London-based prop firm
Second attempt finally funded after I slowed down and treated the phase one target as a soft number. Second phase blew by in three sessions once I accepted their lot sizing rule as a sanity check.
Found a firm where the daily loss limit is calculated on closed equity only, which fits a trend-following swing style perfectly.
Honest spreads during London open with EURUSD staying under 0.4 pips most of the window.
Reliable execution during Fed days which is honestly the only test that matters for a futures scalper. Reasonable 10 percent profit target on the swing version made the lower drawdown feel like a tradeoff worth taking. Firm respects their own posted rules which sounds trivial until you have been burned by one that did not.
Reasonable firm for day trading NQ but the overnight margin on ES futures is punitive compared to my broker. Phase one went smoothly on NQ scalps, but phase two targets felt tuned to force a few extra trading days of commissions.
Payout denominated in USDC meant I did not lose four days to a wire bouncing through a correspondent bank. Hedging between gold and the dollar index on their platform was allowed, which fit my macro-driven approach.
Challenge was passable with a conservative swing approach on indices, not just high-frequency scalping. TradingView plug-in syncs orders without the usual two-second delay I had with another firm's bridge.
Account was breached by a stale quote on a weekend gap that the risk team acknowledged was abnormal but refused to reverse. Account was closed one week after I passed phase two, with an email saying I had violated an undisclosed internal risk metric.
Hit three months of consecutive payouts and the firm sent a 5 percent bump on my split as promised. Pro trader discount of 20 percent on the 200k evaluation was honored after I sent two prior payout statements.
Support chat is bots only, and getting a human requires emailing a specific inbox that answers in two to five business days. Dashboard goes down for maintenance during random overnight sessions, usually right when the Tokyo open volatility picks up.
Low commissions on NQ at $1.80 round-trip meant my scalping edge survived onto the funded account. Weekend holds on EURUSD swings were honored every single Friday without a surprise closeout email on Monday.
Challenge pacing felt rushed on the 30-day version and I would have preferred the unlimited time option they advertise elsewhere. Fills on gold futures were decent during London but slipped noticeably in the thin Asian session right before Sydney open. Instant funding tier at 10k feels thin once you realize the trailing drawdown is 4 percent and the profit target is 8 percent.
Challenge support of 24 hour live chat actually answered a question about trailing drawdown math at 2am before the Tokyo open.
Reset refund never arrived after I canceled within the 7-day window; three support tickets later it is still unresolved.
KYC was stuck for three weeks because my passport photo had a glare, and support kept sending the same automated reply. Soft breach notice arrived in my inbox after a drawdown touch that my own broker and TradingView never registered on their feeds. Profit split was quietly reduced from 90 percent to 80 percent for new payouts and the policy update was only on their blog.
News trading violation was never explained beyond a one-line notice; I was in the position 20 minutes before the release. Nothing on the funded account matches the sales page, from the stated commissions to the actual time it takes to reach a human. After I passed phase two with an EA, they demanded a manual verification trade of a very specific setup, which is not in any rule I signed.
Risk desk sent me a short loom video on why my hedge was flagged and how to structure it next time. Finally found a firm where the swing account allows overnight holds on indices without a stealth closeout.
Daily loss limit at 4 percent is tight but it kept me from revenge trading after a bad Monday. Allowed EA use after a short review of my backtest, with a clear list of which parameters they cared about.
Decent for day traders only, since the swing version has a lower drawdown and a higher profit target that cancel each other out.
A completely routine daily loss touch on a Wednesday was flagged as a hard breach because of a dashboard sync delay to the risk team. A random weekend overnight gap on EURJPY tripped a soft breach even though my stop was placed inside the allowed range. Scaling was frozen without reason even though I had hit the posted targets, and I am still waiting on a response two weeks later.
Finally hit a payout cycle where the processing time matched the time quoted in the contract.
A pending order on gold was treated as a filled position for drawdown purposes, which is nowhere in the written risk policy.
Dashboard showed me at 2 percent daily loss when the risk team said I was at 4.9 percent, and they went with their number. Spreads doubled at every scheduled release, turning what should have been a 2 pip trade into a 5 pip trade with no recourse.
Scaled across three accounts of 50k, 100k, and 200k simultaneously with a single consolidated payout statement each month. After two years with another firm I switched over and the first payout here landed quicker than any of their last six. Payout denominated in USDC meant I did not lose four days to a wire bouncing through a correspondent bank.
Rules on consistency were applied inconsistently to me and three friends on the same firm with the same strategy and different outcomes. After passing the challenge in six days they held my funded account for a 14 day review period that was not disclosed up front. Reset refund never arrived after I canceled within the 7-day window; three support tickets later it is still unresolved.
