Due Diligence Checklist

A prop firm asks you for a fee and a signature on its terms. Before you give either, run the checks below. They cover the four things that decided outcomes for traders between 2024 and 2026: who stands behind the firm, what its rules say in numbers, how often those rules change, and what happens if it stops.

Before you pay

Start with payout evidence. 2 firms publish a funnel. Topstep reported for 2025 that 16.8 percent of Combines passed, 33.3 percent of funded participants received a payout and 0.71 percent reached Live ^[1]. Tradeify reported for August 2025 to July 2026 that 17.2 percent of evaluations completed successfully, 28.5 percent of funded participants received a payout and 3.0 percent of funded accounts were called up to Live Funded ^[2]. Both are self-reported and unaudited. No firm in our dataset publishes a payout denial rate as of 13 September 2026, and none publishes a first-attempt pass rate. Marketing totals are not rates: Topstep's $1.5 billion paid to traders and FTMO's $650 million in rewards carry no denominator. Absence of a funnel is not proof of a problem, but presence of one is the only hard evidence on offer.

Then longevity. Topstep was founded in 2012, FTMO in 2015, The5ers in 2016 and TradeDay in 2020. 22 of the 26 firms in our registry with a recorded founding year were founded in 2021 or later. A firm founded before February 2024 has operated through the platform crisis of that month. A firm founded after it has not been tested.

Then the entity and its jurisdiction. Find the legal page, not the About page. FXIFY shows what to look for: Prime Intermarket Group Eurasia Ltd in Mauritius operates the trading side under Investment Dealer Licence GB24204066, FXIFY Solutions Limited (UK 14451720) is the payment agent, and the restricted country list runs to about 35 countries including the United States as of our 6 September 2026 changelog ^[8]. Breakout is owned by Kraken, which completed the purchase on 4 September 2025 ^[3]. DNA Funded is the prop arm of DNA Markets in Australia. A firm that names no entity, licence or country gives you nothing to check, and that is the finding.

Then the platform. The February 2024 closures ran through platform licences the firms did not control, so the platform is a dependency, not a preference. DNA Funded offers TradeLocker only, with a public demo login. E8 Markets lists 5 platforms. Apex lets you choose Tradovate, Rithmic or other vendors at checkout. Topstep runs its own TopstepX. A firm with one platform has one point of failure.

Then refund and reset terms in numbers. Topstep charges $99 to reset. Earn2Trade deducts a $139 activation fee from the first withdrawal. Funded Futures Network charges $120 to activate and $126 per month for data once funded. Take Profit Trader added a PRO activation fee and IQ Capital disclosed a monthly funded fee, both recorded on 6 September 2026. The list price is one of five fees. Find the other four before you pay the first.

Rule stability: read the ledger

Our public changelog recorded 47 verified changes across tracked firms between 20 July and 6 September 2026, 36 of them dated 6 September. 18 were pricing changes, 7 rules, 5 payout, 7 coverage and 10 other. 6 were better for the trader, 4 worse and 37 neutral. The 4 that cut against you are the ones to study: Funded Trading Plus made its 90 percent split a paid add-on, FXIFY raised One Phase prices and restricted around thirty countries, IQ Capital narrowed to two sizes and disclosed a monthly funded fee, and Take Profit Trader added a PRO activation fee.

The ledger also shows the noise behind those entries. In the 90 days to 16 September 2026 our screener detected 298 candidate changes, rejected 123 as noise (reworded pages, promo banners, mis-read tables), verified and applied 97, and left 78 under review. About 4 in 10 detected changes were nothing. Every published entry has a stored quote and a human confirmation, and a corrected entry keeps the old value visible ^[4]. Check the firm's row at /changes before you buy and again before each payout request.

Warning signs while funded

Five signs recur in the record. Payout terms tightening: profit cuts and trading limits preceded FundingTicks' wind-down announcement on 18 January 2026 ^[5]. Rule changes landing together: the 4 adverse entries in our ledger all carry the same date, 6 September 2026. Promotions deepening: 12 of 30 firms showed a promo price as of 13 September 2026, averaging 50 percent of list, with Apex at 90 percent off and IQ Capital at 80 percent off, which IQ Capital confirmed as standing pricing on 31 August 2026. A deep promo on its own tells you nothing; one that deepens while payout terms tighten is a pattern. Platform switches: a firm that announces a platform change has lost or is leaving a dependency. Payout delays are the fifth sign and the plainest. The Funded Trader's pause on 28 March 2024 followed reports of just over $2 million in blocked withdrawals in January and February against $17 million paid ^[6].

If a firm fails

The two 2026 wind-downs both came with a notice, a refund process and a short deadline. FundingTicks announced on 18 January 2026 that refunds were underway and that support would run until 31 January 2026, 13 days later ^[5]. Seacrest Markets closed all prop CFD accounts on 6 February 2026 and set a refund and payout deadline of 28 February 2026, 22 days later. MyFunded Futures is a separate business and continued ^[7]. Plan for a window of that length.

Read the notice in full and write down the deadline. Submit every refund and payout request the notice allows, in the form it specifies, before the deadline, and keep the confirmation. If you paid by card, contact your card issuer at once and ask about a chargeback for a service not delivered. Issuers and card schemes set their own windows and we do not quote them. Keep records from the day you buy, not the day the firm stops: screenshots of the terms, the pricing page and the payout page dated at purchase, every payout request and its response, and every email from the firm. This is practical guidance from an editorial desk, not legal advice. Where real money is at stake, ask a lawyer in your jurisdiction.

The checklist

1. Founding year, legal entity name, company number and country, from the firm's legal page.
2. The platform vendor, the broker or liquidity provider if named, and any licence number, checked on the issuer's register.
3. Published payout evidence: a funnel with definitions, or a note that none exists.
4. Drawdown mode in numbers (static, end-of-day trailing or intraday trailing) and the daily loss limit, from the rules page rather than the banner.
5. Consistency cap and minimum trading days, with the percentage and the day count.
6. Profit split floor, and whether the top tier costs extra.
7. First payout window, minimum payout and any per-request or per-cycle cap, including caps stated on the rules page but not at checkout.
8. All five fees: list, promo, reset, activation and any monthly funded fee.
9. Refund terms and the date the promo price was captured.
10. Restricted countries, checked against your own residence.
11. The firm's row in the /changes ledger for the last 90 days and the direction of each entry.
12. Dated screenshots of the terms, pricing and payout pages, filed with the receipt.

What this means for you

Run the twelve checks before the first fee, not after the first denied payout. Every one uses a page the firm itself publishes.

Weight what a firm discloses more than what it promises. A published funnel, a named entity, a licence number and a stable ledger row can be verified. A payout total with no denominator cannot.

Keep your records from day one and know the wind-down pattern: notice, refund process, deadline in weeks. If a firm stops, that window is the whole game.

Data note

Figures marked "our dataset" come from the PropTraderCheck structured dataset as of 13 September 2026: 30 firms with structured programme data (of 37 tracked), 159 programme rows, 48 programmes. Regulatory positions are stated as of the date given and change.