FTMO Review (2026)
FTMO is the longest-running name in prop evaluations, and the one most EA traders try first. The headline numbers are easy to find. The parts that actually fail people — a trailing drawdown on one product and a hard overnight rule on one account type — are not. This review focuses on those.
The two routes
FTMO sells two different products, and they are not the same trade-off. Picking on “one phase is easier than two” is how people lose a fee.
| Rule | 1-Step Challenge | 2-Step (Challenge → Verification) |
|---|---|---|
| Profit target | 10% | 10%, then 5% |
| Max daily loss | 3% | 5% |
| Max overall loss | 10% — trailing, end-of-day | 10% — static |
| Minimum trading days | None stated | 4 |
| Time limit | None | None |
| Extra constraint | Best Day Rule | — |
The rule that actually catches people
On the 1-Step, the 10% maximum loss trails your end-of-day balance and only ever moves up. Have a strong week and your floor rises with you — the room you thought you had quietly shrinks. On the 2-Step, that same 10% is measured from your initial balance and stays put.
Read the daily limits alongside that and the “easier” product inverts: the 1-Step gives you 3% of daily room, the 2-Step gives you 5%. So the single-phase route is the stricter risk regime day to day and the one whose floor chases you upward. It's faster, not easier.
The 1-Step also carries a Best Day Rule: your single best trading day can’t exceed 50% of the combined gains of all your profitable days. One lucky session can’t carry the account, which rules out strategies that rely on rare outsized wins.
The part that breaks EAs
This is the detail worth the most to anyone on this site. After you pass, your funded account is one of two types:
- Standard — news-trading restrictions apply, and positions must be closed before the overnight/weekend rollover.
- Swing — neither restriction applies.
Neither restriction applies during the evaluation. That is the trap: an EA that holds positions overnight will pass a Standard evaluation cleanly and then start breaching rules the moment it’s funded. If your strategy carries trades past the daily rollover — most trend and swing systems do, including TrendRider and grid-based approaches — you want the Swing account, not Standard.
Profit split, fees and scaling
- 90% profit split. On the 2-Step this is stated for that product; 1-Step qualifiers receive 90% from inception under the Premium Programme.
- One-time fee, no recurring charges. On the 2-Step, the fee is refunded with your first reward withdrawal.
- Account sizes: $10,000 · $25,000 · $50,000 · $100,000 · $200,000. Prices change — verify live.
- Free Trial available with unlimited attempts, so you can test an EA against the rules before paying.
Scaling requires all four of: at least 4 months as an FTMO Trader, at least 10% total net simulated profit on the initial (or scaled) capital, at least 2 processed rewards, and a positive balance at scale-up. Meet them and the account grows 25% every 4 months, up to a maximum of $2,000,000.
Who it suits
Good fit: systematic traders who can hold inside a 5% daily loss; EA users willing to take the Swing account; anyone who wants no time pressure, since neither product has a deadline.
Poor fit: martingale and aggressive grid systems — a 10% hard floor ends those on the first bad sequence, no matter how good the equity curve looked. Also a poor fit for news scalpers on a Standard account, and for any strategy whose edge depends on holding through the rollover if you end up on Standard.
Passing is a risk problem, not a strategy problem
Almost nobody fails an evaluation because their entries were bad. They fail because one day got away from them and breached the daily loss limit. That limit is a fixed number you can calculate before you place a trade — which makes it enforceable rather than something to rely on willpower for.
Our free Risk Manager caps daily loss at the terminal level and closes trades when the limit is hit, and the position-size calculator works out lot size from a percentage risk so a single trade can’t take a disproportionate bite. Both are free and neither is FTMO-specific.
How we reviewed this
This is a rules-and-terms review, built from FTMO’s own published trading objectives and reward pages on the verification date above. We have not traded a funded FTMO account, and we don’t publish pass-rate claims — nobody outside the firm can verify those. Where a figure moves often, such as challenge pricing, we say so rather than print a number that will be wrong next month. See our review methodology.
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