After I passed phase two with an EA, they demanded a manual verification trade of a very specific setup, which is not in any rule I signed. Risk team was openly hostile over a gold trade on the day of a central bank meeting, even though gold news was not on their calendar.
Scaling was frozen without reason even though I had hit the posted targets, and I am still waiting on a response two weeks later. Rules are buried in footnotes and a separate operations manual you can only find linked inside the funded account dashboard. Hidden rule killed my funded account when they decided copy trading between my own two funded accounts was unauthorized.
Hedge rule triggered a soft breach when I was not even hedging; I had two uncorrelated positions on different symbols.
Honest execution on the proprietary platform with time and sales matching what my charts showed. Challenge was passable with a conservative swing approach on indices, not just high-frequency scalping. Second phase blew by in three sessions once I accepted their lot sizing rule as a sanity check.
Risk team was openly hostile over a gold trade on the day of a central bank meeting, even though gold news was not on their calendar.
Account was disabled during an active payout request and the only notice I got was a cryptic email about risk review.
After pushing through three failed challenges elsewhere I finally cleared this one on the first try. Scaling trigger at 10 percent profit plus two payouts was clearly posted on the dashboard the day I signed up.
Instant funding tier at 10k let me skip the two-phase evaluation and start trading futures the same evening.
Payout was cut by 25 percent without explanation beyond a vague reference to a consistency metric that is not disclosed to traders. Consistency rule was used as an excuse to pay out only 60 percent of my first withdrawal with no clear math on how they got there. Minimum trading days moved up from three to five after I had already structured my strategy around the posted number.
Platform latency during the first minute of the cash open cost me my funded account on a trade that would have been profitable at my broker. Risk desk closed my account over a swap charge on a Thursday swing position that pushed drawdown by $12 for 20 seconds overnight.
Challenge is priced like a scam at $249 for a 50k account when competitors offer the same product for under $150.
Scaling plan triggered automatically after my third payout request, so I did not have to open a ticket. Daily loss limit at 4 percent is tight but it kept me from revenge trading after a bad Monday. TradingView plug-in syncs orders without the usual two-second delay I had with another firm's bridge.
Scaling from a 25k account to a 100k allocation after three green months felt earned, not promotional.
Reliable fills on futures contracts even in the first minute of the cash open, which is where I live or die.
Trailing drawdown took me a week to properly understand because the documentation uses a different formula than the dashboard. Scaling criteria require consecutive profitable months, which is fine until a drawdown month resets the counter without notice.
Consistency rule capped my best day at 35 percent of total profit and honestly it kept me from blowing up twice. Dashboard shows every tick of my drawdown live, which killed the anxiety of logging in each morning.
Spreads doubled at every scheduled release, turning what should have been a 2 pip trade into a 5 pip trade with no recourse. Live feed is off from TradingView by one tick at random, which is enough to trigger a stop that should not have been hit.
Hidden rule killed my funded account when they decided copy trading between my own two funded accounts was unauthorized.
Payout processor options are limited to wire or stablecoin and the wire fee of $35 bites small withdrawals noticeably.
Weekend holds are allowed on the swing version but blocked on the standard account with no obvious way to upgrade mid-cycle. Honest about the trailing drawdown mechanics in the contract but their landing page glosses over the floating-equity aspect.
Slippage ate my profit target on NQ during a CPI release when their simulator showed a fill at 15 and the actual fill was at 23. After I passed phase two with an EA, they demanded a manual verification trade of a very specific setup, which is not in any rule I signed. Suspended for a copy trading disclosure after I truthfully answered a question about whether I run a signal service on the side.
Payout denied on a technicality about not having two trading days with at least one trade each inside the payout window. Phase two targets were inflated by a hidden consistency check that calculates on daily P&L rather than cumulative P&L. Risk desk told me gold was a prohibited symbol only after I had opened a position, despite the firm not listing any prohibitions on the signup page.
Risk desk told me gold was a prohibited symbol only after I had opened a position, despite the firm not listing any prohibitions on the signup page. Daily loss was calculated using floating equity down to the tick, including spreads at the exact moment of a news release.
Rules forbid news trading but the news calendar they publish misses roughly one in five scheduled central bank speeches.
Portal looks like it was designed in 2015 but the actual information you need is there once you learn where to click. Portal shows pending payouts clearly but gives no estimated delivery window, so you refresh the page a lot. A fine 50k challenge for the price, but the add-on 25k purchase doubles the effective profit target in ways not shown up front.