Forex firms comparator

L1, Shaw House, 201 Wan Po Road, Tseung Kwan O

Al Shohada Road 10055, Al Hamra Industrial Zone-FZ, 10055, Ras Al Khaimah, U.A.E.

Somesh Kapuria

Sebastian Ness

Hong Kong

United Arab Emirates

2024

2023

Liquidity Provider

Pro and Prime: 100% of the fee paid is refunded with the fourth successful payout from the same account, not available on Direct. Cancellation refunds must be requested within 14 days without any trading activity.

Historically, standard challenges were non-refundable. A newer rule states that evaluation fees purchased after January 9, 2026 are refundable on the 4th payout, while older purchases remain non-refundable.

2.5% per payout. Minimum fee: USD 25 for bank wire or Rise; USD 5 for crypto.

2% payout fee or a $10 minimum transaction fee per payout.

Pro and Prime: on-demand, biweekly or monthly cycle selected at purchase; it cannot be changed later. Direct: every 14 days from the first trade in the cycle. After a payout, a new trade starts the next cycle.

1 Step Evaluation and 2 Step

• Instant payout request once requirements are met.

Instant Funding Static

• Base schedule every 14 days.
• Promotional instant requests may apply.

Instant Funding Trailing and Buy Now, Pay Later

• Every 14 days.

EA Challenge

• First payout after 4 weeks, then every 2 weeks.

Futures Style

• Instant Funding: payout eligible after 5 days.
• 1 Step Pro Evaluation: payout eligible after 3 days.

Processing within one hour of an eligible request, following a prior review of up to 24 business hours. Business days only; additional verification or incomplete details may cause delays.

Payouts are processed within 24 business hours or the trader receives an extra 10% on the profit split.

Bank wire or crypto: USD 50. Rise: USD 500. Thresholds apply to the trader share, excluding the firm share.

$100 minimum withdrawal. Lower withdrawals may be processed on request with fees deducted.

• Futures Style 1 Step Pro Evaluation: $250 / $500 / $750 / $1,000 minimum payout on $25K / $50K / $100K / $150K.

• Instant Funding Zero under the new terms announced on August 20, 2026: no payout cap.
• Other funded products: usually capped at 5% of the initial balance per payout cycle, depending on the program.

Pro: 100:1. Prime and Direct: 50:1. Exotic pairs: Pro 10:1; Prime and Direct 5:1.

• Standard challenge accounts: 1:50
• Funded phase: 1:30
• EA Challenge during challenge phase: 1:100

Pro: 20:1. Prime and Direct: 10:1.

Gold is included in the firm's general leverage framework.

Commodities: Pro 5:1; Prime and Direct 2:1.

Pro: 20:1. Prime: 10:1. Direct: 5:1.

Pro: 2:1. Prime and Direct: 1:1.

Optional at purchase for all Forex accounts; pricing is listed under Add-ons.

After a hard breach a new evaluation or account can be purchased.

Only the 1 Step Evaluation documents a free reset, available if the funded account is lost within 10 days. Futures Style Instant Funding and Futures Style 1 Step Pro Evaluation show reset availability; no reset fee is stated publicly. Other listed products do not include a free reset.

Swap-free: +10% of the base fee before discounts. EA Trading: +10%, MT5 only and unavailable on Direct. cTrader: USD 20 fixed surcharge where available. Alternative payout cycles have different configurator prices; the table shows the base option.

• +10% Profit Split (+15%)
• Weekly payout (+20%)
• +10% Profit Split + Weekly payout (+30%)
• News trading: Instant Funding Static and 1 Step
• Instant Funding Zero: remove the Daily Loss Limit (+30% on the account price).

Direct Account provides funded access without an evaluation phase.

1-Step Prime Challenge.

Four-month cycles from the first trade: at least 10% net profit, two profitable months, two payouts and a positive balance. Manual request required. Increases based on the original balance: 25% first, 40% second and 50% from the third, up to USD 4 million per user. Loss limits are recalculated on the scaled balance. Unavailable during PCP.

Available as 2-Step Pro Challenge and 2-Step Prime Challenge.

Pro and Prime: static floor based on the initial balance, also monitored against floating equity. Direct: trails the highest end-of-day balance, only moves upward and locks at the starting balance after the full drawdown distance is earned. A payout does not lower that floor.

