[Updated July 2026] Prop Firm Rule Leniency Ranking: 16 Firms Compared | Rated on Two Axes — 'Rule Leniency' and 'Discretionary Risk'

📢 Advertising / affiliate disclosure: This article contains prop-memo.com affiliate links (Fintokei / Funded7, marked 🎁 in the tables). If you purchase a challenge through one of these links, you'll receive unlimited access to Hosono P's semi-discretionary EA "ELDRA" as a gift. See Hosono P's note article for details.

※ Prop firm rules change frequently. Always check each firm's official site for the latest, accurate rules. (Last updated: September 27, 2026. The Hantec Trader entries were re-checked against the official help center on the same date.)

What changed in July 2026

Here's a summary of what's changed since the previous version (April) first.

• Added 5 firms: FundedNext / BlueberryFunded / FundedHive / SuperFunded / Forge of Traders. Expanded from 11 firms → 16 firms
• ⚠️ Forge of Traders bans EAs, bots, and scripts entirely (the official FAQ explicitly calls this a "hard breach"). It also has a 40-second minimum hold time on every trade and a combined open-position risk cap of 2% during evaluation / 1% funded — among the strictest rulebooks of the 16 firms covered here
• ⚠️ FundingPips' "1% floating loss cap on funded accounts" claim was wrong. This 1% guideline has been abolished and replaced by the Striking System (a 4-strike warning system). The official rule card for 2 Step Standard explicitly states Risk Per Trade Idea = Removed. We've corrected this and explained it in a dedicated section
• ⚠️ FundingPips' weekend holding was not simply "banned on Zero only." Since January 29, 2026, it has been temporarily disallowed on Master accounts across all 4 models (positions are auto-closed before the Friday close — this is not a hard breach). Weekend holding remains allowed during evaluation as before
• ⚠️ FundingPips' news restriction was not simply "none except on Zero" either. On Master accounts, trades opened or closed within 5 minutes of a news event have their profit fully confiscated (positions opened 5+ hours before the event are exempt)
• ⚠️ We had confused "FundingPips' new policy effective June 27, 2026" with a news restriction. It's actually the Profit Concentration Policy (if a single trade idea accounts for more than 60% of the profit target, 4 profit days are required per payout request once on Master). We confirmed all four points above against the original text of the official help center
• ⚠️ We found that SuperFunded's news restriction is a 10-minute window before and after — the longest of the 16 firms covered here. Our own SuperFunded guide previously said "news trading OK," which was incorrect and has now been fixed
• ⚠️ We found that FundedNext also bans "One-Sided Betting." The one-directional-bet ban now covers 3 firms: The5ers / Hantec / FundedNext. It's no longer an outlier clause
• ⚠️ BlueberryFunded significantly relaxed its prohibited-trading list on March 12, 2026. Martingale, grid trading, all-in trading, one-sided betting, and more are now unbanned for accounts purchased on or after that date — an unusual case where the applicable rules depend on your purchase date
• FundedHive now ranks #1 on rule leniency. No consistency rule, no news restriction, free scalping/EA. That said, it was founded in 2025 and has a thin track record — worth noting separately
• We split the evaluation into two axes. In addition to the existing "rule leniency," we've added a new axis: "discretionary risk" (how far the operator's judgment call can shut you down). The reason is explained below, but in short, having fewer written rules is not the same as being safe
• We reviewed the terms of all 16 firms. We checked each firm's official terms and help center for the presence and wording of discretionary clauses, summarized in the discretionary risk table
• #1 changed to Lark Funding. After reviewing The5ers' official prohibited-practices list in full, we found it actually has more written constraints than we'd previously reported
• Corrected the description of The5ers. Our previous claim that it has "the fewest prohibited practices" was inaccurate. It actually has 22 items, most of which have no quantitative threshold
• ⚠️ We found that Lark Funding has a "$10,000 profit cap per day / per trade." This is stated explicitly in the official help center. We missed it in the previous version (details)
• ⚠️ We found that Hantec also bans "one-sided bets" (one-directional-only bets). The5ers is not the only firm with this clause
• ⚠️ We found that FundedElite has a clause allowing it to require an interview at any time, and to deny a payout if you don't respond within 5 business days.
• ⚠️ Hantec's 3% rule and news restriction turned out to apply "only to funded accounts." After checking the official help center directly, there are no restrictions at all during the evaluation phase. The previous wording ("must always stay under 3%," "3 minutes before/after news") read as if it applied during evaluation too, so we've corrected it. The substance of the 3% rule is: on a funded account, if the combined floating loss across all positions reaches 3% of the initial balance, you fail immediately
• Hantec's "no more than 85% margin concentration" rule has been abolished. We've removed this from this article and from our Hantec guide
• ⚠️ We found that The5ers has the same interview clause (confirmed directly in the terms of service). What's more, both scheduling and completing the interview must happen within 5 business days, which is even stricter wording than FundedElite's. As a result, we've raised The5ers' discretionary risk from "High" to "Highest"
• Split ATFunded out of the main ranking. Following its service suspension on June 8, 2026, it's been moved to an appendix for the record

