A free funded account, in the sense of trading a firm’s capital without paying anything, is not what evaluation-based prop firms sell. Every firm in this ranking charges a challenge fee, and the funded account comes only after you pass. What can be free is the net cost: refunds, pay-after-pass entry charges and promotions each lower it in a different way. The practical question is which route a firm offers and what you must do to collect it. FTMO tops the ranking with a refundable fee. XPIPS is the pay-after-pass option, though it pays out by UPI only. Audacity Capital has the widest loss limits but the lowest user rating, and E8 Markets does not refund its fee.
What “free” means at a prop firm
Fee refunds. You pay the fee upfront and get it back later, typically with a funded-account payout. If you fail the evaluation, the fee is gone, and a refund covers only the account you passed on, not earlier failed attempts unless the terms say so. FTMO, Audacity Capital, V Prop Trader, XPIPS, OneFunded and WeMasterTrade refund the fee. E8 Markets does not.
Pay after pass. You pay a small entry charge to start the evaluation and owe the main fee only after you pass. XPIPS runs its Pay After Pass 1-Step challenge this way, and the fee quoted for it is the entry charge, not the full cost.
Promotional free accounts. Some firms issue a free account, often of the same size, after you reach a payout on a paid one. These come with conditions, such as first order only, specific programs or excluded account types, and they change often.
Giveaways and trading competitions. Firms and their partners sometimes award funded or challenge accounts through contests. You cannot plan around them, and the prize account normally carries the same drawdown and payout rules as a paid one. Check that the firm itself issues the account.
A legitimate prop firm charges an evaluation fee. It does not ask you to deposit your own trading capital. An offer that is free to join but then asks for a deposit to “activate” or “unlock” withdrawals is not a prop firm arrangement.
How we checked the firms in this list
We ran these checks on 2026-11-13, connecting from Tallinn, Estonia, in the EU. For each of the 9 brands we opened the official site, noted the legal entities it names, and looked for matching company register records where a lookup was on record. Only 2 of the 9 brands have a register result. Companies House (UK) confirmed XPIPS Technologies Limited, named on the XPIPS site, as Active, incorporated 24 September 2025. For OneFunded, Companies House (UK) confirmed company number 15918986 as Active, incorporated 27 August 2024. The other 7 brands, including FTMO, FundingPips and WeMasterTrade, have no register lookup on record, so we cannot speak to their registration either way. One more detail stood out. Audacity Capital’s official site redirected to another address.
We also followed each site’s main sign-up button to see what came next. At FTMO (“Get Started”) and WeMasterTrade (“Start Your Challenge”), it led to a sign-in or account page before any payment screen. The remaining 7 brands, among them FundingPips with “Buy Challenge” and OneFunded with “Choose challenge”, opened a checkout without an account. That matters if you prefer to see the price before you hand over an email address.
Public signals help with comparison too. FundingPips shows a Trustpilot score of 4.4 from 73,691 reviews and FTMO shows 4.8 from 56,660, while OneFunded’s 4 rests on just 149 reviews. Archive history varies widely. FTMO’s first archive capture is 2002-11-16, and V Prop Trader’s is 2025-02-06. These checks have limits. We did not open accounts, deposit money, buy a challenge, test payouts or contact support, so nothing here tells you how a firm treats traders once they are inside.
How the order is set
Entries are ranked by the overall score out of 10, from 8.1 for FTMO down to 5.8 for WeMasterTrade. The user rating is a separate figure, and the gaps between the two matter:
- Audacity Capital sits third with a 7.0 score but has a 3.4 user rating, the lowest in the table, from 1,056 reviews.
- V Prop Trader has a 4.7 user rating from 26,665 reviews but scores 6.8, the same as E8 Markets, whose user rating is 4 from 3,304 reviews.
- FundingPips has the largest review count here (72,793) with a 4.4 rating, and FTMO has 56,205 reviews at 4.8.
A high score with a low user rating, as with Audacity Capital, is a reason to read the firm’s trader ratings on the prop firm reviews page before buying, because the two figures measure different things. The review count shows how many ratings stand behind each one.
Where the entries actually differ
Four terms need confirming with the firm before you buy. FundingPips states its daily loss as “3%5%” with no configuration attached, so check which limit applies to your account before sizing positions. Audacity Capital gives its loss limits and targets in pairs, so check which value applies to each phase or account type before relying on the wider limit. WeMasterTrade’s split is “30% / 90%”, and the firm should tell you which figure applies to your account. For XPIPS’s pay-after-pass challenge, get the amount due on passing before you treat the entry price as the cost of the account.
Account size changes every fee comparison
Most fees in the table are quoted for a $100K account, but not all of them. V Prop Trader’s fee is for a $50K account and OneFunded’s is for a $25K account. Their lower dollar figures are not cheaper versions of a $100K challenge. Compare fees only at the same account size, or divide the fee by the account size to get a rough cost per $1,000 of allocation.
