IC Funded Review 2026

What IC Funded actually sells

Start with the sentence IC Funded prints at the foot of every page of its own website, because it settles most arguments about prop firms: IC Funded provides services exclusively in a simulated trading environment using virtual funds. Any accounts provided to users are demo accounts only and do not involve real-market execution, real capital, or the custody of client funds.

That is not a critic’s framing. It is IC Funded’s own footer, repeated in clause 5 of its Terms and in the FAQ headed Is IC Funded a broker?, which answers no.

The transaction in plain terms: you pay a one-time fee, from USD 74, for login credentials to a demo account on MetaTrader 5 or cTrader. Hit a profit target inside a set of risk limits without breaking a rule and IC Funded may move you to a second demo account it calls the simulated funded stage. Those profits are also simulated. If IC Funded approves your payout request, it pays 80 per cent of them from its own money.

None of that makes IC Funded illegitimate – it is how the retail prop industry works, and IC Funded describes it more honestly than most. But it changes what you should check. You are not assessing execution quality or segregation of client funds. You are assessing whether a private company in Saint Lucia will honour a payment obligation. The MetaTrader server it publishes on its own Spreads page makes the point: ICFundedEvaluations-MT5-Demo.

Is IC Funded connected to IC Markets? What the documents actually say

Everyone assumes a link from the name, and a reader in Kuala Lumpur or Manila who already trades with IC Markets will assume it hardest. The link is real, and IC Funded markets it hard – but it is narrower than the branding implies.

What IC Funded claims

The association is the first thing a buyer sees. The homepage hero carries a partner logo captioned Powered by IC Markets, and a scrolling marquee on both the homepage and the pricing page reads BACKED BY IC MARKETS. The About page adds that IC Funded operates in partnership with IC Markets. The most precise claim, though, sits in the privacy policy, which defines Group Companies as IC Funded and companies that are under common ownership or control with IC Funded, including IC Markets entities – then adds that each is a separate and independent legal entity responsible only for its own obligations.

What the broker’s side shows

The group rebranded to IC during 2026 and icmarkets.com now redirects to ic.com. We checked that global site: the phrase IC Funded does not appear on it at all. The regulated entity behind it is Raw Trading Ltd, licensed by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority under Securities Dealer’s licence SD018, Seychelles registration 8419879-1.

What the trade press reported

FX News Group reported that IC Markets hired Petros Kalaitzis, previously of FunderPro, as General Manager of IC Funded, and that the firm went live on 11 May 2026 after a paused 2024 beta. Kalaitzis was more direct with TradeInformer than the Terms are. He said IC Funded is backed by IC Markets and that this should not be hidden; that there is a Chinese wall between the firms, making IC Funded a different legal entity; and that the two are nonetheless part of one ecosystem. All three parts are load-bearing. The backing is real and openly claimed, and so is the legal separation.

The honest summary

They share ownership, branding and, in the General Manager’s phrase, one ecosystem. They do not share a licence or legal liability. IC Funded’s Terms – the document that binds you – never mention IC Markets once. If IC Funded refuses your payout, Raw Trading Ltd’s Seychelles licence gives you nowhere to complain.

Regulation: there is none, and that is the material fact

IC Funded is not authorised by any financial regulator anywhere: not MAS, not ASIC, not CySEC, not the FCA, not the Seychelles FSA. There is no licence number to look up because there is no licence. Any review listing a regulator for IC Funded is either describing IC Markets, or has mistaken a company registration for a financial authorisation.

That is not unusual – selling a simulated assessment is not, in most jurisdictions, a regulated activity. IC Funded’s own General Manager said as much, telling TradeInformer that in prop trading right now there is no regulation and no client funds rules.

Concretely:

• Your fee is IC Funded’s revenue from the moment you pay. It is not segregated client money and no compensation scheme covers it.
• There is no ombudsman and no regulator to escalate a withheld payout to.
• Your contract is governed by the laws of Saint Lucia. Suing a Saint Lucia company from Singapore or Jakarta over a four-figure payout is not a real remedy.

