Reviewed · how we check firm rules
Method · reviewed 23 October 2026
How we check prop firm rules
Every target, drawdown and consistency figure published on this site is supposed to be traceable to the firm that set it. This page describes the standard a figure has to meet before it appears, what the date beside a set of rules actually promises, what happens when a firm changes a threshold, and what to do when something here is wrong. It is deliberately unglamorous: the value of a rules table is that you can check it.
The short version
- Primary sources only: the firm's own plan page, help centre or terms — never another comparison site.
- Figures are published by plan name, because most firms sell several rulebooks under one logo.
- Every checked row carries the date it was read. A row without a date does not exist here.
- If a figure cannot be confirmed, the firm is named and the number is withheld.
- Corrections come from readers. A wrong number that is reported gets fixed and dated.
The 2026 rules matrix is where this standard is applied most strictly, because it is the page people use as a checklist before buying an evaluation. The firm comparison applies the same rule across a wider list of firms, and flags the rows that were not checked in the current pass rather than letting them borrow the authority of the ones that were.
What counts as a source
A figure enters this site only if it appears in documentation published by the firm whose account it governs. In practice that means one of three things: the plan page on the firm's own website, an article in the firm's help centre, or the trading terms shown during checkout. Where a firm publishes rules only inside its dashboard after purchase, the help centre is cited and the figure is described as published rather than as independently verified.
The test is whether a reader can follow the link and see the same number. If they cannot — because the page is behind a login, because the figure lives in a PDF that changes address, or because the term appears nowhere outside a marketing email — the figure is either described qualitatively or left out.
Sources that are not enough on their own
Several kinds of source are common in this market and none of them qualifies as primary. A review site's comparison table is a third party's reading of the rules, and it may be two rulebooks out of date. A forum post is one trader's experience of an outcome, which is useful evidence about payout behaviour and weak evidence about a percentage. A video walkthrough is usually recording a dashboard that has since been updated. Our own older articles are not a source either: a page that cites another page on this site is not a citation, which is why rule claims route to the firm rather than to a sibling article.
The one exception is deliberate and narrow. When the question is what traders actually experience — whether a payout arrived, how long a support ticket took, whether a breach was reversed — first-hand accounts are the evidence, and they are labelled as accounts rather than as terms.
Why figures are published by plan, not by firm
Almost every firm in this market sells more than one product under one brand, and the products frequently have different rules. One firm may offer a static floor on a two-phase plan and a trailing floor on a one-phase plan; another may sell a standard evaluation and a cheaper variant with a lower target and a tighter daily stop. A comparison that says "firm X has a 10% drawdown" is therefore not wrong so much as unusable, because the reader cannot tell which product the number belongs to.
This is why the matrix names plans — FTMO 2-Step, FundedNext Stellar 2-Step, The5ers High Stakes, Apex EOD, Topstep Combine — rather than brands. It is also why some firms appear without figures at all. A firm with five products and no single standard schedule cannot be summarised in one row without inventing a rule that nobody sells.
What a checked date means
The date beside a group of rows is the date someone opened the firm's documentation and read the figures off it. That is all it means, and it is worth being precise about both halves of the promise.
What it does promise: on that date, the number on this site matched the number on the firm's page. The link in the sources note goes to the page that was read, so the claim can be tested rather than taken on trust.
What it does not promise: that the firm has not changed the rule since, or that the same figure applies to a plan that launched last week. Firms in this industry revise targets, tighten daily stops and rewrite consistency clauses with no announcement, and often with no changelog. A date is a statement about the past, not a guarantee about tomorrow.
How often rows are re-read
There is no fixed sweep in which every firm is re-checked on a schedule, and claiming one would be a promise the page cannot keep at this size. In practice a row is re-read in four situations: when we are about to trade that firm's evaluation, when a client or reader reports a mismatch, when a firm announces a change, and when a page is rewritten for another reason. Because that cadence is uneven, the date is published per row set rather than as a single site-wide "last updated" stamp — a page updated for a wording change should not imply that every figure on it was re-verified.
Practically: a row dated within the last few weeks is a reasonable basis for a decision. A row dated six months ago is a starting point, and the number you act on should be the one on the firm's page at checkout.
When a firm changes a rule
The response depends on what changed, and there are only three honest options.
Update the figure and the date. The straightforward case: the target moved from 8% to 10%, the new number is on the firm's page, the row is corrected and re-dated. Old numbers are not kept alongside new ones, because a table with two versions of the same rule is a table nobody can use.
Remove the figure and keep the firm. Used when the firm has restructured its products so that the published row no longer describes anything on sale. The firm stays in the list with a note explaining that its plans now differ enough that a single set of numbers would mislead. This is what happened to several firms in the current matrix.
Add a qualifier rather than a number. Used where the rule exists but is conditional — a daily loss limit that is optional at checkout, a consistency rule that applies only on one payout path, a drawdown that stops trailing once it reaches the starting balance. In each case the condition changes the answer, so the condition is written into the cell instead of being left in a footnote.
What is not an option is leaving a superseded number in place because it is inconvenient to re-check. A stale figure that a reader acts on costs them an evaluation fee, which is a worse outcome than a gap in the table.
