denial reports per 1,000 claimed funded traders — that does not require guessing the denominator.

Is upme promoted because you own it?

No. upme appears on the zero-payout-denial list because it actually publishes its own denial rate and signs the refusal-rate commitment — an empty ledger and a public pledge, not paid placement. upme is a sister property; the cross-link is honest, not sponsored, and it carries no affiliate commission.

A firm shows 0 reports — is it safe?

Not necessarily. “0 verified reports” means exactly that: no verified reports. It does not mean 0 denials. A firm with no data has neither a published figure nor enough trader reports to estimate, and that is stated on its dossier rather than papered over. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.