Conclusion: Leniency ranking (rule-based)

Ranking all 16 firms by how lenient their rules are once you're funded (pro account). ⚠️ marks firms that need attention on the "discretionary risk" axis covered below.

※ ATFunded is excluded from the ranking due to its service suspension on June 8, 2026. (See the appendix for the record.)

Why #1 changed

Our previous reason for ranking The5ers #1 was "no consistency rule, weekends OK, only a 2-minute news window." That's still true, but after reviewing the official prohibited-practices list item by item, we found it has 22 items, including clauses like these:

• Bulk trading (opening multiple trades simultaneously)
• High-frequency trading (most holding times of a few seconds or less)
• One-sided bets (consistently one-directional positions)
• Gambling-like speculation

The fact that "holding multiple positions at once" is, on paper, a prohibited practice is something we missed in the previous version. We're correcting it here.

Meanwhile, Lark Funding allows weekends, news, hedging, scalping, and martingale, with no consistency rule at all — an extremely lenient setup on paper. The only unusual things are the reset time (17:00 EST) and the $10,000 profit cap.

And this time, we found that the newly added FundedHive is even more lenient.

• No consistency rule exists on any challenge (the firm's CEO has said in an industry media interview that "the consistency rule isn't a risk-management tool, it's a payout trap")
• No news-trading restriction, gold OK, no IP restriction
• Both scalping and EA are unrestricted (only HFT bots and glitch abuse are excluded)
• Prohibited practices are effectively just two things: copy trading and hedging
• We found no profit cap like Lark Funding's

So we're naming FundedHive the #1 firm by rule leniency. That said, it was founded in 2025 and has only 131 Trustpilot reviews — a thin track record. "Lenient rules" does not mean "safe." This is exactly why the article now splits the evaluation into two axes.

The second axis: discretionary risk

This is the new section for this update.

Fewer written rules ≠ safe. In fact, the most dangerous combination is "vague wording × heavy penalties × judged at the operator's discretion," and that's invisible if all you do is count clauses.

Verified: The5ers

The official Prohibited Trading Practices list has 22 items. Almost none of them come with a quantitative threshold.

The penalty clause reads as follows:

No refunds or profits will be processed and you will be permanently banned from The5ers Fund.

No grace period or warning is written into the clause. In practice, there have been cases resolved with just a warning (see the real example), but that's discretion on the operator's part, not a guaranteed right.

Additionally, the terms of service contain a clause allowing payouts to be frozen.

both the scheduling of the interview and the conduct of the interview itself must take place within five (5) business days from the date of the request

Failure to successfully schedule and complete the interview within this strict timeframe will result in the denial of any pending payouts, immediate cancellation of all associated accounts, and termination of the collaboration

Both scheduling and completing the interview must be finished within 5 business days. Miss the window because of a business trip, hospitalization, time-zone issues, or a tech problem, and on paper any pending payout is denied and all accounts are canceled. FundedElite has a similar clause, but The5ers is stricter in that it puts a deadline on both "scheduling" and "conducting" the interview.

