Alpha Futures is a UK-registered futures prop firm that sells three programs: the Zero Evaluation, the Standard Evaluation and the Direct Account. All three pay a 90% profit split and measure maximum loss on an end-of-day basis. The main concern is July 2026, when the firm closed its Premium Plan without paying pending Premium payouts and moved accounts to its own platform. This review covers costs, limits, consistency rules and payout terms.
Who operates Alpha Futures
The firm trades under the legal entity ALPHA FUTURES LIMITED, registered in the United Kingdom, and operates from alpha-futures.com. It is a futures-only firm. Traders get simulated capital in contracts across four asset groups: equity and index futures, currency futures, metals and crypto futures. It is not related to Alpha Capital Group, a separate firm that appears beside it in payout rankings.
The firm supports TradingView, WealthCharts and Quantower. Since July 2026 it has also moved its accounts onto its own platform, AlphaTrader.
The July 2026 changes: Premium Plan closure and platform switch
On 12 July 2026, Alpha Futures announced that it was closing its Premium Plan. Under the announcement:
- all active Premium Plan accounts were to be refunded and closed;
- pending payouts earned under the Premium Plan would not be honored, apart from payouts already paid;
- the firm’s agreement with NinjaTrader (Tradovate) ended on 12 July;
- Zero, Advanced and Direct accounts were moved to the firm’s proprietary AlphaTrader platform.
Premium Plan traders got a fee refund but lost profits that had not yet been paid out. Unlike holders of other account types, they were offered no migration path. The precedent matters more than the plan itself. A fee refund is much smaller than a pending payout on a funded account, and a trader building profits here is exposed to the same kind of product decision.
Since then the firm has brought back the Standard Plan with a 50% evaluation consistency rule and a two-day minimum. It sits alongside Zero and Direct as one of the three programs currently on sale.
Programs and costs
Zero Evaluation
Zero is a one-step evaluation in $25K, $50K and $100K sizes. Its prices are $89, $169 and $279.
| Size | Profit target | Daily loss | Max loss (EOD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $25K | $1,500 | $500 | $1,000 |
| $50K | $3,000 | $1,000 | $2,000 |
| $100K | $6,000 | $2,000 | $3,000 |
The minimum is one trading day, and the evaluation stage has no consistency rule. In principle, one strong session can complete a Zero Evaluation. The trade-off is that Zero is the only evaluation with a daily loss limit, so a single bad session can also end it.
Standard Evaluation
Standard is also one step, in $50K, $100K and $150K sizes. Its prices are $129, $239 and $349. The profit targets are $3,000, $6,000 and $9,000. The maximum loss is $2,000, $3,000 and $4,500, measured end of day.
Standard has no daily loss limit. In exchange, the evaluation carries a 50% consistency rule and a two-day minimum. On the $50K and $100K sizes, Standard has the same target and maximum loss as Zero.
Direct Account
The Direct Account skips the evaluation and is instant, in $25K, $50K, $100K and $150K sizes. Its prices are $349, $519, $689 and $859, which is much higher than either evaluation at the same size. The cost reflects that you start in the qualified stage.
Direct still has profit targets, in two tiers per size:
| Size | First target | Later target | Daily loss | Max loss (EOD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $25K | $1,500 | $1,000 | $500 | $1,000 |
| $50K | $3,000 | $2,000 | $1,000 | $2,000 |
| $100K | $6,000 | $4,000 | $2,000 | $3,000 |
| $150K | $9,000 | $6,000 | $3,000 | $4,500 |
The first target matches the evaluation target for that size, and later targets are one-third lower. Direct has no minimum trading days. Its qualified consistency rule is 20%, which is stricter than any other stage.
The Advanced plan
The firm’s consistency terms name Advanced evaluations (40%) and Qualified Advanced (no rule), and Advanced accounts were among those moved to AlphaTrader. Advanced is not currently on sale, so its fees and targets are not available for comparison.
How the loss limits work
On the $25K and $50K sizes, the ratio of profit target to maximum loss is 1:0.67. On a $50K Zero or Standard account, the $3,000 target sits against a $2,000 loss allowance, so you need to make one and a half times the amount you are allowed to lose. On the $100K and $150K sizes the target is twice the maximum loss.
The maximum loss is calculated on an end-of-day (EOD) basis. The loss floor is set from closing balances, so unrealized profit during the session does not ratchet it upward the way a real-time trailing drawdown would. A position that runs up and retraces before the close does not tighten the limit.
The daily loss limits on Zero and Direct work separately from the maximum loss. On a $50K Zero account, losing $1,000 in one day triggers the daily limit even though the account is still $1,000 above its overall floor.
Consistency rules by stage
The consistency rule changes as an account moves from evaluation to qualified status:
- Zero evaluation: none
- Standard evaluation: 50%
- Advanced evaluation: 40%
- Qualified Zero and Standard: 40%
- Qualified Direct: 20%
- Qualified Advanced: none
A consistency rule caps how much of your profit can come from one day. For example, suppose a 40% rule is measured against total profit. A qualified trader with $2,500 in profit whose best day was $1,500 has 60% of profit from one day. That trader would need to keep trading until total profit reached $3,750 before the $1,500 day fell to 40%.
Passing Zero with no consistency rule does not mean trading without one. Once qualified, Zero and Standard accounts both face 40%. Direct accounts face 20%, which in practice requires profits spread across several comparable days rather than one large session.
Payouts
The firm pays a 90% profit split on every program. Payouts are available up to four times per month, after every five winning trading days with at least $200 profit each. The firm says an approved payout is paid in five business days or less.
