BrightFunded is a UAE-based proprietary trading firm that sells one-step and two-step evaluations for simulated forex and CFD trading. Traders who pass trade a funded account for a profit split of up to 90%. It also runs a futures program called BrightCore.
Overall, the firm has flexible evaluation terms: no consistency rule, no time limit on the 2-Step, and no news restrictions until funding. Its weaker points are a trailing drawdown on the 1-Step, headline terms that are paid add-ons, a short operating history and an advertised payout speed that differs from its own rules.
What BrightFunded is and who operates it
Bright Global Computer Systems Software Design FZCO, located in Dubai Silicon Oasis, is the entity the terms name as providing BrightFunded’s services. The firm started in 2023, so it has about three years of operating history. Its main product is a paid evaluation. You buy a challenge at a chosen account size, meet a profit target without breaking the loss limits, and then receive a funded account on which profits are shared.
The United States and the United Arab Emirates are restricted countries.
BrightFunded’s core offer is CFD trading on forex and crypto. Instruments also include commodities and indices, and the separate futures product adds equity, metals, FX and energy futures.
Challenge programs and costs
BrightFunded offers two forex/CFD programs, each in six sizes from $5K to $200K. Neither has a consistency rule, and the 2-Step program has no time limit.
1-Step Challenge
- Profit target: 10%
- Daily loss limit: 3%
- Maximum loss: 6%
- Minimum trading days: 5
The 1-Step route is the faster path to funding, but it has the tighter limits. Its maximum loss trails equity until equity reaches 6% above the starting balance, then locks at the initial balance.
2-Step Bright
- Profit target: 8% in Phase 1, 5% in Phase 2
- Daily loss limit: 4%
- Maximum loss: 8%
- Minimum trading days: 5 per phase
The 2-Step version asks for 13% of total profit across two phases rather than 10% in one. In return, the daily and overall loss limits are wider.
What the fees look like
Fees are one-time, and BrightFunded quotes them in dollars and euros. Current prices are discounted from the list price. For example, the $100K 1-Step costs $388 against a $554 list price, a gap of about 30%. At equal sizes, the 2-Step costs slightly less than the 1-Step at every size. At $100K the discounted prices are $372 versus $388.
Trading rules
How the drawdown limits work in money terms
A hypothetical $100K 1-Step account shows the mechanics:
- The 3% daily limit equals $3,000 of loss in a day.
- The 6% maximum loss starts the floor at $94,000.
- As equity rises, the floor trails up behind it.
- Once equity touches $106,000 (6% above the initial balance), the floor locks at $100,000 and no longer trails.
The trade-off is that early gains raise the floor. A trader who reaches $104,000 and then gives back $6,000 can fail even though the account never fell below its starting balance.
On a hypothetical $100K 2-Step account, the 4% daily limit equals $4,000 and the 8% maximum equals $8,000. The profit targets are $8,000 in Phase 1 and $5,000 in Phase 2.
Minimum days and inactivity
Each phase requires 5 trading days. A day only counts if a trade on it stays open for at least one minute, so opening and closing a position within seconds does not satisfy the requirement. An add-on removes the minimum-day requirement in the evaluation. Funded accounts have no minimum-day rule.
Inactivity has its own rule. An account with no trade for 30 days is deactivated. You can reactivate it through support within six months, after which it is permanently closed.
News trading on funded accounts
During the evaluation, news trading is unrestricted. On funded accounts, the firm applies a window of 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after major news events on the affected instruments:
- No trades may be executed in that 10-minute window. This covers pending orders, stop losses and take profits that fill inside it.
- Profit made inside the window is deducted as a soft breach. A soft breach does not fail the account, unlike breaking the daily or maximum loss limit, which is a hard breach and ends it. Losses taken in the window are not compensated.
- A position opened more than 5 minutes before the event can be held and modified. If its stop loss or take profit fills inside the window, that still counts as a soft breach.
- Trades held for at least 48 hours are exempt from the profit deduction.
- Instruments not affected by the release can be traded normally.