• 1 Step Evaluation: 10% maximum drawdown, trailing on end-of-day (EOD) high-watermark.
• EA Challenge uses trailing high-watermark logic.
• 2 Step and Free Challenge use static maximum drawdown.
• Instant Funding Static uses static drawdown.
• Instant Funding Zero: 5% of the initial balance, trailing from the highest recorded equity (high-water mark).
• Instant Funding Trailing and Buy Now, Pay Later funded phase use trailing high-watermark logic.
• Futures Style Instant Funding: EOD maximum-loss limit of $1,000 / $2,000 / $3,500 / $5,000 for $25K / $50K / $100K / $150K.
• Futures Style 1 Step Pro Evaluation: EOD maximum-loss limit of $1,000 / $2,000 / $3,000 / $4,500 for $25K / $50K / $100K / $150K.

The table shows the base biweekly 80% option. Pro and Prime also offer on-demand 80% and monthly 95% with an advertised 20% surcharge; Direct offers a separately priced biweekly 90% variant. The cycle is selected at purchase and cannot be changed later.

• 1 Step Evaluation: 90%
• 2 Step: 80%
• Instant Funding Static: scales from 50% to 80%
• Instant Funding Zero: 70% from the first payout
• Instant Funding Trailing: 80% from the first payout
• EA Challenge: scales from 50% to 80%
• Buy Now, Pay Later: 80%
• Futures Style Instant Funding: 90%
• Futures Style 1 Step Pro Evaluation: 90%
• Free Challenge funded outcome: 50%

A Free Challenge exists, but it still requires a small activation fee of $1 to $5 and converts into a $5,000 2 Step account if passed.

A hard breach forfeits profits and pending payouts. Forex daily-loss-only exception: profits may still be paid if every trade had a stop loss and no trade exceeded 1% of the initial balance in profit or loss.

Soft-breached profit is deducted at payout review. If deductions reduce profit to zero or below, the payout is denied and the account is reset.

Calculated from the previous day closing balance and includes realized and floating results. Resets at 17:00 EST as stated by Hola Prime. Breaching it is a hard breach.

Daily drawdown resets at 5 PM EST and is generally recalculated from the higher of balance or equity using the product's initial-balance loss allowance.

• Futures Style Instant Funding: no daily limit on $25K; $1,200 / $2,100 / $3,000 on $50K / $100K / $150K.
• Futures Style 1 Step Pro Evaluation: no daily limit on $25K; $1,200 / $1,800 / $2,700 on $50K / $100K / $150K.

Standard combined allocation across sim funded and Direct accounts: USD 400,000 per trader or strategy. USD 90,000 cap for Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Israel, Thailand, Botswana, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Jamaica and Mozambique. Combined Forex and Futures: USD 800,000. Prime Circle and scaling have separate conditions.

Evaluations: unlimited purchases. Sim funded and Direct: up to four 50K accounts, two 100K accounts or one 200K account, within the total allocation limit. 100K and 200K accounts cannot be active together. Direct: at most two active accounts.

Only same-model Pro or Prime sim funded accounts, with no open trades or active cycle and a combined balance matching an available size. Unavailable for evaluations, Direct or PCP. Allocation limits and promotional-account exclusions apply.

No evaluation deadline, subject to the inactivity rule.

No time limits are stated for the 1 Step and 2 Step evaluations. No broader firm-wide maximum duration rule was documented for the other active products reviewed.

Pro: two days per phase. Prime 1-Step: two days. Prime 2-Step: three days per phase. Direct: no minimum. A day counts when at least one trade is opened.

Instant Funding Zero under the new terms announced on August 20, 2026: no minimum trading days.

Prime Circle: five lifetime Forex payouts, with no consecutive-payout or minimum-amount requirement. Only master payouts count when copying. Automatic eligibility subject to compliance, Platinum support, one pre-trading platform switch and allocation growth: USD 25,000 per three unique payouts of at least 1.5%, up to USD 1 million. The geographic USD 90,000 cap remains.

Pro and Prime: three profitable days per biweekly cycle or seven per monthly cycle. Each day requires at least 0.5% net of the initial balance, measured using the lower of closing balance and equity minus the previous closing balance. On-demand uses consistency and minimum-profit requirements. Direct has no profitable-day minimum.

