Frequently Asked Questions

A prop challenge is a skill-assessment program on a simulated trading account. Pass the published trading rules and profit targets to receive a simulated "funded" account. Eligible payouts are performance rewards based on simulated P&L (not live brokerage withdrawals). See Simulated Trading.

All evaluation and funded accounts run in a simulated environment on real market prices. You do not trade your own money, and payouts are performance rewards based on your simulated results. SMP Fund is not a broker and holds no trader capital.

1) Choose a package and account size and pay the fee in crypto. 2) Trade the evaluation within the rules until you reach the profit target and minimum trading days. 3) Complete KYC. 4) Your funded account is activated within a maximum of 48 business hours after approval, and you can request rewards.

Prime has 2 phases (targets 8% and 5%, 5% daily loss, 10% max loss). Rapid has 1 phase (target 8%, 3% daily loss, 6% max loss). Instant has no evaluation: the funded account is issued once identity verification (KYC) is approved, with a 6% trailing max loss and no profit target. See the Trading Rules page for the full table.

Prime and Rapid are offered from $2,000 to $100,000. Instant accounts range from $2,000 to $6,000. Prices depend on the size and are shown in the shop.

No. None of our packages has a time limit. You only need to meet the minimum trading days, and an evaluation account that stays inactive for 30 consecutive days is closed.

You must be at least 18. Citizens and residents of restricted countries cannot use the service; the list is published on the Restricted Countries page. Each person may hold only one profile.

Yes. One person may hold several challenges at once, but the combined account size of all your live challenges (evaluation, passed and funded together) may not exceed the per-person allocation cap — $500,000 by default (maximum number of live challenges at once: 5); a purchase or reset above it is refused. Approved scaling is not limited by the cap, but a scaled account's new size counts toward it for later purchases. Note that hedging between your own challenges is restricted once any of them is funded.

A hard breach (daily loss, max total loss, the 3rd yellow flag or a prohibited practice) closes the account immediately. You then receive a personal one-time discount code by e-mail, valid for 48 hours (25% for a lost account of up to $25,000, 10% above); a self-service reset of the same package with a 15% discount is also offered on Challenge reset when it lists your account — neither needs admin approval. Fees are generally non-refundable.

Expert Advisors (EAs), bots and scripts may open and manage trades on every account at no extra cost; no add-on or registration is needed. Tools that only manage open positions are always allowed. See the EA / Bot Policy and Restricted Practices.

The maximum your account may fall within one calendar day (UTC). The drop is measured from your start-of-day equity — the balance plus any floating profit or loss at the 00:00 UTC day change — counting closed and floating results; the limit itself is a percentage of the start-of-day balance. Prime 5%, Rapid 3%. It is a hard limit: exceeding it terminates the account immediately, without a prior warning.

It is measured against the initial balance: Prime 10%, Rapid 6%, Instant 6%. On Prime and Rapid the floor is static; on Instant it is trailing and follows your highest point. Falling below the floor terminates the account.

Maximum combined floating loss on currently open positions. The cap is 3% of the initial balance. Winning positions offset losing ones; stop-loss levels are not counted. Example: on a $10,000 account with a 3% limit, once all open positions together are at a $300 floating loss, every open position that is itself in loss gets a yellow flag. When it is reached, every open position that is itself in loss gets a yellow flag and an email; positions stay open and, if a flagged trade later closes in profit, that profit is not credited. It is a single yellow flag for the whole event, and the same open positions are not flagged again while they remain open. This alone does not terminate the account, but it counts as one of the 3 yellow flags (the 3rd closes the account).

A yellow flag is a warning for breaking a soft rule, such as Max Open-Trade Loss or correlated hedging. An account can hold at most 3; the 3rd is a red flag and terminates it. Flags stay on your record and can reduce future funded size.

