Institutional vs Retail Prop Trading

Two products share the words "prop trading" and almost nothing else. One pays you a salary to trade its capital. The other charges you a fee to trade a simulation and shares the simulated result if you pass. This piece keeps them apart.

What an institutional prop desk is

Jane Street, Virtu and Citadel Securities trade their own capital. The people who trade it are employees. They are hired through interviews, paid a salary and a bonus, and given firm money and firm infrastructure from the first day. Nobody pays to join, and nobody is asked to hit a profit target before the firm commits capital. The firm's risk is real from the first trade, and a risk department, not a rules page, decides how much a desk may lose. We publish no figures on these firms. They do not sell a product to the public and they are not in our dataset.

What a retail prop firm is

A retail prop firm sells an evaluation. You pay a fee, trade a simulated account to a profit target inside loss limits, and if you pass you trade a funded account that is usually still simulated, keeping a share of its profit. The relationship is remote, global and contractual. There is no salary. The money flows from you to the firm first, and back only if you pass and the firm pays.

The list price for a $100K account across 26 firms in our dataset runs from $74 to $3,495 as of 13 September 2026, with a median of $489. Profit split floors sat at 80 percent at most firms as of 13 September 2026, and 15 of 36 firms advertise up to 100 percent on at least one programme as of 5 November 2026. The route from a funded simulated account to live capital is narrow where it exists at all. Topstep reported that 0.71 percent reached Live in 2025 ^[1], and Tradeify reported that 3.0 percent of funded accounts were called up to Live Funded between August 2025 and July 2026 ^[2]. Both figures are self-reported and unaudited.

The cohort in our dataset

The retail model is young. Topstep, founded in Chicago in 2012, is the oldest firm in our dataset as of 13 September 2026 ^[5]. FTMO followed in Prague in 2015 and The5ers in London in 2016. TradeDay arrived in 2020. Of the 26 firms in our registry with a recorded founding year, 22 were founded in 2021 or later: 5 in 2021, 6 in 2022, 5 in 2023, 3 in 2024, 2 in 2025 and 1, Moneta Funded, in 2026. A firm founded in 2022 has traded through one platform crisis and one wave of closures. A firm founded in 2025 has traded through neither.

What nobody can count

No authoritative count of retail prop firms exists, and no authoritative revenue figure for the industry exists either. We publish no firm count and no growth rate because none can be sourced. The only audited number in the industry is the 2025 consolidated revenue of FTMO's parent OHM, CZK 8.9 billion, up 30 percent, reported alongside the CZK 8.79 billion (about $422 million) FTMO paid for OANDA ^[3]. One firm's accounts are not an industry. Finance Magnates Intelligence estimated that 80 to 100 prop firms closed in 2024 ^[4]. That estimate carries a range for a reason.

What this means for you

If a retail firm's marketing borrows the institutional vocabulary, translate it. "Funded" means a simulated account in most cases. "Capital" means a rules contract. "Trader" means customer until a live tier says otherwise.

Judge a retail firm on what you can verify: founding year, the entity behind it, the rules in numbers, the payout terms and the disclosures it publishes. 2 firms, Topstep and Tradeify, publish a funnel. Most publish nothing.

Do not price the industry's size into your decision. Nobody knows it, and a firm that quotes a figure for it is quoting a guess.

Data note

Figures marked "our dataset" come from the PropTraderCheck structured dataset, and each carries its own date. Figures as of 13 September 2026 come from that snapshot: 30 firms with structured programme data (of 37 tracked), 159 programme rows, 48 programmes. Figures as of 5 November 2026 come from that snapshot: 36 firms with structured programme data, 916 programme rows. Regulatory positions are stated as of the date given and change.