FTMO Review 2026

What FTMO actually sells, and why it is not a broker

Almost every mistake made about FTMO comes from treating it as a broker. It is not one, and it says so itself. The disclaimer at the foot of every page reads: “FTMO only provides services of simulated trading and educational tools for traders… FTMO companies do not act as a broker and do not accept any deposits.”

What you buy is an evaluation. You pay a one-time fee, you are given a demo account with a notional balance, and you attempt to hit a profit target without breaching a set of loss limits. If you succeed, a second FTMO company may offer you a contract on a larger demo account, and pay you a cash reward calculated from the profit you generate on it.

The distinction matters in three ways. First, your money is a fee, not a deposit: it is FTMO’s revenue the moment you pay it, it is not held in a segregated client account, and no deposit-protection or investor-compensation scheme applies. Second, there is no brokerage relationship, so none of the conduct rules governing a broker’s treatment of you apply either. Third, what you are paid is not profit from a market position. It is a performance-based reward from FTMO’s own funds, calculated from data you generated in a simulator.

FTMO is unusually straight about this. Its How it works page states that “all accounts we provide to our clients are demo accounts with fictitious funds and any trading is in a simulated environment only.” That is the sentence to hold on to for the rest of this review.

Is FTMO regulated? Not the company that sells to you

This is the single most important section of this review, and the one where competing articles most often mislead.

The entities that sell the FTMO Challenge to Southeast Asian traders hold no financial-services licence. This is not an inference. Clause 2.1 of the FTMO Challenge Terms and Conditions, last updated 4 August 2026, states:

“None of the Services are subject to laws regulating the financial sector in the countries where we provide the Services. We are not regulated by the Czech National Bank or a similar authority overseeing the financial sector in other countries. As a result, you will not receive regulatory protection associated with the financial sector with respect to the Services.”

Be careful with three things that look like regulation but do not protect you. First, a Czech company registration number is a company registration, not a licence: FTMO Evaluation Global s.r.o. is registered as company ID 092 13 651 in Prague, which tells you the company legally exists and nothing more about supervision of its conduct. Second, FTMO’s ownership of OANDA does not regulate FTMO. OANDA holds broker licences in several jurisdictions, but OANDA is not your counterparty when you buy a Challenge, and its licences confer no protection on your FTMO account.

Third, and least well understood, one FTMO-branded entity genuinely is licensed. FTMO Australia is operated by VRGK Tech Pty Ltd, ACN 640 619 521, AFSL 525757, of Three International Towers Level 24, 300 Barangaroo Avenue, Sydney. That is a real Australian financial services licence, printed in the footer and the general disclaimer of ftmo.com/au. It covers clients routed to the Australian site and nothing else. If you buy from Kuala Lumpur, Manila or Bangkok you are not that entity’s client, you are contracting with the unlicensed Czech companies, and the AFSL gives you nothing.

Practically, this means there is no regulator to complain to about a failed evaluation, no ombudsman and no compensation fund. The one out-of-court route FTMO does name, the Czech Trade Inspection Authority at clause 17.1, is expressly limited: the clause opens “This Clause 17.1 applies only to a Consumer who is an EU resident.” It is not open to a trader in Southeast Asia. Your remedy is the contract, governed by Czech law with disputes falling to the Czech court local to FTMO’s registered office, which is a theoretical remedy rather than a practical one from this region.

One narrow route back does exist, and it is worth knowing before you click buy. Clause 12.1 gives a Consumer, defined in the terms as any natural person acting outside their trade, business, craft or profession with no geographic limit attached, fourteen calendar days to withdraw from the Order and have the fee returned. Note the catch: the right survives only while you have not opened your first simulated trade. FTMO’s wording is that placing that trade means the Services “are to be provided in full and will cause you to lose your right to withdraw from the Agreement.” Send the withdrawal by email inside the window and clause 12.2 requires the fee back within fourteen days, by the same method you paid. Once you have placed a single trade, that is gone, and from then on you should price the fee as money you may simply lose.

You contract with two different companies

Most reviews say “FTMO” as though it were one company. It is at least two, and the split has consequences.

FTMO Evaluation Global s.r.o., company ID 092 13 651, registered at Purkynova 2121/3, Nove Mesto, 110 00 Prague 1, sells you the FTMO Challenge. That is who takes your fee and who runs the evaluation.

