Prop Firm Rules 2026, Compared Rule by Rule

The rule set

Prop firm rules, and why they decide everything else

A prop firm sells one product: permission to lose someone else's money inside a boundary. Everything on a checkout page, the price, the account size, the profit split, the marketing, sits on top of that boundary. The boundary is written in the rulebook, and the rulebook is the only part of the offer that can end an account.

That is why this directory indexes rules instead of ranking brands on feel. Two firms can advertise the same $100,000 account at the same price with the same 90% split, and one of them can be four times harder to keep. The difference never shows in the price. It shows in whether the drawdown trails your equity, whether the daily reset falls at a time you are usually in a position, whether a consistency percentage is measured on your best day, and whether the minimum trading days are counted per phase or once.

Seven rules do almost all of the damage. Maximum loss, daily loss, consistency, minimum days, news restrictions, holding restrictions and payout conditions. A trader who reads those seven lines before buying will avoid most of the accounts that get closed for reasons that had nothing to do with a bad trade.

Rules indexed

28 firms, 10 rule categories

Firm rule sheets

16 dedicated pages

Source

each firm's own published terms, FAQ and checkout

Last read

3 September 2026, Directorio updated 1 October 2026

The shortest published rule set in this directory belongs to Meridian Funded, which runs no consistency requirement during evaluation and none at all on its Instant Zero accounts, with three minimum trading days per phase. The longest belong to firms that stack a daily limit, a trailing maximum loss, a best-day percentage and a lot sizing rule on the same account. Both appear in the tables below with the same columns, so the gap is visible rather than argued.

Method

How this rules directory was built

Every cell in every table below was read from a primary source: the firm's own rules page, its FAQ, its terms of service, or the plan selector on its checkout. Nothing here comes from a review aggregator, an affiliate summary or another comparison site. Where a firm publishes a number, the number is quoted. Where a firm does not publish one, the cell says so instead of guessing.

1. Open the firm's rules or FAQ page and record every numeric limit with the plan it belongs to.
2. Open the checkout and confirm the limits shown on the plan selector match the rules page, because they often do not.
3. Record the rule's basis: balance or equity, end of day or intraday, per phase or per account.
4. Record what the rule does on a funded account, which is frequently different from the evaluation.
5. Leave the cell blank and label it as unpublished when the firm never states the number.

That last step matters more than it looks. A missing number is information. A firm that publishes a consistency threshold you dislike has told you the truth about the product. A firm that mentions consistency without a percentage has reserved the right to decide after you have made the profit, and that reservation is worth pricing.

Position in the comparison tables follows the rules, not commercial terms. Meridian Funded is placed first because its published set is the least restrictive of the 28 indexed here, and because the numbers behind that placement are printed in the same columns as everyone else's. Firms are linked so you can verify each line yourself.

Why

Why prop firm rules exist at all

Rules look arbitrary until you understand what the firm is doing with your order flow, at which point most of them become predictable. There are two business models in this industry and they produce two different rulebooks.

The evaluation model

The firm sells evaluations. Fees are the revenue, payouts are the cost, and the internal number that matters is the ratio between them. Rules in this model exist to keep the ratio stable: consistency requirements stop a single outlier from producing a large payout, minimum trading days force a sample the firm can judge, and drawdown limits cap the size of any individual loss the firm might have to absorb.

The brokerage model

The firm routes some or all funded flow to a real market and earns spread, commission or a share of a liquidity arrangement. Rules here exist to protect execution: news windows exist because fills during a release are unpredictable, HFT clauses exist because latency strategies extract money from the pricing engine rather than the market, and minimum holding times exist for the same reason.

You can usually tell which model you are dealing with by which rules are tightest. Heavy consistency and payout conditions with loose execution rules points to an evaluation business. Loose consistency with tight news, holding time and automation clauses points to a firm that is actually hedging. Neither is dishonest. They simply fail different traders.

The practical use of this distinction: match your strategy to the model, not to the marketing. A concentrated discretionary trader belongs at a firm that does not need consistency, which tends to be one earning from flow. A high volume systematic trader belongs at a firm whose HFT definition is a published number they can live with, which tends to be one earning from fees.

Max loss

Maximum drawdown rules across 28 prop firms

Maximum loss is the account's floor. Touch it and the account is finished, in evaluation and on a funded account alike. The headline percentage tells you very little on its own, because the same percentage behaves differently depending on what it is measured from.

