FTMO Futures Review 2026: The Payout Contract You Cannot Read

Overview

FTMO spent a decade selling one product. In 2026 it started selling a second, and it is not a variation on the first. FTMO Futures is a CME futures programme with its own contract, its own forbidden practices page, its own legal counterparties and, for American traders, its own jurisdiction. Nothing you know about the FTMO Challenge carries across. If you want the CFD rules they are on our FTMO rules page; the futures rules are on a separate page of their own, because treating them as one product is the first mistake available here.

The shape is three steps. A single phase Evaluation, sold as a monthly subscription rather than a one off fee, at 50K, 100K or 150K in either a Growth or a Pro version. Pass it and you move to a Sim-Funded Account, still simulated, where payouts start at a 90/10 split. Above that sits a Live Funded Account on real money, offered by invitation at the discretion of FTMO’s trading department and not applied for. The whole thing carries a BETA badge and the site navigation calls the section Futures Beta.

Two things about the design are worth saying before any criticism. The maximum loss limit trails on your end of day closing balance and then stops, locking permanently at your starting balance. It never follows you into profit, which puts it in the better of the two camps futures firms split into. And there is no minimum trading day requirement and no time limit at all, which removes the single most common way a trader is pushed into a size they did not want.

The problem is narrower, and it matters more. The contract that decides whether you are paid is not published. FTMO publishes its Evaluation terms in full, in two versions, and they are detailed and readable. Passing hands you to a different company under the FTMO Futures Sim-Funded Account Terms and Conditions, which appears on no page of the terms and policies index and is signed inside the client area after identity checks. FTMO will send a sample by email if you ask. That is the document containing every rule about the money, and you cannot read it before you spend anything.

The programmes, and what each costs you in rules

Growth and Pro share one Evaluation, one profit target scale and one profit split. They diverge on risk and on price.

Growth costs $119, $169 or $229 a month for 50K, 100K or 150K, with resets at $109, $159 and $219. There is no daily loss limit at all during the Evaluation, and a soft one of $1,000 to $3,000 once you are funded: hit it and the platform closes your positions and locks the account until the next session rather than ending it. The consistency rule caps your best day at 40% of total profit. You may request half of your profit, capped at $2,500, $3,000 or $4,000.

Pro costs $139, $199 or $269 a month, resets at $129, $189 and $259, and buys a harder risk regime for a better payout. The daily loss limit is $1,000 to $2,000 and it is hard in both phases: touching it ends the account, and on the Sim-Funded side there is no reset available. In exchange the maximum loss allowance is $1,000 larger at every size, you may request 100% of your profit, and the caps run to $5,000, $6,000 and $8,000. Consistency loosens to 50%.

The profit target is $3,000, $6,000 or $9,000 on both. Pro 50K is therefore a genuine one to one target to drawdown, which is FTMO’s own headline claim and is accurate.

Three features of the design deserve to be understood rather than skimmed.

The maximum loss floor is calculated at the start of each trading day from the highest closing balance of any preceding day, or your starting balance if that is higher, less the allowance. It can only rise. Once it reaches your starting balance it locks there for the life of the account. Your equity, including open profit and loss and commissions, is what must stay above it, so it can be triggered intraday even though it only moves at the close. Futures firms split into two camps here, those whose floor trails on intraday equity and those that trail only on the closing balance, and almost every funded product in the sector stops the floor somewhere, usually at the starting balance or a hundred dollars above it. FTMO sits in the better camp on both counts, which is worth having. It is not on its own a reason to choose FTMO over Topstep’s Combine or Take Profit Trader’s Test account, which land in the same place.

Passing cuts your position size. You clear the Evaluation with a limit of 5, 10 or 15 contracts. The Sim-Funded Account starts you at 2, 4 or 6, and you scale back up on end of day profit milestones. The ladder runs both ways: a bad day returns you to the lower limit the next morning. FTMO’s own comparison table does not show this. It lists the funded limit as 5, 10 and 15, identical to the Evaluation, with no starting figure at all. A trader who sizes a strategy off that table is sizing off a limit they will not have on day one.

You cannot hold anything overnight. Every position and every resting order, stop losses and brackets included, must be closed before 4:10 p.m. ET each day. This is not merely an auto flatten, it is one of the eight numbered forbidden practices, and FTMO tells you not to rely on the platform’s liquidation doing it for you. For a futures trader this rules out swing trading entirely and it rules out any strategy that carries risk through a settlement. It also makes the contract expiry question moot, which is FTMO’s own explanation for why there is no roll or first notice day rule.