FTMO Trading Global s.r.o., company ID 094 18 415, at the same Prague address, is a separate legal person. Clause 6.1 says that if you pass, FTMO Evaluation “will inform FTMO Trading Global s.r.o. … which may offer you a contract” for the funded account. The same clause continues: “Successfully completing the Evaluation Process does not guarantee your acceptance into the FTMO Trader Program. We are not responsible for you not being admitted into the FTMO Trader Program for any reason.”

Clause 6.2 reinforces the separation: the agreement between you and FTMO Trading “are solely between you and FTMO Trading”, governed by a different document, the FTMO Account Terms and Conditions.

There is also a hard ceiling most readers never reach but should know about. Clause 6.3 allows FTMO to withhold the funded programme where it would take you past USD 400,000 of total Initial Simulated Capital across every agreement you hold, aggregated per client, per strategy and per ultimate beneficial owner. That is the cap on capital you can buy your way into; the scaling figures discussed later are about growth on top of an existing account, not about buying more.

Passing the test buys you a recommendation, not a guaranteed contract.

1-Step and 2-Step: two genuinely different products

FTMO now sells two evaluations, and the differences run deeper than the number of phases.

The 2-Step Challenge is the classic route. Phase one, called the FTMO Challenge, needs 10% profit. Phase two, called Verification, needs 5%. Both phases allow a 5% maximum daily loss and a 10% maximum loss, and both require at least four trading days. There is no time limit on either.

The 1-Step Challenge collapses this into a single phase with a 10% profit target, but tightens the risk side considerably. The maximum daily loss drops from 5% to 3%. The maximum loss stays at 10% but becomes an end-of-day trailing limit rather than a static one. And a Best Day Rule is added that has no equivalent in the 2-Step product.

In exchange, the 1-Step pays a flat 90% profit split from the start, against 80% on the 2-Step. It is also cheaper at every account size. But the 1-Step fee is not refundable, where the 2-Step fee is refunded in full on your first payout, and the Swing account type is not available on the 1-Step at all.

FTMO’s own objectives page lists no minimum trading days for the 1-Step, where the 2-Step requires four per phase. For a trader who can hit the target quickly, that removes a small friction; FTMO advertises a shortest 1-Step pass time of two days.

Neither is obviously better. The 1-Step suits a consistent, low-variance trader; the 2-Step suits anyone who wants the fee back and a static drawdown floor they can plan around.

What it costs, and the refund trap in the 1-Step

Every FTMO evaluation is priced in euros regardless of the account currency you choose, and the account sizes run $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 and $200,000.

The 2-Step fees, taken from FTMO’s own pricing card, are EUR 89, EUR 250, EUR 345, EUR 439 and EUR 1,080. The 1-Step fees are lower: EUR 79, EUR 199, EUR 319, EUR 399 and EUR 999. At the time of writing the $100,000 tiers were both discounted, shown at EUR 439 against a EUR 540 list price on the 2-Step and EUR 399 against EUR 499 on the 1-Step, tied to a promotion FTMO was running on the $100K 1-Step.

Now the part that catches people out. On the 2-Step pricing card FTMO shows a row reading “Refund: Yes, 100%”, and the fee is described as a “One-time refundable fee”. On the 1-Step card the same field reads “One-time fee (non-refundable)”. Plenty of reviews state flatly that FTMO refunds your fee on first payout. That is true of the 2-Step and, on FTMO’s own published wording, not true of the 1-Step.

So the real comparison at $100,000 is not EUR 399 against EUR 439. If you pass and get paid, the 2-Step costs you nothing and the 1-Step costs you EUR 399. If you fail, the 1-Step is EUR 40 cheaper. You are effectively paying EUR 399 for the higher profit split and the shorter route.

How you pay changes the price too, which is easy to miss. Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Revolut Pay are instant and free. PayPal, Skrill and cryptocurrency each carry a 3% fee, and bank transfer takes two to five business days with variable fees. Crypto and e-wallets are common rails across the Philippines, Vietnam and much of the region, so this is not academic: on a EUR 439 Challenge, paying by crypto costs roughly EUR 13 more than paying by card. FTMO also notes that bank transfers are unavailable for Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan and Ukraine.

The drawdown rules, measured on equity and recalculated at midnight

Both loss limits are measured on equity, not balance. FTMO defines equity as “Balance + Open Positions P/L +/- Swaps – Commissions”. An open losing position can therefore breach a limit before you close it. This is where most accounts die.