On profits, it states:

Any accrued balance of profits or rewards shall be canceled and forfeited, and you waive any future claim against the Company regarding this termination

Also note that the "ban on using an EA whose source code you don't own" is one of the listed clauses, meaning anyone running an off-the-shelf EA unmodified is, on paper, in violation.

Verified: Funded7

The official terms spell out discretionary clauses explicitly.

Provision 1: The Provider reserves the right to deny service to any individual at its sole discretion, at any time, and for any reason.

Provision 14: The Company reserves the right to terminate this agreement at any time and without prior notice if, at its sole discretion, the Client fails to comply with any provision...

Provision 16: All communications between Funded7 and the Client are confidential. ... The Client agrees not to publicly share, reproduce, or selectively present any such communications in a way that misrepresents Funded7's position.

It's rare for a firm to write a confidentiality clause on communications (Provision 16) directly into its terms. Publicizing support correspondence during a dispute can, on paper, be treated as a breach of terms.

That said, to be fair, a broad phrase like "for any reason" can also work as room to avoid a scenario where you get flagged as violating a rule you didn't actually violate. Instead of ruling a violation and confiscating profit, the firm can choose to end the relationship at its discretion (i.e., still pay you) — the breadth of the clause doesn't necessarily cut only against traders.

Verified: Lark Funding (not exempt even at #1)

Even Lark Funding, ranked #1 on rule leniency, has a clause worth knowing. This is quoted from the official help center's Prohibited Trading Strategies.

The daily and/or per-trade gain limit is set to $10,000.

There's a cap on profit. This doesn't contradict the "#1 in leniency" rating (it's a cap, not a banned practice), but it doesn't mix well with a strategy aiming for one big score on a large account, so make sure you know about it. We missed it in the previous version.

The discretionary penalty clause reads:

the Company reserves the right to immediately close your account. Such closure may include the forfeiture of any fees owed to you by the Company, at the Company's sole discretion.

On the other hand, there's something to credit here too. Where other firms only write "gambling (gambling-like trading)" with no further definition, Lark Funding actually defines it.

all-or-nothing trading refers to a style of trading where a trader could breach, or come close to breaching, the drawdown limits in a single trade

Because there's a drawdown-based definition — "a position sized so a single trade could breach the drawdown limit" — traders can actually stay on the right side of it. From the "does it have a quantitative standard" angle discussed above, this is well-written.

Verified: other key clauses

Notable wording we confirmed directly against each firm's official terms and help center.

FundingPips — has one of the broadest termination clauses.

FundingPips may terminate or suspend access immediately, without prior notice or liability, for any reason whatsoever.

Also worth noting: the list of prohibited strategies includes undefined terms like "toxic trading flow" and "churning and burning."

That said, to be fair, the operational rules on the help-center side are among the most specific of the 16 firms. The Striking System is "warning at 1.2%, closure on the 4th," Risk Per Trade Idea is "2% on $50K and above," and the Profit Concentration Policy is "over 60% of the target" — all numbers you can monitor yourself. It's also unusual to see the definition of a "trade idea" spelled out this precisely (multiple positions in the same instrument/direction, plus a re-entry within 10 minutes of closing a losing one). What's more, rule changes come with an effective date attached — e.g., "from January 29, 2026" or "for accounts created on or after June 27, 2026" — so you can track exactly what changed and when. This firm has a two-sided character: broad terms of service, but specific operational rules.

Hantec Trader — explicitly bans "one-sided bets," just like The5ers.

Prohibited trading includes trading in a way that establishes justified concerns that the provider might suffer financial or other harm as a result of the customer's activities (such as overleveraging, overexposure, one-sided bets, account rolling).

The key point is that this is a catch-all clause — "trading that raises concern the company might suffer financial or other harm." On top of account suspension, it also states that during scalping violations, the firm can "adjust, reduce, or strip away profit."

E8 Markets — broad discretion on penalties, but its HFT definition is spelled out numerically.

