[September 2026] Which Prop Firm Should You Buy Right Now | An "Expected Payout" Ranking Split Between EA Traders and Manual Traders (Updated After the FundedNext EA Ban and Moneta's Debut)

📢 Advertising / affiliate disclosure: This article contains prop-memo.com affiliate links (Fintokei / Funded7, marked with 🎁). If you purchase a challenge through these links, you'll receive unlimited use of Hosono P's semi-discretionary EA "ELDRA" as a gift. Rankings are decided by the criteria in this article, not by whether a firm is a partner.

※ This article is based on each firm's official help pages, terms of service, and prop-memo.com's plan database as of September 9, 2026 (updated September 13, 2026 to add E8 Markets' relaunch, and September 27 to re-confirm Hantec Trader's details via official help). Prices are for $100K-equivalent accounts before any coupon, and only E8 Pro is a one-step plan. Rules and prices change month to month, so always check each firm's guide and official site before buying.

TL;DR: Five events that moved the rankings in September

• FundedNext banned EAs / automated trading entirely on accounts of $50,000 or more (revised September 9). If you're running an EA, you're now limited to $25K or below, so it has dropped out of the EA ranking. The rating for manual traders is unchanged → breaking news article
• Moneta Funded has launched. Its $10K Instant is cheap at $155, but the profit split is a choice between 60/88%, it has a 5% trailing DD, a 15/20% consistency rule, and reports of accounts being closed on the 3rd+ payout. Judged as "hot only in price," so we're staying on the sidelines → review article
• The5ers lifted its yellow card on September 25, 2026. On the site owner's account, both payouts went through with no interview required. The interview clause remains in the terms, so check your email daily while a payout is pending → article on the lift
• FundedElite has a Trustpilot suspension plus an EA ban, and ATFunded is suspended. Don't buy either right now
• Alpha Capital has dropped out of the EA ranking (added September 13). Official help explicitly bans fully automated EAs, saying they "will not be approved under any circumstances," and only allows supporting tools like lot-size calculators and SL/TP management. On top of that, Trustpilot has suspended its rating (fake reviews removed, score hidden). For manual traders, we've placed it 8th after reflecting the price change → research notes
• E8 Markets fully relaunched, introducing E8 Pro (added September 13). All plans are now one-step. E8 Pro's $100K is $488 list price, $366 with code E8 — the only sub-$400 option in this ranking. No consistency rule, no minimum trading days, no news restriction, daily withdrawals available: it's one of the best fits for EAs. However, because Trustpilot has suspended its rating, we've placed it 4th among EA firms → review article

As a result, for running $100K on an EA: FTMO > Funding Pips > Fintokei > E8 Pro > Funded7, and for manual/semi-discretionary Japanese traders: Fintokei > Fundora > FTMO > Funded7 > FundedNext — that's September's lineup.

Criteria: ranked by "expected payout"

The ranking uses a single axis.

Expected payout = ease of passing × certainty of getting paid × the share of profit you keep

• Ease of passing: the Phase 1 target, the shape of the drawdown (static or trailing), the deadline, minimum trading days, consistency rules
• Certainty of getting paid: Trustpilot review count and content, how often terms change, whether payout problems follow a consistent pattern
• Share of profit kept: the initial split and its cap, add-on costs

We've matched prices to "$100K 2-step equivalent." As this site keeps saying, since a first-time coupon can only be used once, use it on $100K (here's why).

Ranking A: for people running an EA on $100K

#1 FTMO: the reason it stays the default pick hasn't changed

The 10% target is the heaviest in the industry, yet it's #1 because the risk of "not getting paid" is close to zero. It's been operating since 2015, has a Trustpilot score of 4.8 across 40,000 reviews, and changes its terms gradually with advance notice. EAs, even off-the-shelf ones, can run — just watch the 2,000 orders/day and 200 simultaneous positions caps, and the news restriction on FTMO (funded) accounts. If Phase 1's 10% feels too heavy, you can pass a $50K account first and scale up to $100K later.

