Having been accredited prop trading firms since 2015 (FTMO) and 2021 (The Funded Trader), both platforms have made major strides in the domain and focused their attention on attracting forex traders majorly.
For this reason, it can be difficult to decide where you should pay money and start trading.
This article helps you deal with this difficulty by providing you with the required pros and cons on a topic-by-topic basis.
Both these platforms will require you to perform a KYC procedure after passing their challenge and before getting access to a funded live account.
Our No. #1 Prop Firm  |
|
FTMO vs The Funded Trader: Trading Instruments
FTMO is a major forex trading platform that allows you to trade stocks, cryptocurrencies, bonds, indices, and commodities.
The Funded Trader allows the trading of majorly forex pairs but also has major indices, metals like gold and silver, and four cryptocurrencies that can be traded on their platform. For this reason, The Funded Trader tends to attract forex traders to its shores.
Account Types & Maximum Account Size
FTMO has no choices in accounts for you to learn and choose between. There is only one two-phase evaluation challenge. After you pass this, you have to choose between a regular FTMO-funded account or an FTMO Swing Account.
The Swing Account has fewer restrictions when it comes to holding positions during the release of news, overnight, or over the weekend, which you cannot do with a regular FTMO-funded account. So if you are a swing trader, you should choose the appropriate plan.
The maximum account size on FTMO begins with you controlling a live account with $200,000 in trading capital, but the platform restricts the maximum balance to $400,000, and this is where their scaling plan ends.
The Funded Trader has three different trading challenges you can take, and on passing them, get access to a live-funded account.
You can choose whether you want a Regular or Swing Account within the Standard and Rapid challenges. This option is not present in the newly started Royal Challenge.
The maximum account size you can start with on The Funded Trader is $400,000 with the Standard Challenge, $200,000 with the Rapid Challenge, and $300,000 for the newly started Royal Challenge.
100k Account Challenge / Evaluation Prices & Period
For FTMO, the $100,000 account challenge, as with all the other challenges in different denominations of starting balance, gives you 30 days to complete Phase 1 or the FTMO Challenge Phase and 60 days to complete Phase 2 or the Verification Phase.
You can choose to take the Normal Challenge for €540 or the Aggressive Challenge for €1,080.
All three of the challenges at The Funded Trader, i.e. the Standard, Rapid, and Royal Challenges, have a plan that starts you on the path to a live account with a $100,000 trading balance.
With the Standard challenge, you have 35 days in Phase 1 and 60 days in Phase 2 to achieve the profit targets set before you. The Swing and Regular variants cost a refundable fee of $549, which is given back to you with your first profit withdrawal from the live account.
The Rapid Challenge costs $499 in refundable fees for both the Regular and the Swing accounts and gives you 35 days for Phase 1 and 60 days for Phase 2. You must reach your profit targets in these times, or else your challenge try is considered to have failed.
The Royal Challenge only has one type of account and costs a refundable fee of $489, and has the same time limits as the other challenges on TFT. 35 days to complete Phase 1, and 60 days to complete Phase 2.
FTMO vs The Funded Trader: 100k Account: Challenge Rules
FTMO only has one challenge, within which there is a Normal and Aggressive variant. The Normal variant in Phase 1 gives you 30 days to achieve a minimum of 10 trading days to get to the 10% profit target set out as part of the challenge. Phase 2 allows you 60 days to get to the 5% profit target with a minimum of 10 trading days.
The Aggressive variant gives you the same number of days in both Phases and the same number of minimum trading days to pass the challenge. The change that comes with the Aggressive plan is regarding the profit target of 20% in Phase 1 and 10% in Phase 2.
The Funded Trader has three different challenges, and two of them have a further option to get a Regular or Swing account.
With the Standard Challenge, both the Regular and Swing accounts require a minimum of three trading days, a 10% profit target in Phase 1, and a 5% profit target in Phase 2.
When it comes to the Rapid Challenge, there are no minimum trading days, and you must achieve a profit target of 8% in Phase 1, which lasts 35 days, and 5% in Phase 2, which is 60 days long.
In both these cases, the difference between the Regular and Swing accounts is the maximum allowed leverage and that the Regular account does not allow you to hold your trades over the weekend.
There is also the Royal Challenge which is the latest offering from TFT. You need a minimum of five trading days to pass the challenge successfully, a Phase 1 profit target of 8%, a Phase 2 profit target of 5%, and the allowance of Expert Advisors to help you take your trades.
FTMO vs The Funded Trader: Profit Sharing Ratio
FTMO’s profit sharing ratio defaults to 80:20 in your favour, and if you are an ideal trader, do not break any of the live account’s rules and get to the profit target as prescribed by the scaling plan; you can have your profit split increased to 90:10 in your favour.
On The Funded Trader, all the live accounts have the profit splits set to 80% in your favour. If you stay within the trading rules and achieve the requirements of the scaling plan, the platform will increase your trading balance by 25% and also increase your profit-sharing ratio to 90% in your favour.
