FTMO Review

FTMO is a well-known prop trading firm from the Czech Republic.

But is FTMO a scam?

No, it isn’t!

Our review and experience show that FTMO is a safe proprietary trading firm.

Sign up with FTMO now!

You can share your experiences with FTMO within our comment section.

Key Takeaways

• FTMO is legit because it has paid more than 170 million USD in payouts and has around a million active traders on its platforms
• The profits-sharing ratio of 90-10 is one of the best on the market, and FTMO offers free educational materials and professional coaching to help you become a better trader
• Our review will tell you its features, pros and cons, and everything you need to know to make an informed decision

About FTMO

In 2014, Otakar Šuffner (Current CEO) and Marek Vašíček together founded a website called Ziskejucet.cz for prop trading from a small office in Prague.

Their trading and risk management skills got them good profits, inspiring them to pursue something larger.

After securing investment in 2017, they transformed their website and launched FTMO as the international version of their business. Still headquartered in Prague, the company has around 2074 employees.

According to 2021 data, they have over 900,000 active trading accounts on the platform and made a monthly payout of 2.41 million.

Safety and Regulation

Based on our own experience and research, FTMO is one of the safest prop trading companies and is undoubtedly the most well-known. The prop firm has a huge trader base and has been constantly in profits since the start of the company.

Our team discovered through using this product that FTMO is a professional and well-structured company that is transparent about its operations, including payouts, passing challenges and verifications, etc.

From 2019 to 2021, FTMO won the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 award four times consecutively for being the fastest-growing technology company in central Europe.

It also won the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2022 in the Czech technological category. FTMO has been featured on Forbes as well.

According to the 2021 data given by FTMO, the FTMO platforms executed more than 90,000,000 trades in the year. That’s more than three trades per second.

Since its inception, the company has paid more than 170 million USD to its traders.

FTMO isn’t regulated as it’s not a broker. So, it can operate without being regulated by governments.

Overall, FTMO’s reputation, our own experience using their services, customer reviews and the long history of successful operations indicate that FTMO is no scam and is a legit and safe prop trading company.

Accepted Countries

FTMO is a global company, and traders worldwide can trade here without any problem. However, some governments and states within the US have restrictions on using the proprietary trading firm for prop trading.

• Australia: Yes, registration is possible
• Canada: Yes, registration is possible
• Ghana: Yes, registration is possible
• Hong Kong: Yes, registration is possible
• India: No, registration isn’t possible
• Ireland: Yes, registration is possible
• Kenya: Yes, registration is possible
• New Zealand: Yes, registration is possible
• Nigeria: Yes, registration is possible
• Pakistan: Yes, registration is possible
• Philippines: Yes, registration is possible
• Singapore: Yes, registration is possible
• South Africa: Yes, registration is possible
• United Kingdom: Yes, registration is possible
• United States: Yes, registration is possible

FTMO doesn’t accept clients from Iran, Syria, Myanmar and North Korea due to their presence on sanction lists.

Evaluation Process

To become a trader, you have to go through the evaluation process. It’s a two-step process involving a FTMO trading challenge and verification.

Your trading skills and discipline will be tested in the evaluation challenge, and once you have passed both steps, you will become a verified trader.

Here’s a breakdown of the entire process:

• FTMO Challenge
• Verification
• FTMO Trader
  • Scaling Plan

FTMO Challenge

The challenge checks if you can trade responsibly within the given rules.

You’ll use a demo account to trade and achieve specific trading objectives in this stage. The trade period used to be 30 days earlier, but it’s indefinite now. But you can’t lose over 5% of the total capital within a day.

Now, there are three options: regular, swing, or aggressive.

• A swing account is for conservative users who want to hold positions for extended periods and even during weekends.
• Aggressive accounts allow double max daily loss, maximum loss and profit target and the registration fee is double compared to regular and swing accounts.
• For swing and regular accounts, you have to achieve a 10% profit target, while the aggressive traders need to reach a 20% profit target.