FTMO
FTMO (Czechia, operating since 2015) runs a 2-step FTMO Challenge with a 10% then 5% profit target, a 5% daily loss limit, a 10% maximum loss and a minimum of 4 trading days on the $100K account. News trading and weekend holding are restricted. The first payout comes 14 days from the first day of trading, the split is up to 90%, and scaling goes to $2M. The fee is refundable.
FundingPips
FundingPips’ 2 Step Standard sets an 8% target in phase 1 and 5% in phase 2, with a static 10% maximum loss and a 3-day minimum. Its daily loss is the unconfirmed “3%5%” figure noted above. The split is up to 100% with bi-weekly payouts. Scaling tops out at $400K, against $2M at FTMO and Audacity Capital. Like FTMO, FundingPips restricts news trading and weekend holding.
Audacity Capital
Audacity Capital’s Ability Challenge has the loosest loss limits in the table: daily loss of 7.5% / 5% and a static maximum loss of 15% / 10%, with profit targets of 10% / 5%. Weekend holding and EAs are allowed, and news trading is restricted. It is a forex-only challenge, and payouts run by card, PayPal or SEPA rather than the crypto and Rise transfers most other firms use.
E8 Markets and E8 Futures
Both run the E8 One challenge with rules stated in dollars on the $100K account: a $9,000 profit target, $4,000 daily loss and a dynamic $6,000 maximum loss. A dynamic limit moves with your balance or equity as the account grows. A static limit, used by FundingPips, Audacity Capital, XPIPS and OneFunded, stays anchored to the starting balance. The minimum is 1 trading day, payouts come after 3 days and the split is 80%. E8 Markets does not refund the E8 One fee. E8 Futures is the futures version of the same challenge.
V Prop Trader
V Prop Trader’s 2 Step uses the standard 10% / 5% targets, 5% daily loss and 10% maximum loss with a 4-day minimum on a $50K account. Scaling stops at $100K, the lowest ceiling in the table, and the split is up to 80%. The fee is refundable.
XPIPS
XPIPS (United Kingdom, since 2024) has the shortest operating history of the dated entries apart from WeMasterTrade, and the most distinct structure. Its 1-step challenge has a 4% profit target, 5% daily loss, 8% static maximum loss and no minimum trading days. News trading has a 5-minute restriction window, while weekend holding and EAs are allowed. The payout cycle shortens over time, from 30 days to 21 to 14. Payouts are by UPI only, which rules XPIPS out if you cannot receive UPI transfers.
OneFunded
OneFunded’s Core challenge (United Kingdom) is a $25K account with 8% / 5% targets, 5% daily loss, 10% static maximum loss and a 3-day minimum. News trading and EAs are allowed. Payouts run on a 14-day cycle, or a 7-day cycle with an add-on, and scaling reaches $1M.
WeMasterTrade
WeMasterTrade (St. Lucia) has operated only since 2026, so its record as a payer is short. Its Challenge Package covers forex, stocks and crypto, with 8% / 6% targets, 5% daily loss and 10% maximum loss. News trading, weekend holding and EAs are all allowed. Its “30% / 90%” split is one of the terms to confirm above. Payouts are by bank transfer, USDC or other stablecoins.
What a refunded fee is worth
A refund changes the economics only if you pass and get paid. A hypothetical example, not any firm’s terms:
- Challenge fee: $500, refundable with the first payout
- Account: $100K, split 80%
- First payout period: $2,000 gross profit
Assuming the refund comes with the first payout, you receive $1,600 (80% of $2,000) plus the $500 fee, $2,100 in total, and the account cost you nothing. If you fail the first attempt and pass on the second, you have paid $1,000 in fees and recovered $500, so the account cost $500 net.
A loss limit breached before the first payout ends the account, and the refund with it, so the loss limits and minimum days above decide whether a refundable fee ever comes back.
Free funded accounts versus swap-free accounts
A swap-free account, sometimes called an Islamic account, is not a free account. It removes the swap, the overnight financing charge or credit applied to positions held past the daily rollover. Some setups replace it with a fixed holding fee or limit how long positions can stay open.
Among the firms ranked here, FTMO, FundingPips, Audacity Capital and E8 Markets allow swap-free accounts under their challenge or funded account rules. Eligibility, the instruments covered and any substitute fee are set by each firm, so confirm the conditions before holding positions overnight. Weekend holding is a separate rule: FTMO and FundingPips restrict it even where swap-free trading is available.
Checking a “free” offer before you trade it
Before treating any account as free, establish four things:
- What triggers the refund or free account: passing, the first payout or a later one, and whether the offer is limited to a first order or to specific programs.
- The full fee path: the amount due on passing for pay-after-pass models, and whether a refund is paid as cash or as account credit.
- The funded-stage loss rules: static or dynamic, percent or dollars, and whether daily loss is measured on balance or equity. These decide whether you survive long enough to collect anything.
- Payout methods and timing. A refund paid on a 30-day first cycle, or only through a method you cannot use, is worth little.