Two details sharpen this. IC Funded publishes no company registration number anywhere – not in the Terms, the Privacy Policy or the Affiliate Terms. The entity name IC Funded Evaluations Ltd appears exactly once, in the opening line of the privacy policy. And Saint Lucia itself sits on IC Funded’s restricted-countries list: the firm will not accept customers from the jurisdiction whose law governs its contracts.

None of this predicts bad treatment. It means that if it comes, the published rules and the firm’s goodwill are all that stand between you and losing the fee.

The three programmes, side by side

IC Funded runs three products. They differ more than the marketing suggests, and choosing wrongly is the most expensive mistake available here.

2-Step Professional is the flagship and the cheapest entry. Step 1 asks 10 per cent profit against a 4 per cent daily and 8 per cent maximum drawdown. Step 2 asks 5 per cent with looser limits – 5 and 10 per cent. The funded stage keeps Step 2’s limits. Forex leverage runs to 1:50 and sizes reach USD 500,000.

1-Step Accelerated is one phase and a 10 per cent target, but you pay for the shortcut in headroom: 3 per cent daily and a 6 per cent maximum. It adds a 45 per cent consistency rule the 2-Step does not have, drops forex leverage to 1:30, runs from USD 10,000 to USD 100,000 rather than 5,000 to 500,000, and costs more for a comparable account – USD 154 at 10,000 dollars against 125 on the 2-Step.

Instant Funded skips evaluation for a higher fee – USD 109 at 5,000 dollars against 74, on the pricing page at least; the Rules & Payouts page prices the same account at 89. It is also the strictest product on the shelf and the only one whose drawdown trails. News trading is banned outright rather than restricted, the consistency rule tightens to 20 per cent, and the 1.5 per cent risk-per-trade-idea guideline that is advisory elsewhere becomes a hard rule.

One caution on the marketing. The homepage card for the 2-Step advertises a 10 per cent maximum and 5 per cent daily drawdown – the Step 2 figures. Step 1, where you actually start, is 8 and 4 per cent.

What each account size costs

Every fee is one-time and charged in US dollars, with no subscriptions and no recurring platform fees once a challenge starts. Southeast Asian traders should budget for their card issuer’s currency conversion, since no local-currency pricing exists.

The 2-Step ladder runs USD 74, 125, 249, 449, 689, 1,275 and 2,999 for sizes from 5,000 to 500,000 dollars. The 1-Step starts a rung higher at 10,000 dollars and runs 154, 309, 469 and 809 up to 100,000. There is no 200,000-dollar 1-Step account.

Instant Funded is where IC Funded contradicts itself. The pricing page runs 109, 159, 339, 519 and 879 up to 100,000. The Rules & Payouts page lists the same five account sizes at 89, 165, 369, 689 and 1,049 – cheaper at the bottom rung and dearer at every other one, so it is not a discount pattern. Both pages send you to the same checkout. IC Funded has not reconciled the two, so read the figure at checkout and treat either published list as indicative only.

Read the pricing-page ladders against each other and the premium for skipping work is smaller than the headline sizes suggest: the 1-Step costs between 4 and 24 per cent more than the 2-Step at the same account size, and Instant Funded between 16 and 47 per cent more, with the premium largest on the smallest accounts and smallest at 50,000 dollars. For either premium you accept tighter risk limits.

Two refunds, easily confused

The first is a 14-day cooling-off refund: requested within fourteen days of purchase, before any trade or account action, by emailing support. One trade and it is gone, and IC Funded notes approved refunds may still carry provider or administrative fees.

The second is the fee rebate the marketing leads with: your challenge fee is returned after your third payout as a funded trader, paid alongside it. With payouts on 14-day cycles, the earliest realistic rebate is around six weeks into funded trading, and only if you clear three consecutive payout reviews. IC Funded does not say whether Instant Funded fees qualify.

Fail a challenge and the fee is gone. There is no free retry.

Drawdown: the rules that actually end accounts

Worth reading twice: drawdown breaches, not missed profit targets, end most evaluation accounts.

Static on the evaluation programmes

IC Funded uses an equity-based static model on the 1-Step and 2-Step. The threshold is calculated from the initial starting balance and does not move up when you profit. Its own worked example: a 100,000-dollar 2-Step account in Step 1 has an 8 per cent limit, so equity must never touch 92,000 – and if the account grows to 108,000, the floor stays at 92,000. In Step 2 and the funded stage the limit is 10 per cent, so the floor is 90,000 even at 110,000 equity. The 1-Step is tighter still, at 6 per cent from the initial balance.