Depending on your registration fee, you’ll get an amount between 10,000 and 160,000 euros to trade. However, you can trade other currencies such as USD, GBO, Swiss francs, Canadian and Australian dollars, and Czech crowns.

Verification

If you successfully complete the challenge, you’ll come to the FTMO verification step. It’s the final step that tests if you can trade consistently.

In this step, regular and swing traders must achieve a 5% profit, and aggressive traders must complete a 10% profit target. There’s no time limit— you can take as long as you need to pass the verification stage.

FTMO Trader

Once you have achieved your trading objectives and passed the FTMO challenge and verification test, you’ll become a funded trader and will be given a fictitious fund to trade with. Though the trades won’t be executed in a real market, the profit and earnings will be real.

While most prop trading platforms offer 50-50 or 60-40 profit-sharing deals, FTMO offers you an 80-20 profit split right from the beginning. And once you’ve scaled your funded account, you’ll receive 90% of the profits.

Scaling Plan

By making profits consistently, you can increase your capital to 2 million. Initially, funded traders receive a maximum of 400,000 USD to trade with.

To increase the capital amount, you’ll need to prove your trading skills and generate a minimum of 10% profit in 4 consecutive months. For regular trading accounts, the average profit per month must be a minimum of 2.5%.

Also, you must make at least two payouts within the four months. So, it’s essential that the account balance needs to be higher than the initial trade capital at the time of scaling.

If you meet these requirements of the FTMO scaling plan, you can get a scaled-up account, ensuring a bigger profit share and a much higher capital for trading.

After another four months, if you meet the requirements, you can further scale up your account and continue until you reach 2 million capital.

Challenge Trading Rules

Here are the trading rules for the challenge –

• Profit Target
• Profit Split
• Trading Period
• Minimum Trading Days
• Maximum Daily Loss
• Maximum Loss
• Maximum Position Size
• Maximum Capital Allocation and Multiple Accounts
• Trading Types
• Leverage
• Trading Style
• Trading Hours
• News Trading
• Weekend and Overnight Trading
• Expert Advisor
• Copy Trading

Profit Target

For regular and swing traders, the profit target is 10%, and for aggressive traders, the profit target is 20%.

Profit Split

Initially, the profit split will be 80-20. Once you scale up the account with consistent profits over the four months, you’ll get 90% of the profit share.

Trading Period

There’s no limit on trading duration.

Minimum Trading Days

You must trade for a minimum of 4 days in the challenge and verification phases.

Maximum Daily Loss

The maximum daily loss for all traders is 5%. And the trade will automatically end if you lose 5% of the total trading capital. The measure has been put in place to protect the traders and the investors.

Maximum Loss

For extra security, FTMO has placed the maximum loss limit for all traders at 10%.

Maximum Position Size

In ideal situations, you can handle up to 50 lots in Forex. It depends on your trading strategy and market conditions. You also must consider your daily and total losses while deciding on the position size and place limits on the losses.

Though more prominent positions can lead to more enormous profits, they can also cause significant losses quickly.

Maximum Capital Allocation and Multiple Accounts

Multiple accounts are allowed in FTMO, so you can adopt different strategies with different accounts. However, you can’t register multiple times. Instead, you’ll use a single login and create multiple strategic accounts for trading

FTMO gives unscaled accounts a maximum of 400,000 USD for trading. It helps them with risk management and protects the investors.

Trading Types

You can trade all assets available on your platform, such as Forex, crypto, commodities, futures, and stocks.

Leverage

The leverage depends on the commodity or the instrument you’re trading. You can check the leverage in our account.

The leverage for Forex is 1:1000. That means if your account is worth 1k USD, you can trade 1 million USD. You can lower the leverage, but it can’t be increased.

Trading Style

FTMO allows you to choose your trading style, whether discretionary, algorithmic, or using Expert Advisors (EAs). However, they insist on legitimate and replicable trading under actual market conditions.

Though a stop-loss isn’t required, it’s recommended for safety.