A calendar day (UTC) on which you opened at least one position that was held at least 5 minutes and sized at least the lot floor of your challenge (it grows with the account size and is shown on the challenge page and in your account). If the position has a stop loss, the distance to it must risk at least 0.25% of the initial balance ($25 on a $10,000 account). Profit or loss does not matter. Prime needs 5 per phase, Rapid 3 and Instant has no minimum to pass; each funded payout additionally needs 5 qualifying days in its payout cycle (since the last paid payout, or since funding for the first payout).

No single trading day may account for more than 35% of your net closed profit, on every package. Only closed trades count. Exceeding it is not a yellow flag and does not close the account — it only blocks withdrawals until the share is diluted by more profit. After a successful payout the cycle resets.

On Prime and Rapid, yes, but for trades opened or closed within 15 minutes before or after a high-impact event only 40% of the profit counts while 100% of any loss counts. On Instant, news trading is not allowed: the order is not blocked, but its profit is not credited at all while any loss counts in full (not a yellow flag). Latency or feed-error abuse is prohibited on all packages.

Yes, on all packages. Holding does not waive the daily or max total loss rules, and a gap that breaches them still fails the account. Swap is charged at the start of each new trading day and counts toward your loss limits.

Opening long and short on the same symbol in one account is allowed; for the 3% open-trade loss the floating results are netted, so when one leg closes the other leg's loss counts immediately. Hedging between your own challenges is generally fine in evaluation, but once one is funded it gets a yellow flag first and a hard fail if repeated. Hedging with other prop firms, or copying between different people on funded accounts, is a hard breach. Copying between your own accounts is not treated as copy abuse, but any trade whose comment carries a trade-copier tag (such as “copier”, “signal”, “master”, “sync” or “follower”) gets a yellow flag and its profit is not credited — on every account, with or without the Automation add-on. Use a copier that leaves the trade comment empty.

It may. Under rule 21 of the Trading Rules, the firm can select simulated funded accounts that meet its internal criteria and mirror their trades on its own live accounts, at a volume ratio it chooses, at any time and without notice. You will not be told whether your account is mirrored: knowing it would only add pressure and could change your strategy. Nothing changes for you — your simulated account, rules, metrics, payouts and profit split are evaluated exactly as before, and the results on the firm's live accounts belong to the firm. Just trade as you always do. Copying between different customers remains prohibited (rule 8).

It may. Under rule 21 of the Trading Rules, the firm can select simulated funded accounts that meet its internal criteria and mirror their trades on its own live accounts, at a volume ratio it chooses, at any time and without notice. You will not be told whether your account is mirrored: knowing it would only add pressure and could change your strategy. Nothing changes for you — your simulated account, rules, metrics, payouts and profit split are evaluated exactly as before, and the results on the firm's live accounts belong to the firm. Just trade as you always do. Copying between different customers remains prohibited (rule 8).

Yes: latency or price-feed arbitrage, shared EAs or strategies between several users, exploiting platform bugs, multiple profiles, sharing logins and coordinated activity with other traders. These lead to immediate termination, and serious cases to a permanent ban. HFT / tick-scalping (bursts of trades opened and closed within seconds) first gets a notice — the profit of the matched trades is not credited — and a repeat closes the account. You can appeal within 7 days.

On Prime and Rapid, yes. NFP is a high-impact event, so any trade opened or closed within 15 minutes before or after the release is treated as news trading: only 40% of its profit counts, while 100% of any loss counts. On Instant, news-window trading is not allowed: the order is not blocked, but its profit is not credited at all while any loss counts in full (not a yellow flag). Latency or price-feed abuse around news is prohibited on every package.

Example: on a $10,000 Rapid account you open EURUSD 5 minutes before NFP and close it at +$500. Only $200 (40%) counts toward your profit target and reward. If the same trade had lost $300, the full $300 would count against your daily and max loss.

Rule: News Trading Policy · Trading Rules

Yes, on all packages there is no forced Friday close. But holding does not suspend any risk rule: the daily and max total loss limits still apply, swap is charged and counts toward them, and a Monday gap that crosses a limit still fails the account.