The three types you will meet

• Static. The floor is fixed at a percentage below the starting balance and never moves. A 10% static floor on $100,000 sits at $90,000 on day one and on day four hundred.
• Trailing to the starting balance. The floor follows your equity or balance up until it reaches the starting balance, then locks. This is the common compromise and the one most traders can live with.
• Fully trailing. The floor keeps following your equity high for the life of the account. Profit becomes something you are defending rather than something you have banked, and a normal give back on an open position can close a profitable account.

The difference is not academic. On a fully trailing 6% floor, reaching $8,000 of profit on a $100,000 account moves your liquidation level to $101,600. You are now risking a closed account to hold a position that is still up on entry. On a floor that locks at the starting balance, the same $8,000 profit means the worst case is breaking even.

Read the type column before the percentage. A 10% static floor is more forgiving than a 6% fully trailing one in almost every realistic sequence of trades, even though 10% looks like the worse number on a comparison page. Meridian Funded publishes 6% trailing that locks at the starting balance on its 1-Step, widening to 10% static on its longer evaluations, and 5% on Instant Zero.

Trailing

Trailing drawdown, end of day and intraday

Two firms can both say trailing and mean opposite things. The question is when the floor is recalculated.

End of day trailing

The floor moves once, after the daily close, based on the closing balance or equity. Intraday spikes do not lift it. This is the friendlier version: a position that runs $3,000 in your favour at lunchtime and gives it back by the close has not raised your liquidation level.

Intraday trailing

The floor follows the highest equity print of the session, unrealised profit included. Every favourable tick you do not bank raises the level at which the account dies. Scalpers who let a position breathe and swing traders who hold through news are the two groups this rule removes fastest.

There is a third variation worth naming: trailing on balance rather than equity. Only closed trades lift the floor. For a trader who takes partial profits, that is nearly as comfortable as end of day trailing, because the floor moves in steps you chose.

When you compare two accounts, convert both floors into the same question: how much can I lose from my worst realistic moment before the account closes? A 6% floor that locks at the starting balance answers 6% until you are profitable, then more. A 6% fully trailing floor answers 6% forever, measured from a high you may never see again.

Daily loss

Daily loss limit rules and reset times

The daily limit is the rule traders break most often, and usually not because they lost too much. They break it because they did not know when the day started.

A daily limit has three moving parts: the percentage, the basis, and the reset time. The percentage is the part everyone compares. The other two decide what the percentage means.

Basis: balance, equity, or the higher of the two

If the limit is measured from the day's starting balance, unrealised losses on a position you opened yesterday do not count until you close. If it is measured from equity, they count continuously. If it is measured from the higher of balance or equity, you get the stricter of the two readings, which is the most common wording and the one most often misread as generous.

Reset time

Most firms reset at 5:00 PM New York, which is the rollover on retail forex servers. Some reset at midnight in a server timezone that is not stated on the rules page. The consequence is concrete: a position held through the reset can produce a loss that is charged to the new day, the old day, or split across both, and only the reset time tells you which.

Two practical habits remove most daily limit breaches. Flatten before the reset on days you are already down, because a small loss carried across a reset can consume the following day's allowance. And set your platform's clock to the firm's reset timezone, so the number on your screen and the number in the firm's risk engine refer to the same day.

Meridian Funded publishes 3% to 5% depending on the plan and 2.5% on Instant Zero, measured at the 5:00 PM New York reset on the higher of balance or equity, which is the strictest basis stated in plain language rather than left implicit.

Consistency

Consistency rule thresholds compared

A consistency rule caps how much of your total profit any single day, trade or week is allowed to represent. It exists to stop a firm paying out on one lucky position. It also punishes traders whose edge is concentrated, which is most traders who are actually good at one thing.

The four shapes

• Best day percentage. Your largest winning day cannot exceed a set share of total profit. A 50% best day rule on $10,000 of profit means no single day may contribute more than $5,000.
• Best trade percentage. The same idea applied to one position, which is much tighter.
• Lot or volume consistency. Position sizes must stay within a band, so a trader cannot pass with one oversized trade. This is a rule about behaviour rather than profit.
• Weekly or per payout consistency. Applied at withdrawal rather than during the evaluation, which is where most traders meet it for the first time and are most surprised.

The shape matters more than the number. A 50% best day rule is loose. A 20% best trade rule is severe. And a rule applied only on funded accounts, which is the most common arrangement, means the evaluation you just paid for did not test the constraint you will actually trade under.

What to check on any checkout page, in order: is there a consistency rule at all, is it stated as a number, does it apply during the evaluation or only once funded, and is it measured on a day, a trade or a week. A firm that answers all four in writing has given you a product you can plan around. Meridian Funded publishes none during evaluation and none on Instant Zero, with 25% on Step funded accounts and 15% on Instant Funding, which is the full answer to all four questions.