Trading Hours

Different platforms have different trading hours. MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 (Trading Platforms) have different trading hours, and you also need to consider the stock exchange time zones.

News Trading

Prop Trader news calendar can help you make informed decisions on trades. It contains essential financial news that can significantly affect the market.

However, not all trading accounts are allowed news trading. Traders in the challenge and verification phase can participate in news trading without restrictions (except swing traders).

However, verified traders can’t trade two minutes before and after a major news release. It’s to protect the traders as the market is highly volatile during that time.

FTMO can also turn off the stop-loss and take-profit features during that period.

Weekend and Overnight Trading

Holding trades over the weekend or overnight isn’t safe as there’s potential for unexpected market events or differences in prices when the market opens. That’s why FTMO has forbidden overnight and weekend trading for verified traders.

Once you’re a trader, you have to complete trades before the markets close.

It also applies to market interruptions. However, swing traders and traders in the challenge and verification phase can hold trades over the weekend and overnight without restrictions.

Expert Advisor

FTMO allows Expert Advisors (EAs) for automated trading. However, you need to keep in mind that third-party EAs often execute similar trades on multiple platforms, giving you a disadvantage and reducing your profits.

Copy Trading

Copy trading is allowed, but the same risk as EAs is present with this strategy as well.

Trading Platforms

There are only three platforms allowed by FTMO –

• Metatrader 4
• Metatrader 5
• cTrader

Metatrader 4 is best for forex trading, while Metatrader 5 is best for raw materials. You can switch between these platforms without any issues.

*US citizens aren’t allowed to use the cTrader platform for regulatory reasons

Trading Instruments

You can use your preferred trading instruments and indices available on the platform. The range of instruments includes crypto, forex currency pairs, commodities, equities, and individual stocks. You can find them on the FTMO dashboard.

More than 100 symbols can be traded through the FTMO. Here are the most used instruments in FTMO –

• Forex Pairs: EUR-USD, GBP-USD, EURO-GBP, USD-JPY, USD-CAD, among others
• Indices: US100 cash, US2000 cash, GER400 cash, EU50 cash, JP225 cash, among others
• Crypto: BTC-USD, ETH-USD, LTC-USD, XRP-USD, among others
• Commodities: Including XAU-USD, XPD-USD, USOIL cash, NATGAS.

If you are trading with FTMO for the first time, I’d recommend you stick to trading currency pairs (Forex) as it’s the safest. Once you have a good understanding of the trades, you can deal with crypto, stocks, and others.

We listed FTMO as Best Prop Trading Firm, as Best Stocks Prop Trading Firm, as Best Forex Prop Trading Firm, as Best Crypto Prop Trading Firm, in the Top 3 Prop Trading Firms for Beginners and in the Top 3 Swing Trading Prop Firms.

Brokers

FTMO works with multiple brokers, but they have not made the list of brokers public yet.

Other Products

Apart from trading, FTMO offers several other products to help you become a better trader –

• FTMO Academy
• Performance Coaches
• Certificates
• Trading Apps
  • Account Matrix
  • Account Analysis
  • Statistical App
  • Trading Journal
  • Mentor App
  • Equity Simulator
  • Quick Trade Manager
• Blog
• Leaderboard
• Economic Calendar

FTMO Academy

FTMO academy will teach you the basics of trading, covering topics such as the market, instruments traded in the market, trade terminologies, and contracts for difference.

The syllabus also includes lessons on technical analysis of the market and a detailed guide on how to use their platforms.

Performance Coaches

FTMO offers performance coaches free for traders. These professional coaches provided by FTMO will try to identify the factors holding you back and eliminate them to help you become a successful FTMO trader.

If you submit interest, you’ll receive an email with a short questionnaire. The questionnaire helps the professional coach prepare for the session with you. You can book up to two sessions per month.

Certificates

When you pass the challenge phase, FTMO provides you with a certificate for successful trading showing you have the necessary money management and risk assessment skills to work as a trader.

