Account Sharing Prop Firm Rules · reviewed October 2026
Account Sharing Prop Firm Rules
An evaluation account is issued to a person, not to a household or a team. The clause that says so is short, and its consequences are long: a pass produced by someone else can be reversed at funding or at payout, and the fee is not returned. This guide separates the three arrangements that get confused — third-party trading, shared access and multiple accounts — and explains how each is detected and what written permission actually buys you.
Key takeaways
- Account sharing is about who places the trades, not who owns the money. A relative, a friend or a paid service all fall under the same clause.
- Account access and account trading are separate permissions. Giving someone login details is one breach; letting them trade is another.
- Firms detect third-party trading by comparing trade timestamps, device and IP data, and by asking for evidence on a discretionary basis.
- A management service is compliant only where the terms expressly allow third-party or managed trading, and only where it is disclosed.
- Multiple accounts for one person are usually permitted with a position cap; mirrored positions across them are usually not.
Contents
- What the clause actually says
- Three arrangements, one clause
- Access versus trading
- How sharing is detected
- Managed accounts and passing services
- Family, teams and joint accounts
- Multiple accounts for one trader
- What written permission buys you
- If a pass is reversed
- Buying, selling and transferring accounts
- What a payout interview looks like
- Building the evidence file
- The practical risk of each arrangement
- What if the account is held by a company
- Common questions
The clause exists because an evaluation is a test of a trader. If someone else takes the test, the result measures the wrong person, and the funded account that follows is priced on a skill set the firm has not seen. That is the whole rationale, and everything else in the rule follows from it: the identity requirement, the prohibition on managed services, the restriction on copying between accounts and the payout review that asks who was at the keyboard.
What the clause actually says
Wording varies, but the substance is usually one of three forms.
| Form | Typical wording | What it prohibits |
|---|---|---|
| Third-party trading | "The account must be traded solely by the account holder" | Any trade placed by someone else, paid or unpaid |
| Access restriction | "Login credentials must not be shared with any third party" | Handing over platform access, even for monitoring |
| Managed service | "Managed accounts and signal services are not permitted" | Buying a pass, following a provider, delegating decisions |
The first form is the broadest and the most common. It does not require payment, intent or a formal arrangement; it requires only that someone other than the account holder placed the trade. A friend taking one entry while you are at work is a breach in the same category as a paid service, even though the consequences feel disproportionate.
The second form is narrower and often overlooked. Login sharing is prohibited even when the person doing it is only watching, and even when they never send an order. Firms care because shared credentials are the mechanism by which third-party trading happens, and because a shared login breaks the audit trail they rely on for every other rule.
The third form targets the commercial arrangement. It is the clause a passing service must check before quoting, and it is the one that decides whether a fee buys a pass or a reversible pass.
Three arrangements, one clause
Traders routinely confuse three arrangements that the terms separate. Getting them straight answers most of the practical questions.
| Arrangement | Who places trades | Who is paid | Usual status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Household use | Owner, with a relative occasionally trading | Owner | Prohibited unless expressly allowed |
| Team or prop group | Members trading one shared account | Split by agreement | Prohibited on individual evaluations; team products exist separately |
| Managed service | A third party, for a fee | Service and owner | Prohibited unless the firm expressly permits managed trading |
The middle row is where confusion is highest. A group of traders pooling capital and splitting a funded account feels like a legitimate arrangement, and in some jurisdictions it is a regulated activity rather than a forbidden one. On a retail prop evaluation, it is usually outside the product: the firm sold one seat to one trader. Firms that want team arrangements sell them as separate products with their own terms, and those terms usually include tighter position caps.
The third row is the commercial case. A managed service is not a loophole; it is a different business model, and it is compliant only where the firm has written the permission into the terms. The absence of a prohibition is not permission — if the terms say trades must be placed by the account holder, a service that places them is in breach whether or not the word "service" appears.
Access versus trading
Two permissions are usually separate and both are usually restricted. The first is access: who can log in to the platform. The second is trading: who can send orders. A plan might restrict only the second, which would allow a viewer, but most plans restrict both and many also restrict access to the dashboard and the email on the account.
The email matters more than it appears. The account's identity is tied to the registered address, and a change of email is one of the signals firms use to detect resale. A trader who buys a "used" evaluation is therefore exposed twice: on the login clause and on the identity behind the account.