That is genuinely better than the trailing models common elsewhere, where the floor chases your equity high and every winning day tightens the noose.

Instant Funded does trail

Instant Funded inverts this: maximum drawdown is 5 per cent below the highest end-of-day equity ever recorded. IC Funded’s example runs 100,000, then 103,000, then 101,500 – and the floor is set from 103,000, giving 97,850. It never falls back when equity does.

Measured on equity, in real time

Both limits use equity, not closed balance. Floating losses count the moment they exist, so an open trade can breach the account before you close it.

The reset time matters in Asia

The daily limit resets at 00:00 server time, which IC Funded gives as GMT+2 or GMT+3 – roughly 05:00 to 06:00 in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, and 04:00 to 05:00 in Jakarta, Bangkok and Hanoi. A loss taken late in the US session lands on the next day’s allowance.

Profit targets, trading days and the missing clock

The targets are conventional. The 2-Step asks 10 per cent then 5 per cent; the 1-Step a single 10 per cent; Instant Funded has no target at all, since you are notionally funded from day one.

The genuinely good news is that there is no time limit. IC Funded confirms its challenges carry no maximum duration. This removes the worst incentive in prop trading – the 30-day countdown that pushes people into position sizes they would never otherwise take. For a trader balancing a day job against London and New York hours, that is worth more than a slightly cheaper fee.

The counterweight is inactivity: accounts with no trading for thirty consecutive calendar days will be suspended or terminated, and are not eligible for refunds except at the company’s discretion. The clock is inverted, not gone – unlimited time, provided you trade monthly.

An inconsistency to watch

IC Funded is not consistent about the minimum trading-day requirement. The pricing page tooltip says 3 active trading days. The rules page labels the same field minimum profitable days: 3. The FAQ says minimum trading days: 3. Two of those mean any day you place a trade; one means a day you finish in profit, which is considerably harder.

The funded stage is unambiguous by contrast: five profitable days before the first payout. Ask support to confirm the evaluation requirement in writing before buying, and keep the reply.

The soft rules most reviews skip

Three lesser-known rules trigger a risk review rather than an instant fail. They are the ones that surface in complaints, because traders do not know they exist until a payout is questioned.

The 45 per cent consistency rule (1-Step only)

No single trading day may account for more than 45 per cent of total profit during a 1-Step evaluation. IC Funded’s example: on 10,000 dollars of profit, one day may contribute at most 4,500, and a 1,500 excess is added to your profit target rather than failing the account. It is a soft breach, and does not apply to the 2-Step or the funded stage. Instant Funded runs a tighter 20 per cent version.

The margin exposure rule

Traders may use a maximum of 50 per cent of available margin on a single trade or trade idea; 75 per cent on Instant Funded. Exceeding it is a soft breach that may trigger a risk-team review; repeated violations can lead to closure. This rule sits in the FAQ rather than the headline rules table, and it is the most common subject of negative Trustpilot reviews – several complain a breach was never flagged at the time and only surfaced when a payout was requested.

The 1.5 per cent risk-per-trade-idea guideline

On the 1-Step and 2-Step this is a guideline: exceeding it does not fail the account, though materially exceeding it may trigger a review. On Instant Funded it is a hard rule. Note the definition of a trade idea – combined exposure from positions sharing a thesis, instrument, direction or correlated setup. Three correlated dollar shorts count as one.

What voids an account

IC Funded publishes an unusually long prohibited-practices list, in clause 11 of the Terms and again in the FAQ.

Banned outright: latency, hedge, reverse, rollover and gap arbitrage; exploiting price errors or delayed feeds; high-frequency trading and tick scalping; copy trading, mirror trading and signal sharing between accounts; shared IPs, VPS environments or proxy networks linking accounts; martingale, grid averaging and recovery-style sizing; account sharing, renting or third-party management; and cross-firm hedging – offsetting an IC Funded position against any other account, including one you own yourself elsewhere.