Trading Apps

FTMO has many trading apps that can help you to improve your trading performance significantly. Let’s learn about them –

Account Matrix

It’s a web app designed for FTMO traders in the challenge, verification, and trial phases. The app monitors your progress, gives you a comprehensive overview of the objectives and shares essential trading statistics.

Account Analysis

The app offers an unbiased evaluation of your results.

After the challenge is completed, the app uses all your data and provides insights into your performance, identifying areas where you can improve your strategy and avoid future mistakes.

Statistical App

It provides number-based probabilities of market behavior. You can use the probabilities and patterns to trade wisely and improve your profit margin.

Trading Journal

Trade journal makes it easy to track results. It automatically logs all trades and helps you to note your thoughts and feelings. The retrospective analysis allows you to identify and avoid mistakes in the future.

Mentor App

The app is critical to maintaining your discipline as a trader. It helps to avoid overtrading and develop good trading habits.

Equity Simulator

Equity Simulator simulates various outcomes and helps you anticipate drawdowns. As a result, it’s easier to stay within expected ranges. That enables you to prepare for multiple outcomes and preserve your capital.

Quick Trade Manager

Quick Trading Manager simplifies order entry on MetaTrader platforms, so you don’t have to complete complex calculations.

Blog

FTMO blogs should be read regularly by all the traders. You’ll find all the latest news about trades and detailed analysis of different strategies used by traders.

Leaderboard

The leaderboard shows the most successful trader accounts on the platform. You can follow the activities of the accounts for better insights and create effective strategies.

Economic Calendar

The economic calendar contains the latest news about the market that can restrict trades and be immensely helpful in starting new trades.

Prices and Challenge Fees

You must pay a small fee to participate in the 10k challenge. The cost is refundable if you are successful in the challenge and become a trader. You’ll be given capital to make trades with based on your payment.

• Capital $10,000 = Reg Fee €155
• Capital $20,000 = Reg Fee €250
• Capital $50,000 = Reg Fee €345
• Capital $100,000 = Reg Fee €540
• Capital $200,000 = Reg Fee €1,080

Apart from the registration fee, there’s no other hidden fee.

Payment Methods and Payout System

Multiple payment methods are accepted by FTMO, including Visa, Mastercard, Skrill (with a 3% fee), and Confirmo (with a 3% fee). Also, you can deposit money via bank transfers.

The profits are paid out monthly. However, if you wish, you can select the payment-on-demand option after 14 days of placing the first trade.

After an invoice is generated, the payout processing time is generally 1-2 days. You can make withdrawals through a bank, crypto, or Skrill.

Registration and KYC

The registration process is so simple that there’s not much to explain. Here’s the step-by-step process for that –

1. Visit the FTMO website
2. Click the Registration button
3. Fill out the one-page form with the required information, such as name, email, phone number and country of residence
4. Set a secure password
5. Confirm Prop Trader’s Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions
6. Click Register to complete the process
7. After logging in, you can sign up for the free trial

Once you have learned the basics, you can register for the evaluation process for a trader.

After you have passed the evaluation stage, your FTMO Identity will be unlocked. You can then register as either an individual or a company.

Individuals need to confirm their identity through Know Your Customer (KYC) and businesses can complete the verification process through Know Your Business (KYB).

After that, you can check your FTMO contract and sign it. The verification process can take 1-3 business days to complete. Once the verification is done, you can start trading.

Discount and Promo Code

FTMO doesn’t offer discounts in the traditional sense. But sometimes, you can find deals for entry registration for up to 25% through affiliates on various websites. You can get the discount if you use the affiliate’s link for registration.

Free Trial and Demo Account

FTMO offers a free trial for 14 days to help you gain trading experience. You can learn about trading using the demo account without risking any money.

The demo account comes with apps like the Account Metrix, Statistics Application, Mentor Application, and Trading Journal to help you become familiar with the process.