The practical rule is simple. If the plan does not expressly permit a second person to log in, do not let one. That includes sharing a screen, giving a temporary password to a mentor, and letting a friend place a trade while you are travelling. The three cases feel different and are the same clause.
How sharing is detected
Detection is mostly circumstantial and mostly retrospective, and the signals are well known to firms.
| Signal | What it suggests | How firms use it |
|---|---|---|
| Login from a new location or device | Shared credentials | Automatic flag; may trigger a support request |
| Trade timestamps matching another account | Copying or one trader on several accounts | Cross-account comparison at payout review |
| A style change mid-account | Two traders on one account | Manual review of the trade history against the stated approach |
| Round-number lot sizes with no risk pattern | A system or a service, rather than a person | Combined with an automation clause check |
| Support answers that contradict the history | The account holder does not know the trades | Follow-up questions before approving a payout |
The last row is the one traders underestimate. A payout review sometimes includes questions about specific trades — why this entry, why this size, what happened next. An account holder who did not place the trades cannot answer them, and the inability is the evidence. That is why managed services tend to fail at the payout stage rather than at funding: the pass can look perfect and the interview cannot.
None of these signals is proof on its own. Firms combine them and then ask. The outcome depends on whether the account holder can produce a coherent explanation and, where relevant, written permission. A trader who has neither is relying on the firm not looking.
Managed accounts and passing services
A passing service trades an evaluation to its target for a fee. Whether that is permitted is a question of the firm's terms, not of the service's quality, and the answer differs by firm.
Where the terms prohibit third-party trading, a purchased pass is at risk from the moment it is produced. The firm can reverse the pass at funding, or fund the account and withhold the first payout after a review. The fee is not refunded, and the account is usually closed. That outcome is the reason a serious service checks the terms before quoting, and why a quote without a terms check is not a complete quote.
Where the terms expressly permit managed trading, the arrangement is legitimate and the risks change. The trader is now relying on the service's performance and its compliance with the other clauses — news windows, automation, position caps — rather than on the third-party rule. Even there, disclosure matters: an undeclared arrangement is a different problem from a declared one.
The distinction to hold onto is between permission and silence. Silence is not permission. A firm that does not mention managed accounts but requires trades to be placed by the account holder has prohibited them by implication, and that implication has held up in practice far more often than traders expect.
Family, teams and joint accounts
Household arrangements are the most common breach and the least commercially motivated. A spouse places a trade while the account holder is at work; a sibling monitors an open position overnight; a parent funds the evaluation and takes an occasional entry. Each of these is third-party trading under the standard clause.
The compliant version of a household arrangement is narrow. The account holder places every trade; another person may watch, discuss or suggest, provided the plan does not also restrict access; and no second person logs in. Suggestions are not trades. The line is the executed order and the credentials, not the conversation.
Joint ownership is a different product category. Some firms offer team or partner accounts, and those terms define how many people may trade, how payouts are split and what the position cap is across the group. If you want a shared account, buy one. Trying to build one out of an individual evaluation is the arrangement the clause exists to prevent.
Multiple accounts for one trader
This is often confused with account sharing, and it is a separate question. Most firms permit one person to hold several accounts within a cap, and many permit it explicitly as a scaling strategy. What they usually restrict is mirrored trading: the same position copied across accounts, which concentrates risk from the firm's perspective.
| Arrangement | Usual position | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Several accounts, different ideas | Permitted within a per-person cap | Independent decisions; risk is diversified |
| Several accounts, same idea mirrored | Restricted | One idea becomes a concentrated position across the cohort |
| Several accounts, defended together | Restricted | Hedging across accounts can defeat the drawdown rule |
| Several accounts, one copied from another | Restricted | Copy trading and, in substance, shared management |
The third row is subtle and worth a note. A trader who is long on one account and short on another is hedged in aggregate, which can make the combined book look safer than either account. Firms restrict it because each account is evaluated on its own drawdown, and a hedge that protects the aggregate does not protect either account's floor. The arrangement is sometimes called cross-account hedging and is prohibited in most terms.
