FTMO review

Checked October 2026

FTMO is the forex firm most people mean by a prop firm, and its own terms say the accounts are simulated and that no actual trading takes place. Backtoast is first if you want the payout to come from profit on real trading.

1Backtoast

You pay $99 for two full tests of your own strategy, and a pass is an offer of 30% of the profit Backtoast makes trading it with its own money. Forex is one of the five markets the test runs.

2FTMO

A $100K 2-step lists at €540 (€439 on a deal if you don't already have an active $100K), the fee returns with your first reward, and the split starts at 80% and can rise to 90%. FTMO says it has paid more than $650 million in rewards and has more than 4.5 million customers, and it publishes no pass rate. News trading is blocked for two minutes around restricted releases only on the funded Standard account, not during the challenge. A path to a live account is described for FTMO Futures, by invitation, and not for the forex accounts.

E8 Markets is the forex firm here that publishes a pass rate, 17.7% from January 2023 to March 2024.

Rules

The 2-step asks for 10% in the challenge and 5% in the verification, with a 5% daily loss limit and a 10% maximum loss that stays fixed at the starting balance, and you need at least 4 trading days but have no time limit. Both limits are checked against equity, so a losing trade you haven't closed counts, and the daily limit resets at midnight Central European time. The 1-step lists at €499 for $100K, and that fee isn't refunded. It asks for 10%, with a 3% daily loss and a 10% maximum loss that trails your highest end-of-day balance, and on orders from 12 October 2026 your best day can't be more than 50% of total profit. On a funded Standard account you have to close positions before any market break longer than 2 hours, which includes the weekend, unless you picked the Swing account. EAs are allowed up to 200 open orders and 2,000 positions a day.

Payouts

You can claim the first reward on the 14th day after your first trade, and the 1-step pays 90% from the start. The scaling plan adds 25% to the account every 4 months if you made at least 10% net profit and took 2 rewards in that time, up to $2 million across all your FTMO accounts, and it doesn't apply to Instant accounts.

FTMO's prices, rules and reward claims are from ftmo.com, checked 31 October 2026, and the line about simulated accounts is from its terms updated 12 October 2026. Compared on cheapest prop firms for 2026.