One more pricing point, because it changes the comparison. This is a subscription. The cost of an evaluation is the monthly price multiplied by however long you take, plus resets. Since there is no time limit, a slow trader pays more for the same product, and the reset fee sits alongside the subscription rather than replacing it. Passing cancels the subscription and nothing is charged for the funded stage, and there is no activation fee. Whether any of it is refundable is not published on any futures page: the Global contract carries a 14 day consumer cooling off right that dies the moment you place your first simulated trade, and the US contract carries no cooling off clause at all.

Payout terms, and what the contract does not say

The split is 90/10 in the trader’s favour, on every size, both products, and on the Live Funded Account above them. That is at the generous end of the sector and FTMO applies it without a tier ladder or a purchase date condition.

Getting to it runs through four filters, applied in order, and the order is what most summaries get wrong.

First, qualifying days. You need four days on Growth or five on Pro, each closing at or above a minimum: $150, $250 or $300 on Growth by size, $200, $300 or $500 on Pro. A day that closes at $149 on a Growth 50K account is not a qualifying day and FTMO’s own worked example makes the point explicitly. Second, the share you may request: half your profit above the starting balance on Growth, all of it on Pro. Third, the cap. Fourth, the 90%.

Stack those on a Growth 50K account and the largest sum that can reach you in a single payout is $2,250, and only if at least half the request is profit made in the current cycle. That last condition is real and it is the one to plan around, because carried over profit can never be more than half of what you take.

Which brings us to the term the whole payout section rests on. Payout cycle is used throughout the rules page and defined nowhere on it. When a cycle begins, how long it runs, and when it resets are not published. The marketing says get paid every four days on Growth and every five on Pro, which reads as a cadence; the rules page counts qualifying days, which is not the same thing, because four qualifying days need not be four consecutive days. FTMO is describing one rule two ways and only one of them is the rule.

No approval or payment turnaround is published for the futures product. Payment is in dollars by Wise, Revolut bank wire, Visa Direct or Mastercard Send, the last unavailable to US clients, and the minimum payout is $20. US traders need a tax identification number to be paid at all, must file a W-9 before a first payout, and must receive into a fully licensed bank rather than a fintech account.

The Live Funded Account is where the disclosure thins out completely. It is real money, offered by invitation, with daily payouts and no cap once you have cleared a one time buffer. The buffer amount is not published. Neither is the account size, its drawdown allowance, the market data fee that FTMO says applies, nor the terms of the account. The word buffer does not appear on the rules page or the comparison table at all.

And underneath all of it sits the gap that shapes our payout reliability score more than any individual number. The Evaluation terms are published in full. The Sim-Funded terms are not published at all, and it is the Sim-Funded terms that govern payment. FTMO’s terms and policies index lists nine documents, three of them futures, and that contract is not among them. We score payout reliability high anyway, close to where we scored the CFD product, and the reason is evidence rather than charity: the same group, the same directors and the same payment rails have been paying traders since 2015 and went through the 2024 shakeout without a payout scandal. That record is the best predictor available for a product this new. What it does not do is tell you what you would be agreeing to.

The rules that exist because people cheated

Eight numbered prohibitions: exploiting the simulated environment, using the platform’s drawdown protection as your only exit, hedging or offsetting risk across accounts, copying another trader, automated systems that manipulate or gain an unfair advantage including high frequency and latency arbitrage, opening a position within 2% of a CME daily price limit, holding anything past the end of the trading day, and trading in a way inconsistent with live futures market standards.

Most of that is unremarkable and some of it is generous. Automated trading and expert advisors are permitted outright. Copy trading across your own accounts is permitted, provided each account complies independently. No stop loss is required. News trading is allowed. FTMO’s stated position on strategy is that it has no reason to restrict how you trade, and for a firm this size that is a real commitment rather than a slogan.

Alongside the eight sit three risk management standards, framed as patterns to avoid: inconsistent position sizing, concentrating trading around scheduled economic events, and trading materially differently once funded than you did in the Evaluation. All three are judged against your behaviour across all of your accounts, not just the one in question.

Then there is clause 7.3, which is the one worth reading twice. Any simulated trading that, in FTMO’s words, knowingly or unknowingly produces results which could not reasonably be achieved in live market trading is a forbidden practice, irrespective of whether it is expressly listed on the website. Clause 7.4 gives FTMO sole discretion to decide what qualifies.