E8 may, at its sole discretion: suspend or terminate your account, invalidate your performance data and deny any pending or future rewards...

HFT strategies are restricted, requiring at least 50% of trades to stay open for one minute.

"At least 50% of trades held for one minute or more" is a standard you can monitor yourself. That said, a vague clause about "trading style judged excessively aggressive or gambling-like" also coexists with it.

FundedElite — we judged this firm to have the widest discretion among the 16.

Funded Elite reserves the right to terminate the Live Account and this Agreement at its sole discretion, with or without cause.

Funded Elite reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to require any User to participate in a mandatory verification interview at any stage... failure to attend such interview within five business days will result in the denial of any pending payouts, immediate cancellation of all associated accounts, and termination of the relationship.

On top of language that lets them terminate "with or without cause," there's a clause that lets them demand an interview at any time, and deny pending payouts if you don't respond within 5 business days. This can function as a way to stall a payout review.

This firm has also had its Trustpilot rating suspended since July 2026 (for violating guidelines — i.e., fake reviews removed).

FundedNext — has 17 prohibited items, which is a lot, but it deserves credit for stating quantitative thresholds alongside them.

Quick Strike Rule: A Quick Strike percentage of 30% or higher constitutes a violation. (30% or above is a violation. When it happens, the account is closed at the end of the trading cycle and Quick Strike profit is fully confiscated.)

One-Sided Betting is a gambling-like trading behavior where a trader takes concentrated directional exposure, opens multiple trades in the same direction, or enters reactive positions.

Hyperactivity (overactivity) also has a clearly stated stage: "breach on the 3rd occurrence." That said, subjective clauses like "Gambling Behavior" and "All in One Trading" coexist too, and penalties range from "account termination / reward denial / permanent ban."

BlueberryFunded — one of the few firms that explicitly distinguishes hard breach from soft breach. Minor, first-time violations are settled with a risk-team warning, and if a violation is confirmed during payout review, the defined penalty is "losing the payout right for that cycle."

That said, the hard-breach side (immediate closure, payout denial) includes undefined terms like "toxic order flow" and "bad-faith trading." The fact that its parent, Blueberry Markets, is ASIC-regulated is reassuring in a way not shared by the newer firms.

FundedHive — founded in 2025, and its defining trait is simply how few published rules it has. Prohibited practices center on copy trading and hedging, with no restrictions on consistency, news, scalping, or EAs.

Fewer clauses means "lenient," but it also means "less written down = less to judge by." With only 131 Trustpilot reviews, there isn't much data on how it actually handles trouble. If you're picking based purely on rule leniency, this is the top pick; if you're picking based on track record, it's one to skip for now.

SuperFunded — its list of prohibited strategies (HFT, tick scalping, grid trading, martingale, latency/reverse arbitrage, data-feed manipulation, third-party account management) is fairly standard for the industry with few vague terms. The firm advertises transparency, claiming it "publishes every rule up front and has never invalidated an account over an undisclosed condition" (its own claim).

The biggest thing to watch isn't vague wording — it's the 10-minute news window before and after an event. If your strategy trades across news releases, make sure no exit falls inside that 20-minute window.

Alpha Capital Group — if you trigger a prohibited strategy, you get suspended and blocked from withdrawing, but most of its discretionary clauses concern site operations and content, not sweeping discretion over trade judgment. Among the 16 firms, this is middling.

Fundora — has a rule that treats violations of its multi-account policy the same as prohibited trading, with disqualification, denial of a funded account, and non-payment of rewards all defined. Also note that going 30 days without trading results in disqualification.

Discretionary risk table (all 16 firms)

Verification-level legend: ✅ Primary source = the original text of the official terms/help center was directly obtained and confirmed. ⚠️ Excerpt = the relevant part of the official terms was checked (full read-through not yet complete). ⚠️ Partial = only some clauses checked.

How to read this table: "Higher discretionary risk" doesn't mean "a dangerous company." The5ers has operated for 10 years and paid out over $43M cumulatively. Nothing happens in normal times. The problem shows up when the firm enters a phase where it wants to slow down payouts — that's when a vague clause can suddenly function as grounds for denial.