Minimum days

Minimum trading day rules

Minimum trading days force a sample size. The firm wants more than one session of evidence before it hands over an account or a payout. The rule is usually mild, and it is usually misread in one specific way: per phase or per account.

Four days per phase on a two phase evaluation is eight days, not four. Add a minimum holding time per day, which some firms impose to stop a trader opening and closing a token position, and the real floor on a two phase challenge can be two working weeks before a payout is even possible.

What counts as a trading day

Definitions vary and the difference is money. Some firms count any day with at least one closed position. Some require a minimum volume. Some require a day with a result, positive or negative, which means a flat day does not count. Firms that sell a minimum day removal add-on at checkout have effectively priced their own rule, which tells you how binding they consider it.

Traders who hold positions across several sessions should check whether a multi day position counts once, on the open, or on every day it remains open. That single definition decides whether a swing trader satisfies the rule naturally or has to trade artificially to meet it.

News

News trading rules and event restrictions

News restrictions are the clearest example of a rule that is written for the firm's hedging desk rather than for the trader's education. During a high impact release, spreads widen and slippage is unpredictable, and a firm passing your order flow to a liquidity provider does not want to guarantee your fill at your price.

The four levels of restriction

• No restriction. Trade any release, in evaluation and funded. Rare, and usually paired with tighter drawdown.
• A window around the release. No opening or closing within a stated number of minutes either side, commonly two to five.
• A profit cap around the release. Trading is allowed but profit made inside the window is capped or excluded, which is the least disruptive version because nothing gets closed.
• Funded accounts only. Free during evaluation, restricted once real money is involved. This is the most common arrangement and the one that catches traders who built a news based edge during their challenge.

Two things to establish before you rely on a news strategy. Which calendar the firm uses, because a release rated high impact on one calendar is medium on another, and whether a position opened before the window may be held through it. A rule that only blocks opening is very different from a rule that requires you to be flat.

Meridian Funded leaves news trading free during evaluation and, on funded accounts, caps profit at 1% of balance within five minutes of a high impact release rather than closing the position, which is the profit cap version described above.

Holding

Weekend and overnight holding rules

Holding rules decide whether a strategy fits inside the account at all. A swing trader on an account that forces a flat book by Friday close is not a swing trader, whatever the rest of the rulebook says.

Weekend holding

Most retail focused firms now allow it. Those that do not are usually running a model where the weekend gap cannot be hedged. Where weekend holding is allowed, look for a separate gap rule: some firms measure the maximum loss against Monday's opening print, so a gap through your level closes the account even if price recovers within the hour.

Overnight holding and swap

Overnight holding is almost always permitted, but two details are worth reading. Whether swap or financing is charged to the account, because on a small account a carried negative swap can consume a meaningful share of a daily allowance without a single bad trade. And whether the daily reset falls before or after your usual holding window, which links this rule back to the daily limit.

Instruments with their own calendar

Futures, indices and crypto do not share the forex week. A rule written as no weekend holding may refer to the forex close on Friday while crypto trades through. Firms that offer both asset classes and publish only one holding rule have left that ambiguity in place, and an ambiguity in a rulebook is resolved by the firm, not by you.

• Ask whether a position open at the Friday close is closed by the firm or merely flagged.
• Ask whether the gap rule is measured on equity or on the maximum loss level.
• Ask whether crypto positions are exempt from the forex weekend rule.
• Ask whether swap is charged and whether it counts toward the daily limit.

Algos

Expert advisor, bot and copy trading rules

Nearly every firm in this directory allows automation in some form and prohibits a specific list of uses. The permission is broad, the prohibitions are narrow, and the narrow part is where accounts are lost.

Normally allowed

• A custom expert advisor you wrote or commissioned, executing a strategy with a real thesis.
• Semi automation: a script that manages stops, trails or partials on trades you opened.
• Copying your own trades between your own accounts at the same firm, when the firm permits multiple accounts.

Normally prohibited

• High frequency trading. Usually defined by a minimum holding time, often thirty seconds to two minutes, or by trade count per day.
• Latency arbitrage. Exploiting a delay between the firm's feed and a faster reference feed. Detectable after the fact and treated as a hard breach.
• Tick scalping and quote manipulation. Strategies whose profit comes from the pricing engine rather than from the market.
• Challenge passing bots. Commercial EAs sold specifically to pass evaluations, usually identified by trade signature across many accounts.
• Group copy trading. Many accounts copying one signal provider, because the firm then holds one concentrated position it did not price.

The practical risk in this category is not permission, it is detection after a payout request. A firm that reviews trade history at withdrawal can retroactively judge a strategy to be prohibited. Before running any automation, get the firm's answer in writing on three points: the minimum holding time, whether your EA needs to be declared, and whether the same EA may run on several of your accounts.

