Which Hola Prime Plan Should You Buy? For EAs, the "2% Rule" Decides Everything

※ This article is based on testing a specific strategy shape (weekly entries, gold, EA). Rankings will differ for other strategies. This is not investment advice. Assumptions and limitations are spelled out at the end.

Hola Prime has five plans: 1-Step Prime / 2-Step Prime / 2-Step Prime X / 2-Step Pro / Direct.

Prices are all similar — $569–$1,049 for $100K. The standing coupon WELCOME20 takes 20% off (excludes $2K, $200K, and $300K).

But if you're running an EA, there's a rule you need to check before the price.

First, understand "2% per trade idea"

Hola Prime's funded accounts carry this rule:

・A stop loss is mandatory on every trade
・Risk cap of 2% per trade idea
・Reopening the same symbol/direction within 10 minutes counts as "the same idea" and is combined
・Split positions that overlap in time are also combined into one idea

The definition of "risk" here is unusual, and misreading it will get your settings wrong.

The official trading rules page states:

"Risk" refers to the maximum loss determined by your stop-loss placement on a trade or trade idea. What matters is the risk taken, not the loss itself. If the SL is set within the 2% risk limit, any additional loss from price gaps is not counted toward the risk calculation.

In other words, what's judged is only where the SL sits, as a % of the account, at the moment of entry.

SL placed at 1.9% of the account         → compliant
A gap jumps the SL and you lose 3%        → still compliant (not counted toward the risk calculation)
SL placed at 2.1% of the account          → violation. Account suspended

This is not "your account is done once floating loss touches 2%." That's a separate clause, and it only applies to trades with no stop-loss set.

Any trade or trade idea without a stop-loss (SL) that results in an unrealized or realized loss exceeding 2% will be considered a violation of the rules.

Translating this into a setting

If you're running an EA, just place the stop-loss around 1.9% of the account (a bit of margin under the 2% cap).

If your strategy uses a 2.5% stop-loss elsewhere, you'd scale the lot down to roughly 0.76x to keep the same price distance.

Other firms (2.5% stop-loss)… lot 1.00
Hola Prime (1.9% here)       … lot 0.76

Read this as "2% floating loss" and tighten it to 1.25%, and you cut your lot to 0.5x, throwing away 30% of your profit. The author initially misread it exactly this way.

And this rule doesn't apply during evaluation

The official pricing simulator's trading-objectives table gives the answer directly.

Neither the risk cap nor the mandatory stop-loss applies during evaluation. You can run at full lot size.

During evaluation   … lot 1.00, stop-loss 2.5%
After going Funded  … lot 0.76, stop-loss 1.9%

You need to switch your EA's parameters between evaluation and post-Funded. Miss this and tighten from the start, and it takes needlessly longer to pass.

We ran four plans on real data

From here it's a real test. We ran a gold strategy with weekly entries — two variants — across two and a half years of hourly candles, actually looping through challenge → funded → fail → rebuy in real sequence. Fees are $100K prices after WELCOME20.

1-Step Prime came out 22% ahead. And splitting the period into three sub-periods didn't change the ranking.

Why does the toughest plan win?

This runs against intuition. A plan's difficulty can be measured as "target ÷ max loss."

1-Step Prime … 10% ÷ 6%  = 1.67  ← the toughest
2-Step Prime … 8% ÷ 10% = 0.80 → 5% ÷ 10% = 0.50

The two-step plans have more room in their drawdown, and the balance resets with every phase. On paper, the two-step plans should win, and the author expected that going in.

The actual result was the opposite. The reason is speed.

One-step is Funded after a single pass. Two-step needs two passes, and the minimum trading days pile up per phase. For a strategy that only enters once a week, this gap matters.

The 6% max loss really is tight, and failures ran 4.6 times a year (2.3 for the two-step plans). But a failed account can be rebought for $463. Time spent earning on a Funded account outweighed the number of failures.

Flip it around, and this conclusion depends on the premise that "failing is cheap." It doesn't hold for anyone who'd rather avoid the hassle of rebuying, or who can only pay the fee once.

Skip 2-Step Prime X

Prime X's pitch sounds appealing: "no mandatory stop-loss, no 2% risk cap, no 10-minute rule."

But in exchange for dropping those, you're saddled with a different constraint: "2% floating loss." And this one is clearly stricter than the 2% rule on the other plans.

The other plans' 2% is judged by "the stop-loss position at entry." Exceed it via a gap, and it's not a problem. Prime X's "2% floating loss" is judged by actual unrealized loss. In exchange for the freedom to place a stop-loss, you're saddled with a hard cap on floating loss that has no escape.