We are not going to pretend that is unusual or that it is unreasonable. The volume of organised abuse this sector has absorbed makes an anti-abuse catch-all necessary, and every serious firm has one. The honest framing is narrower: the numbered list on the website is not the rulebook, it is a summary of the rulebook, and the actual standard is whatever FTMO reasonably concludes could not have been done with real money.

The remedies are broad and they are worth knowing before you need them. Clause 7.7 lists nine, from treating the conduct as a failure to meet the objectives, through cutting your contract limits, cancelling or reclassifying individual trades, terminating every service across the FTMO group, to instructing FTMO Trading to cancel your Sim-Funded accounts and any rewards under them. FTMO will try to notify you but is not required to do so first. There is no compensation and no refund.

What is absent is the counterweight. There is no published warning system, no strike count, no escalation ladder and no statement about whether anything resets after a payout. There is no published appeal against a breach finding, a termination or a refused payout. The only routes in the documents are a general complaints clause answered within 30 days and, for EU consumers, the Czech Trade Inspection Authority. Given the breadth of clause 7.3, an appeals process is the thing we would most like to see FTMO add.

Where the marketing page and the contract disagree

We read every published futures page and both contracts as markup on 31 August 2026. These are the divergences that would change what a trader does.

The beta guarantee is not a term. FTMO’s beta page promises that the trading objectives you purchased are guaranteed and protected, will not change on an account you are already trading, and that new objectives or prices apply only to new purchases. Clause 5.7 of the terms reserves the right to modify, change, replace, add, suspend, withdraw or remove any element of the services at any time without compensation, and the definitions clause states that trading objectives may be updated from time to time. We have no evidence FTMO has changed objectives on a live account, and its conduct on the CFD side is the reason to expect it will not. The point stands anyway: that promise is a commitment of reputation, not something you could enforce.

A published sum is simply wrong. The Growth 150K profit target card reads, verbatim, “Example Profit Target = $9,000 Balance required for passing = $109,000”. On a $150,000 account a $9,000 target is a $159,000 balance, which is exactly what the Pro 150K card on the same page says. We checked the served markup twice, and the figure is in the HTML rather than being a rendering fault. It is a typing error rather than a rule, and the rule itself is unambiguous, but it is on the page a buyer is told to read, on the largest and most expensive account FTMO sells here.

Three different assessment times. The rules page says accounts are assessed for a pass after the end of the trading day in one place and at 5:05 p.m. ET in another. The FAQ says 4:10 p.m. ET. All three are live.

Individuals only, except in the contract. Three separate FAQ answers say FTMO Futures accepts natural persons only, that companies and self employed individuals are not allowed, and that business verification is unavailable. Both contracts contain eligibility conditions for a legal entity and a clause governing how a legal entity may share access with its top management.

Up to $450,000, or no maximum. The site wide call to action offers up to $450,000 in simulated capital. The accounts FAQ says there is no maximum total capital allocation and that the only limit is three funded accounts. Both can be read as true, and they point at different ceilings.

Depth of market, advertised and unavailable. The platforms page sells NinjaTrader’s SuperDOM and Tradovate’s depth of market visibility. The market data FAQ says Level 2 depth of market cannot be purchased on the platform when logged in with FTMO credentials.

None of these is evidence of bad faith and several are the ordinary artefacts of a product shipped fast. That is what a beta is. But a rules surface this new, changing this quickly, with no version archive and a trading updates page that carries no entries at all, gives a trader no way to see from the outside what changed or when. Both contracts were uploaded on 28 August 2026 and both carry the date 31 August 2026. There is no changelog and no archive of what they replaced.

Firm health and corporate structure

On firm health this is the strongest name in the sector and nothing about the futures launch changes that. FTMO has traded since 2015, survived the 2024 shakeout that removed roughly one in seven retail prop firms, acquired the quantitative trading firm Quantlane in 2023 and the broker OANDA in 2025. The imprint names the same two authorised representatives, Otakar Suffner and Marek Vasicek, across every Czech entity.

Corporate disclosure is where the futures product is genuinely candid and genuinely incomplete at the same time.

The candour first, because it is better than most of the sector manages. The terms say in plain words that the accounts are for simulated trading, that the activity is not trading in real financial instruments, that the capital shown has no monetary value, and that the definitions clause labels the same thing “demo trading” in marketing materials. FTMO states that it is not regulated by the Czech National Bank, and the US document states that it is not regulated by the CFTC or the NFA, so no regulatory protection applies. Firms that bury this exist in large numbers. FTMO puts it in clause 2.1.