Pro sim funded: maximum open exposure of 10 lots on 25K, 20 on 50K, 40 on 100K and 80 on 200K; no cap on 5K and 10K. From the second scaling, each step adds 10% of the original cap. Prime and Direct: no explicit lot cap, subject to idea risk. First violation: closure, deduction and requested reactivation; second: 30% split and termination.

MT5 only with the purchased EA Trading add-on; unavailable on Direct, cTrader, MatchTrader and TradeLocker. Strategy declaration and distinct settings required; identical strategies may be grouped for allocation. Analytical tools may not automatically execute or modify orders.

EAs are generally prohibited, except on the EA Challenge where they are allowed only during the challenge phase and prohibited once funded.

IP must match the registered country, including KYC and payments. No geographic circumvention. VPS permitted only for trade-taking EAs with a dedicated static IP; manual VPS trading is prohibited. No MT5 access from US IP addresses.

Hedging within a single account is allowed. Hedging across multiple accounts (offsetting buy/sell positions on the same instrument) is prohibited.

Required on sim funded and Direct accounts. There is no fixed three-minute deadline; it must be placed before closing. A trade without a stop loss is treated as unlimited risk and can cause account closure.

Scalping is not completely banned, but tick scalping is prohibited and trades should generally remain open for more than 2 minutes.

Multiple entries are combined as one idea for risk limits. DCA, averaging down and systematically increasing losing exposure are prohibited.

Sim funded and Direct: at most 2% of the initial balance per idea, not per ticket. Risk is combined across overlapping positions and same-asset, same-direction re-entries within ten minutes, including chains. Not applicable during evaluation. PCP: 1% per idea and at most 30% aggregate margin.

Only own Hola Prime accounts. Challenge to challenge: unlimited. Sim funded: one master and one copier. Challenge to sim funded: only one receiving funded account; sim funded to challenges: unlimited. Copying from other prop firms is prohibited. Applies to accounts purchased on or after 15 September 2026.

Prime and all evaluations: allowed. Pro sim funded and Direct: no opening or closing affected instruments from five minutes before to five minutes after high-impact news, including SL, TP and pending orders. Previously opened positions may be held. Pro: offending profit removed; Direct: account closure. PCP also restricts Prime news trading.

For new accounts purchased after the rule change announced on 30 September 2026, trading high-impact (red-folder) news is prohibited during the 5 minutes before and after the event. A news trading add-on is available at checkout for Instant Funding Static and 1 Step. Accounts purchased before the change retain their previous news trading permissions.

Hard breach after 30 consecutive calendar days without opening a trade, in evaluation and sim funded. Closing trades, changing SL/TP or placing pending orders does not count as activity.

At least one open trade or pending order is required every 30 days to keep the account active.

No consistency target to pass Pro or Prime. On-demand sim funded: best day at most 40% of cycle profit and total profit of at least 2% of the initial balance. Direct: best day at most 20%. A partial payout resets the calculation; retained profit does not replace new-cycle profit. PCP may impose additional conditions on high-risk traders.

Profit Consistency Rule

• 1 Step Evaluation: no single trading day can make up 50% or more of total profits, in both evaluation and funded phases.
• 2 Step, Instant Funding Static and EA Challenge: a trading day cannot equal or exceed 25% of total profit for the payout period.
• Instant Funding Lite: 15%.
• Instant Funding Trailing and Buy Now, Pay Later: 20%.
• Instant Funding Zero under the new terms announced on August 20, 2026: no consistency rule.
• Futures Style 1 Step Pro Evaluation: none in evaluation; 40% in funded status.

There is no lot size consistency rule.

Prime and Pro evaluations: allowed. Pro sim funded: close before 15:45 EST Friday; automatic closure and suspension until Monday. Direct: same deadline, but a hard breach and termination.

HFT and tick scalping; arbitrage or exploitation of errors and liquidity; grid, martingale and DCA; unsupported one-sided bets, overexposure and account rolling; third-party accounts, devices, management or signals; cross-account hedging; material changes in strategy, assets or risk after passing; hyperactivity and unauthorized automation. MT5: at most 100 simultaneous orders and 1,000 positions or modifications daily. Sanctions may include profit adjustments, restrictions, PCP or termination.

• Tick scalping / ultra-short trades
• High-frequency trading (HFT)
• Latency arbitrage
• Reverse arbitrage
• Martingale
• Account management
• Third-party copy trading or mirrored group trading
• Exploiting pricing, execution, latency or platform errors
• Manipulative hedging patterns designed to game payouts or risk limits