Time limits
Trading at these firms means you cannot simply walk away from your terminal forever. Both entities impose a 30-day inactivity rule, which prevents you from taking long breaks; if you don't place a trade within a month, your account is terminated.
Regarding payouts, you are restricted by rigid calendars. At Blueberry Funded, you cannot access your profits until 14 days have passed (unless you pay for a 20% Add-On to reduce it to 7 days). City Traders Imperium (CTI) is even more restrictive for its 1-Step and 2-Step accounts: after the first withdrawal, you are limited to requesting funds only during the last 5 days of each month. Furthermore, CTI's Instant accounts won't let you touch the 50% profit share from Level 1 until you have successfully reached the profit target of Level 2.
Weekends and news
The freedom to hold positions or trade during volatile events is heavily curtailed, especially at Blueberry Funded.
- News restrictions: At Blueberry, you cannot open new trades within 2 minutes (or 5 minutes for Flex accounts) before or after high-impact news. Violating this repeatedly leads to account closure. CTI, by contrast, does not impose news trading bans.
- Weekend gaps: If you choose the Blueberry Flex 1 Step, you are strictly prohibited from holding positions over the weekend.
- Consistency: If you hold an Instant Lite account at Blueberry, you are limited by a 15% consistency rule. CTI applies a 20% consistency score specifically for those wishing to scale their Instant Funding accounts, meaning you cannot rely on a single "lucky" trade to grow your capital.
Where you can trade from
Geography is a major barrier for many traders. Blueberry Funded has a long list of prohibited countries, including the United States, Australia, Russia, and several Middle Eastern nations. If you reside in these regions, you cannot use their services.
City Traders Imperium has a smaller list of exclusions (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Vietnam), but it still restricts access based on international sanctions. Both firms require you to use a Static IP if you use a VPN, meaning you cannot trade from changing locations without risking a security flag.
What the platform limits
The technical environment restricts both your software choices and your strategy.
- Software: At CTI, you cannot use MetaTrader 4, as they only provide MT5 and MatchTrader. Blueberry offers more variety but restricts certain styles across all of them.
- Strategy bans: CTI is much stricter regarding trading styles. You are not allowed to use Hedging or Stacking. You also cannot use Martingale strategies (except in the 1-Step challenge).
- Automation: CTI prohibits the use of third-party EAs in most challenges, forcing you to trade manually or use only your own proprietary code. Blueberry allows EAs but bans "Tick Scalping" (trades lasting only a few seconds) and HFT.
What the rules cost you
The price of the challenges limits how many attempts your budget can handle. A $25,000 1-Step account costs $165 at Blueberry and $159 at CTI. However, the real cost is in the risk margins:
- Risk per Trade Idea: Blueberry imposes a brutal limit of 1% to 1.5% risk per trade idea. You cannot simply "bet big" on a setup; if the combined loss of positions in the same direction exceeds this percentage of the initial balance, you face a breach.
- Mandatory Stop Loss: CTI does not allow you to trade without a Stop Loss. If you fail to set one, the system will automatically close your trade after 1 minute, preventing you from managing trades with mental stops or wide ranges.
- Drawdown: Blueberry's Instant accounts use Trailing Drawdown, which is more restrictive than Static Drawdown because the "floor" follows your peak balance, never giving back the margin you've earned.
Restrictions that add up
The most significant limitation arises from the combination of the Risk per Trade Idea at Blueberry and their payout thresholds. Because you can only risk 1.5% per idea, your path to the $100 minimum withdrawal is slow and requires high precision. At CTI, the combination of banning hedging and requiring a 7-day profitable minimum for the first payout means you cannot hedge your way out of a bad week to preserve your account; you are forced to take directional risks and sustain them over a full trading week before seeing a single dollar.