#2 Funding Pips: the pick if you're running multiple accounts off one EA

It's one of the few major firms that explicitly allows copy trading between your own Funding Pips accounts. You can run three $100K accounts from a single EA. Up to 100% profit split, $529.

Three things to watch for. Fully automated self-built EAs are sometimes asked for proof of ownership (uncompiled source or development history). Account closures for Risk Per Trade Idea violations are the most common complaint in reviews. VPN/VPS connections are flagged with a flat "not allowed" in the official terms, so you need to register a static IP with support. Zero (instant) accounts have stricter EA restrictions, so EA traders should choose the 2-Step Standard plan.

#3 Fintokei: the only 1:100 leverage firm that works fully in Japanese

Japanese site, dashboard, and support, 1:100 leverage, Sapphire at $529 for an 80% split, and a standing 10% off coupon FINTO10PROLAB. EAs just need to respect a 15-second minimum hold and the customization requirement for off-the-shelf EAs. Martingale and DCA became "allowed (though not recommended)" after the July 28, 2025 policy change — of the firms in this article, Fintokei is the only one that explicitly allows it (official FAQ).

What kicks in instead of an outright ban is the 3% risk rule (a warning when realized + floating loss exceeds 3%), and this warning accumulates across accounts. Three warnings caps you at 1%, six restricts all your accounts, ten ends your service. DCA and multi-position EAs push you toward this threshold faster the more accounts you run, so fix your risk cap at the logic level before adding accounts. See Fintokei's 3% rule countermeasures for details.

#4 E8 Pro: best-in-class rules, but payout certainty is unverified

E8 Markets rebranded to SimFi™ in 2026, and every current plan is now one-step. The newly launched E8 Pro has almost none of the clauses that trip up EA traders: no consistency rule, no minimum trading days, no deadline, no news restriction, off-the-shelf EAs allowed, and daily withdrawal requests. $100K is $488 list price, $366 with code E8. It's the only firm on this ranking where a $100K account is priced in the low $300s to $400s.

In our Monte Carlo simulation (40,000 runs, 120 trading days, 0.8% risk per trade), even someone with zero edge (50% win rate, RR 1.0) got back 4.53x the fee on average, with a break-even win rate around 47.8%. E8 One (dynamic DD, 9% target), buyable at the same $366, only returned 1.43x — meaning the less you rely on your edge, the more the static DD's protection pays off. At a 60%-level win rate, though, E8 One overtakes it (158.6x vs. 164.1x).

Still, we kept it at #4 because we can't verify payout certainty. E8's Trustpilot rating is suspended for "guideline violations" and "removing fake reviews" (score hidden across 3,298 reviews). On top of that, the fee is non-refundable, and the terms include a discretionary clause allowing the firm to "cap risk at 1% per trade idea upon detecting a prohibited action."

Before buying, understand two quirks. You can only grow the account by up to 2% of the initial balance per day; anything above that gets deleted from the account between midnight and 1am the next day. Running without knowing this can cut your expected value by up to 54% (the fix is one line: "don't open a position if the expected profit target is bigger than the day's remaining allowance"). The other is that the static DD is only static until your first payout. The moment you request a payout, the failure line moves permanently to the initial balance, and since you can only withdraw 50% of the profit, the half you leave behind becomes your only buffer. Full details in Is E8 Pro worth buying at $366?

#5 Funded7: the fastest route to running an EA in yen

The Two Phase (JPY) plan is denominated in yen so your P&L reads directly, spreads are 0.1 pips, and payouts arrive fast — the site owner has received several personally. SEVEN gives 20% off plus a +10% profit split. Founded in 2025 with one year of track record, so read the complete guide for the discretionary clauses in the terms (Provisions 1, 8, 14, 16) before buying. On the EA logic side, martingale — increasing lot size after a loss — is explicitly banned under Rule 4. The official examples say "increasing 1.0 → 1.5 → 2.0 lots is BANNED" while "averaging down at the same or a reduced lot size is SAFE within Rule 2's risk cap," so fix your lot size before deploying a DCA-style EA. The 1-phase / instant-type plans have a 50% split, so only buy the Two Phase plan.