Prohibited

Prohibited strategies and what counts as abuse

Every rulebook in this directory contains a clause reserving the right to void profit made through what it calls abusive trading. The clause is broad by design. Understanding the small number of patterns it targets is the difference between trading freely and trading nervously.

1. Reverse hedging across accounts. Opposite positions on two or more accounts, so one passes whatever the market does. This is the pattern the clause exists for, and it is the one firms detect most reliably.
2. Hedging between a funded account and a personal broker account. Same mechanic, harder to detect, treated identically when it is found.
3. Group passing services. Paying a third party to trade your challenge. Detected through login fingerprints and trade signatures, and it voids the account rather than merely failing it.
4. Exploiting a pricing error. Trading a bad quote or a stale feed. Firms void that profit and generally keep the account open.
5. Gambling the last day. Not prohibited anywhere, but it triggers manual review at payout on most firms, which delays money you have already earned.

Two things reduce your exposure to a subjective clause. Keep your position sizing inside a recognisable band, because a consistent risk profile is the cheapest proof that a strategy is a strategy. And never open an account at a second firm to hedge the first, however tempting the arithmetic looks, because both sets of terms treat it as a voidable breach.

Payouts

Payout rules, cycles and eligibility

A payout rule is three answers: when you may first request, how often after that, and what conditions attach to the request. A firm can have an excellent split and a payout schedule that makes the split irrelevant for the first two months.

The conditions that sit behind the schedule

• Minimum profit. A floor, in dollars or percent, before a request is accepted.
• Minimum trading days on the funded account. Separate from the evaluation requirement and frequently overlooked.
• Consistency at withdrawal. The rule from the consistency section, applied to the payout rather than the challenge.
• Completed verification. Identity checks that should be finished before the first request, not during it.
• Method restrictions. Some rails are only available above a threshold, and the fee is sometimes charged to you.

Processing time is the part firms advertise and the part that matters least, because the difference between twelve hours and three days is small next to the difference between requesting on day one and requesting on day fourteen. Read the eligibility column before the speed column.

Meridian Funded publishes a twelve hour processing commitment during London business hours with a 10% addition to the next payout if it is missed, requests every fourteen days on Step accounts and on demand on Instant Funding and Instant Zero.

Splits

Profit split rules and how the top number is reached

Almost every firm now advertises a number between 80% and 100%. The advertised number is the ceiling, and the rule that governs how you reach it is the only part worth comparing.

The four routes to a higher split

• Default. The number applies from the first payout with no condition. The honest version.
• Paid add-on. A checkout upgrade raises the split. Straightforward, and it means the headline number is a price rather than a reward.
• Earned by performance. Consecutive payouts or a profit threshold unlock the higher rate. Reasonable, provided the threshold is published.
• Available on request. Unquantified, and therefore not a rule. Treat it as marketing until a number appears in writing.

Convert every offer into the same sentence before comparing: what percentage do I receive on my first payout, without buying anything and without a performance condition. That single figure ranks splits honestly, and it is usually ten to twenty points below the number on the homepage.

Refunds

Evaluation fee refund rules

The fee refund is the most conditional promise in the industry. It is usually real, and it is usually attached to conditions that appear nowhere near the advertisement.

Read three things. Whether the refund arrives with the first payout or after a set number of payouts, because a refund on the third payout on a fourteen day cycle is six weeks away. Whether it is paid in cash or in account credit, because credit is a discount on your next purchase, not a refund. And whether a headline above 100% is a refund of your fee plus a bonus, which is a marketing expense the firm has chosen to disclose as generosity.

A refund is worth exactly its expected value: the amount, multiplied by your honest probability of reaching the condition, discounted for how long you wait. On that arithmetic a plain 100% refund on the first payout usually beats a 200% refund three payouts deep.

Scaling

Scaling rules and account size ceilings

Scaling is where the size of the opportunity is decided. Two firms can both start you at $100,000 and one can take you to $2,000,000 while the other stops at $200,000, and neither difference appears on the checkout page.

What a scaling plan needs to state

• The trigger: a profit percentage, a number of payouts, or elapsed time.
• The increment: a percentage of current size or a fixed step.
• The ceiling: the maximum capital a single trader may hold.
• Whether limits scale with the account, because a 6% floor on a larger balance is a larger dollar figure but the same discipline.
• Whether a losing period reduces the account, and by how much.

Meridian Funded publishes $10,000 to $500,000 at purchase and a Meridian Pro path adding 25% each time 10% profit is made within three months, up to $5,000,000 across as many as twenty accounts, which is the most explicit ceiling in this directory.

