Funded-account firms are the loudest monetization pitch in retail trading, and algorithmic traders are their fastest-growing audience. The rules mostly allow EAs, the odds are mostly unspoken. Both halves matter. Figures below are published terms and independent industry analyses as of July 2026; verify current rules before paying.
You pay an evaluation fee, roughly 150 to 1,100 dollars per attempt at the FTMO-class firms depending on account size. You then trade under drawdown limits, profit targets, and time and consistency rules. Pass, and you trade a funded account with a 70 to 95 percent profit split, fee typically refunded with the first payout. Fail, and the fee is spent. For many firms, evaluation fees are a substantial revenue source alongside trading activity, which is worth keeping in view while reading everything else.
The major surviving firms allow automated trading with restrictions, and the restrictions target exactly what systematic traders do. Commercial marketplace EAs are commonly banned or capped because hundreds of identical copies trigger identical trades; at least one major firm publishes a capital cap per strategy for this reason. News-window blackouts break event-driven systems. Consistency rules, capping how much of the profit may come from your best days, structurally punish the fat-tailed return profiles most honest trend and breakout systems produce. High-frequency styles and latency-dependent approaches are widely prohibited. An EA that passes an honest four-year backtest can still be unfundable under these rules, not because it lacks an edge but because its return shape is inconvenient.
Independent analyses of the industry through 2025 and 2026 consistently estimate that only a mid-single-digit percentage of challenge buyers ever receive a payout, that a meaningful share of funded traders never reach a second payout, and that the average buyer spends thousands of dollars on attempts before the first payout, if it comes. The 2024 to 2026 shakeout, in which dozens of firms vanished, some owing payouts, added counterparty risk to the odds. Surviving firms moving inside regulatory perimeters is a real improvement; it improves conduct, not your pass probability.
Even a successful funded career monetizes your labor on one account, not your strategy. The edge itself, the thing you actually built, earns nothing beyond what your own hands trade under one firm's rules. It cannot compound through distribution, cannot earn while you sleep in another time zone, and dies for the firm the day a rule changes. For a strategy author, the funded account is a wage; a distributed strategy is an asset. The economics of that path, on the third-party platforms that offer it, are laid out in the monetization guide and the provider economics table.
A funded account is rational when you have a validated, rule-compliant strategy whose return shape fits consistency rules, when the fee is money you can burn several times, and when you have chosen a surviving firm with a real payout record. Running your own account is rational when your edge's strongest feature is that it is provable: the evidence stands on its own, the size you trade is your decision rather than an evaluator's, and no news blackout stands between the strategy and its result. Validate first either way; the evidence standard is the same, only the decision changes.
Most major surviving firms allow automated trading with restrictions: bans or caps on commercial marketplace EAs, news-window blackouts, consistency rules limiting how concentrated profits may be, and prohibitions on latency-dependent styles. Rules differ per firm and change often; read the current rulebook before paying an evaluation fee.
Independent industry analyses through 2025 and 2026 consistently estimate that only a mid-single-digit percentage of challenge buyers ever receive a payout, with the average buyer spending thousands across attempts first. Firms publish pass rates selectively; the payout rate is the number that matters, and it is rarely advertised.
They monetize different things. A funded account pays for your supervised labor on one account under the firm's rules, and it ends the day a rule changes. Your own account keeps the whole result and answers to no consistency rule, but the capital at risk is yours. Validate first either way: the evidence standard is the same, and it is what tells you whether either path is worth taking.
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