How we research and update this site

Where facts come from

We read primary sources first: SEBI circulars and orders, the NSE and BSE lists of online bond platform providers, RBI press releases, rating agency rationales, debenture trustee filings, and each platform's own terms, FAQs, fee pages and app store listings. News reports come second. Forum posts and other review sites are used only to find leads or to report what users say, and are labelled as such.

Each fact is stored with its value, the source URL and the date it was verified. Facts with no label were read from a primary source or from the platform's own pages. Facts marked reported come only from a secondary source such as a news article, a blog or another review site, and we say so on the page. We write Not disclosed when a platform does not publish something, and not verified when a page could not be read, for example because its answers load only in a browser. The two mean different things, and we keep them apart.

How often we refresh

Data	Source	Cadence
OBPP registry	NSE xlsx and BSE zip files	Monthly, with each file's as-on date shown
SEBI and exchange orders	SEBI enforcement orders	Monthly
App ratings	Google Play and Apple App Store, India storefronts	Weekly, with the read date shown
Fees, custody, exit terms, minimums	Platform terms, FAQs and fee pages	Quarterly, and whenever a platform changes them

Play Store ratings differ by country: on 17th Oct 2026 Dhan showed 4.7 in India and 4.0 in the US. We always quote the India figure with its date. A page's verified date changes only when we have re-checked it, not when the site is rebuilt.

Why there are no stars, scores or rankings

A single score would blend things that matter differently to different readers: an NRI cares about eligibility, a retiree about exit terms, a trader about pledging. SEBI's advertising code for online bond platforms bars rankings and testimonials in their adverts, and a numbered list on a review site invites exactly that use. Stars on a finance comparison also read as a recommendation. Our best-for pages state their criteria and list every platform that meets them in alphabetical order, with the fact behind each entry.

How we treat self-reported claims

User counts, money invested and zero-default claims come from the platforms themselves and are rarely audited. We label each one self-reported with the date we read it, and where sources disagree we show the figures side by side. Stable Money's user count, for example, reads 40 lakh, 50 lakh and 60 lakh across sources within eight months.

We never advise on bonds

We describe platforms, brokers and government channels. We do not say buy, sell or hold on any bond or issuer, and we do not publish lists of best bonds. Bonds appear only as dated factual examples, such as a split rating or a default, to show how a platform's shelf or disclosures work.

Planned: the same-bond price panel

We plan to publish the price at which the same bond (same ISIN) is offered on different platforms on the same day, set against exchange trades, with clean price, dirty price and yield basis made comparable. No exchange, regulator or platform publishes this today, and SEBI's rules do not require platforms to show their spread. The panel is pending legal review, because SEBI's Jan 2025 clarification restricts the use of live prices of specific securities by people relying on the education exemption. It will be framed as market data with no recommendation attached, and its method will be published here before launch.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we fix it on the page, update the verified date and add a note at the foot of the page saying what changed and when. Send corrections, with a source if you have one, to the address on the About page.

Right of reply for platforms

Before a profile is published, the platform concerned receives its draft fact box and may reply with documents. We correct any fact a platform shows to be wrong. A reply does not change our criteria, and statements a platform makes to us are labelled as the platform's statements.