Breakout Prop

No. The official help center's list of non-crypto instruments is just "XYZ100, S&P500, Crude Oil, and Silver" — gold is not on it. Since silver is offered but gold isn't, don't assume gold is there just because silver is. FX pairs, Nikkei 225 and Dow 30 are also unavailable. The remaining 59 instruments are all crypto (BTC, ETH, SOL, etc.). Note that only XYZ100 can be traded on both Breakout Terminal and DXtrade — S&P500, crude oil and silver are Breakout Terminal only. If you want to trade gold, pick another firm that offers MT5.

Since there's no MT4/MT5, you can't just drop an MT-based EA on it. The platform choice is the in-house Breakout Terminal (Web/iOS/Android) or DXtrade — the official site states both have identical rules, leverage and prohibited-practice lists (the only differences are the interface and how the swap is charged). On the other hand, algorithmic trading itself is not named in the prohibited list. However, "third-party, off-the-shelf methods sold on the promise of passing the evaluation" and "executing third-party trade ideas" are both clearly banned, so buying and running an off-the-shelf bot is not allowed. Whether you can run your own algorithm via an API isn't mentioned anywhere in the official documentation, so confirm with support before buying.

There are two rules — daily loss and max drawdown — and both are judged on equity (including floating P&L). Max DD is static: it's a fixed % of the starting balance (Classic 6% / Pro 5% / Turbo 3%) and never moves no matter how much the account grows (for a $100K Classic account, that line is permanently $94,000). The daily loss line is set every day at 0030 UTC by subtracting 3% from the "balance" at that moment. The official site explicitly rejects the idea that "you can't fail unless you close the position" — a floating loss alone can blow the account.

The recalculation is based on "balance," so floating P&L is not reflected. In the official example, an account with a $101,000 balance and a +$5,000 floating profit (equity $106,000) still gets a fail line of $101,000 − 3% = $97,970 at 0030 UTC. In other words, carrying a floating profit overnight adds room on the equity side, while carrying a floating loss overnight cuts your usable room by that amount. Factor this in if your setup holds positions across the rollover.

Looking at target ÷ max DD makes the character of each plan clear. Classic is 10%÷6% = 1.67x, Pro is 12%÷5% = 2.4x, Turbo is 9%÷3% = 3.0x. On paper Classic is easiest to pass and Turbo is the hardest, and yet the pricing runs the intuitive way — Classic is the most expensive and Turbo the cheapest. Turbo in particular has a 3% max DD equal to its 3% daily limit, so one bad day can end the entire account. Choosing Turbo purely for its low price per dollar of account size will trip you up here.

On-demand, 24/7 — no cycle, no waiting for approval. The minimum is $50 after the split, sent as USDC (Ethereum ERC-20) to your designated wallet. The official site says most requests are processed within hours, and states you can request your first payout on the very day you go funded. You cannot receive fiat currency. The standard split is 80%, upgradeable to 90% only at checkout when you buy (permanent, can't be changed later), and the upgrade costs exactly 20% more than the base price.

Yes. The official help center's list of excluded countries — Afghanistan, Belarus, Myanmar, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Cuba, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe (23 countries), plus the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine — does not include Japan. The official site states it serves 160+ countries. That said, there's no Japanese site or Japanese-language support.

Yes, it's backed by the Kraken (Payward) group. The logo carries the "powered by kraken" mark, the funded stage is run by Payward Oceanic Ltd, and the footer lists Payward-group brands including Kraken, Kraken Pro, xStocks, NinjaTrader and CF Benchmarks. Trustpilot shows 4.7 / 1,096 reviews with no rating suspension (91% 5-star). The payout track record is publicized at over $60M, and lifetime payouts can be checked on a public leaderboard. That said, read the terms' disclosures carefully. The company itself states that a submitted trade idea isn't guaranteed to actually reach the market — it may be booked internally as a notional P&L instead — and that a conflict of interest can exist because "the more you fail an evaluation and buy another one, the more Breakout earns."

0.04% one-way (4 basis points), 0.08% round-trip (8bp). The official Program Rules state it is "calculated using the notional size of the position" — so it's charged against the position's notional size, not the account balance. On top of that, there's a daily 0.033% swap per open position. The charging method differs by platform: DXtrade charges once a day (against positions open at 0000 UTC, debited at 0025 UTC), while Breakout Terminal splits it into 6 charges every 4 hours (about 0.0055% each). The fee applies from the evaluation stage onward and is deducted from the account's demo balance — meaning it directly affects both the profit target and the DD. The official site explains this is "aligned with Bybit's taker fee."

The higher the leverage, the more damaging it gets. Since the fee is based on notional size, opening a 10x-leverage position (notional $1M) on a $100K account costs $800 round-trip — 0.8% of the account — in a single trade. Classic's 6% max DD ($6,000) is really only about 7-8 full-leverage round trips' worth of fees. At 1x leverage (notional $100K), a round trip drops to $80, or 0.08%, so the whole setup assumes you keep leverage and trade frequency low. This is the most common complaint in Trustpilot's low-star reviews, with specific reports like "net profit of $57.93 against $18 in fees (should have been about $75)." Scalping-leaning strategies fare worse.

None of this is mentioned anywhere in the official rulebook. A full check of the official Program Rules on September 16, 2026 found none of the words API, bot, automated, algorithmic, Expert Advisor, HFT, or scalping. The help center's "Breakout Terminal" and "Trading Platform" collections had no API-related articles either. In other words, this is officially neither allowed nor banned. That said, the prohibited list includes "third-party, off-the-shelf methods sold on the promise of passing the evaluation" and "executing third-party trade ideas," so buying and running an off-the-shelf bot is clearly not allowed. Whether you can run your own algorithm via an API is mentioned in some third-party reviews ("you can connect via API"), but there's no official confirmation of this. If you're planning to buy this with automation in mind, get written confirmation from support first.

Breakout wins on having fewer rules; Fintokei wins on room to operate and Japanese-language support. Breakout has no consistency rule, no minimum trading days and no per-trade risk cap, but its max DD is a tight 3-6%. Fintokei has a wider 10% max DD (static, based on starting capital) and everything works in Japanese, but it has a cap where a floating loss over 3% of the balance is a violation — and that applies to the total of all open positions at once. The markets are different too: crypto versus FX. See the Breakout Prop vs. Fintokei comparison article for details.