Example: you hold a $10,000 Prime account with a gold position over the weekend. Your balance is $10,000 and the floating result is −$50 when the market closes on Friday, so Monday's start-of-day equity is $9,950 (the daily loss is measured from start-of-day equity, which already includes floating P&L). On Monday's open gold gaps against you and the floating loss becomes −$600 (equity $9,400). The day's loss is $9,950 − $9,400 = $550, above the 5% daily limit ($500), so the account is terminated. Had the position been closed on Friday, the loss would have stayed at −$50.

Rule: Trading Rules · Execution Policy

Your account is not terminated. When the combined floating loss of all open positions reaches 3% of the initial balance, every open position that is in loss receives a yellow flag and you get an email. The positions stay open; if a flagged trade later closes in profit, that profit is not credited. It is a single flag for the whole event, and the same open positions are not flagged again while they remain open. A yellow flag stays on your record, and the 3rd flag is a red flag that ends the account.

Example: on a $10,000 account the trigger is $300 of net floating loss. You hold EURUSD at −$180 and GBPJPY at −$120, so the total is −$300 and both trades get a yellow flag and an email. If EURUSD is at −$180 and GBPJPY at −$100, the total is −$280 and nothing happens yet.

Rule: Trading Rules

No. The rule looks only at your actual net floating (unrealised) loss in money. Where your stop losses sit, or whether you use one at all, is not part of the calculation. A wide stop does not trigger it by itself, and a tight stop does not protect you from it if the floating loss really reaches 3%.

Example: on a $10,000 account you open a trade with a stop loss $500 away and no other positions. While it floats at −$120 nothing happens, even though the stop is 5% away. If it floats at −$300 the rule triggers, even if your stop is only $310 away. Only the floating figure matters.

Rule: Trading Rules

Yes. For the 3% open-trade rule, winning and losing open positions are netted: the number that counts is total floating profit minus total floating loss. That netting is live, so if a winner closes or reverses, the net figure can jump past the limit immediately.

Example: on a $10,000 account (limit −$300) you hold −$400 on one trade and +$150 on another. The net is −$250, so no flag. If you close the +$150 winner, the net becomes −$400 and every losing position gets a yellow flag. Closing winners while losers stay open is the most common way traders trigger this rule by accident.

Rule: Trading Rules

No. Commission is not part of the 3% open-trade loss rule. It does count toward the daily loss limit and the max total loss limit, together with swap and closed and floating results.

Example: on a $10,000 Prime account your open trades float at −$290 and you have paid $30 of commission. For the open-trade rule the figure is −$290, below the −$300 trigger, so no flag. For the 5% daily limit ($500) the figure is −$290 − $30 = −$320, which leaves $180 of room today.

Rule: Trading Rules

The daily drawdown is the drop of your account within one calendar day in UTC (00:00–24:00 UTC), measured from your start-of-day equity (the balance plus any floating profit or loss at the 00:00 UTC day change); the limit itself is a % of the start-of-day balance. It counts closed results plus floating results, and swap and commission are included. Prime allows 5% and Rapid 3%. Crossing it terminates the account immediately without a warning, and it resets at the next 00:00 UTC.

Example: a $10,000 Rapid account starts the day at a $10,000 balance, so the daily floor is $10,000 − 3% = $9,700. You close −$120, pay $10 commission and hold a position floating at −$150. Total drop −$280, so $20 remains. One more tick against you and the account ends. Tomorrow's start-of-day equity is your new reference — if you hold a position over the rollover, its floating result is part of that reference.

Rule: Trading Rules

A gap does not excuse a breach: if the price jumps and your equity ends below the daily or max total loss limit, the account is terminated. The simulated environment follows real market prices, so we cannot fill you at a price the market never traded. The loss beyond the limit is never a debt: you owe nothing and lose only the account and its fee.