An example: a qualified $50K trader logs five days of $250, $400, $200, $600 and $350. Each day clears the $200 threshold, so the account becomes eligible for a payout on $1,800 of profit. At 90%, the trader receives $1,620, before any limits set by the consistency rule or other payout terms. A day of $150 profit would not count toward the five, and losing days do not count either.
The $200 threshold is slightly higher than Topstep’s condition of five winning days at $150 or more. Some other futures firms set frequency on a different basis entirely: My Funded Futures pays every 48 hours, and Lucid Trading splits terms by whether a daily loss limit is enabled.
Several terms need confirming with the firm before you trade: the payout cycle for the Direct Account, what triggers Direct’s lower target tier, whether the end-of-day floor trails each new end-of-day high, whether touching it intraday counts as a breach, and whether consistency is measured against total profit or the profit target.
Alpha Futures reports $110 million in total payouts, 11th of 50 firms that publish a total and 1.7% of all reported payouts. The figure is the firm’s own and has not been independently verified. It is also cumulative, so it says nothing about how payouts have been handled since the July changes.
Discount codes and pricing
The code ALPHA40 gives 40% off the Zero Evaluation, checked November 8, 2026. On 13 November 2026 the site showed Standard and Direct at half of list, for example $64.50 for the 50K Standard and $174.50 for the 25K Direct, so confirm at checkout which discount actually applies. Check reset and activation costs separately.
At the discounted prices, the cost per $10,000 of account size works out to:
- Zero $50K: about $20 per $10K ($101 ÷ 5)
- Standard $50K: about $15 per $10K ($77 ÷ 5)
- Standard $150K: about $14 per $10K ($209 ÷ 15)
- Direct $150K: about $34 per $10K ($515 ÷ 15)
These figures assume the 40% code applies and no further fees are added. On that basis, Standard is the cheapest route per dollar of account size, Zero costs more for the absence of an evaluation consistency rule, and Direct costs the most for skipping evaluation. For comparison across firms, see the cheapest prop firm challenges.
Strengths and trade-offs
What works in the firm’s favor:
- A 90% split on every program, with no tiers to unlock.
- End-of-day drawdowns on all programs, which avoids the tightening caused by real-time trailing limits on open profit.
- A choice of evaluation structures: Zero with no evaluation consistency rule, Standard with no daily loss limit, or Direct with no evaluation at all.
- Up to four payout cycles a month, with the firm stating that approved payouts are paid in five business days or less.
- A one-time fee on Direct, though Zero and Standard prices were shown with a monthly label on our 13 November 2026 visit.
What counts against it:
- The Premium Plan closure ended pending earned payouts. This is the main risk factor for anyone building balances on a funded account.
- Trading has moved to the proprietary AlphaTrader platform after the Tradovate arrangement ended, so the platform has a shorter history than established third-party alternatives.
- Consistency rules tighten after qualification, to 40% for Zero and Standard and 20% for Direct.
- Payout eligibility requires $200 winning days. Traders who make small, frequent gains may take longer to reach five qualifying days.
- Direct Account pricing is two to more than three times the evaluation price at the same size.
Trustpilot reviews are polarized: about 85% are five-star and about 10% are one-star, and they span periods before and after the July 2026 changes.
How we checked Alpha Futures
We visited alpha-futures.com on 13 November 2026, connecting from Tallinn, Estonia. It opened normally. On the home page we scrolled to the footer, which names ALPHA FUTURES LIMITED, company number 15655643, with a registered office in Harpenden, England. From there we clicked About, Terms of Use and Terms and Conditions. The Terms of Use say the firm offers simulated trading only and is not required to be authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority. That same page lists a different registered office, at 10 Lower Thames Street, London. No risk warning appeared anywhere we looked.
Prices lined up with the plans described in this review. Zero was listed at $89, $169 and $279 for the 25K, 50K and 100K sizes, Standard at $129, $239 and $349, and Direct from $349 to $859. Two details stood out. Zero and Standard prices carry a “/month” label, while Direct is marked one-time. Some discounts also ran deeper than 40%: the 50K Standard showed $64.50 against a $129 list price. Clicking “Start Evaluation” led to a checkout page on alpha-futures.com with prices on it. We stopped there and paid nothing, so we cannot say whether an account is required before payment.
Next came the register. On Companies House, the UK company register, we searched for 15655643 and opened the record for ALPHA FUTURES LIMITED. It shows the company as Active, a private limited company incorporated 17 April 2024, at the same Harpenden address the footer gives. The domain itself was registered on 2024-04-05, and the earliest Wayback Machine capture of the site is dated 2024-04-20.
When we read Trustpilot on 13 November 2026, the profile showed 4.3/5 from 6,287 reviews. The company had replied to none of the eight newest. Some things remain out of reach for us. We could not verify the $110M payout figure or how quickly payouts actually arrive, because we did not trade or request a withdrawal.
Who it may suit
Zero suits a futures trader who can hit a target quickly and accepts a daily loss cap. The one-day minimum and the absence of an evaluation consistency rule reward a decisive pass. Standard suits a trader who wants the lowest cost per dollar of account size and the room of no daily limit, and who can spread profit across at least two sessions. Direct suits only a trader who values skipping evaluation enough to pay a much higher fee and can trade with the 20% qualified consistency rule.
In every case, the Premium Plan episode argues for withdrawing as soon as each five-day cycle allows. A trader for whom unpaid balances are the main concern may prefer firms with a longer unchanged record, such as those in the best futures prop firms.
Alternatives
| Provider | Score | Fee | Split | Payouts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.4/10 | — | — | — | Review | |
| 6.7/10 | $85 | 80% | Withdraw from day one in PRO. No waiting on payout windows. | Review | |
| 6.6/10 | $418 | 80% | 10 business days | Review |