For more context, also see The5ers lifting its yellow card (September 2026).

What's true across all firms

All 16 firms have a clause letting them terminate at their own discretion, to varying degrees. This is industry-standard, not a sign that any particular firm is malicious.

So the practical takeaway isn't "find a firm with no discretionary clause" — it's "get your money out before discretion kicks in." The longer your balance sits in the account, the more time it's exposed to a discretionary clause.

"Peace of mind" as a function of whether there's a quantitative threshold

Even when the same thing is "banned," how defensible you are as a trader depends entirely on the wording.

A firm with more rules is less dangerous than a firm with vague rules — that's the conclusion here. Hantec's "3-minute/30% rule" is a hassle, but the hassle comes with the ability to stay compliant yourself.

Item-by-item comparison

Weekend / overnight holding

Only FTMO clearly bans weekend holding (on Standard accounts). Swing accounts are exempt but cost extra. You can offset this using prop-memo.com's CME holiday auto-close feature.

FundingPips note: Since January 29, 2026, weekend holding has been temporarily disallowed on all Master accounts of 1 Step Flex / 2 Step Standard / 2 Step Flex / 2 Step Pro. Any open positions are automatically closed by the system before the Friday close, and this does not count as a hard breach (only Zero results in immediate account termination). During evaluation, holding is allowed on all instruments, and crypto can only be held during evaluation. Since the official wording says "temporary," it's worth checking with the firm on whether it might be lifted.

News trading restrictions

Important: FTMO and BlueberryFunded have news violations that can become a hard breach (account closure, payout denial). BlueberryFunded in particular treats even a TP/SL fill within 2 minutes of a release as a violation, so it's a poor fit for a strategy that holds positions across news events. The5ers is a soft breach (profit forfeiture / position closed, but the account is kept).

FTMO is especially worth watching, since even an unintentional SL/TP fill around an NFP release can count as a violation.

EA (automated trading)

Tips for choosing by EA style:

• Want to run an off-the-shelf EA as-is → FTMO is the most permissive (though there's a capital-allocation risk if many people use it)
• Want to customize an off-the-shelf EA → Fintokei explicitly says this is OK
• Only self-built EAs allowed → The5ers (must own the source code), Fundora (submission required)
• EA banned outright → only FundedElite and Forge of Traders. The other 14 all allow EA use with some conditions

Note for off-the-shelf EA users: The5ers' "must own the source code" isn't a verbal guideline — it's a clause written directly into the official prohibited-practices list. This is clearly stricter here than elsewhere, so if you're running a purchased EA as-is, pick a different firm.

Scalping restrictions

Gold scalpers should be especially careful of Hantec's 3-minute rule. It applies "if net profit from trades closed in under 3 minutes reaches 30% or more of net profit for the period," and the firm has discretion to adjust or remove profit, restrict trading, or suspend the account.

Change from the previous version: We've revised The5ers from "✅ almost no restriction" to "⚠️." The clause bans "HFT where most holding times are a few seconds or less," but since "most" is undefined, high-turnover methods carry a judgment risk. Fundora's "under 20 seconds banned" looks stricter on the surface, but it's actually easier to stay compliant with precisely because the threshold is clear — an inversion worth noting.

Consistency rule

Fintokei note: Since April 15, 2026, the VaR calculation has been dropped in favor of a simplified "3% rule." A violation occurs if the floating loss on an open position exceeds 3% of account balance. Restrictions escalate as warnings accumulate. Daily drawdown (5%/3%) continues as before.

The tricky part of consistency rules is that they "bite at payout time." Nothing gets flagged during evaluation — instead, some firms are designed to stop you at the payout-request stage with "your Best Day exceeds the limit." For more, see the complete guide to consistency rules.

Martingale / averaging down

Drawdown terms

See the complete guide to drawdown types for the differences between DD types.

Per-trade risk limits

The "1% rule" is applied very differently from firm to firm.

