Every prop firm in this industry is, one way or another, priced against FTMO. Its two-step challenge is the format everyone else copies or reacts against, its terms are the ones rivals quote when they claim to be friendlier, and its name is the one that opens any serious conversation about the category. If the category has a reference model, this is it.

Which is exactly why it deserves the full examination. A reference model sets the industry’s habits, including the bad ones.

The product, on paper

The word “funded” gets the asterisk it always gets from this desk: FTMO’s own terms describe the accounts as simulated. You are never trading the firm’s live capital; you are being paid according to your performance on a demo environment, out of the firm’s own funds. The company is unusually plain about this, which we count in its favour — the honesty, not the arrangement.

The evaluation, step by step

The structure is legible, and legibility is rarer in this industry than it should be. Step one asks for 10% without breaching a 5% daily or 10% overall loss limit. Step two asks for 5% under the same limits. Neither step carries a deadline as of this writing, per the published terms — and the absence of a clock removes the single biggest forced-error generator in the format. Two smaller graces are worth knowing: the fee is returned with your first payout, and a challenge that ends its period in profit without reaching the target can qualify for a free repeat, per the published terms.

Do the arithmetic the marketing does not do for you. A 10% target against a 10% maximum loss means the design demands roughly one unit of risk per unit of reward just to sit the exam, and the 5% daily limit means two ordinary bad days in a row can end it. FTMO publishes all of this; what it cannot publish away is that the geometry pushes candidates toward risk they would not take with their own money, and then expects them to stop taking it the day they pass.

Where the fine print bites

Two clauses earn their own section.

First, the breach asymmetry. A single violation — one daily-loss breach by any margin — ends the account, and on an evaluation the fee stays with the firm regardless of how profitable you were up to that moment. There is no netting, no appeal to the average. The trader’s downside is total per attempt; the firm’s obligation begins only after every rule has held. That asymmetry is the industry’s business model, not an FTMO invention, but FTMO’s scale makes it the largest single collector of it.

Second, consistency. The published terms expect the trading style on a funded account to be consistent with the style that passed the evaluation, and they prohibit a catalogue of practices the firm characterises as abusive — one-shot all-in bets among them, per the terms as of this writing. Certain account types also restrict trading around high-impact news. The intent is defensible; the effect is discretion. “Consistent” is judged by the firm, on the firm’s definitions, at the moment your payout is being calculated. Read that section twice before you pay, and a third time before you scale.

Payouts and the split

The split starts at 80/20 in the trader’s favour and can reach 90/10 through the scaling plan, with payouts on a roughly two-week cycle by default, per the published terms. Payout reliability is the one thing an outside reviewer cannot audit — we can only note that FTMO’s record of paying at scale is the main reason the rest of the industry benchmarks against it, per industry reporting, and that a published term is a promise, not an escrow.

The standing risk note, in this house’s register: the only transfer guaranteed in this business is the fee, and it travels from you to the firm — pay it with money whose loss you have already accepted, because most candidates fail exams that demand 10%.

The file, both columns

Verdict

If you are going to sit a two-step evaluation anywhere, the case for sitting it at FTMO is that the exam is published, the examiner has a long record, and the fee comes back if you pass and collect. The case against is the same as everywhere in this category: you are paying for an asymmetric test on simulated capital, and the fine print is the product. We grade the paper in front of us — 8.4, the highest mark on this desk so far, with the red ink above explaining the missing points.