#6 Hantec Trader: a candidate for medium/long-term logic, skip for short-term systems

Backed by FCA-regulated Hantec Markets, you can trust its payout reliability at roughly FTMO's level. Enhanced (2-step) has a good shape — static 10% DD, no consistency rule, no deadline — but on your first payout, the max-loss line locks to the initial balance (withdraw all your profit and you have zero cushion left). If you plan to withdraw while continuing to trade, Endurance (3-step, $100K at $299, static 8%) is a better fit since its line doesn't move when you withdraw (EnhancedX's line doesn't move either, but it carries a 35% consistency rule) (comparison of the four plans).

For EA traders, the things that matter are: MT5 only, 50x leverage, being flagged and subject to profit removal or account suspension if trades closed in under 3 minutes make up 30%+ of net profit, an instant-failure-plus-news-restriction if floating loss hits 3% once you're in a Funded account (not applied during evaluation), a ban on one-sided bets, and a $400K allocation cap (also $400K per EA/strategy — you can't run the same EA strategy across multiple accounts). If your logic holds positions for hours or more, this is #5; for scalping systems, skip it. EnhancedX's 35% consistency requirement (changed from 45% in September 2026) is the worst possible match for EAs, so avoid it.

Alpha Capital: fully automated EAs are officially banned, so EA traders should look elsewhere

The price is attractive. Alpha Pro 10%'s $100K is listed at $447 ($357.60 with ALPHA20), and it has 1:100 leverage on FX. Static 10% DD across two steps, and choosing bi-weekly payouts removes the consistency rule entirely. On the numbers alone, it would rank near the top.

Even so, we've excluded it from the EA ranking because official help explicitly bans fully automated EAs.

Automated EAs that execute trades independently, without human oversight, are strictly prohibited and will not be approved under any circumstances

This covers third-party bots, fully automated strategies, HFT, and latency arbitrage, and using one triggers instant account closure the moment it's detected. Only supporting tools — lot-size calculation, SL/TP management, moving to breakeven — are approved, and even those are MT5-only (not usable on cTrader, DXtrade, TradeLocker, or Alpha Direct). The process requires selecting "Enable EA" at purchase and then sending an EX5 file to support for prior approval. You need to have enabled and used it from the evaluation stage to use it on a Funded account, so you can't add it in afterward.

On top of that, any Funded account bought on or after July 21, 2026 gets the Max Risk Rule. The instant a single symbol's floating loss hits 2% for accounts $50K and up or 3% for under $50K (1% on Alpha Direct), the account is closed without warning. Multiple positions on the same symbol are summed, and profitable positions don't offset them. It's separate from the max DD, so an 8%-DD plan effectively caps out at "2% on a single symbol." This is a poor fit for logic that holds multiple positions at once.

We've placed it 8th in the manual-trader ranking.

FundedNext: still stands for manual traders, no longer for EA traders

With the September 9 revision, $50K, $100K, and $200K accounts — challenge and Funded alike — are now fully manual only. EAs are only usable on MT4/MT5 accounts under $50K (with a separate usage fee, non-refundable; cTrader and Match-Trader don't allow EAs regardless of size). The $300K cap per EA strategy is still there, so in practice you're limited to "$25K × 12." Fine if you're comfortable splitting across small accounts; skip it if you intend to run $100K. The rollout timing for existing accounts is unstated officially, so if you're already running one, check the breaking-news article's steps.

How martingale/DCA EAs are treated (confirmed with each firm's official help on September 10, 2026)

"Martingale ban" tends to get lumped together, but the actual wording varies a lot by firm. Separate martingale (increasing lot size after a loss) from DCA (averaging down at the same lot size).

"Not named specifically" doesn't mean "OK." FTMO and Funding Pips catch doubled lot sizes under their size-consistency clauses, while Hantec and Alpha Capital leave it to discretionary judgment. If you fix your lot size and keep total risk within 3%, both Fintokei and Funded7 explicitly allow it. As of September, Fintokei is the only one where you can run logic that's built to increase lot size. See Does DCA help against consistency rules? for whether same-lot DCA affects pass rates.