Maximum daily loss

The limit is recalculated every day at 00:00 CE(S)T as that moment’s account balance minus the daily loss amount, which is 5% of initial capital on the 2-Step and 3% on the 1-Step. On a $100,000 2-Step account starting fresh, day one’s floor is $95,000. If you close day one at $102,000, day two’s floor becomes $97,000. Note what this means: after a profitable day the floor rises with you, so profit does not buy you extra daily room.

Maximum loss

Here the two products diverge sharply. On the 2-Step the maximum loss is static: 10% below the initial simulated capital, and it never moves. On a $100,000 account the floor is $90,000 for the life of the account.

On the 1-Step it is an end-of-day trailing limit. It is recalculated daily as 10% below the highest balance recorded at any previous midnight, or below initial capital if that is higher. FTMO’s own worked example: close day one at $104,000 and your floor rises to $94,000 permanently. “The limit can only increase, but never decrease.” Only when you withdraw a reward and are issued a new account does it reset to 90% of initial capital.

That ratchet is the real cost of the 1-Step, and the point is easy to state badly. Run a $100,000 account up to $109,000 and your floor rises to $99,000. You still have exactly $10,000 of room, because the Maximum Loss Amount is a fixed 10% of initial simulated capital and the gap from your trailing high never narrows. The comparison is what stings: on the 2-Step, that same trader’s floor would still be $90,000, leaving $19,000 of room. The 1-Step floor climbs behind you; it never widens.

The Best Day Rule, and why it is not a breach

The Best Day Rule applies to the 1-Step Challenge and to the funded 1-Step account. It does not exist on the 2-Step product at all, on either phase or on the funded account.

The rule: your single best day must not represent more than 50% of your Positive Days’ Profit. Positive Days’ Profit is the sum of closed profits from all your profitable days, each day running from 00:00 CE(S)T.

FTMO’s own example is worth reproducing because it shows the arithmetic clearly. Day one loses $2,000; day two makes $10,000; days three and four lose $2,000 each; day five makes $6,000. Positive Days’ Profit is $16,000, the sum of the two winning days only. The best day, day two, accounts for $10,000 of that, which is 62.5%. The rule is not satisfied. To fix it while day two remains your best day, Positive Days’ Profit must reach at least $20,000.

Two things people get wrong. The denominator counts winning days only, not net profit, so losing days do not help you dilute a big day. And exceeding the threshold is expressly not a breach: FTMO states that “exceeding the Best Day limit is not treated as a rule breach” and that you simply keep trading until the proportion falls to 50% or less. Your account is not closed; your pass or your payout is deferred.

The effect is that the 1-Step punishes a single windfall trade. If your edge is one enormous monthly winner, take the 2-Step.

The rules that most often void an account

Beyond the loss limits, two clusters of rules can end an account, and both are written to give FTMO discretion.

The Forbidden Trading Practices list covers exploiting pricing errors or display delays; opening opposite positions across connected accounts to manipulate results; using software, artificial intelligence or ultra-high-speed tools that give an unfair advantage; expert advisors that make the account hyperactive, which FTMO quantifies as more than 2,000 server requests per day; hedging or holding opposing positions to spread profit artificially across days and dodge the Best Day Rule; and letting any third party access or trade your account. FTMO’s platform also caps you at 200 orders at a time and 2,000 positions per day.

The Risk Management Rules in clause 7.4 and 7.5 are looser and more dangerous. FTMO reserves “the discretion to implement any measures we consider appropriate to prevent activities we deem analogous to gambling”. It names three examples of what breaks market-standard risk management: opening substantially larger position sizes than your other trades, opening substantially more or fewer positions than usual, and repeatedly building cumulative exposure in one symbol or correlated symbols.

The consequences in clause 7.6 are broad: FTMO may treat it as a failure, cancel or reclassify individual trades, cancel all services immediately, instruct FTMO Trading to close your funded accounts and cancel rewards, cut your leverage, or cap your risk per trade idea. Clause 7.7 adds that FTMO “is not required to notify you before taking such action”, and clause 7.9 that you get no compensation and no refund.

Trade as though a human will review your account, because one will.

News, overnight and weekend rules: Standard versus Swing

This is the area where FTMO is more permissive than its reputation suggests, and where the scoping matters twice over.

First, the timing. Restrictions on news trading, overnight holding and weekend holding do not apply during the evaluation at all, on either account type. FTMO states that during the Evaluation Process “the restriction does not apply regardless of the account type”. They only switch on once you are trading a funded FTMO Account.

