A guide to prop trading firms.

The major futures prop firms operate as legitimate businesses with public terms, registered entities, and verifiable payout records. We track $1.4 billion in cumulative payouts across the seven firms in this lab. That said, the industry is unregulated in most jurisdictions, so doing your own due diligence on a firm before paying for an evaluation matters.

Public payout data suggests that consistent funded traders earn between $500 and $5,000 per month per account, with a small minority crossing $10,000. Marketing material from prop firms tends to highlight the top performers, but the median experience is closer to a side income than a salary. Stacking accounts can multiply this, but it also multiplies the risk of synchronised losses.

Three reasons account for the majority of failures. First, traders misread the drawdown rule and size positions too aggressively. Second, they rush the evaluation and break the daily loss limit on a bad morning. Third, they ignore the minimum trading days requirement and fail technically while showing a profit. Reading the contract once, slowly, fixes most of this.

A trailing drawdown is a moving floor that tracks your peak balance. If your account grows to $52,000 with a $2,500 drawdown, you cannot fall below $49,500 even if your starting balance was $50,000. It rewards traders who lock profits early and punishes traders who give back gains. Static drawdowns, by contrast, stay fixed at the start. The choice between them changes how you should size every trade.

A reputable firm will not refuse a legitimate payout. They can, however, void payouts when their terms of service have been broken: copy trading across accounts, news trading when prohibited, exploiting platform latency, or running automated strategies without authorisation. Reading the terms once before your first payout request prevents the vast majority of disputes.

For most evaluations, the minimum trading days requirement sets the floor. With profit targets between 6% and 10%, an experienced trader typically clears an evaluation in two to four weeks. Less experienced traders often need multiple resets, which extends the timeline by months. Plan a realistic six-month horizon from first eval to first payout.

An evaluation is a paid trial where you trade simulated capital under the firm's rules to prove your skill. A funded account is the post-evaluation phase where you trade real capital from the firm and become eligible for payouts. The rules are usually similar but not identical. Most traders pass the evaluation and lose the funded account because they assume nothing changes between the two.

Stacking accounts multiplies payouts but also multiplies losses. If your strategy fails on one account, it fails on all of them simultaneously. Most firms allow it, some encourage it. Stacking only makes sense once you have a proven strategy and a strict per-trade risk discipline that prevents synchronised drawdowns.

All major firms reserve the right to update their terms, and most do at least once a year. The best ones announce changes in advance and grandfather existing accounts for a transition period. The worst ones modify rules silently. We track every change in this lab, log them on the comparison table above, and surface the meaningful ones in our Wire feed.