The structure is where it gets complicated. Outside the United States you contract with FTMO Evaluation Global s.r.o., Czech identification number 092 13 651, under Czech law, with a 14 day consumer cooling off period before your first trade and a right to reject a change of terms. Passing hands you to a different company, FTMO Trading Global s.r.o., number 094 18 415, under the unpublished Sim-Funded contract. The Evaluation terms say that agreement is solely between you and FTMO Trading.

In the United States you contract with JV Prop Corporation of 1209 Orange Street, Wilmington, Delaware, under New York law, with AAA consumer arbitration in New York, a class action waiver, a jury waiver and a one year deadline to file. There is no cooling off clause in that document, so only the blanket no refund term applies, and changes to the terms take effect on continued use rather than on notice. The imprint lists no company number, no registered agent and no officers for JV Prop Corporation, which is the one disclosure gap on this page we would call material: it is a new entity, unique to futures, and it is the counterparty for every American trader. Delaware, incidentally, is itself one of the five US states FTMO will not sell the futures product into.

On sentiment we have deliberately published nothing. FTMO’s Trustpilot profile covers the whole business and is dominated by a decade of CFD trading; nothing there is specific to a futures product that launched this year, and quoting a firm wide rating in a review of one product would flatter it. We will report futures specific payout experience when there is a body of it to report.

The verdict

The rule design here is the best case for buying it. A trailing drawdown that stops at your starting balance, no minimum days, no time limit, news allowed, automation allowed, unlimited resets and a flat 90/10 add up to a product that does not need a trader to be lucky about the calendar. None of that is unique in futures, and the drawdown in particular is normal for the better half of the sector rather than a reason on its own to switch. Pro at 50K, with a one to one target to drawdown and 100% of profit requestable, is a genuinely competitive offer against the established American futures firms.

The case against is not about any single rule. It is that FTMO is asking you to buy into a three step programme while publishing the terms of only the first step. The document governing payouts, with a different company, is not on the site. The Live Funded stage above it has no published terms, no published buffer and no published fee. For a firm whose reputation rests on being the transparent one, that is the gap worth closing, and closing it would move this score more than any rule change.

Around that sit the ordinary costs of a beta: an arithmetic error on the priciest account’s own target card, three published assessment times, a comparison table showing a funded contract limit you do not start with, and a marketing promise about locked in objectives that the contract does not support. Individually small. Together they are why we score rule fairness below the CFD product from the same brand.

Buy it if you are an intraday futures trader who wants a drawdown floor that locks at breakeven and no clock, and you can accept flattening every day at 4:10 p.m. ET. Wait if you want to read the contract that decides whether you get paid before you pay anything, because today you cannot.

Frequently asked questions

Is FTMO Futures the same as the FTMO Challenge?

No. They are separate products with separate contracts, separate forbidden practices pages and separate rules. The futures product is a single phase Evaluation sold on a monthly subscription, with a contract limit rather than leverage, no overnight holding, and a 90/10 split. The CFD Challenge has its own structure entirely. Rules from one do not apply to the other.

Does the FTMO Futures drawdown trail forever?

No. The maximum loss limit is recalculated at the start of each trading day from your highest previous closing balance less the allowance, it only ever rises, and it locks permanently once it reaches your starting balance. It never follows you into profit. Your equity, including open positions and commissions, is what must stay above it, so it can be triggered during the day even though it only moves at the close.

How quickly can you get a first payout from FTMO Futures?

You need four qualifying days on Growth or five on Pro, each closing at or above a minimum daily profit that varies by account size. Those days need not be consecutive. After that the amount is limited by the share of profit you may request, then the payout cap, then the 90% split. FTMO does not publish how long it takes to approve or pay a request on the futures product.

Can you hold FTMO Futures positions overnight or over the weekend?

No, at any stage. All positions and all resting orders, including stop losses and brackets, must be closed before 4:10 p.m. ET each trading day. Holding past the close is one of the eight forbidden practices, so it is treated as a conduct breach rather than simply an automatic liquidation.

Who do you actually contract with at FTMO Futures?

Outside the United States, FTMO Evaluation Global s.r.o. under Czech law for the Evaluation, then FTMO Trading Global s.r.o. under a separate Sim-Funded agreement that is not published. In the United States, JV Prop Corporation, a Delaware company, under New York law with AAA arbitration in New York, a class action waiver and a one year limit on claims.