Back
- Prop Trading Firms
- Best Funded Trader Program
- Best Forex Funded Accounts
- What Is Prop Trading?
- Reviews
- Fidelcrest Review
- TopStep
- The Trading Pit
- FundedNext Review
- FTMO Review
- SurgeTrader
- OneUp Trader Review
- City Traders Imperium Review
- Our Methodology
- Prop Trading Firms
- Best Funded Trader Program
- Best Forex Funded Accounts
- What Is Prop Trading?
- Reviews
- Fidelcrest Review
- TopStep
- The Trading Pit
- FundedNext Review
- FTMO Review
- SurgeTrader
- OneUp Trader Review
- City Traders Imperium Review
- Our Methodology
menu
Home » reviews » FTMO Review
Our review of prop trading firm FTMO found they have a profit split of 80% and an interesting scale up plan so you can trade with more capital. See what we have to say about FTMO.
Written by Noam Korbl
Edited by David Levy
Fact Checked by Justin Grossbard
Edited by David Levy
Fact Checked by Justin Grossbard
Updated:
What Changed?
Each month we update average spreads data published by the brokers the retail brokers lose %
Fact Checked
We double-check broker fee details each month which is made possible through partner paid advertising. Learn more this here.
Our forex comparisons and broker reviews are reader supported and we may receive payment when you click on a link to a partner site.
FTMO Key Features Snapshot
💱 Audition Fees | €250 – €1080 |
💱 Account Types | Normal, Aggressive, Swing Trader |
📊 Trading Platforms | MT4 ,MT5, cTrader |
💰 Minimum Deposit | Audition fee |
💰 Funding Fee | $0 |
🛍️ CFDs Offered | Forex, CFDs (Crypto, Shares, indices) |
Pros
- Free trial offered to test your skills
- Various account types offered
- Automatically scaling capital allocation and profit split
- 90% profit split available No limits on lot sizes
- No limits on lot sizes
- Two-step evaluation phase
- Minimum trading days required during audition (4)
- No $1M account
- Charges commissions on trades
- No news and weekend trading for certain assets with standard accounts
If you’re looking for a prop trading firm that offers a range of account types and customisation options, an 80% profit split, plus an automatic scaling plan for extra capital, then FTMO could be the prop firm for you.
While they didn’t top the CompareForexBroker list, there’s plenty to like about FTMO as you will see from this review. Overall we scored them an impressive 8.25/10.
What We Say About FTMO
Established in 2015, Czech Republic-based FTMO is one of the leading prop firms in the industry, and for good reason.
One of the most notable aspects of the offering is that their profit split starts at 80% which is already higher than many other prop trading firms. What’s more, it can increase further to 90% as part of their automatic scale-up system which you can opt into if you are continuously profitable.
Additionally, FTMO will also automatically scale-up your account’s capital allocation, so you won’t need to pay and sit another audition to access a larger funded account. This means your $200K account size, which is the largest they offer, can theoretically increase to $2M if you continuously fulfil the rules – but more on this later.
Another unique feature we like is that FTMO offers three account types. These include a Standard Account, an Aggressive Account, and a Swing Account.
The Aggressive Account has larger take profit, daily loss and trailing drawdown metrics compared to the Standard Account, while the Swing Account allows you to hold positions over the weekend and into news releases, but with reduced leverage.
We’re big fans of flexibility and customisation when it comes to assessing prop trading firms, and FTMO does pretty well in this respect. This is further demonstrated by the fact there is no restriction on the trading strategies you can use to become a successful trader with a funded account.
There’s even no requirement to use a stop loss for either the audition or as a funded trader. We should say that risk management is very important when trading, so we’re not sure how beneficial this feature is, but it’s there nonetheless.
If you do pass the FTMO challenge and become a funded trader, you don’t need to hit a profit target before you can request a withdrawal. and you can even choose the day you want the profit split to happen if you meet the requirements.
When it comes to cost, we think their audition fees are fairly reasonable starting from €155, and their spreads are also pretty tight. A key drawback however is that FTMO charges a commission on trades, so this needs to be considered.
We also don’t like their two-step audition and minimum trading day requirement, but overall we think FTMO’s offering is pretty good with some truly unique aspects.
From proprietary apps to help you with your trading to an in-house team of performance coaches, FTMO is certainly a prop firm worthy of close consideration.
Spreads and Commissions
Unlike many prop firms, FTMO doesn’t use a third-party forex broker. Instead, FTMO has partnerships with various liquidity providers which supply your account with an institutional data-feed, delivering RAW spreads with Direct Market Access (DMA).