Worth noting: Fundora's 1% rule and Fintokei's 3% rule aren't "instant disqualification" — they're "warning → penalty if repeated." Fintokei effectively enforces it hard, since 10 warnings means service termination.

FundingPips' Striking System is also a warning-based system, but you only get 4 strikes. Because the mechanics are unusual and easy to misread, we cover it separately below.

What is FundingPips' "Striking System"?

In short: it's a staged penalty system where a "trade idea" whose floating loss touches a certain line gets one strike, and the account is closed once 4 strikes have accumulated. It's similar to a baseball strikeout, except it's 4 strikes, and the count never resets across "innings."

How this differs from normal DD rules

Daily DD and max DD are judged on the whole account's balance or floating loss. The Striking System is different — it's judged per individual trade idea.

In other words, even if your account overall has plenty of DD room left, a single idea sinking to the threshold on its own is enough to earn a strike. This is the biggest trap: "there was plenty of DD room and yet I still got a warning."

Trigger conditions

The key is the definition of "trade idea"

Compared to other firms' "one trade," this bundles a much wider range together.

• Multiple positions in the same instrument and direction are combined into a single idea
• Re-entering in the same direction within 10 minutes of closing a losing trade is also combined into the same idea

The second point is especially tricky. Re-enter right after a stop-out, and you carry the previous trade's loss forward into the ongoing count.

Penalty stages

Three things that especially deserve attention

1. The strike doesn't clear even if you recover. Even if you briefly touch -1.2% and then flip back to profit, the record stays
2. It accumulates for the account's entire lifetime and never resets across reward cycles. There's no "it resets this month" relief
3. You're not force-closed. Since you're not stopped out automatically, you can walk straight into the next strike without noticing

Approaches that are easy to get caught by

• EAs that stack positions in one direction (grid/martingale-style) → all get combined into one idea
• Re-entering right after a stop-out → the 10-minute rule carries the previous loss forward
• Averaging entries down to lower your average price → same issue
• A swing that tolerates floating loss while waiting for a bounce → 1.2% is shallower than it sounds

Practical countermeasures

• Design your strategy to cut before the combined floating loss on one idea reaches 1.0% (0.9% on Flex). Don't aim right at the threshold
• Leave at least 10 minutes between a same-direction re-entry and the previous idea's close
• Track how deep your own "max floating loss per idea" actually goes. Recording trade history with the EA P&L tracker lets you verify this after the fact

FundingPips itself has broad discretionary clauses in its terms, but its operational rules are stated with clear numbers and stages. This is exactly the point raised in the discretionary risk section about "broad terms, specific operational rules." Since the line you need to stay under is visible as a number, this is a rule you can actually engineer around.

Recommendations by trading style

Gold scalper

→ FTMO or Lark Funding on rules alone. Both have no scalping restriction. FTMO requires a weekend close, so pair it with prop-memo.com's CME holiday auto-close. We recommended The5ers here previously, but we no longer do, since its HFT clause has no quantitative threshold and that's a real risk for high-turnover methods.

But whether gold scalping "passes the rules" and whether it "actually wins" are two different questions. A reader told us "FTMO's trading costs make gold scalping pretty rough," and that's exactly right — this article only evaluates rules. Read the next section for details.

Swing trader

→ The5ers or Fintokei. Weekend holding OK + no consistency rule (normally) + only a 2-minute news window. If your method holds positions for a long time, you're less likely to run into The5ers' vague clauses (HFT, bulk trading), which makes it a good fit.

EA trading

→ FTMO or Fintokei. FTMO has the most lenient EA restriction (up to 2,000 requests/day). Fintokei allows an off-the-shelf EA as long as you customize it. The5ers requires owning the EA's source code as a condition of the terms, so off-the-shelf EA users should avoid it.

Steady, low-key traders

→ Funded7 or Fintokei. If you trade normally, there's almost nothing here that would trip you up.

Martingale / averaging players

→ Fundora or Fintokei. Both allow martingale. The 5% daily DD still applies either way, so risk management is still essential.