What we publish when a figure cannot be confirmed
Some firms cannot be tabulated in a single pass. Their plans differ enough that no row is representative, or their rules live behind a checkout flow that varies by country, or the documentation contradicts itself between the plan page and the help centre. In those cases the firm is named, its official site is linked, and the numbers are withheld.
That choice costs visible completeness and buys something more useful: a reader can tell the difference between a figure that was checked and a figure that was copied. It also means the gaps in the matrix are informative. A firm appearing without numbers is a signal to read that firm's own plan page carefully, not a signal that the firm is somehow suspect.
A blank cell is a claim too. It says the number was not confirmed, which is a different statement from "the firm does not publish one" and from "the rule does not exist". Where the distinction matters, the note beside the table says which it is.
Corrections
Rules pages go stale, and the fastest way to find a stale one is for a trader using that firm to read it. Corrections are wanted, not tolerated.
Send the page, the firm and plan, the rule that is wrong, what the firm currently says, and a link or screenshot of the firm's own page showing it. The last part is the only requirement that matters: a correction with a primary source is applied immediately, and one without it starts a check rather than ending an argument. Email support@elitepropx.com with "rules correction" in the subject line, or send the same details on Telegram.
What happens next: the figure is checked against the firm's page, the row is corrected if the report is right, and the checked date moves. Where a correction changes a conclusion — a plan that was described as static turning out to trail, for instance — the surrounding text is rewritten rather than patched, because the arithmetic that follows from the rule usually changes with it. Corrections are not quietly absorbed: the date change is the record that something was fixed.
The target is five working days for a verified correction. A report that cannot be confirmed gets a reply saying so rather than silence.
Commercial interest
Almost every prop firm pays affiliates a commission for sending a funded trader to its checkout, and those commissions are large enough to determine which firm appears first on most comparison sites. ElitePropX takes no affiliate commission from any firm, and no firm can pay for placement, for a better row or for a page written about it.
The commercial interest here runs the other way, and it is worth naming because it shapes the method: this site sells a service that trades evaluations against these rulebooks. A wrong drawdown figure is not an editorial embarrassment, it is an operational loss. That is a bias, but it is a bias in favour of reading the primary source carefully rather than in favour of whichever firm pays best this month.
Where a page discusses a firm that the service trades regularly, that is stated in the copy. Being a client of a firm's product does not make its rules better, and it does not stop the row from being corrected.
What this method cannot do
Three limits are worth stating plainly, because a rules page that oversells its certainty is worse than one that is candid about its edges.
It cannot make a firm's terms stable. The date tells you when the page was read, not when the firm last changed the rule, and firms sometimes change terms mid-cohort. The number that governs your account is the one in the agreement you accept, not the one on any third-party site, including this one.
It cannot resolve contradictions inside a firm's own documentation. Where a plan page, a help-centre article and a checkout screen disagree, the conflict is described rather than settled. In that situation the checkout screen is the one that binds you, which is the advice that matters even though it is unsatisfying.
It cannot cover regional variation. Several firms run different products or pricing by jurisdiction, and a row checked from one region may not describe the plan on sale in another. If the figures you see at checkout do not match the row, the checkout figures are correct and the mismatch is worth reporting.
None of this is a reason to skip the firm's own terms. It is a reason to use a checked table to know what to look for and how the rules interact, then read the plan you are buying. That sequence — rulebook, arithmetic, checkout — is the whole method.
Frequently asked about our method
How often are the prop firm rules on this site checked?
Rows are re-read when a firm is about to be traded, when a reader reports a mismatch, when a firm announces a change, and when a page is rewritten. There is no fixed schedule that re-verifies every firm every month, which is why each row set carries the date it was read rather than the site carrying one "last updated" date. Treat a recent date as a reasonable basis for a decision and an older one as a prompt to check the firm's page.
Why do some firms appear without any figures?
Because their products differ enough that a single row would describe a rulebook nobody sells, or because the figures could not be confirmed from the firm's own documentation in the current pass. In both cases the firm is named and linked, and the numbers are withheld. Publishing an unverified figure to make a table look complete would transfer the risk of a stale number onto the reader.
What if a firm changes its rules after a row is published?
The row is either corrected and re-dated, removed if it no longer describes a product on sale, or rewritten with the condition that makes the rule apply. Superseded numbers are not kept alongside current ones. If you find a row that no longer matches the firm's page, the fastest fix is to send the page, the plan, the rule and a link to the firm's documentation.
Do prop firms pay to be included or ranked?
No. ElitePropX takes no affiliate commission from any firm, and no firm can buy a position in the rules matrix or the comparison. Firms are ordered by plan structure — drawdown type, how the daily limit is measured, when consistency applies — because those are the things that decide whether an evaluation is survivable.
What is the single most common error in a rules comparison?
Comparing a trailing drawdown to a static one as though the headline percentage were the same product. An intraday trailing floor reacts to unrealised profit and can end an account during a retracement that closes green; a static floor never moves. Two firms advertising "10% maximum loss" can be offering materially different difficulty, which is why the drawdown type is a column rather than a footnote.
Where to go next
The method matters only in what it produces. The rules matrix is the full table with sources and dates. The 2026 comparison turns the table into decisions, and the refund guide covers what happens to the fee when an attempt fails. If you would rather not trade the evaluation yourself, the passing service describes what that involves and what it costs.
Corrections, disagreements and better sources are welcome at the contact page.