It’s important to understand that as a forex trader, when you’re trading with FTMO on a ‘real’ funded account, the funds are actually virtual and the FTMO team is copying your trades on their own live account. However, FTMO states that the trading account offered to you resembles the exact conditions of the real account.
Spreads
Taking a look at their spreads, we can see that they are pretty tight with spreads starting from 0.22. 0.65, and 0.27 on EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/JPY respectively.
Commissions
One drawback when prop trading with FTMO is that unlike some other firms including Level Up Trading and SurgeTrader, they do charge a commission.
For forex, commissions are $3 per standard lot/roundtrip, 0.0040 percent/volume for equities, and 0.0010 percent/volume for metals.
Our Verdict on Spreads and Commissions
We scored FTMO well for their tight spreads but given they don’t absorb the commission like many other prop firms, this saw them lose points which culminated in a modest ranking overall.
Visit FTMO
Qualification and Rules
FTMO has all the typical rules you would expect from a prop trading firm. They have profit targets, daily loss limits and maximum loss limits, although there are a few unique aspects that stand out as part of the FTMO evaluation – let’s dive in.
Hard Breach Rules
There are two steps to the FTMO audition; the FTMO Challenge and FTMO Verification.
To pass the FTMO Challenge, you need to meet the following requirements:
- Achieve a 10% profit target (20% for the Aggressive Account)
- Avoid a 5% daily loss limit (10% for the Aggressive Account)
- Avoid a 10% maximum loss (20% for the Aggressive Account)
- Open at least four separate trades on four separate days during the audition period
To pass the FTMO Verification, all the same rules apply except the profit target is reduced to 5% for Standard Accounts and 10% for Aggressive Accounts. The Swing Account follows the same rules as a Standard Account in both phases of the audition.
To demonstrate, if you’re currently sitting the FTMO Challenge with a $100,000 Standard Account, you would need to reach a $10,000 profit target without incurring a $5,000 daily loss, while also avoiding a $10,000 account drawdown.
If you were sitting the FTMO Verification with a $100,000 Standard Account, you would need to reach a $5,000 profit target without incurring a $5,000 daily loss, while also avoiding a $10,000 account drawdown.
Keep in mind that the percentage values increase/decrease with your account size, so if you make a 2% profit and your Standard Account value rises to $102,000, your new daily loss limit would be $5,100 (5% of $102,000) while your trailing drawdown limit would be $10,200 (10% of $102,000).
It’s important to recognise that your new account balance each trading day comes into effect at midnight CET, so any new daily loss amounts which reflect the updated balance will activate from this time.
Further, losses include open positions not just closed positions, so be aware that your floating profit and loss (PnL) contributes towards your daily loss and trailing drawdown limits.
Other Rules
During the audition phases, we can confirm that there are no other trading objectives you need to hit which makes things nice and simple.
There’s also no need to trade with a stop loss, no limit on how many lots you can open with risk, and no need to close your positions prior to the weekend or significant news events.
If you do pass the audition however, this all changes quickly and various additional rules apply for the standard account and aggressive account including:
- No weekend trades – FTMO restricts you from holding trades over the weekend
- No market break trades – FTMO requires you to close a position if the particular market is scheduled to close for longer than two hours
- No trading of news – FTMO restricts you from opening or closing certain trades before and after a significant news release event (2 minutes either side), although you can trade ‘non-targeted’ assets. For example, if the US NFP release is about to take place, you can’t open or close a USD pair, but you could open or close AUDNZD, GBPAUD, or EURGBP.
To understand which news events are restricted, you can visit FTMO’s economic calendar which clearly displays this.
It’s important to re-state that these rules only relate to FTMO Standard and FTMO Aggressive accounts and don’t apply if you’re a swing trader who chooses the FTMO Swing Account. We delve into the key differences further on.
Lastly, we can confirm that no stop loss is required at all for any account type when trading as an FTMO funded trader (or in the audition).
Our Verdict on Qualification and Rules
When it comes to the audition aspect, it’s no secret that we favour prop trading firms that offer a single-step evaluation process. While FTMO’s second step has a reduced profit target, we don’t think it’s enough to compensate forex traders for the fact that it’s still an extra hurdle you will face.
While it’s true that FTMO offers a relatively large maximum loss percentage when compared to many other prop firms, providing greater room for drawdown before getting disqualified, our view is that it doesn’t counteract the two-step audition.