Where a firm says scaling available with no trigger, no increment and no ceiling, treat the account as fixed size. An unquantified scaling plan is a discretionary decision the firm makes later, and it should carry no weight in your comparison.

Platforms

Platform, instrument and leverage rules

Platform choice looks like a preference and behaves like a rule. It determines which order types you have, how your stops are handled, whether your automation runs at all, and in several cases what the firm is able to measure about your trading.

Why the platform is a rule

• MetaTrader 4 and 5 support the largest EA ecosystem and the largest pool of prohibited EAs, which is why HFT clauses are written most tightly there.
• cTrader gives depth of market and cleaner partial fills, and it changes what a tick scalping prohibition can practically mean.
• Proprietary web platforms give the firm complete control of execution and usually the fewest automation options.
• Futures platforms bring exchange rules on top of the firm's rules, and the exchange's rules win.

One habit prevents most surprises here: run the demo before the evaluation. Ten minutes on the firm's own platform tells you more about the effective rules than any comparison table, including this one.

Models

One step, two step and three step rules compared

The number of phases is not a difficulty setting. It is a trade between how long you are tested and how tightly you are constrained while the test runs. Firms price the two against each other, and most traders choose the wrong side of the trade because they compare targets instead of limits.

The pattern across this directory is consistent. Fewer phases means a tighter maximum loss, more phases means a wider one. A 1-Step at 6% trailing and a 2-Step at 10% static are the same product sold to two different risk profiles. Pick the one whose floor matches how far your strategy can go wrong before it is right.

One detail decides more outcomes than the model itself: whether the minimum trading days are per phase. A 2-Step with four days per phase is an eight day floor, which makes it slower to a first payout than its target suggests. Meridian Funded publishes three days per phase across its Step models, and none on Instant Zero.

Instant

Instant funding rules: what is removed and what is added

Instant funding removes the evaluation and moves the constraint to the other end of the account. Nothing has been given away. The firm still needs to know you can trade before it pays you, and the test has simply been relocated to the period between funding and your first withdrawal.

Removed

• The profit target. There is nothing to reach.
• The phase structure and its per phase minimum days.
• The time pressure of a challenge, and usually the failure mode of running out of days.

Added

• A tighter maximum loss, commonly 4% to 6%, and more often trailing than static.
• A payout gate: a minimum number of profitable days, a minimum profit, or both, before the first request.
• A lower initial split on some plans, rising after the first payouts.
• In several cases a consistency rule that applies from day one, because there was no evaluation in which to apply one.

The honest way to compare instant funding with an evaluation is to price the total cost of the first payout. On an evaluation you pay a fee and spend days. On instant funding you pay more upfront and spend days inside a tighter floor. Which is cheaper depends entirely on how often you fail evaluations, which is a fact about you rather than about the product.

Meridian Funded publishes two instant products with a stated difference in constraint rather than in price alone: Instant Funding with a 15% consistency rule and five days of at least 0.5% profit before a payout, and Instant Zero with a 5% floor, 2.5% daily, no consistency rule and no minimum days, paid on demand.

Every firm

Every prop firm rule set in one table

The complete index. One row per firm, the seven rules that decide account survival, read from each firm's own published terms on 3 September 2026. Firms with a dedicated rule sheet are linked to it in the sections below.

Scroll sideways for the full table

Scan the consistency and maximum loss columns together. Those two decide whether a strategy fits inside an account, and every other column is negotiable by comparison. A firm with no consistency rule and a floor that locks at the starting balance has sold you a product you can plan around. A firm with an unquantified consistency rule and a fully trailing floor has sold you an option it controls.

Fewest rules

Prop firms with the fewest rules

Counting rules is not a ranking of quality, but it is a useful proxy for how much of your attention the account will consume. Every additional constraint is a thing you can break by accident while trading correctly.

Scored on five binary questions, the least constrained sets in this directory look like this: is there a consistency rule during evaluation, does the maximum loss trail after you are profitable, is there a lot sizing rule, are news windows blocked during evaluation, and is the minimum day count above three per phase.

The pattern is worth naming: the firms with the fewest rules tend to compensate with either a tighter floor or a slower payout cycle. Nobody gives away all five. What you are choosing is which of the five you are least likely to break, and that depends on your strategy rather than on the firm.

For a discretionary trader whose profit is concentrated in a few sessions a month, the consistency rule is the one to remove first, because it is the only rule on the list that can punish you for winning. For a systematic trader running many small trades, the minimum holding time and the HFT clause matter more than consistency ever will.