An offshoot for people who can run something other than MT5

• E8 Markets: Rebranded to SimFi™ in 2026, and all 3 Forex plans are now one-step. E8 One $488, E8 Pro $488, E8 Signature $280 (all $100K list prices). MT5 has been added, alongside cTrader / Match-Trader / TradeLocker / E8 Terminal for five total platforms. Consistency rules only apply at the Performance stage (One 40%, Signature 35%, Pro has none). E8 gives 25% off. But Trustpilot's rating is suspended
• SuperFunded: We've confirmed live use of a Python bot via the TradeLocker API. Only 30 Trustpilot reviews and no regulatory info, so keep size small
• PipFarm: cTrader, $490 for an 80→95% split. The 3% daily DD is tight
• Lark Funding: DXtrade / cTrader, $525. Allocation cap is on the small side

Ranking B: manual/semi-discretionary Japanese traders

Fundora is #2 because it's run by a Japanese company, pays into domestic Japanese bank accounts in yen, and allows corporate contracts — a level of "payout certainty" only a domestic firm can offer. cTrader only, EAs limited to self-built cBots, and a fixed 80% split mean it doesn't suit EA traders, but it's the least stressful option for manual traders. Coupons come only from occasional drops on the official LINE account.

The5ers lifted its yellow card on September 25, 2026 (the site owner received both payouts with no interview, on the account we track). We're keeping it at #6 because the clause requiring an interview within 5 business days — failing which payouts are held — remains in the terms, and the September 14 revision shrank the $50K/$100K account sizes and added payout caps. If you can commit to checking email daily while a payout is pending and avoiding bulk trading and copy tools, it's a solid pick.

Firms to skip / watch for now

Propr and Hypernova (Hyperliquid-based crypto prop firms) aren't included in this ranking. With FX perps leveraged at 25x, BTC at 10x, and withdrawals limited to USDC, they're a different category from FX prop firms entirely. If you're interested, see our guide to Propr and Propr vs. Hypernova.

How to buy: FTMO for one account, spread out for three

• Just one account: put your first-time 10% off on FTMO's $100K. EA or manual, prioritize payout certainty above all
• 2–3 EA accounts: FTMO + Funding Pips + Fintokei. Splitting across firms means one firm's rule change (like FundedNext's this month) doesn't shut everything down at once. Running the same EA across multiple firms is fine under the rules, but within a single firm, check the allocation cap per strategy and the rule against changing strategy between evaluation and Funded (comparing allocation caps / comparing strategy-change rules)
• To try it cheap, or to field-test an EA: E8 Pro. $100K is $366 with E8, $10K is $51. The fee is low enough that the per-account expected value is best-in-class, but since Trustpilot is suspended, plan on not leaving a large balance sitting there
• To keep everything in Japanese and yen: one account with Fintokei or Fundora. For a JPY-denominated option, Funded7's two-phase plan
• Register purchases in My Challenges: track deadlines, payouts, and phase progress. Link your EA account to the P&L tracker and the old account gets auto-archived the moment a phase advances

Coupons usable this month (with confirmation date)

For the latest list, see our full roundup of coupons across 19 firms. Always confirm the total at checkout right before buying.

FAQ

Q. If I'm running an EA on $100K, which firm is best right now?

FTMO. The 10% target is heavy, but with Trustpilot at 4.8 across 40,000 reviews and stable terms, the risk of not getting paid is lowest. If you want to distribute across multiple accounts from one EA, go with Funding Pips; if you need Japanese support and 1:100 leverage, Fintokei is next best.

Q. Should I stop buying FundedNext?

If you plan to run $50K or more on an EA, you can't (fully manual only, per the September 9, 2026 revision). For manual traders, the evaluation hasn't changed — target 8%/5%, up to 95% split, 24-hour payout guarantee — and it's ranked 5th in the manual-trader list.