Second, the account type. On a funded Standard account you may not open or close trades in a window starting two minutes before and ending two minutes after selected high-impact releases. FTMO names the US Federal Funds Rate, Non-Farm Employment Change, CPI and GDP, along with equivalent releases from the EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland, plus Crude Oil Inventories. Breaching it “may result in termination of an FTMO Account”. You must also close positions shortly before the weekend close, or where a market rollover lasts longer than two hours.

Third, and this is the part most reviews leave out, the restriction is scoped to the affected instruments only, not to your whole account. FTMO’s own example: “during the US NFP release, you may trade EURGBP or AUDNZD; however, you must not open or close trades on USDJPY or GBPUSD within the time window.” For a US release the restricted set is USD pairs, gold, the US indices and DXY. The trap is automation rather than clicking: FTMO states that a pending order, Stop Loss or Take Profit triggering inside the window also counts as a breach. From Southeast Asia most US releases land late in your evening or overnight, so the order sitting on your chart is the one likely to break the rule, not you.

On the Swing account type none of that applies. FTMO states the Swing type “does not have any restrictions on trading during news releases” or on holding overnight or over the weekend. The trade-off is leverage: 1:30 instead of 1:100.

The catch for swing traders is availability. The Swing type is offered exclusively on the 2-Step Challenge. It cannot be used on the 1-Step. And you can convert Swing to Standard afterwards but not the other way round, so if you want it, choose it at purchase.

Getting paid: split, timing and methods

The profit split is 90% on the 1-Step from the outset. On the 2-Step it starts at 80% and rises to 90% only if you meet the Scaling Plan or Premium Programme conditions.

Timing is better than the old monthly-cycle model. FTMO states you can request a reward “in the Account MetriX on the 14th or any following day after the first placed trade”. There is no fixed payday after that; you request when you want, provided you are compliant with the objectives. On the 1-Step you must also satisfy the Best Day Rule at the moment of the request.

Minimums are low: $20 of closed profit for a bank wire, $50 for cryptocurrency. Methods are bank wire, instant transfer via Visa Direct or Mastercard Send up to $20,000, Skrill up to $3,000, and cryptocurrency. FTMO states it “does not charge any additional commissions for Reward withdrawals”, though your own bank or the crypto network will. Processing is quoted at one to two business days for the account review and a further one to two business days for the payout after the invoice is approved.

One caution on the marketing figures. FTMO’s pricing cards advertise an “Avg. Reward” per account size, from EUR 680 on the $10,000 tier to EUR 12,234 on the $200,000 tier, and the site claims more than $650 million paid in rewards to over 4.5 million customers. These are self-reported and unaudited, and the averages are drawn from traders who were paid, not from everyone who bought a Challenge. FTMO publishes no pass rate anywhere on the pages cited in this review.

Scaling Plan and Premium Programme

Two routes exist to grow beyond the account you bought, and their published ceilings do not sit neatly together, so treat each on its own terms.

The Scaling Plan requires at least 10% net simulated profit above the starting balance within the prior four months, four months as an FTMO Trader or since your last scale-up, at least two processed rewards in that window, and a positive balance. Meet it and FTMO raises your account size by 25% every four months and lifts the split to 90%, which it notes is “valid for 2-Step only”. The published ceiling is $2,000,000 across all your FTMO Accounts.

The Premium Programme is a separate track with two tiers. Prime requires an active FTMO Account, no failed accounts in the past four months, and at least four successful reward withdrawals of 4% or more; it pays 90% and states a maximum capital allocation of $600,000. Supreme requires an active $400,000 Prime account, three months as a Prime trader and three further rewards of at least 4% each; it removes the maximum daily loss limit entirely, allows immediate reward withdrawals, and states a maximum allocation of $1 million. Above that sits Quantlane, FTMO’s proprietary trading arm, which recruits Supreme traders who pass an assessment onto a two-year salaried contract in Prague.

Note the inconsistency: the Scaling Plan page cites $2,000,000 while the Premium Programme page cites $1 million at its top tier. FTMO does not reconcile the two publicly, and we have not guessed at which governs.