FTMO vs The Funded Trader: Scaling Plan
FTMO has a simple scaling plan where they will increase the balance in your live funded account by 25% in four months.
This increase will be triggered once in four months when you reach the 10% profit target, and the maximum balance you can grow your account to is $400,000. Remember that your account must have already been processed and achieved at least two payouts to be eligible for scaling.
The Funded Trader has the same scaling plans for their Standard and Royal Challenge. If you make either a 6% return in 3 months or a 2% return in each of the three months, then you are eligible for the scaling plan.
In this case, scaling can only be requested once a withdrawal request has been placed, as the initial balance should be equal to the current balance when it is to be scaled.
When you satisfy the above conditions, your account balance will be increased by 25%, and the profit split will be increased to 90:10 in your favour. These accounts can scale up to a maximum of $1.5 million.
The Rapid Challenge plans that if you make more than 10% of your account’s initial capital in one profit split and then request a payout, TFT will give you the profit payout you have asked for and scale up the balance of your account by 10%.
For your next time, you only have to earn 10% of your initial balance to qualify for another 10% scaling bump. Regarding the 90% profit split scaling, if an account allows for the scaling plan in 2 out of 3 consecutive months, the profit split is then permanently increased to 90%.
Allowed Leverage & Max Daily Drawdown & Total Drawdown
The Normal Account at FTMO allows maximum leverage of 1:100, a maximum daily loss of 5%, and a total loss of 10% before your account is suspended. The Aggressive Account allows the same leverage, a maximum daily loss of 10%, and a total loss of 20%.
With The Funded Trader, the Standard Challenge’s Regular Account, you are allowed maximum leverage of 1:200, a maximum daily drawdown of 6%, and a total drawdown of 12%.
In the Swing Account, only the maximum leverage is reduced to 1:60, but the maximum daily and total drawdowns are the same.
For the Rapid Challenge’s Regular Account, the maximum leverage is 1:100, the maximum daily drawdown is 5%, and the total drawdown is 8%. For the Swing account, the leverage is 1:30, and the other parameters remain the same.
The Royal Challenge allows maximum leverage of 1:200, a daily drawdown limit of 5%, and a total drawdown limit of 10% of the account’s initial balance.
FTMO vs The Funded Trader: Trading Hours
FTMO allows its traders who still hold a challenge account to hold their positions over the weekend, overnight, or during news releases. Once you pass the FTMO trading challenge and decide whether you want a Regular or Swing Account, the trading hours apply respectively.
With the Regular Account, you are not allowed to hold trades going into the weekend, and all your positions will need to be closed accordingly. You will also need to exit all the positions where the rollover time is going to exceed two hours.
The Swing Account is much more relaxed in terms of trading hours, and you can keep your positions open during all the above-mentioned times. This type of account is made especially for swing traders and their style of trading.
The Funded Trader allows trading according to the program you choose. With the Regular Account on the Standard and Rapid Challenges, you are not allowed to hold trades over the weekends. On these accounts, all positions need to be closed by Friday at 4 pm EST, or they will be liquidated.
With the Royal Challenge and the Swing account on Standard and Rapid Challenges, you are allowed to hold trades over the weekend.
FTMO vs The Funded Trader: Payout/Payment methods
FTMO requires you to choose the day you will receive your payout, and this is aptly called the Profit Split Day. These requests can only be placed once the account is more than 14 days old.
The Funded Trader allows their Standard and Royal Challenge alumni to place their first withdrawal request 30 days after the first trade was placed on the account.
With Rapid challenge alumni, you only have to wait 14 days to place your first withdrawal request. After your first payout, you only have to wait for 14 days from the last payout to place a new payout request.
At both these times, your account will be made read-only until the payout process is completed, and there should be no open positions or orders in your account.
All payouts are processed via Bank Transfer, Deel, Coinbase, Paypal, Payoneer, Revolut, Wise, and others. Any payouts higher than $10,000 must be requested via Deel.
FTMO vs The Funded Trader: Allowed EAs & Rules
FTMO allows you to make trades using EAs or discretionary bots and use these techniques as you see fit.
The Funded Trader allows EAs only on their Royal Challenge and not on any other of their offerings. Even with this, you are not allowed to indulge in grid trading, arbitrage trading, or copy trading from third-party signals.
FTMO vs The Funded Trader: Trading Platforms
Trading on FTMO can be done on Meta Trader 4, Meta Trader 5, or cTrader depending on which one you are comfortable with.
All funded accounts on The Funded Trader platform offer trading services through Eightcap’s Meta Trader 4 and Meta Trader 5.
Conclusion
In conclusion, you can say that most of the differences between the platforms lie in their variety of funding options where. The Funded Trader has options of a Standard, Royal, and Rapid Challenge, while FTMO only has one challenge with Normal and Aggressive profit targets.
Suppose you are experienced with cTrader and not very comfortable with MetaTrader 4, or MetaTrader 5. In that case, The Funded Trader is where you should register and trade, otherwise, stick to FTMO & you will not regret it.
Our No. #1 Prop Firm |
|
Contents