In consideration of the above, and the fact that there’s also a requirement to place a minimum number of trades, we ranked FTMO modestly for this section.
Accounts, Funding and Withdrawals
FTMO offers various account funding levels with the smallest starting at US $10,000 and the largest at US $200,000. While this might seem like a relatively small amount of initial capital compared to some other prop trading firms, FTMO does offer you the ability to scale up your account size to $2M, if you are continuously profitable.
If you don’t opt into automatic scaling, then your account size will be capped at $200,000, although FTMO does allow you to run multiple accounts with a total limit per trader of $400,000 (prior to any account scaling).
Account Types
FTMO offers three account types which include FTMO Standard, FTMO Aggressive and FTMO Swing.
The key differences are the Aggressive Account has a larger take profit target, but also a larger daily loss and maximum loss limit which can be beneficial if your strategy permits larger drawdowns.
As the name suggests, the Swing Account is designed for swing traders who typically hold positions open for longer periods of time. For this reason, if you’re trading with the Swing Account, you will be able to hold your positions open over the weekend and into significant news releases. Be aware however that leverage is limited with this account to minimise your risk level.
Demo Account
There’s also a free demo account which provides good insight into how trading with FTMO will be. We think this is a nice feature as various prop trading firms don’t or can’t offer this capability.
Scale-up
As we have mentioned, a unique aspect about FTMO is the use of an automatic scaling system where if you are consistently profitable, the amount of funds you have at your disposal increases by 25% every four months. We like this approach as it rewards trading talent and profitable trading strategies.
While there are no profit targets when you’re a CFD or Forexfunded trader to request a profit withdrawal, you do need to generate a 10% profit across four consecutive months (or an average 2.5% per month for standard accounts) to qualify for an automatic scale-up.
Additionally, the profit split percentage also increases, moving from the standard 80% up to a whopping 90%.
Funding
To pay for the audition itself, you have several options to choose from including via Visa, Mastercard, Nuvei, bank transfer, Skrill, Checkout.com or Confirmo, which also supports crypto payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC and others. Be aware that some payment methods do incur fees.
Once you have paid, there is also a range of currencies which you can denominate for your account, these include USD, GBP, EUR and AUD.
Withdrawals
Profit splits are done on a monthly basis which is fairly standard for most prop firms, but FTMO spices things up as you can request a ‘payout on-demand’ after 14 days from your first placed trade (assuming your account is in profit).
You can also choose which day after the 14 day period you want to get paid out from FTMO, which we think is a nice touch. Once you have requested your pay out, payments are usually processed within a day or two.
Importantly, with FMTO there is no profit target when you are a funded trader which means you can request a profit split whenever you want, assuming there is profit in the account.
We can also confirm there are no withdrawal fees.
Our Verdict on Accounts, Funding and Withdrawals
While we didn’t score FTMO full points for this section due to the absence of a $1M funded account, the diversity of account options, a unique scaling system, and diverse funding methods with flexible withdrawals saw it perform well overall.
Visit FTMO
Trading Platforms
FTMO offers trading on various platforms including MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and cTrader. All three of these platforms are very popular and each has different pros and cons which we will expand upon below.
MetaTrader 4
MetaTrader 4 (MT4) is the most popular forex trading platform in the world, offering an unrivalled community of traders and developers. It’s no surprise that MT4 boasts over 15,000 expert advisors (EAs) which you can use with FTMO given there are no restrictions on algorithmic and automated strategies.
Desktop
With the MT4 desktop app you can personalise your trading environment, modify indicators, templates, chart types and various other settings. There are 30 built-in indicators, 9 timeframes, and 24 analytical objects including fibonacci tools, Gann tools and more.
Web
The web application bears a striking resemblance to the desktop version and offers nearly all the identical functions. Its main advantage lies in its versatility, as you can access it on any device, making it particularly useful when your regular computer is unavailable.
Mobile
The MT4 mobile application proves incredibly valuable while you’re on the go, offering nearly all the essential features. It allows you to access market data, track and execute trades, and utilise EAs for automated trading strategies.
MetaTrader 5
MetaTrader 5 (MT5) expands upon the foundational features of its predecessor and introduces the ability to trade in equity markets. Additionally, it offers a wider range of indicators (38 instead of 30), analytical tools (44 instead of 33), and timeframes (21 instead of 9). Moreover, MT5 provides real-time updates on market developments and economic news.
cTrader
The cTrader platform is an all-in-one multi-asset trading software that has more advanced trading capabilities when compared to MT4. It provides a detailed depth of market (DOM) feature with ECN/STP market execution, algorithmic trading via cBots, backtesting capabilities and other advanced order types.