Platforms, instruments and what trading actually costs

FTMO’s platforms page lists four: MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader and TradingView. MT4 and MT5 run on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android, with MT4 also available in a browser. cTrader runs on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and in a browser. TradingView covers that same set and adds Linux, in both Debian and Snap builds. Server time on MT4 and MT5 is GMT+2 with daylight saving, which matters from Southeast Asia: every FTMO rule that resets “at 00:00 CE(S)T” resets during your morning, not at your midnight. Work out that reset time for your own timezone before you trade, or you will misjudge which side of the daily loss limit a trade falls on.

Instruments span six asset classes: forex, exotics, metals, cash CFDs covering indices and energies, crypto and equity CFDs. FTMO’s Symbols page enumerates every symbol within each class but prints no total, so we have not quoted an instrument count.

On costs, FTMO is more open than it is often given credit for. The Symbols page, linked from the footer of every FTMO page as “Instruments”, is public and needs no account. For each symbol it gives the commission and commission type, contract size, margin percent, Standard and Swing leverage, swap long and short, and trading hours, alongside a live spread comparison. The headline figures: 5 USD per lot on forex, EUR/USD included, or the equivalent in your trading currency; zero on index CFDs such as US500.cash and UK100.cash, which FTMO markets as “completely commission-free”; and 0.065% of volume on crypto CFDs such as BTCUSD, which is 0.0325% per side.

What FTMO does not publish is a typical or average spread. The comparison on the Symbols page is live, so it tells you what a pair costs at the moment you look rather than what it costs across a normal week, and FTMO offers no benchmark against other firms. Check it before you buy, because you can, and because trading costs come straight out of a 10% profit target. Just budget for the number moving.

Can you use FTMO from Southeast Asia?

Mostly yes, with one large exception that most reviews aimed at this region fail to mention.

Indonesia is excluded. FTMO’s own eligibility page names “the Republic of Indonesia” in the list of countries where, “due to business decisions based on risk management considerations”, it does not provide services. Indonesian residents cannot use the global FTMO service. Neighbouring Timor-Leste is also on the list, and Myanmar is excluded more strictly still, applying to nationals as well as residents.

Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam do not appear anywhere on FTMO’s exclusion list, so residents of those five countries are accepted. FTMO also localises its website into Vietnamese, the only Southeast Asian language among the eight it publishes in, alongside English, Czech, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and French. FTMO separately claims 24/7 customer support in 21 languages, which is a wider set than the website localisation.

Two further points for this region. No FTMO Challenge entity exists in Asia: whatever your country, you contract with the Czech companies in Prague, under Czech law. The group is a different matter since December 2025, because FTMO now owns OANDA, which does hold regulated entities in Singapore and Tokyo among other markets, but OANDA is not your counterparty on a Challenge and its licences give you nothing. Australia and the United States are the only two territories routed to separate affiliated entities. And FTMO’s published account specifications and its list of permitted account modifications make no mention of a swap-free or Islamic account, which matters in Malaysia and Brunei; we could not confirm the position either way and have not assumed one. If you need swap-free conditions, ask support in writing before you pay.

Requirements are otherwise light: over 18, not on an international sanctions list, and able to pass FTMO’s know-your-customer checks.

The verdict: who FTMO is actually for

FTMO is the least bad option in a sector with a poor record, and that is a real compliment rather than a backhanded one. It has been trading since 2015, it is large enough to have bought OANDA from CVC outright in December 2025, it carries 4.8 out of 5 across more than 51,000 Trustpilot reviews, and it documents its rules and its trading costs in more detail and with more honesty than any competitor we have examined.

But be clear about what you are buying. You are buying a test, from an unlicensed Czech company, with a fee that is not client money and is not recoverable through any regulator once you have started trading. You are trading a simulator throughout, funded stage included. And you are accepting a contract that lets the firm decide at its own discretion whether your trading looks like gambling, act on that without warning, and owe you nothing afterwards.

If you have a defined edge and genuine risk control, the 2-Step at $50,000 or $100,000 is the sensible entry: the fee comes back, the drawdown floor is static, and the Swing option removes the news and weekend rules if you hold for days. The 1-Step works if you are quick and consistent day to day, provided you accept that the fee is gone either way and the trailing floor tightens behind you as you profit.

If you are in Indonesia, none of this applies; FTMO will not serve you. And if you cannot afford to lose the fee outright, do not buy the evaluation at all.

Read more about FTMO here.

1. FTMO trading objectives and evaluation rules — ftmo.com/en/trading-objectives (checked September 2026)
2. FTMO published symbols, spreads and commissions — ftmo.com/en/symbols (checked September 2026)