Example: a $10,000 Rapid account has a max total loss floor of $9,400 (6%). You hold a position floating at −$450 (equity $9,550) over the weekend. Monday opens with a gap that puts equity at $8,900. The account is terminated at the gap price, the extra $500 below the floor is not charged to you, and a new challenge would be a new purchase.

Rule: Trading Rules · Execution Policy

Yes on Prime and Rapid, and the same news rule as any other symbol applies. Gold (XAUUSD) reacts strongly to US data such as CPI, NFP and Fed decisions, so a trade opened or closed within 15 minutes of a high-impact event counts only 40% of its profit and 100% of its loss. On Instant, news-window trading is not allowed: the order is not blocked, but its profit is not credited at all while any loss counts in full (not a yellow flag). Gold's leverage and margin follow the broker's symbol specification, and spreads widen a lot around releases, which raises your real risk.

Example: on a $10,000 Prime account you buy gold 4 minutes before US CPI and close at +$400. Only $160 (40%) counts as profit. If it had gone −$250, the full $250 counts against your 5% daily limit ($500), so one bad news trade eats half your day.

Rule: News Trading Policy · Trading Rules

After KYC approval, request performance rewards from your trader dashboard. Rewards are based on simulated P&L under our Payout Policy (not live brokerage withdrawals). Contact info@smpfund.com or Telegram.

The first payout is possible at least 21 calendar days after your account is funded; after that there is a 14-day cooldown between payouts. Your very first payout also needs at least 21 days since signup, and each payout needs 5 qualifying trading days in its payout cycle (since the last paid payout; for the first payout, since funding). KYC must be approved, and all positions must be closed when you submit the request. Example: your $10,000 account is funded on 1 March. The earliest first request is 22 March (after 21 days); if it is paid, the next request opens 14 days later. On the standard $10,000 package payouts 1–2 are capped at 3% of the initial balance ($300 each); every package shows its own caps on its challenge page. See the Payout Policy.

Every package has its own payout caps, shown on its challenge page and in your account: payouts 1–2 and 3–4 are each capped at a percentage of the initial balance (smaller accounts get a higher percentage), and from the 5th payout there is no cap. The minimum is $50 per funded account (profits of two accounts cannot be combined). A flat $3 fee is deducted from each payout, and crypto network fees are paid by you.

You start at 80% of the simulated profit (70% on Instant). You can request an upgrade to 85% after at least 2 months funded with gross profit of at least 10% of the account size, and to 90% after at least 4 months and 25% (the same % also within the last 120 days, with the best-day limit met); upgrades are not automatic, apply only to profit earned after approval, and 90% also requires a profitable last cycle.

Payouts are sent to your crypto wallet on the networks we support after KYC approval. While a payout request is under review the account is frozen for that review: opening a trade does not cancel the request, but trades opened during the review earn no profit credit (their losses still count). The withdrawn amount is deducted from the challenge book on the same account.

Scaling moves your simulated funded account to the next package size of its own type, one step at a time — Rapid and Prime: $2K → $5K → $10K → $25K → $50K → $100K; Instant: $2K → $6K. You can request the next size once your credited profit since funding or your last scaling reaches 10% of your current account size; payouts do not reduce it. Every request is reviewed manually, and after approval the account follows the new package's minimum lot size and payout caps. For example, a $25K Rapid or Prime account can request $50,000, while a $100K account is already the largest size.

You start at 80% of your simulated profit (70% on Instant). You can request an upgrade to 85% after at least 2 months funded with gross profit of at least 10% of the account size, and to 90% after at least 4 months and 25%; the same % must also have been made within the last 120 days and the best-day limit met, and 90% also requires a profitable last cycle. Upgrades are requested by you and are not automatic. The new share applies only to profit earned after approval, and the ladder is per account, so it resets if that account is terminated.

Example: you earn $1,000 of simulated profit in a cycle on a $10,000 funded account. At 80% your reward is $800, at 85% it is $850 and at 90% it is $900, each before the flat $3 payout fee. If you are upgraded to 90% after that cycle, the next $1,000 pays $900, while the $1,000 already earned stays at 80%. The payout caps of this $10,000 example (3% of the initial balance for payouts 1–2, 5% for payouts 3–4 — every package shows its own on its challenge page) still limit how much you can withdraw per request; the rest stays withdrawable later.