Strictest

The strictest prop firm rules, and when they are worth it

A strict rule set is not a red flag on its own. Futures firms and firms hedging real positions have reasons for their constraints, and a trader who fits them can trade a strict account for years. The problem is buying a strict account by accident.

The five strictest rule patterns in this directory

1. A fully trailing maximum loss that never locks. Profit is never banked and every good day raises the level at which the account dies.
2. A best trade consistency rule below 25%. Effectively a ban on conviction, and it forces artificial position sizing.
3. An unquantified consistency rule. The firm decides after you have earned the money.
4. A daily limit measured intraday on the higher of balance or equity, with an undisclosed reset time. Two unknowns stacked on the rule traders break most.
5. A minimum day count above five per phase on a two phase model. Ten trading days before funding is possible, plus the funded account requirement on top.

One strict rule is a constraint. Three stacked on the same account is a different product, and it should be priced as one. If a plan carries a trailing floor, an intraday daily limit and a consistency rule at the same time, the honest comparison is not against a cheaper plan elsewhere, it is against not buying.

Firms nearer the strict end of this directory include the futures focused programmes, where exchange rules and daily loss limits combine, and any plan advertising a very high split alongside a very tight floor. The split is paid for by the floor. That is the trade, and it is a reasonable one for a trader who takes profit quickly and never carries risk overnight.

Breaches

Hard breach against soft breach

Not all rule breaks end the account, and the distinction is written into most rulebooks without being labelled. Knowing which category a rule belongs to changes how you trade near its edge.

The practical consequence: a hard breach limit deserves a hard buffer. Trade as though the daily limit is 20% tighter than published, because slippage, commission and swap all count toward it and none of them are under your control at the moment they land.

Soft breaches deserve the opposite treatment. A consistency rule at payout does not need a buffer, it needs a plan: know the threshold before the profit exists, and size the last trades of a cycle so the ratio lands where it needs to. A trader who learns the consistency percentage after making the profit has already lost the option to manage it.

Behavioural breaches deserve neither buffer nor plan, only avoidance. They are judged after the fact, by a human, at the moment you request money. Nothing about a behavioural clause is negotiable once the trade history exists.

Red flags

Rules that should make you walk away

Most rules are simply constraints, and a constraint you can see is something you can plan around. A small number of clauses are different in kind, because they transfer a decision from the contract to the firm's discretion after your money is already in.

1. An unquantified consistency rule. Any wording along the lines of trading must be consistent, with no percentage. The threshold gets decided when you ask for money.
2. A maximum loss that trails forever with no lock. Profit is never banked. A normal give back on a winning position closes a winning account.
3. A discretionary payout clause. Wording that allows the firm to refuse or reduce a payout at its own judgement without naming a breach.
4. No reset time on the daily limit. A hard breach rule with an undisclosed boundary, which is a hard breach you cannot manage.
5. Rules that exist only in the terms and contradict the plan page. The terms govern, and the contradiction tells you how the firm is run.
6. A restricted country list that does not include payout rails. If the firm cannot pay your residency, the evaluation has no possible outcome.

None of these require a judgement about the firm's honesty. They are structural: each one moves a number from the contract into someone's discretion. A firm can be entirely well intentioned and still have written a clause that will cost you a payout during a bad quarter, because the clause is what gets used when the payout ratio moves.

The inverse is also true and is the reason this directory prints unpublished in cells rather than leaving them blank. A firm that states a rule you find restrictive has treated you as an adult. A firm that states nothing has kept an option, and options have value to whoever holds them.

Rule changes

Rule changes, grandfathering and terms updates

Every firm reserves the right to change its terms. The question that separates a stable product from a risky one is what happens to accounts that already exist when the rules move.

The three positions a firm can take

• Grandfathering. Existing accounts keep the rules they were bought under. The strongest position and the rarest.
• Notice period. Changes apply to everyone after a stated number of days. Workable, provided the notice is actually sent.
• Immediate effect. The published rules are whatever the page says today, including for the account you bought last month.

Very few firms state their position explicitly, which is why it is worth asking support in writing before buying a large account. Keep the answer. A dated reply from support is the only version of the rulebook you can point to later.

A habit that costs nothing

On the day you buy, save the firm's rules page as a PDF, with the date visible. If a limit changes mid evaluation, that file is the difference between a conversation and an argument. This applies to the plan page and the terms of service, because the two are frequently inconsistent and the terms usually win.

Watch specifically for changes to the consistency percentage, the payout cycle and the split conditions. Those three are the levers a firm pulls when its payout ratio moves against it, and they are the three most often changed quietly.

KYC

Verification, account and eligibility rules

The rules that have nothing to do with trading stop more payouts than most traders expect. They are also the easiest to satisfy, because every one of them can be handled before the first trade.

