The criteria, one by one
The scorecard exists because the trading-alert market is awash in confident assertions no outsider can put to the test. Three of the five tests carry their own page here, because they are the ones services fail most often. The full five-test method sits on the method page.
What the scorecard is really sorting
A buyer almost never weighs two near-identical services against each other. In practice you are choosing between types of service — a messaging room, a copy-trading platform, an influencer caller, a re-poster, or an audited desk — and each type passes or fails the tests as a category, not one call at a time. The scorecard's job is to make that structural difference visible, so a glossy front end cannot hide which category a service belongs to. The table below sorts the field on the two tests that settle most cases: was the call sealed before its result, and is the win rate shown with the full count behind it.
| Service type | Timestamped? | Denominator shown? | Why it lands there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telegram / Discord room | No | Rarely | Owner edits or deletes at will; the losers never surface. |
| Copy-trading platform | Rarely | Sometimes | Outcomes are logged, but seldom proven per signal. |
| Influencer caller | No | No | Posts are deletable and the revenue is usually affiliate links. |
| Signal re-poster | No | No | Forwards others unaudited; inherits every gap in the source. |
| Automated / AI service | Sometimes | Backtest only | A backtest is not a live record, and no person owns it. |
| Audited, timestamped desk | Yes | Yes | A per-call on-chain receipt plus a named independent review. |
Only the bottom row satisfies both tests, which is the structural case this guide makes for the pick — not that it shouts louder, but that it belongs to the one type a stranger can audit. The three criteria below each take one test apart in full.
Why these two columns settle most cases
Of the five tests, two do nearly all the work. Sealed before its result is the one that cannot be retrofitted: a service either anchored its calls in public before they resolved or it did not, and no amount of later polish rewrites that. The denominator shown is the one that cannot be faked without an outright lie, because a win rate is only evidence when the full count of calls, the losers included, sits beside it. A service that clears both has handed you a record you can interrogate. The remaining three tests — the measured grade, open pricing and subscriber-paid incentives — are real, but they tend to confirm a verdict the first two have already reached rather than reverse it. That is why the table sorts on the two, and why a service can have a slick site, a busy community and a confident pitch and still land in a row with two crosses.
The three tests with their own page
The remaining two tests — open pricing and subscriber-paid (non-affiliate) incentives — are covered on the method page, because they are quicker to confirm and rarely the deciding factor.