In practice, a swing trader holding positions for days is largely untouched by this rule. A short-term trader who leaves tight stops and targets in place around data releases can see profits removed without having placed a trade during the window.
Allowed and prohibited strategies
Expert advisors, copy trading, hedging within an account, and holding overnight and over weekends are permitted. Crypto can be held and traded over weekends. The conditions:
- Copy trading is allowed only between accounts you personally own. Those can be BrightFunded accounts, accounts at other prop firms, or a retail broker account. Copying between accounts owned by different people is prohibited.
- EAs must follow the trading rules, and the firm does not guarantee that third-party EAs work on its platform setup.
- VPNs and changing IP addresses are accepted for travel, but only the account owner may trade. Account sharing is not allowed.
The prohibited list is broad. It covers:
- hedging across accounts, firms or platforms, including through copy trading
- exploiting platform errors or delays
- using external or delayed data feeds
- coordinated or multi-account manipulation
- high-speed or abusive automated tools
- overleveraging, overexposure and one-sided bets
- account rolling
- grid trading, arbitrage, tick scalping and high-frequency trading
Some of these categories, such as “overexposure” and “one-sided bets”, depend on how the firm interprets a trade. This matters most for traders using large position sizes or all-in directional bets.
Leverage
Leverage is the same on the 1-Step and 2-Step programs:
| Asset class | Leverage |
|---|---|
| Forex | 1:100 |
| Metals and energy | 1:40 |
| Indices | 1:20 |
| Crypto (all categories) | 1:5 |
Crypto at 1:5 means a crypto position needs twenty times the margin of a forex position of the same notional size. Margin, not just the drawdown rules, limits position size on crypto CFDs.
Payouts
Profit split and schedule
The profit split is up to 90%:
- 80% base split
- 90% with a paid add-on
- 100% once the account has been scaled up three times (see the scaling section)
BrightFunded advertises “24-Hour Guaranteed Payouts” and a “1-Hour Average Payout Time”, but its rules set a different schedule: the first payout 30 days after funding, then bi-weekly, with weekly payouts available as an add-on. Several terms need confirming in the current rulebook before you pay:
- the payout cycle
- whether the 2-Step maximum loss is static or trailing
- whether the daily limit is measured from balance or equity, and when it resets, which decides whether open losing positions count toward it
- which platforms your program offers, especially if you plan to run EAs
- whether your country is eligible, since the restricted list may not be complete
Payout methods
Withdrawals are paid in crypto (USDC on the ERC-20 network) or by bank transfer in euros, with no minimum payout amount. USDC on ERC-20 carries Ethereum network fees, and a euro-only bank transfer means currency conversion for traders whose banks work in dollars, pounds or Canadian dollars.
The 15% evaluation profit reward
BrightFunded also pays a bonus linked to the profit made during the challenge:
- Reach at least 10% growth on your funded account. Growth across several funded accounts can be combined only within the same linked chain (the original funded account plus the new accounts issued after payouts). Growth from separate funded accounts cannot be combined.
- Take the payout for that performance.
- You then receive a new funded account whose starting balance includes a bonus equal to 15% of your Phase 1 and Phase 2 evaluation profits.
The bonus is not applied automatically. You have to contact support to request it.
Firm-reported payout total
BrightFunded reports $17.4M in total payouts on its payouts page, which places it around 30th of the 50 firms that publish a total and about 0.3% of all payouts those firms report. The figure is self-published.
Scaling plan
Funded accounts can grow under a scaling plan with these conditions:
- Review period: four consecutive months from the first trade
- Profit requirement: profitable in at least two of the four months, with at least 10% total profit
- Payout requirement: at least two completed payouts
- Balance condition: the account must be at breakeven or in profit when the scale-up happens
When all conditions are met, the balance increases by 30% of the original account size, and there is no stated upper limit. From the third scale-up onward, the split becomes 100%.
As a hypothetical example, a $100K account would reach $130K, $160K and then $190K after three scale-ups. Because each review covers four months, that would take at least a year of meeting the conditions.