1. Identity verification. Government identification and usually proof of address. Start it the day the account is funded, not the day you request money.
2. Name matching. The name on the account, the payment method used to buy it and the payout destination must match. A card in a partner's name is the single most common administrative hold.
3. One account per person. Most firms allow several accounts but tie them to one identity, and a second identity is treated as fraud rather than as an error.
4. Age and residency. Eighteen or older, and not resident in a restricted jurisdiction. The restricted list is usually in the terms and rarely on the sales page.
5. Tax documentation. Some firms require a tax form before the first payout depending on your residency.

Restricted country lists change with sanctions policy and payment provider requirements. Check the list against your actual residency, not your nationality, because payout rails follow residency. A trader who buys an account from a jurisdiction the firm cannot pay has bought an evaluation with no possible outcome.

By style

Which rules matter for your trading style

The same rulebook is generous to one trader and hostile to another. Rather than looking for the best rules, look for the rules that do not interfere with the thing you already do well.

The exercise takes five minutes. Name your style, find your row, then check those two or three fields on any firm you are considering and ignore the rest of the comparison. A firm that fails your row is not a bargain at any price, and a firm that passes it is worth paying more for than one that merely has a bigger split.

By size

How rules change with account size

Rules are usually published as percentages, which makes them look size independent. In practice three things change as the account grows, and none of them are percentages.

• The dollar value of a mistake. A 5% daily limit is $500 on $10,000 and $12,500 on $250,000. The discipline required is identical, the psychological load is not.
• Commission and spread as a share of the allowance. On small accounts, costs consume a visible fraction of the daily limit before the market moves at all.
• The firm's attention. Larger payouts are reviewed more carefully. Every soft and behavioural rule becomes more consequential as the size rises.

Two account sizes deserve a specific warning. The smallest, often $5,000 or $10,000, where a single normal loss can approach the daily limit, which makes the account a test of position sizing rather than of strategy. And the largest available at purchase, where a firm that has never paid you anything is being asked to trust you with its widest exposure, and where scaling from a mid size account is usually cheaper and safer than buying the top tier outright.

The scaling path is the right answer to both problems. Buy the size where your normal risk per trade is a small fraction of the daily limit, prove the strategy, and let a published scaling rule do the rest. That is why the scaling section above insists on a stated trigger, increment and ceiling: without them, the small account is the whole opportunity.

Challenge rules

Prop firm challenge rules, phase by phase

A challenge is a rulebook with a deadline attached. The limits are the same ones described above, but two of them behave differently during an evaluation than they will once you are funded, and that difference is where most first time buyers lose an account they could have kept.

What tightens during the evaluation

• The time limit, where one exists. Many firms have removed it, and where it remains it converts a drawdown rule into a pace requirement, which changes position sizing.
• The profit target against the floor. The ratio between them is the real difficulty. An 8% target against a 5% floor asks you to make more than you may lose, which requires a win rate and a reward ratio, not just discipline.
• The minimum days, per phase. Two phases at four days each is eight, and a fast pass does not exempt you.

What loosens during the evaluation

• Consistency, at most firms, applies only once funded.
• News restrictions, at most firms, apply only once funded.
• Payout conditions do not exist yet, which is why a challenge can feel easier than the account it leads to.

The consequence is a trap with a specific shape: a trader passes a challenge using a method the funded rulebook does not permit. Passing with two large news driven days is a pass, and it is also a demonstration of a strategy that a 25% consistency rule and a funded news window will not allow. Read the funded column before you start the evaluation, and trade the challenge under the funded rules.

The target to floor ratio is the single number worth computing before buying. Divide the profit target by the maximum loss. Below 1.0 the account is forgiving, at 1.5 it demands a real edge, and above 2.0 the challenge is the product rather than the funding.

Futures

Futures prop firm rules, and how they differ

Futures evaluations are a separate species and comparing them with forex programmes on the same columns produces nonsense. Three structural differences change every rule on the page.

1. Limits are in dollars, not percentages. A daily loss limit is a fixed figure per account size, which makes it easier to plan and impossible to scale by choosing a bigger account.
2. The exchange sets the instrument rules. Margin, tick value, trading hours and settlement come from the exchange, and the firm layers its own limits on top. Where the two conflict, the exchange wins.
3. The trailing floor is normally intraday and normally does not lock until a stated buffer above the starting balance. This is the rule that ends most futures evaluations.

Two costs are easy to miss. Monthly platform or exchange data fees, which are recurring where a forex evaluation is a single payment. And the withdrawal buffer, an amount that must stay in the account after a payout, which functions as a permanent haircut on the first withdrawal rather than a rule about trading.