On top of that, you get these extra conditions:

・50% consistency rule
・Minimum trading days: 5 per phase (others are 2–3)
・Withdrawals are bi-weekly with an 80% split only (other plans can choose monthly at 95%)
・No news trading on funded accounts

There's no upside for the constraint that got dropped — conditions just get worse. It also finished last of the four in our test.

Choosing Prime X because "you don't want a mandatory SL" doesn't hold up, since the constraint you thought you avoided just comes back under a different name.

Who needs 2-Step Pro, and who doesn't

The difference between 2-Step Pro and 2-Step Prime really comes down to just these two points.

$90 more, and two more restrictions after going Funded. In exchange, you get leverage and fewer minimum trading days.

But "1:50" and "1:100" are the FX numbers. Hola Prime's leverage is actually split per instrument.

If you trade gold or indices, it's the 10:1 number that matters. At 1.8 lots of gold on a $100K account, the notional value is roughly $790K — 7.9x leverage. There's almost no room left before you hit the 10x cap.

If you only trade FX, 1:50 is usually enough, and you don't need to pay the extra $90 for Pro. If you plan to use a larger lot on gold or indices, Pro's 20:1 becomes worthwhile.

Direct doesn't allow EAs

Direct accounts ban EAs / automated trading entirely. The official FAQ explicitly states it's "strictly prohibited."

The no-evaluation, straight-to-funded product is appealing, but it's off the table for anything automated. On top of that, it comes with a 7% EOD trailing DD, 20% consistency, and no news or weekend holding — the conditions aren't light even for manual traders.

Sometimes an instrument just isn't available (measured firsthand)

On September 19, 2026, we measured instrument specs on the author's $100K account (HolaPrime-Server1).

88 instruments in total. Neither Nikkei nor Dow was available.

If you're bringing an index-based strategy, check which instruments are supported before buying. We measured other firms in the same survey, and index specs vary firm to firm in both name and contract size — even for a single instrument like Nasdaq, contract size ranged from 1 to 20. Get this wrong and your lot size is off by an order of magnitude.

Minimum stop distance was 0, gold's spread couldn't be observed at measurement time (market was closed), and we didn't hit any per-order lot cap.

Fine print worth knowing before you buy

Pulling out the easy-to-miss items from the official trading rules page.

Conditions change with your withdrawal method, chosen at purchase.

Withdrawal fees are 2.5%. Bank transfer and Rise have a minimum of $25, crypto a minimum of $5. Even choosing the 95% split, your take-home gets reduced further by this.

Daily loss is based on "yesterday's closing balance." Not the initial balance. The allowance grows with profit and shrinks with loss.

There's a cap on the number of accounts: any one of $50K×4 / $100K×2 / $200K×1. Combined FX + futures max is $800K. Some countries are capped at $90K max (check the official list for affected countries).

Conclusion

For EAs, go with 1-Step Prime. $579 for $100K, $463 with WELCOME20.

Three reasons.

1. One pass is Funded. For low-frequency strategies like weekly entries, the time cost of passing two phases outweighed the extra room in the drawdown. It came out #1 in all three sub-periods.

2. Minimum trading days are the shortest, at 2. 2-Step Prime requires 3 days per phase, Prime X requires 5.

3. The fewest restrictions after going Funded. Both news and weekend holding are allowed. 2-Step Pro bans both, Prime X bans news.

The 6% max loss being tight is real — failures ran roughly 4–5 times a year. Whether you can accept "just rebuy it" is the deciding factor. If you can't, go with 2-Step Prime. The difference is 22% — not a fatal gap.

And whichever plan you choose, run the evaluation phase at full lot size. The 2% rule only applies to funded accounts. Miss this and your time to pass doubles.

Limits of this test

• Only one strategy shape was tested — weekly entries, gold, holding for several hours. Rankings could change for strategies that enter multiple times a day or hold for several days
• Minimum trading days and consistency rules aren't in the model. Prime X's 50% consistency and 5-day minimum could work against it even more than shown
• Test period is two and a half years (April 2024–September 2026), dependent on a single instrument, gold
• Slippage, rejected orders, and payout cycles aren't accounted for
• Prices and rules were measured on September 19, 2026 via the official pricing simulator and trading rules page. Conclusions would change with different coupons
• The 2.5% withdrawal fee and the consistency rule aren't in the simulation. Actual take-home will be lower than the table shows
• Look at the ranking, not the absolute figures. The absolute amounts depend heavily on the market conditions during the test period