Q. I heard Moneta Funded's instant accounts are cheap.

The $10K account is $155 ($78 with the 50%-off code TOKONATSU50), which is genuinely cheap, but the 88% split is a paid add-on — the cheaper price gets you a 60% split. Given the 5% trailing DD, the 15/20% consistency rule, and reports of account closures on the 3rd–4th payout clustered in June–September, we're staying on the sidelines. See the review article for details.

Q. Where can I run a DCA/martingale-style EA?

Among the firms covered here, Fintokei is the only one that officially allows martingale (increasing lot size after a loss), since July 2025 (not recommended). Funded7 explicitly bans martingale but explicitly allows same-lot or reduced-lot DCA within its risk cap. FTMO and Funding Pips don't name it specifically but effectively ban it under their "position significantly larger than your other trades" clauses, while Hantec and Alpha Capital leave it to discretionary judgment under their one-sided-bets/gambling clauses. Wherever you run it, fix your lot size and keep total risk within 3%.

Q. E8 Pro is cheaper than the top four firms — why is it ranked 4th?

On rules and price alone, it would be #1. No consistency rule, no minimum trading days, no deadline, no news restriction, off-the-shelf EAs allowed, daily withdrawals — and $100K is $366 with E8. Even in our Monte Carlo simulation, it came out best for a zero-edge trader at 4.53x the fee.

We kept it at #4 because of "payout certainty." This ranking's axis is "ease of passing × payout certainty × split," and E8's Trustpilot rating is suspended for guideline violations and removing fake reviews (score hidden across 3,298 reviews). The fee is also non-refundable, and the terms include a discretionary clause allowing risk to be capped at 1% per trade idea. We've applied the same standard to Blueberry Funded for the same reason, keeping it on the watch list too. If the rating comes back, it would move up. Details in the E8 Pro review.

Q. Can I run an EA on Alpha Capital?

Not a fully automated one. Official help explicitly states: "Automated EAs that execute trades independently, without human oversight, are strictly prohibited and will not be approved under any circumstances," "includes third-party bots, fully automated strategies, HFT, and latency arbitrage," and "using one results in instant account closure."

Only supporting tools can run. Things classified as "trade management tools" — lot-size calculation, SL/TP management, moving to breakeven — are approved. The process is a two-step: choose "Enable EA" at purchase, then get prior approval by sending an EX5 file to support. It's MT5 only — unusable on cTrader, DXtrade, TradeLocker, Swap-Free accounts, or Alpha Direct. You need to have enabled and used it from the evaluation stage to use it on a Funded account, so you can't add it in after passing.

Also, if multiple traders use the same EA and produce identical trades, that triggers a "group trading" violation and account failure. Shared use of an off-the-shelf EA is structurally impossible. Details in the Alpha Capital complete guide.

Q. Which firms work fully in Japanese?

Three: Fintokei (full support), Fundora (Japanese company, domestic bank payouts), and Funded7 (supported, JPY-denominated). Manual traders can safely pick among these three.

Q. Which account size should I use my first-time coupon on?

$100K. Most firms' first-time codes are one-per-person, and since discounts are percentage-based, the bigger the account, the bigger the savings. On a $5K account it saves roughly $15; on $100K it's closer to $250.

Q. Is The5ers safe to use?

Yes. Both payouts on the site owner's account went through with no interview, so we lifted the yellow card on September 25, 2026 ($1,230.86 in crypto on September 9, then $3,545.67 via Rise on September 24; see the payout report). Still, the interview clause remains in the terms, so check your email daily while a payout is pending, and don't do bulk trading (opening multiple positions at once) or copy trading — both are explicitly banned.

References

• Breaking news: FundedNext bans EAs on accounts of $50K+
• Review of Moneta Funded's instant accounts
• We lifted The5ers' yellow card
• Is E8 Pro worth buying at $366? (checking its two catches)
• Comparing prop firm EA rules
• Does DCA help against consistency rules? (sorting out martingale/DCA terms)
• Comparing rules across 16 firms
• April 2026 ranking (12 firms)

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