Our Verdict on Trading Platforms
We scored FTMO well for this section given they aren’t only integrated with both MT4 and MT5, but cTrader as well. This ensures that traders of all experience levels, preferences and persuasions are catered for.
Markets and Leverage
With FTMO you can trade various asset classes including forex, commodities, indices, crypto, stocks and bonds. There’s 28 major and 14 minor FX pairs, 10 cryptos, 14 indices, and various commodities and stocks to trade.
In our view the range of markets is ok, but it’s primarily geared towards FX and indices, so keep this in mind if you primarily trade other asset classes.
Leverage
FTMO offers pretty substantial leverage of up to 1:100 on Standard and Aggressive accounts, while it is capped at 1:30 for Swing Accounts. As far as prop trading firms go, this is undoubtedly on the higher end of the spectrum.
Standard/Aggressive Account | Swing Account | |
---|---|---|
Forex | 1:100 | 1:30 |
Commodities | 1:50 | 1:15 |
Indices | 1:50 | 1:15 |
Crypto | 1:1 | 1:3.3 |
Stocks | 1:3 | 1:10 |
Our Verdict on Markets and Leverage
FTMO offers huge leverage on its standard and aggressive accounts. While excessive leverage can fast-track your risk of ruin, we think having the flexibility and offering you the choice is good nonetheless.
As far as markets go, we think the offering is a little limited when it comes to stocks, crypto and commodities, but their forex and indices markets are robust.
In consideration of the above, we scored FTMO well for this section.
Customer Service
FTMO has a decent customer service offering given they can be contacted 24/7 via various channels including live chat, WhatsApp, phone or email.
Their live chat is good because you get to speak to a real person also immediately, and their customer service team speaks over 16 languages.
While writing this FTMO trading review, we had to ask the customer service team various questions as we couldn’t find some required information on their website. All of the engagements we had with FTMO were great and the team were very helpful.
Their FAQs are also pretty robust, although it feels a little clunky as the search results don’t always retrieve what you’re looking for.
Our Verdict on Customer Service
Overall we scored FTMO well for customer service given there is always someone available to field your enquiries.
Education
FTMO’s educational material is top-notch in our opinion as it covers a wide range of topics from trading strategy and psychology, to market analysis and more.
Video content
They have a ‘Trading Academy’ section within their trading portal which is segmented into three categories including Beginner, Trading Platforms, and Trading Tips.
As the categories suggest, the content is created for traders of all levels, and is freely accessible on YouTube, so you don’t need to be a funded trader or sitting the audition to watch it.
There’s also various other sections called ‘Account Overview’, ‘Evaluation Process’, ‘FTMO Events’ and ‘FTMO Interviews’. Each section contains multiple video explainers which we think are done very well and are informative.
We particularly like the ‘FTMO Interviews’ which feature stories from some of FTMO’s top funded traders. We think the content provided here is great as it provides aspiring traders with the inspiration they need to keep moving in the right direction.
Written content
While YouTube is the primary driver of their educational content strategy, useful tidbits covering trading psychology, trading strategies, and promotional offers are also shared across their other channels.
They also have a wealth of information on their blog which has various categories including ‘FTMO Traders Analysis’, ‘FTMO Traders Q&A’, ‘Trading Psychology’, and more.
Apps
To complement their video content, FTMO provides a suite of proprietary trading apps which we think is a great addition to the offering.
Account MetriX
The Account MetriX app sits within FTMO’s trading portal and provides you with an easy way to keep track of your trading progress towards becoming a funded trader.
Account Analysis
The Account Analysis app provides you with a breakdown of your trades including win rate, average profit, and profit factor.
Statistical App
The Statistical App provides a weekly overview of the most popular trading instruments, what’s trending, what’s ranging, and which assets are appreciating in price the fastest.
Mentor App
FTMO’s Mentor App is another useful tool which they have designed to assist you with strengthening your money management and trading discipline.
It can plug directly into your MT4, MT5 or cTrader platform, and serves as a guide by sending you notifications when a rule is breached.
Equity Simulator
We think the equity simulator is a very useful tool as it provides the ability to simulate and forecast how your trading strategy will perform over the long-term.