Rule: Payout Policy · Trading Rules

Yes. KYC is required before a funded account is issued (after you pass evaluation), and for funded payouts and affiliate withdrawals. It is not required before you buy or start a challenge. See our KYC Policy.

No. On Prime, Phase 2 continues on the same MetaTrader account: your login, password and balance stay the same, and profit above the Phase 1 target is carried into Phase 2. Only after you pass the last evaluation phase and your KYC is approved do you receive a new funded account with its own login, shown in your dashboard. An Instant account has no evaluation: your funded MetaTrader login is delivered automatically once your KYC is approved.

Every symbol your trading platform offers (forex, metals, energy, indices…) may be traded, with one exception — crypto: only BTC, ETH. A position on any other crypto symbol is closed automatically by the system and its result (profit, loss, commission and swap) is not counted on your account; it is not a yellow flag. Leverage and margin per symbol follow the broker's symbol specifications shown in the platform (no separate per-asset cap from the firm), the same in evaluation and funded stages. There is no hard lot-size cap, but your risk rules still apply.

Everything uses UTC — the firm's rule clock shown in your trader panel — not your local time and not the broker's MetaTrader server time: the daily loss resets at 00:00 UTC, and trading days, news windows and reward cycles follow UTC too. Only swap is charged at the broker's own rollover.

Not trading for too long. On an evaluation account, after 10 days without a trade you get a reminder and the account shows as deactivated (credentials hidden) until you reactivate it from My challenges; after 20 days a second reminder; after 30 consecutive days it is closed automatically (a refund only with admin approval; a discounted rebuy is self-service). A funded account gets warnings at 20 and 40 days and is deactivated at 60 consecutive days without trading, so eligible rewards can be settled by payout.

No. Sharing login credentials is a hard breach, and you are responsible for keeping them secure. Each person may hold only one profile, and identity is tied to your documents, email, wallets and device data.

Expert Advisors (EAs), bots and scripts may open and manage trades on every account at no extra cost; no add-on or registration is needed. Tools that only manage existing positions, such as a position sizer, trailing stop or partial close, are always allowed. Shared EAs across several users and latency arbitrage are hard breaches in every case; HFT / tick-scalping first gets a notice (the profit of the matched trades is not credited) and a repeat closes the account.

Example: you and two friends run the same grid EA from one shared setup on your three accounts. That is a multi-user shared EA: a hard breach on every account involved, whatever the site's robot-trading rule.

Rule: EA / Bot Policy · Trading Rules

Copying between your own evaluation accounts is not treated as copy abuse, as long as your copier leaves the trade comment empty: a trade whose comment carries a copier tag (such as “copier”, “signal”, “master”, “sync” or “follower”) gets a yellow flag and its profit is not credited, on any account. Two more limits matter: opposite positions between your own challenges (hedging) are restricted as soon as any of them is funded, first as a yellow flag with profit strip and, if repeated, a hard breach of your funded accounts. Copying to or from a different person's funded account is a hard breach. Each account is judged on its own rules, and each needs its own KYC-verified owner.

Example: you copy the same EURUSD buy from a $10,000 Rapid account to two other $10,000 evaluation accounts. Same direction, so it is fine as long as the copier leaves the trade comment empty, and each account carries its own 3% daily limit ($300). If one of them is funded and you copy a sell to another of your challenges, that is a hedge: yellow flag and profit strip the first time.

Rule: Hedging Policy · Trading Rules

Yes, and you can mix packages and sizes, but the combined account size of all your live challenges (evaluation, passed and funded together) may not exceed the per-person allocation cap — $500,000 by default (maximum number of live challenges at once: 5); a purchase or reset above it is refused. Approved scaling is not limited by the cap, but a scaled account's new size counts toward it for later purchases. Each challenge is independent: its own balance, targets, daily and max loss, trading days and 30-day inactivity clock, and profits of two accounts cannot be combined for a payout minimum. You need one verified identity, because only one profile per person is allowed, and hedging between your own challenges is restricted once one of them is funded.

