Ad Paid links & important information about these products
Ad / advertising disclosure: links marked 'Ad' are paid affiliate links - we earn a commission if you buy an evaluation through them; this can affect which firms are listed, not the terms you receive. What this page is: a factual comparison of published fees and rules, collected from at least two public sources on the date shown and cross-checked; per-field rankings are arithmetic over the tracked set (see Methodology). It is not a recommendation or opinion about whether you should buy any evaluation, and it is not financial advice. What these products are: prop-firm 'challenges' are paid evaluations on simulated accounts; any later 'funded' stage is a contractual profit share from the firm, not an investment return; most participants do not pass; fees are generally non-refundable. The firms listed are not authorised or supervised by the FMA (NZ), ASIC (AU), FCA (UK), CFTC/SEC (US) or any EU regulator, and you have no investor-compensation protection. Operated from New Zealand.
The terms explained
Every column on the comparison is a rule that decides whether an evaluation ends in a payout or ends early. These explain what each one means. They carry no figures on purpose: figures change, and they belong on the comparison where they are dated and re-read from source.
Do evaluation and funded accounts expire?
Two separate clocks run, and they work differently. The first applies during the evaluation: historically, a participant had to reach the profit target inside a fixed window, and failing to do so ended the attempt even…
Are proprietary trading firms regulated?
In most major jurisdictions, an evaluation offered by a proprietary trading firm is generally not treated as a regulated financial service. The reasoning is structural rather than accidental: the participant places…
What is a consistency rule and how is it calculated?
A consistency rule limits how much of a total gain may come from a single day or a single position. The purpose is to distinguish a result built across many decisions from one produced by a single concentrated bet.…
Can you run more than one account, or copy trades between them?
Multi-account rules govern how many simulated evaluations one person may hold at once, how much combined simulated size those accounts may carry, and whether identical trades may be mirrored across them. The rules exist…
How does a daily loss limit work?
A daily loss limit caps how much an account may lose within a single trading day. It is the rule that ends the largest share of evaluations, usually before the overall loss rule is ever approached. The limit is…
Does trailing drawdown reset, and does it move after a payout?
A trailing drawdown level moves in one direction only. It follows the account upward as the reference figure it tracks makes new highs, and it stays where it is when the account falls. A losing day does not pull the…
How often do evaluation terms change, and why does that matter?
Evaluation terms in this category are not fixed reference data; they are commercial settings that firms revise on their own schedule. The variables that move include the entry fee, the loss limits and the method by…
What does the leverage figure mean on an evaluation account?
Leverage on an evaluation account expresses the maximum notional position size a trader may hold relative to the account's nominal balance. It is a ratio: for every unit of stated balance, the platform permits a…
Why do evaluations require a minimum number of trading days?
A minimum trading day requirement sets a floor on the number of separate sessions in which activity must occur before an evaluation can be marked as passed. It exists because a profit target can, in principle, be…
What is the difference between a one-step and a two-step evaluation?
An evaluation is a simulated test of whether a participant can reach a stated gain on a demo balance without breaching the loss limits attached to that balance. The structure exists because the firm cannot observe the…
What is a payout cycle?
A payout cycle is the interval that must elapse between the points at which a participant on a simulated funded account may request payment of their agreed share of the account's recorded gains. It is a structural term,…
Where do orders go on an evaluation account?
Orders placed on an evaluation account do not leave the firm's system. They are matched inside a simulated environment against a price feed the firm licenses from a data vendor or aggregates from liquidity providers.…
What does the profit split mean?
The profit split is the proportion of simulated gains recorded on a funded-stage account that the participant may request as a payment under the contract. The remainder stays with the firm. It is expressed as a share of…
What is a profit target and how is it measured?
A profit target is the gain a simulated account must show before an evaluation phase counts as passed. It is measured against the account's nominal size — the notional balance the simulated account is opened with — and…
Which trading strategies do prop firms prohibit?
Prohibited strategies in evaluation programmes fall into distinct groups, and the reasoning behind each group…
What is a reset, and what does an evaluation cost after the first payment?
A reset is a payment that restarts an evaluation the participant has already failed, returning the simulated account to its starting balance and clearing accumulated profit, loss and elapsed days. It differs from buying…
How does a scaling plan work?
A scaling plan is a schedule written into the account agreement under which the nominal size of a simulated funded account is increased once stated conditions are met. The usual trigger is sustained gains recorded…
How is a payment from a proprietary trading firm treated for tax?
Tax treatment depends entirely on the participant's own jurisdiction, residence status, and personal circumstances, and cannot be determined by a comparison page. What follows describes why the question is harder than…
What is the difference between trailing and static drawdown?
Drawdown rules define the loss floor at which an evaluation account is closed. A static maximum loss anchors that floor to the account's opening balance. It is set once and never moves: gains raise the distance between…
What is a funded account at a proprietary trading firm?
A funded account, in the language used across this category, is the stage that follows a completed evaluation. In most arrangements it is a further simulated account, opened under a written agreement between the…
What happens when you breach a rule or fail an evaluation?
A breach is the moment an account's state crosses a limit written into the rules of the evaluation. Detection is almost always automatic: the platform monitors equity, position size, instrument type and session times…
What does the evaluation fee cover, and is it refundable?
The evaluation fee is the price of entry to an assessment. It is not a deposit, not margin, and not an amount exposed to market movement. Nothing in the fee is placed into a trading position; the simulated account is…
Why would a firm refuse or delay a payout?
A payout request in a simulated-account programme is a claim under a contract, not a withdrawal from a balance the participant holds. The firm checks the request against its written conditions before releasing anything,…