How to Choose a Prop Firm (and Why We Built FFUNDED This Way)

Every prop firm sells the same headline. A big account, a big split, a modest fee. Put three of them side by side and the marketing is close to interchangeable, which is exactly why the headline is the wrong thing to compare.

The number that decides whether you get paid is never on the landing page. It is in the drawdown mechanics, in whether a consistency rule exists, in what the split is on the day you start rather than the day you theoretically max out. Those things differ enormously between firms that advertise identically.

This is the checklist we use, written as questions you can take to any firm you are considering. We answer each one for ourselves at the end of the section, and we are not going to pretend every answer is a knockout. Some of them are simply industry-standard, and saying so is more useful to you than pretending otherwise.

1. Does the drawdown trail?

This is the single most consequential number in prop trading and the one most often left out of the advertisement.

A static drawdown is measured from your starting balance. Start at $100,000 with an 8% maximum loss and the floor is $92,000, permanently. Make $10,000 and the floor is still $92,000, so you now have $18,000 of room.

A trailing drawdown follows your equity upward. Same account, same 8%, but after you make $10,000 the floor has climbed to $101,200. You are up ten grand and you have less room than you started with. Give back $9,000 of your own profit and you are breached, on a winning account.

Neither is dishonest. Trailing drawdowns are why instant-funding plans can be priced the way they are. What matters is whether you were told which one you bought before you paid, because the two behave nothing alike on an identical percentage.

Ask: is the drawdown static or trailing, and is it measured on balance or on equity?

Our answer: stated per plan, on the plan card, before checkout. Our 2-Step Standard and 3-Step run static; Instant, 1-Step and 2-Step Pro run trailing. We put the word on the card rather than in a terms document because the word is the product.

2. Is there a consistency rule, and when does it apply?

A consistency rule caps how much of your total profit any single day or trade may represent. Twenty per cent is a common figure.

The rule itself is defensible. It exists to stop someone passing an evaluation with one leveraged bet on a news release, which is not a skill demonstration and is not something a firm can fund. The problem is not the rule, it is *when* it is applied.

If the rule is enforced at payout review rather than shown while you trade, you can pass an evaluation, trade a funded account for a month, request a payout, and only then discover that a single outsized winner five weeks ago has voided the request. You did nothing you were told not to do. You just could not see the line.

Ask: does a consistency rule exist, what is the band, and can I see where I stand against it while I trade?

Our answer: it exists, the band is published, and your dashboard shows your position against it as you trade. We would rather you adjust in week one than argue in week six.

3. What is the split on day one?

"Up to 90%" is a ceiling. It is not an offer, and the distance between the ceiling and the floor is where the marketing lives.

Read carefully and the headline figure often requires a paid upgrade, a scaling tenure, a promotional window, or all three. The number you are actually paid on your first withdrawal can be ten or fifteen points below the number that sold you the account.

Ask: what percentage am I paid on my *first* payout, before any upgrade or milestone?

Our answer: 85%, on every plan, Instant included. A checkout upgrade takes it to 90%, and the scaling plan raises it across four milestones toward a 95% ceiling. We publish 85% on the pricing page because that is the figure that hits your account on day one. The 95% is real, but it belongs to the scaling story, not to the price tag.

4. Is there a clock?

A 30-day phase is not a risk rule, it is a behaviour rule, and the behaviour it produces is bad.

Traders who are 4% into a 10% target with nine days left do not size correctly. They size for the deadline. Almost every account that dies in the last week of a phase dies of the deadline rather than of the market, and the firm's economics are perfectly comfortable with that.

Ask: how long do I have, and what happens if the market simply does not offer my setup this month?

Our answer: no time limit on any plan. The maximum trading period is indefinite. There are minimum *profitable* days on most plans, which is a different thing and is published per plan, and 2-Step Pro has none at all.

5. What happens at the exact moment you breach?

Most breach notifications are an email that says the account has been closed. Which rule, at what time, on which position, is often absent, and the ambiguity is not accidental.

Ask: when I breach, will I be told which rule and when, and is there any warning before it happens?

Our answer: the dashboard names the rule at the moment it breaks. Separately, our risk-monitoring rules run a published warning ladder, so exposure and high-frequency rules escalate visibly rather than terminating an account without notice. Hard limits, the daily loss and the maximum drawdown, are hard by design and close the account, which is what a drawdown limit means everywhere.

6. Does the fee come back?

A refundable joining fee changes the economics of the whole thing. It turns the fee into a deposit against your own performance rather than a cost of entry.

Ask: is the fee refunded, at what point, and in full or in part?

Our answer: in full, with your first payout, on every evaluation plan, on fees starting at $23. Instant accounts skip the evaluation entirely, so there is nothing to refund against and their fee is not refundable. We say that on the plan card rather than discovering it together later.

The questions where we are ordinary

An honest checklist has to include the rows where the answer is "same as everyone else", so here they are.

Our daily loss limits, 3% to 4% depending on the plan, are tighter than the 5% that is common at the classic two-phase firms. Our maximum drawdown, 6% to 10% by plan, sits inside the normal range. Copy trading between your own accounts is allowed, which is standard. Expert Advisors are allowed with high-frequency and latency abuse as the published exceptions, which is also standard. News trading is allowed throughout every evaluation, and once funded it stays allowed on 3-Step but is restricted on the others.

None of that is a competitive advantage. It is just what the account is, and you should know it before you buy rather than after.

The actual test

Here is the shortest version of everything above.

Open the pricing page of any firm you are considering, including ours. Start a stopwatch. See how long it takes you to find: the drawdown type, whether a consistency rule exists, the split you are paid on day one, and the time limit.

If you find all four in under a minute, the firm has made a decision about how it wants to be judged. If you end up three clicks deep in a terms PDF, that is also a decision, and it tells you something about which conversation you will be having when you request your first payout.

We built our comparison page as that test run in public: every rule we have, laid against the three business models the industry runs on, with no firm named and nothing softened. The pricing page carries every fee at every account size, and the rule book carries the rest in plain English.

Read them before you pay. That is the entire argument.

*FFUNDED provides skill-based trading evaluations on simulated accounts. All trading takes place in a simulated environment with virtual capital; payouts are real money based on simulated performance. Nothing here is financial advice.*