To use this tool, you need to plug in your standard risk-to-reward ratio (RRR) when you take trades, what your risk percentage is, what your average win rate is, and a few other metrics.
The tool will then forecast various account growth trajectories based on your trading parameters.
Performance Coaches
FTMO also has psychology-major performance coaches who can assist you with increasing your trading discipline while boosting self-confidence. We should add that this service is only available to funded FTMO traders.
Our Verdict on Education
We’re big fans of FTMO’s education section and think they provide a very good selection of materials to suit traders of all types and experience levels. This, combined with their suite of apps and performance coaches, led us to score FTMO full points for this section.
Visit FTMO
Trust and Community
FTMO has an ‘Excellent’ ranking on Trustpilot, scoring 4.9 stars with over 5,000 reviews. They also have a 4.8 star rating on Facebook Reviews, with the vast majority of reviews across both platforms overwhelmingly positive.
Social media
FTMO has a significant social media following with over 200,000 on Instagram, 43,000 on Twitter, 80,000 on Facebook, and 90,000 on YouTube.
The content produced by FTMO is focused on trading advice, education and memes, which in our view is a good balance.
Unlike some other prop firms who flaunt pictures of wealth, lamborghinis and private jets, FTMO actually provides valuable content which offers insights and learnings, mixed with a bit of humour.
On YouTube specifically, each video receives anywhere between a few thousand views and hundreds of thousands, and there’s not a picture of a yacht or a sports car in sight.
Community
While FTMO doesn’t have a Discord or Telegram community, there are various unofficial Facebook groups which are full of activity and engaged traders sharing wins/losses and insights.
FTMO does have a ‘Chat with Charts’ section on their portal which is a forum for sharing trade ideas and analysis with other FTMO traders. It’s similar to TradingView’s ‘Ideas’ section but clunkier, and it doesn’t garner much activity or engagement.
Our Verdict on FTMO Trust and Community
When it comes to Trust, we scored FTMO full points given their ‘Excellent’ review on Trustpilot and the overwhelmingly positive sentiment of the comments. They also provide the location of their offices and can be easily contactable via phone, email and live chat support.
On the community side of things, we think FTMO could benefit from a ‘live chat’ community in a Discord server as there isn’t any official community channel other than their ‘Chat with Charts’ section (which isn’t great).
On balance however, FTMO does perform well for this section, especially on the ‘Trust’ side.
How to Sign Up with FTMO
Getting set up with FTMO is pretty straightforward, although it does entail a fair few steps which we have outlined in detail below.
1. Register An Account
You will need to fill in some personal information including name and country of residence. You will then receive an account confirmation email which you will need to click to verify. From here, you will have access to the FTMO dashboard.
2. Select Account Currency
The next step is to select which account currency you want to denominate your account in. You have various currencies to choose from including USD, EUR, GBP and more.
3. Select Risk Mode
Here you can choose if you want to trade with a standard or aggressive account (the Swing Account is only available under standard).
4. Choose Account Balance
At this point you choose how much capital you want to audition for. As mentioned previously, the lowest level is $10,000 while the highest is $200,000.
5. Select Platform
It’s now time to choose which platform you want to trade on. FTMO offers MT4, MT5 and cTrader, so there is plenty to consider. If you’re unsure which platform is best for you, take a read of our MT4 vs MT5 review and our cTrader vs MT4 review.
6. Provide Billing Information
It’s time to fill out your personal information. Some of it will pre-fill from when you signed up but now you need to add your address and postcode.
7. Select Payment Method
Select the currency you want to pay in, tick the two disclaimers, and click pay.
8. Pay
You can choose to pay with various methods including via Visa, Mastercard using Nuvei, a bank transfer, Skrill, or Confirmo which also supports crypto payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC and others.
Congratulations – you made it! You’ll be ready to start your audition within 24 hours after FTMO receives your payment.
Visit FTMO
Our Final Verdict
FTMO provides a good offering overall and scores very well in various departments including funded account types, platforms, education, and customer service.
We particularly like that they offer multiple account types to suit whatever your trading style is, and their unique scaling system for both profit split and capital allocation is a good approach because it rewards disciplined and continuously profitable traders.
However, we can’t ignore the fact that a two-step audition process is required along with the requirement to make a minimum number of trades on a minimum number of days.
What’s more, FTMO doesn’t absorb commissions like some other forex prop firms do, and maximum funding before scaling is relatively low at $200K.
Collectively, this resulted in us scoring FTMO a 8.25/10 overall.
Visit FTMO