Also prohibited, and much vaguer: excessive risk-taking or gambling behaviour, single-trade dependency, unrealistic volume, sudden strategy switching between stages, and micro-lot trades placed purely to satisfy the minimum-trading-day requirement after the target is met.

Automation, VPS and news

Expert Advisors sit in a grey zone. IC Funded says EAs might be allowed provided they are developed and fully controlled by the account holder – the hedged wording is theirs. Third-party EAs, commercial bots and rented automation are not permitted. VPS and VPN use is allowed, though shared VPS environments and frequent IP changes can trigger compliance reviews.

News trading is allowed during both evaluation phases. At the funded stage a three-minute cool-off applies either side of high-impact releases such as rate decisions, CPI and NFP. On Instant Funded it is prohibited altogether.

The clause above the others

Clause 11.3 gives IC Funded full and sole discretion to declare any strategy prohibited even where it is not listed, and states its determination is final and binding.

Getting paid: the schedule, the processor and the gaps

The split is a flat 80/20 in the trader’s favour across all three programmes, with no scaling tiers and no penalty on smaller accounts.

Payouts run on 14-day cycles with a tapering activity requirement. The first needs five profitable days and a minimum of 14 calendar days since activation. The second needs three profitable days and another 14 days. From the third onwards there is no profitable-day requirement at all. A profitable day means a net gain of at least 0.5 per cent of the initial balance, so on a 100,000-dollar account a day up 400 dollars does not count.

Payouts are processed exclusively through RISE, a third-party platform you must hold an account with. Once IC Funded approves a request, funds move there and you withdraw under RISE’s own options. IC Funded charges no withdrawal fee itself, but notes intermediary banks may.

What is not published

Three things a Southeast Asian trader needs and cannot find: there is no stated minimum payout for traders, no stated processing time beyond a note that compliance reviews can extend it, and no alternative to RISE. Be careful with the 200-dollar minimum quoted in some reviews – in IC Funded’s own FAQ that is the affiliate withdrawal minimum, and has nothing to do with trader payouts.

Payouts can be refused

IC Funded states payouts may be delayed, restricted or denied for rule violations, incomplete KYC, suspicious trading or platform abuse, and that all requests are reviewed by Risk Management and Compliance. KYC – government ID plus proof of address – is required first. Complete it the day you are funded, not the day you request money.

Platforms, instruments and simulated trading costs

IC Funded offers MetaTrader 5 and cTrader, both free, as desktop, web and mobile. You choose at checkout, and the account cannot be changed once trading starts – though support may switch platforms if you have not yet traded. Credentials are emailed shortly after purchase: IC Funded says the account is issued within a few minutes in most cases, but warns that payment processing or system checks can occasionally delay it. Multi-device login is permitted, but simultaneous logins from unrelated locations may be reviewed.

On instruments, IC Funded is thinner than it should be. Four asset classes are confirmed through its leverage and commission tables – forex, indices, metals and energies, and crypto – but no symbol list or instrument count is published. If a specific pair or index matters to your strategy, ask support before buying rather than assuming the broker-side range carries over.

Costs inside the simulation are modest and clearly disclosed: USD 4 per standard lot round turn on forex, metals and energy, zero on indices, scaling proportionally so 0.01 lots costs about four cents. IC Funded states this commission is entirely virtual and exists to stop the evaluation being artificially cheap relative to real conditions – a fair-minded choice.

Spreads are the gap. IC Funded publishes no pip figures at all. Instead it offers shared read-only MetaTrader 5 and cTrader logins on its Spreads page so buyers can watch the live feed themselves, with execution disabled. That is more transparent than a table of best-case spreads – but it also means nobody can honestly quote an average EUR/USD spread for this firm, and any review that does has invented it. Swap and overnight financing treatment is not documented anywhere, despite overnight holding being allowed.

IC Funded for Southeast Asian traders

On access, the news is good. IC Funded publishes a restricted list of 42 countries and territories and not one Southeast Asian country appears on it. Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are all eligible, as are India and Hong Kong. The site is localised into Vietnamese, Thai, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese, alongside Spanish and Portuguese – so Southeast Asia is one of several regions the firm targets rather than a special case.

