Common prop firm traps

The listed price isn't what you pay

• Monthly subscriptions: a $50-a-month challenge costs $200 if you take four months to pass.
• Activation fees for the funded account, sometimes more than the challenge itself.
• Resets and new attempts: count on at least one or two.
• Permanent promo codes: an "80% off for 24 hours" that comes back every week mostly tells you the base price is inflated.

The true cost calculator adds all of this up for each plan.

Rules that change the maths

• Intraday trailing drawdown: the limit follows your open profits, even ones you never banked.
• Consistency rule on the funded account: you can pass the evaluation and never get a payout.
• A buffer before the first withdrawal: part of your profit stays locked in the account.
• Payout caps and a maximum number of payouts per account.

Denied payouts

Payouts are most often denied over vague rules: "prohibited strategy", "gambling", copy trading, latency arbitrage, news trading. Before you buy, look up what's banned and how the firm checks it. A rule written without a clear test can be applied to any trade.

Keep a record of your trades and of your messages with support: in a dispute, it's your only evidence.

Fragile firms

Dozens of prop firms close every year, sometimes with payouts still pending. Warning signs:

• a very young firm with unknown owners;
• frequent rule changes, especially retroactive ones;
• aggressive, never-ending promotions;
• payouts taking longer and longer, support going quiet.

Our risk score uses these signals, and our archive lists closed firms and what happened.

Platforms and your country

A platform can disappear overnight (it happened with MetaTrader at several firms in 2024). Also check that the firm accepts clients from your country and that its payout method works there.