People who don't want to think about any of this

→ Lark Funding. Weekend, news, hedging, scalping, and martingale are all OK, and there's no consistency rule. Just remember the reset time is 17:00 EST (6:00 the next morning JST / during daylight saving time).

*We had this slot filled by The5ers previously, but we've changed it given the existence of the 22 prohibited items.

People running a one-directional bot or strategy

→ Avoid The5ers, Hantec, and FundedNext. All three explicitly ban "one-sided bets" (one-directional-only bets) in their terms. BlueberryFunded applies the same ban to accounts purchased before March 11, 2026 (purchases on or after March 12 are exempt). The5ers has actually issued a warning for this in practice (details).

If you run a buy-only or sell-only logic, either pick a firm without this clause or redesign it to open positions in both directions. Note also that other firms can raise the same concern through vague clauses like "gambling" or "all-or-nothing," so nowhere is entirely safe on this front.

What this article doesn't evaluate: trading costs

💬 From a reader: "FTMO's trading costs make gold scalping pretty rough 🥲"

This comment hits on a real structural gap in this article. Everything up to this point only looks at rule leniency. Whether the rules let you trade a certain way, and whether you can actually make money at that firm, are two separate questions.

Why cost dominates for scalping

The math is clear once you run it on gold (XAUUSD). One lot = 100 oz, so a $0.10 move (1 pip) = $10 P&L.

Compare that against your target move.

The same cost eats an increasingly large share of profit as turnover goes up. For a swing trader it's a rounding error; for a 10-pip scalper it can eat your win rate and RR whole. This is usually the real reason behind "the rules are lenient but I can't win."

On top of that, gold's spread widens sharply around news releases (some reports put NFP at 15+ pips), so a plan built only on average-time numbers will fall apart in live trading.

A note on FTMO

To be fair, third-party spread measurements often rank FTMO's gold spread on the lower end — it's not that "only FTMO is expensive." That said:

• Commission is charged on top of the spread (you need to look at the total, not just the spread)
• Widening around news releases is unavoidable
• The mandatory weekend close and 2-hour rule can force you to exit before you've recovered the cost

Put together, the reader's point that high-turnover gold scalping feels heavier here is a fair observation.

Conclusion: measure your own cost

Every firm's advertised "spreads from 0.1 pips" figure is a best-case number, not the effective cost for your trading hours, instrument, and lot size.

The measurement steps are simple.

1. Log the spread on the same instrument for several days, during the hours you actually trade
2. Convert commission to pips and add it in (for gold, a round-trip $6 ≈ 0.6 pips)
3. Measure both normal times and around news releases
4. Divide by your target move to get the cost ratio

Our EA P&L tracker automatically logs MT4/MT5 trade history, so you can later verify your effective cost based on your actual fill prices. Judge by your own history, not advertised numbers.

As a side note, some firms — for example Funded7 (which advertises 0.1–0.3 pips on USD/JPY and EUR/USD) — highlight tight spreads. That's still just an advertised figure, so we recommend confirming it yourself using the steps above rather than taking it at face value.

List of special rules

Things worth knowing before you accidentally step on one.

The easiest traps to fall into:

• FTMO: Fall asleep holding gold on a Friday → instant violation
• Fintokei: Floating loss on an open position exceeds 3% of balance → warnings accumulate → 1% cap, worst case service termination
• Hantec: A string of gold trades closed under 3 minutes → if net profit from sub-3-minute trades hits 30%+ of total, profit gets reduced/removed or the account suspended
• Hantec: Running the same lot size on a funded account as you did on the challenge → 3% combined floating loss = instant fail
• The5ers / Hantec: Running a buy-only or sell-only bot continuously → warning for one-sided bets
• The5ers / FundedElite: Missing an interview-request email → payout denied and account canceled within 5 business days. Check even your spam folder daily while a payout is pending
• Lark Funding: Aiming for one big win on a large account → hits the $10,000 profit cap
• FundedElite: An interview requested after a payout request → payout denied if you don't respond within 5 business days
• SuperFunded: Holding across a news release and TP/SL fills within 10 minutes of it → possible violation
• BlueberryFunded: Just a TP/SL fill within 2 minutes of news → violation
• FundedNext: A single big win pushes you over Quick Strike 30% → account closes at the end of the cycle and that profit is entirely confiscated
• Fundora: Closing within 20 seconds → check the settings on scalping-style EAs
• Forge of Traders: Run an EA even once → hard breach, instant fail (manual execution only)
• Forge of Traders: SL/TP fills within 40 seconds of opening → minimum-hold-time violation
• FundingPips: A momentary touch of -1.2% floating loss on Master → the warning doesn't clear even after recovery, and closes the account on the 4th
• FundingPips: Leaving a position open on a Friday → auto-closed on Master (a temporary measure since Jan 29, 2026). Not a breach, but the unintended close can wreck your strategy