BrightCore futures program
BrightFunded runs a separate futures offering under the BrightCore name. Payouts there are available every 5 trading days, or every 3 days with an add-on, and approved payouts are processed within 24 hours. Futures payouts are capped at $1,000 to $4,000 per payout depending on account size, and a “2x Payout Cap” add-on doubles the cap. A capped payout changes the math for strong months, because profit above the cap stays in the account until the next cycle.
Platforms and instruments
The platforms named on the site are MetaTrader 5, cTrader, DXtrade, NinjaTrader, Tradovate and TradingView. Earlier descriptions of the firm also mention cTrader and a proprietary platform built on DXtrade.
Track record and Trustpilot profile
The Trustpilot rating is 3.1 from 577 reviews. The breakdown is polarized: 405 five-star reviews (about 70%) and 122 one-star reviews (about 21%), with few in between.
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths:
- No consistency rule on either forex program.
- An unlimited time limit on the 2-Step program.
- No news restrictions during the evaluation, and a 48-hour exemption on funded accounts.
- A path to a 100% split through scaling, plus the 15% evaluation profit reward.
- Copy trading between your own accounts across firms is permitted.
Trade-offs:
- The 1-Step’s trailing drawdown can fail an account that never fell below its starting balance, until the floor locks.
- The best headline terms (90% split, weekly payouts, waived minimum days) are paid add-ons, and the 100% split takes a year or more of scaling.
- The prohibited-strategy list includes judgment-based categories.
- The advertised payout speed differs from the schedule in the rules, and methods are limited to USDC and euro bank transfer.
- The firm has a short operating history, and futures payouts are capped.
How we checked BrightFunded
We visited brightfunded.com on 13 November 2026 from Tallinn, Estonia. The home page opened normally. We scrolled to the footer, then opened the About Us page, the Scaling Plan page and the Terms and Conditions. Later the same day we read the payouts page, the Free $1K Challenge page and the help center articles on trading rules and billing. The footer names two companies: BrightFunded Ltd., incorporated in Saint Lucia under company registration number 2025-00358, and BrightFunded LLC, incorporated in Wyoming with a business address in Austin, Texas. The terms take a different line. They say the services are provided by Bright Global Computer Systems Software Design FZCO, located at Dubai Digital Park, Dubai Silicon Oasis. Separate statements on the site describe companies incorporated in Cyprus under HE 478945 and HE 500567. We saw no risk warning anywhere we looked.
On the home page, the 2-Step Bright rules read a profit target of 8% in Phase 1 and 5% in Phase 2, a 4% daily loss limit, an 8% maximum loss and 5 minimum trading days. Prices were in euros. The 100,000 account showed €477 beside a lower €333.90 figure, and the 5,000 account showed €47 beside €32.90. We did not reach a checkout page, so we cannot say whether buying a challenge requires creating an account first. We bought nothing.
None of the numbers in the footer is a financial licence. They are company registrations, and none of them sits in a register we can query, so we ran no register search for BrightFunded. On Trustpilot, read on 13 November 2026, the firm scored 3.1/5 from 577 reviews, with 70% five-star and 21% one-star. The Wayback Machine’s first capture of the domain is dated 2023-07-15. Domain records show it was registered on 2023-01-09.
Some things we could not check. The payouts page reports $17.4M paid in total and a median approval time of 13 min over the last 30 days. These are the firm’s own figures, and we had no independent way to confirm them.
Who it may suit
The 2-Step Bright program fits traders who want wider loss limits and no deadline, and who can hold trades through funded-account news windows or avoid them. Swing traders benefit most from the 48-hour exemption. Scalpers who trade around data releases, and anyone outside the eligible countries, have more obstacles.
Alternatives
| Provider | Score | Fee | Split | Payouts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.1/10 | $619 | 80% | Bi-Weekly | Review | |
| 7.3/10 | $70 | 90% | 7 day payouts | Review | |
| 7.7/10 | $316 | 80% | Bi-Weekly or On-Demand | Review |