Example: you run three $10,000 Rapid accounts and one $25,000 Prime account. Rapid A hits its daily limit ($300) and ends; the other three are unaffected. Rapid B has been idle for 30 days and is closed automatically, while Prime keeps trading. You have four separate dashboards and four separate targets.

Rule: Trading Rules · Hedging Policy

You trade on MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 — the platforms available for your program are shown on the Platforms page and at checkout. Other platforms (such as cTrader or TradeLocker) are not offered. You choose one platform per account at purchase and it cannot be changed afterwards. Your login and server details are shown in your dashboard, and the rules and limits are identical on both platforms.

Example: you buy a $10,000 Rapid account and pick MT5 at checkout. The daily limit is $300 and max total loss $600 whether you trade on MT5 desktop, web or mobile. If you wanted MT4 instead, you would need to buy a new account with MT4 selected, because the platform is fixed on the one you already bought.

Rule: Platforms · Trading Rules

Email info@smpfund.com, message us on Telegram, or open a ticket from your account dashboard. Visit Support.

Commission is a trading fee charged per lot when you open and/or close a position. It is separate from the spread. On this program, commission counts toward daily and maximum loss, but not toward Max Open-Trade Loss.

Typical ECN/RAW ranges (indicative only — live rates are in the platform symbol specs):

• Forex — about $3–$7 per lot per side
• Gold — about $5–$10 per lot per side
• Oil — about $5–$12 per lot per side
• Crypto — about $10–$30 per lot per side, or a small percentage of notional value

See Trading Rules, rule 7.

Swap (overnight / rollover) is a financing charge or credit applied when a position stays open past the broker's daily rollover on its server clock (not the UTC rule clock). The amount depends on the symbol, direction (buy or sell), and the current swap rates. Many markets apply a triple swap on Wednesday.

Swap is included in daily and maximum loss. Holding overnight is a trading decision and can contribute to a daily-loss breach. Live rates are shown per symbol in the platform. See Trading Rules, rule 7.

Spread is the difference between the Bid (sell) and Ask (buy) price. It is the implicit cost of entering a trade: you buy at the higher Ask and sell at the lower Bid.

Spreads on this program are floating — they tighten in liquid hours and can widen around news, rollover, or low liquidity. RAW/ECN-style pricing typically pairs a tight spread with commission; standard accounts often have a wider spread and little or no commission.

The live spread is visible in the platform quote and symbol specification. See Trading Rules, rules 6 and 11.

Challenge purchases and reward payouts are crypto-only. Choose your package and size in the shop, then complete the crypto payment at checkout. You can buy and start an evaluation before completing KYC.

Generally no. Fees are an access fee for the evaluation program and are not refunded by default, including after a breach, a failed attempt or an inactive account. A refund is possible only in special circumstances and only with admin approval. A challenge reset is different: it needs no approval and is a self-service discounted rebuy of the same package from your panel.

Yes. After a failed account you receive a personal one-time discount code valid for 48 hours, with no limit on attempts. Its discount is 25% for a lost account of up to $25,000 (the code then works on challenges up to that size) and 10% for a larger lost account (a challenge of any size), of any type. Your breach history is not cleared by a new purchase.

It is the paid add-on that lets an account trade with a robot (EA, bot or script that opens new orders) when the site's rules require it. The rule right now: Expert Advisors (EAs), bots and scripts may open and manage trades on every account at no extra cost; no add-on or registration is needed. Tools that only manage existing positions, such as position sizers or trailing stops, are always allowed.

The termination email cites the rule and the evidence. You have 7 days to file an appeal through a support ticket or by email, and we review it within 5 business days and reply with a reasoned answer.