The cap itself is worth reading closely. It is usually expressed as a total account value per person or per household, and it can be lower than the number of accounts the dashboard allows you to buy. Buying a fourth account when the cap is three is a rule breach that only becomes visible when the positions are compared.
What written permission buys you
Where a firm does permit managed or shared trading, get the permission in writing and keep it. A support reply that names the arrangement, the person and the account is the difference between a defensible position and a discretionary one.
The permission should answer four questions: who may place trades, whether they may log in, whether the arrangement must be disclosed before or after the trades, and whether the permission survives funding or has to be renewed. That last point catches teams. A permission granted for the evaluation does not automatically extend to the funded account, and the funded terms are the ones that govern a payout.
Keep the reply with the account records, alongside the dated terms you read at purchase. If the firm revises its terms later, the dated copy plus the written permission is the whole case. Without them, the firm's current terms apply and the trader's recollection does not.
If a pass is reversed
The usual remedy is nothing. The fee is forfeited, the account is closed and the profit is not paid. That is a harsh outcome for a household arrangement, and it is the published consequence of a published rule, which is why the clause is worth reading before the first trade rather than after the last.
There are three limited avenues. First, if the firm granted written permission, present it. Second, if the detection was mistaken — a shared IP from a VPN, for instance — supply the evidence that the trades were placed by the account holder. Third, if the terms were ambiguous at the time of purchase, the dated copy of those terms is the argument. Each avenue depends on documentation the trader created before the dispute.
What does not work is the argument that the pass was skilful. The clause is about who traded, not about whether the trading was good. A perfect pass produced by the wrong person is exactly the case the rule anticipates, and the quality of the result is not a mitigating factor.
Buying, selling and transferring accounts
A market exists for passed evaluations. It exists because a funded account has value and because the person who passed it may prefer cash to the account. The market is almost entirely outside the terms of every firm that sells individual evaluations, and the reason is identity: the account was issued to a verified person, and a transfer breaks the link between the trader the firm tested and the trader who will be paid.
The mechanics of the transfer are what fail. The buyer needs the login, which breaks the access clause. The buyer needs the payout to arrive in their name, which fails the payment-name check. The buyer needs to answer questions about trades they did not place, which fails at review. A transfer that survives all three would require the firm's cooperation, and a firm that cooperates is selling a different product.
Selling has the same problem from the other side. The seller remains the verified account holder and therefore remains liable for how the account is traded, including any breach. A seller who hands over credentials has not transferred the obligation, only the access, and the obligation is the part that attaches to their identity.
The rule of thumb is that an account is not a transferable asset. It is a licence issued to a person, and the licence terms are the reason it cannot be sold. Where a firm wants to allow transfers, it writes a transfer process; the absence of a process is the answer.
What a payout interview looks like
Not every payout involves questions, but the ones that do follow a recognisable pattern. The reviewer has the trade history and is checking whether the account holder understands it.
The questions are mundane rather than adversarial. Why did you enter here? What was the stop logic? Why was this size larger than the previous one? What happened on the day with the outsized result? A trader who placed the trades answers in specifics: the setup, the level, the reason for the size. A trader who did not place them answers in generalities, because there is nothing specific to recall.
That difference is the whole detection mechanism. It is not a trick and it does not require expertise: a reviewer who has read a few hundred trade histories can tell the difference between a trader describing their own decisions and a trader describing a result they have only seen in a statement.
The practical preparation is simple. Keep a note per trading day with the reason for each entry, and review it before a payout request. A trader who can reconstruct the last month in a page of notes will pass the interview without effort. A trader who cannot is relying on the reviewer not asking.
Building the evidence file
Most disputes about third-party trading are decided on documents the trader either has or does not have. The file takes minutes to assemble at the time and months to reconstruct later.
- The dated terms you read at purchase, saved as a file rather than a bookmark.
- Any written permission for a second person, naming the arrangement and the account.
- The verification confirmation, with the date and the method used.
- A trade log with one line per trade and a note on the setup.
- Support messages about conduct rules, in date order.
- Payout records, including any hold and the clause cited.
The third item matters more than it looks. Where a detection signal is a new device or location, the verification record establishes that the account holder was the person who set the account up, and the trade log establishes that the same person was trading it. Together they answer the question the signal raises. Without them the firm has a signal and no explanation.