Futures programmes suit intraday traders who flatten before the close and want dollar limits they can plan around. They fit swing traders poorly, and the mismatch is structural rather than a matter of degree.

Glossary

Prop firm rules glossary

The same rule is sold under four names across this industry. These are the terms as they actually appear in published rulebooks, with what each one means in practice.

Two of these are worth learning precisely because they are the ones firms use loosely in marketing. Trailing drawdown, which can mean anything from a gentle end of day adjustment to a permanent ratchet, and profit split, which is almost always quoted as the ceiling rather than the rate you will receive on your first payout.

Checklist

How to read a prop firm rulebook in ten minutes

A full terms of service runs to several thousand words and almost none of it will affect you. The parts that will can be found in a fixed order, and the order matters because each answer changes what you need from the next.

1. Maximum loss, and whether it trails. If it trails and never locks, stop here and decide whether you accept that before reading anything else.
2. Daily limit, its basis and its reset time. Three facts, not one. If the reset time is absent, ask support and keep the reply.
3. Consistency: exists, quantified, and when it applies. Unquantified is a no for any account you intend to scale.
4. Minimum trading days, per phase or per account. Multiply by the number of phases before comparing to a competitor.
5. News and holding rules, evaluation against funded. Check the funded column, because that is where you will live.
6. First payout eligibility. Not processing speed. The date you may first ask.
7. The prohibited strategies clause. Read it once in full, then check your own method against it honestly.

Then do one final pass looking only for numbers that appear in one place but not the other. A plan page saying 10% and a terms page saying 8% is not a typo you can rely on being resolved in your favour. Where the two documents disagree, the terms govern, and a firm whose two documents disagree has told you something about its operational care.

Applied to the 28 firms indexed here, that ten minute pass produces the columns in the table above. The reason to run it yourself on the firm you choose is that the rules move, and the only version that binds you is the one published on the day you buy.

Ask support

Ten questions to ask support before buying

A written reply from support is the most useful document in this process, because it is dated, specific to your account, and quotable later. These ten questions cover every gap this directory has found in published rulebooks, and they can all go in one message.

1. Does the maximum loss trail, and if so does it lock at the starting balance?
2. What time does the daily loss limit reset, in which timezone?
3. Is the daily limit measured on balance, equity, or the higher of the two?
4. Is there a consistency rule, what is the percentage, and does it apply during the evaluation or only once funded?
5. Are minimum trading days counted per phase or per account, and what makes a day count?
6. What is the minimum holding time that separates permitted trading from high frequency trading?
7. Must an expert advisor be declared, and may the same one run on several of my accounts?
8. On what date can I first request a payout, and what conditions apply to that first request?
9. Do commission and swap count toward the daily limit and the maximum loss?
10. If the rules change, do accounts already open keep the rules they were bought under?

Two signals come out of the reply beyond the answers themselves. How long it takes, which is a reasonable proxy for how long a payout query will take. And whether the answers match the published pages, because a support agent contradicting the terms of service is a sign that nobody inside the firm is treating the rulebook as the product.

Send the same message to two firms you are choosing between. The comparison between the two replies is usually more decisive than the comparison between the two rulebooks.

Firm sheets

Prop firm rules by firm

A dedicated rule sheet for each of the 16 firms most often searched by name plus a rule. Every sheet carries the same sections in the same order, so two firms can be compared line by line without reading either rulebook twice.

Each sheet states the rule, its basis, whether it applies in evaluation or once funded, and what it means for a trader in practice. Where a firm does not publish a figure, the sheet says unpublished rather than filling the gap.

Verify

How to verify any rule in this directory yourself

Everything here is checkable in under a minute per line, and it should be checked before money moves. The procedure is the same for every firm.

1. Open the firm's own rules or FAQ page from its main navigation, not from a search result or an advertisement.
2. Find the rule and note the plan it belongs to, because limits differ between plans at the same firm.
3. Open the checkout, select that plan, and confirm the limits shown on the selector match the rules page.
4. Where the two disagree, open the terms of service and search for the same term. The terms govern.
5. Where the terms are silent, write to support and ask for the number in a reply you can keep.

If a line in this directory does not match what you find, the firm has changed it or we have read it wrong, and both are worth telling us about. Write to contact@directorio.com.bo with the firm, the rule and the page you read it on. Corrections are applied with the date of the new reading.

We hold no position in any firm listed. Some links in this directory are affiliate links, which means a firm may pay a commission if you buy through them. That arrangement does not change a single number in any table, and it cannot change position, because position here follows the published rules and nothing else.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions about prop firm rules