ATFunded (rules record before suspension)

ATFunded announced a service suspension on June 8, 2026 (no new challenge purchases). Below is a record of its rules before the suspension. See the summary article for what happened and how refunds/payouts were handled.

Limitations of this article

Being upfront about this.

• The depth of verification varies by firm. We were able to directly obtain the original text of official terms/help center for The5ers, Funded7, Lark Funding, and FundingPips only. For the other 7 firms, we checked the relevant sections of the official terms but haven't read through the full original text. This is noted in the "Verification" column of the discretionary risk table
• We re-fetched FundingPips' help-center originals on July 28, 2026, and replaced our write-up entirely (previously blocked by a 403, so we had relied on secondary sources, which introduced errors). The pages we obtained were Risk Per Trade Idea / 2 Step Standard / FundingPips Zero / News Trading & Weekend Holding
• We could not directly obtain E8 Markets' and BlueberryFunded's terms/help pages (404, 403, redirects), so we're relying on publicly available quotes. We'll update this once we can access the originals
• We re-checked Hantec Trader against the official help center on September 27, 2026, and replaced the table entries (the old rules page returns a 404 — the rules have moved to the help center). The excerpted discretionary-clause quotes remain as previously sourced
• We could not confirm SuperFunded has "no" consistency rule with certainty. It simply isn't mentioned in public info — that's not proof it doesn't exist
• FundedNext's EA usage fee — whether it applies to paid challenges is unclear from official documentation. Confirm with support in writing before purchasing
• Trading costs (spread, commission, widening around news) are not evaluated here. This ranking is purely about rule leniency. Especially for scalping strategies, cost dominates your results, so be sure to measure it yourself
• We haven't been able to review Fundora's full Japanese terms of service. Its rating here is provisional
• Every firm's rules can change without notice. In particular, "how strictly a rule is enforced" can change even when the written clause doesn't
• This article is based on official site listings and real-world cases, but it does not guarantee any individual outcome

Related links

Articles that informed this update

• ⚠️ A real warning we received from The5ers over 'One-Sided Bets' — the full list of 22 prohibited items and the actual warning email
• 🟢 The5ers lifted our yellow card — lifted September 25, 2026. What the remaining interview clause and prohibited items look like
• 7️⃣ Funded7 Complete Guide 2026 — a walkthrough of the discretionary clauses (Provisions 1/8/14/16) in the terms

Firm-specific guides

• Lark Funding Complete Guide
• FundedHive Complete Guide
• FundedNext Complete Guide
• BlueberryFunded Complete Guide
• SuperFunded Complete Guide
• Forge of Traders Complete Guide
• The5ers Complete Guide
• Fintokei Complete Guide 🎁
• Funded7 Complete Guide 🎁
• FundingPips Complete Guide
• Alpha Capital Group Complete Guide
• Hantec Trader Complete Guide
• Fundora Complete Guide
• E8 Markets Complete Guide
• FundedElite Complete Guide
• FTMO Complete Guide
• ATFunded Complete Guide (⚠️ suspended)

Other

• Complete guide to first-purchase coupons for all 19 firms
• Complete guide to consistency rules
• Complete guide to drawdown types
• Prop firm comparison ranking