The sixth item is the one traders forget. A hold that cites a clause is a specific dispute with a specific answer; a hold without a cited clause is worth escalating in writing. Keeping the request and the reply turns a vague complaint into a documented sequence, and documented sequences are what firms respond to.
The practical risk of each arrangement
The arrangements differ less in whether they are permitted than in how likely they are to be detected and what happens when they are.
| Arrangement | Detection likelihood | Typical consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Account holder trades everything | None — the intended case | None |
| Relative places occasional trades | High: new device, style change, unanswerable questions | Account closure; fee forfeited |
| Paid service where managed trading is permitted | Low if declared | None, subject to the other conduct rules |
| Paid service where it is prohibited | High at review | Pass reversed or payout withheld |
| Account bought from a third party | Near-certain at the identity or payment check | Closure without refund |
| Several own accounts, independent ideas | Low | None within the cap |
The second row is the one worth weighing carefully, because the motivation is usually benign and the consequence is not proportionate. A trader who lets a family member take one trade while travelling has not defrauded anyone, and the firm will still close the account. The rule does not distinguish between a favour and a service, and a trader who wants the account should arrange not to need the favour.
The fourth row is the commercial case and the one most likely to produce a large loss, because the service fee and the evaluation fee are both spent before the review. That is why the terms check belongs before the purchase, and why a service that will not perform one is telling you something about how it expects the arrangement to end.
What if the account is held by a company
Some traders register a company and hold evaluations through it. Whether the third-party clause then permits employees to trade depends entirely on the firm's terms, and the answer is not uniform.
Where a firm permits corporate accounts, the terms usually name who may trade: a director, a named authorised trader, or any employee under a written mandate. The permission is specific rather than general, and a colleague who trades without being named is in the same position as a relative on a personal account. The corporate form does not create permission by itself.
Where a firm does not permit corporate accounts, the account is personal regardless of who funded it, and the account holder is the verified individual. Paying the evaluation fee from a company card does not change that. The identity check is on the person, and the clause applies to whoever places the trades.
Three questions settle it before the purchase. Can a company hold the account? If so, who must be named as the trader? And does the payout go to the company or to the individual? The third matters because a payout to an entity that is not the account holder fails the payment-name check, which is the same failure that stops a transferred account.
For a trader operating alone, the corporate structure is usually a tax and liability decision rather than a trading one, and it does not change the account's conduct rules. For a trader with staff, the mandate list is the important document: it is the written permission that converts a shared activity into a defined one, and it is the first thing a review will ask for.
Common questions
Can a family member trade my prop firm account?
Not under the standard clause, which requires the account holder to place every trade. Discussing trades is fine; placing them is not. The arrangement is only compliant where the terms expressly permit it.
Is sharing login details a breach even if the other person never trades?
At most firms, yes. The access clause is separate from the trading clause, and sharing credentials breaks the audit trail even when no order is sent.
Can I buy a passed challenge from someone else?
No. The account is issued to a verified person and the terms require that person to have traded it. A transferred account fails the identity check and is closed, usually without a refund.
Are passing services allowed?
Only at firms that expressly permit third-party or managed trading. Where the terms require the account holder to trade, a purchased pass can be reversed at funding or at payout. Confirm the permission in writing before buying the service.
Can two people own one funded account?
Only through a product designed for it. Some firms sell team or partner accounts with defined ownership and payout splits. An individual evaluation cannot be converted into a joint account, even if both people fund it.
Can I run several accounts at once?
Usually yes, up to a per-person or per-household cap, provided the positions are independent. Mirroring the same trade across accounts, or hedging one against another, is typically restricted because it concentrates or offsets risk in ways the evaluation did not price.
How would a firm know if someone else traded?
Through login records, device and location data, trade-timestamp comparison across accounts, style changes mid-account, and questions at the payout review. No single signal is conclusive, which is why firms combine them and then ask for an explanation.
Does using a VPS count as account sharing?
No. A server running your own terminal does not introduce a third party. The rule concerns who places the trades and who holds the credentials.
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ElitePropX is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any proprietary trading firm. Conduct clauses and enforcement practices vary by firm and change without notice; verify them against the firm's own terms before purchasing an evaluation. Trading involves substantial risk of loss.