Mobile App

FTMO has a user-friendly mobile app that you can use for trading. It features all the functionalities available in the web version, and you won’t face any difficulties doing the trade. The app is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

Customer Service and Support

Customer support is easily accessible through email, WhatsApp, and direct calls. While email and WhatsApp services are available 24/7, the call service operates only between 9 am and 5 pm.

The support is available in English, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Czech, French, Filipino, Serbian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Russian, Polish and Vietnamese.

Taxes

Yes, the payouts are considered taxable income, and you must pay taxes in the country you live in. Tax regulations vary in different countries, so you need to find out how much tax is applied in your country for payouts from FTMO. Learn more in our dedicated guide about “Prop Trading Taxes“.

Alternatives and Competitors of FTMO

Here are the best alternatives to FTMO to start a prop trading career –

Apex Trader Funding

Apex Trading Funding is an excellent prop trading company that teaches you how to trade successfully with minimum cost. The only downside is it’s only available in English.

Topstep

Topstep is an American company that offers you all the trading tools to become a successful trader. The best thing is you get to keep 100% of the profit. However, you must pay a monthly subscription to trade.

The Funded Trader

The website of The Funded Trader has an intuitive UI and great customer service. Plus, the broker list is public and quite good as well. The entry fee is quite expensive, though, at $1,879. However, they give a lot of discount offers to make it easy for new people to start trading.

Conclusion

The summary of our FTMO review is that FTMO is legit, easy to use, and one of the best proprietary trading firms out there. It has allowed thousands of people to make substantial money and can help you to become a successful trader.

My advice is to try their free trial, learn about the trade process, and if you feel confident, then register for the FTMO evaluation process.

The evaluation process is relatively easy; the registration fee is refundable if you pass.

So, what are you waiting for?

Sign up with FTMO now!

Also, if you have any further queries about FTMO, let us know in the comments. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

We answered these popular questions about FTMO:

Is FTMO legit or a scam?

Yes, FTMO is legit and one of the most trusted prop trading companies. People have made money from this website, and hundreds of thousands of people are currently making profits from the platform. Learn more about this in the “Safety and Regulation” section.

Is FTMO regulated?

No, FTMO isn’t regulated. Learn more about this in the “Safety and Regulation” section.

What is FTMO?

FTMO is a proprietary trading firm that offers the best trading conditions for aspiring investors. You have to pass the 2-step evaluation process to become an investor with FTMO. Learn more about this in the “About FTMO” section.

What broker does FTMO use?

The list of brokers hasn’t been made public by FTMO. Learn more about this in the “Brokers” section.

What does FTMO stand for?

FTMO is an acronym made from the first names of the company’s four founders (Filip, Tomáš, Marek, Otakar). Learn more about this in the “About FTMO” section.

How many FTMO accounts can I have?

You can have a single account with a single login. However, you can open multiple accounts internally to try out different strategies. Learn more about this in the “Challenge Trading Rules” section.

Where is FTMO located?

FTMO is headquartered in Quadrio Center in Prague. Learn more about this in the “About FTMO” section.

Does FTMO allow an expert advisor or copy trading?

Yes, FTMO allows both expert advisors and copy trading. Learn more about this in the “Expert Advisor” and “Copy Trading” section.

Is FTMO legal in the US?

Yes, FTMO is legal in the US. Learn more about this in the “Accepted Countries” section.

How long has FTMO been around?

It was founded in 2014 and rebranded as a global company in 2017. Learn more about this in the “About FTMO” section.

How much does FTMO cost?

The minimum registration fee is 155€, which can go up to 1,080€ based on the capital amount you choose. Learn more about this in the “Prices and Challenge Fees“.

How often does FTMO pay out?

Profits are generally paid monthly, but you can request a payout after 14 days of trading. Learn more about this in the “Payment Methods and Payout System“.

Liam Matthews

Having more than eight years of trading experience, I know how hard it is to find a good and reliable Prop Trading Firm and not to choose the wrong one. With PropTradingScam.com I want to help you to pick the right one, stay safe, and share your experience.