The best 25K futures prop firm accounts, ranked: 64 plans compared

A 25K account is where most traders start with a futures prop firm. It is one of the cheapest sizes to buy and one of the easiest to replace if it blows up. It is also where the differences between firms are hardest to see, because most 25K plans look alike on the pricing page: 41 of 64 ask for a $1,500 target and 38 give you a $1,000 drawdown. Typical prices run from $17 to $419.

The rules underneath are not the same. We track 64 permanent 25K futures plans from 21 firms, and the gap between the best and the worst is wide: the top plan scores 81, the median scores 51, and the bottom three score between 14 and 16.

How we score a plan

The PropBench Score ranks each plan against every other plan of the same size and market. It has five equal parts, 20% each, and every one is plain math on the published rules:

• Cost: the expected cost to reach your first payout. That is the price of one try (plus any activation fee) divided by the odds that a trader with no edge, a coin flip trader, gets from day one to a first withdrawal.
• Speed: how many trading days a steady trader needs to reach a first payout. The steady trader makes 0.4% of the account every day ($100 on a 25K) and never loses.
• Payouts: what that same steady trader actually keeps from 63 funded trading days, after the buffer, profit goals, caps, split and fees.
• Rules: a checklist of trading restrictions: consistency rules, minimum days, daily loss limits, intraday trailing drawdown, time limits, news and overnight bans.
• Stability: how many times the firm made its rules worse in the last 12 months.

Prices are each plan's typical price over the last 90 days, coupons included, so a one day sale does not reshuffle the table. The full formulas are on our cost, speed and payouts page.

The 10 best 25K futures plans

For comparison, the median 25K plan costs $144 for one try with its activation fee, $996 to a first payout, takes 29 days and leaves the steady trader with $4,400.

Why E8 Zero Starter is first

E8 Markets' Zero Starter is not the cheapest plan here. At $128 it sits right at the middle of the field on price, and its cost to a first payout ($645) ranks 13th of 64. It wins because it is good at everything else at once: 16 days to a first payout (9th), $5,040 kept (4th) and a light rulebook. The evaluation asks for $1,500 on a $1,000 end of day trailing drawdown, with no daily loss limit and a 40% consistency rule. Its score parts are 81 for cost, 86 for speed, 94 for payouts and 86 for rules.

Zero Max, fourth, has the same rules at $228. The extra $100 is the only reason it ranks lower.

Lucid and Blue Guardian: the value picks

LucidFlex ($79) and Blue Guardian Reserve ($72) are the best plans that are also cheap. Both cost under $400 to a first payout, both pay a 90% split, and both use a $1,000 end of day trailing drawdown. What holds them back is the rulebook: both carry a $600 daily loss limit in the evaluation, which our rules check counts against them.

The cheapest 25K plans to a first payout

If price is all you care about, the order changes:

TradeDay's Quick Pay plans are the cheapest way to a first payout at this size, but they score 52 because the steady trader keeps only $3,150 from them, against $4,400 for the median plan. Cheap to get paid once is not the same as paying well.

Cost to first payout is not a forecast of what you will spend. A skilled trader spends less. It is a yardstick that treats every plan the same way, so the order is what matters.

The fastest 25K plans to a first payout

Every plan in this table is either an instant account or a one step fast track, which is why they cost two to five times more than the cheapest evaluations. Top One Ignite is the fastest, but its payout rules leave the steady trader with $1,800, the lowest number in this table.

What 25K plans have in common

Of the 64 plans, 39 use an end of day trailing drawdown in the evaluation, 9 trail intraday, 4 use a static drawdown and 12 skip the evaluation entirely. The lowest scoring plans, Bulenox's two 25K Qualification accounts and Funded Futures Family's 25K Velocity, score between 14 and 16. On all three the steady trader needs 41 days to reach a first payout, against 29 for the median plan.

How to use this list

Pick the column that matches how you trade: cost to first payout if you expect to retry, days and money kept if you expect to pass. The full ranking, with every size and a filter for platforms, is on the leaderboard, and every plan page shows the rules we used with a source for each one.

Rules and prices change. We check every firm's pages daily, and when a 25K plan's rules move, the change log shows the before and after.