The list is worth reading for what it excludes: the United States, Canada, Belgium, Russia, the standard sanctions jurisdictions – and, notably, Australia, home of the IC Markets brand this firm shares a group with, plus Saint Lucia, Seychelles, Belize and Saint Vincent. IC Funded avoids jurisdictions whose regulators have taken a view on prop firms, and those it is itself tied to.

Practical points for this region

• Everything is priced in USD. Expect a card conversion charge on top. There is no SGD, MYR, IDR, THB, PHP or VND pricing.
• Check the price at checkout. IC Funded’s own pricing and Rules & Payouts pages disagree on what Instant Funded costs, at every account size.
• Payment is via RISE only. Check it works for your country and bank before buying – being unable to receive a payout you earned is the worst outcome available.
• Your daily reset is not local midnight. It lands around 05:00 to 06:00 Singapore time, 04:00 to 05:00 in Jakarta and Bangkok.
• Friday flatten. All positions must close before the weekly close, in the early hours of Saturday across the region. Anything open may be closed automatically. If you hold over weekends, this firm does not fit.
• No local recourse. No MAS, SC, BSP, OJK, SEC Thailand or SSC oversight applies.

What traders are actually reporting

IC Funded’s Trustpilot profile, checked on 3 September 2026, shows a TrustScore of 3.0 out of 5 from 158 reviews, 77 of them left in the preceding twelve months. The profile is claimed by the company.

The average is the least interesting number. The distribution is the story: 42 per cent five-star against 41 per cent one-star, with only 17 per cent in between. This is not a firm that is mediocre for everyone. It is excellent for roughly half its reviewers and a serious problem for the other half, and an average of 3.0 conceals exactly the risk you are trying to price.

Positive reviews cluster on payouts actually arriving, often citing amounts received, and on responsive support. Negative reviews cluster on a narrower complaint than usual: accounts disabled or payouts refused at the point of requesting money, on grounds – most often margin-exposure breaches or suspected VPS and arbitrage activity – that reviewers say were never flagged while they traded.

We cannot adjudicate individual cases, and prop firms do attract bad-faith complaints from traders who broke rules. But the pattern fits the rulebook: margin exposure and consistency are soft breaches assessed after the fact, and clause 11.3 permits unlisted judgements at sole discretion. A rulebook deferring judgement to post-hoc review will predictably produce disputes at the moment money is requested.

The defence is boring and effective: stay well inside the margin limit, keep sizing consistent between stages, complete KYC immediately, avoid shared VPS entirely, and request your first payout on schedule rather than letting a balance build.

Who IC Funded suits, and who should walk away

IC Funded is a better-designed evaluation than most, sold by a company that gives you almost no protection if it decides not to pay. Both halves are true.

The merits are specific. A static maximum drawdown measured from the initial balance is the single most trader-friendly rule in this review, and it is rare. No time limit is the second. The tapering payout requirement rewards traders who last, the fee rebate after three payouts is a real refund path, and the rules are published in full, in tables, before you pay.

The weaknesses are equally specific: no licence, no published company number, Saint Lucia governing law, a discretionary clause overriding every published rule, a payout channel with no stated minimum or timeline, published figures that contradict each other on both the 1-Step drawdown and the Instant Funded price list, and a review profile split down the middle. The IC Markets connection is real at ownership level, and loudly advertised, but sealed off by design – so it should raise your confidence that the firm exists next year, not that a disputed payout has anywhere to go.

Reasonable if

You are a disciplined intraday or short-swing trader, you can close everything by Friday, you want an open-ended evaluation with a static drawdown, and you can afford to lose the fee entirely. Start at the USD 74 2-Step account – the cheapest honest test of whether you and this rulebook can coexist.

Not for you if

You hold over weekends, rely on third-party EAs or copy trading, trade martingale or grid systems, routinely use more than half your available margin, or need a regulated counterparty. Skip Instant Funded unless you have accepted its trailing drawdown, 20 per cent consistency rule and news ban.

Treat the fee as spent the moment you pay it, and never fund a challenge with money you need.

1. IC Funded challenge pricing — www.icfunded.com/pricing (checked September 2026)
2. IC Funded trading rules — www.icfunded.com/rules (checked September 2026)