FTMO has been running trading evaluations from Prague since 2015, which makes it older than most of the firms that copied its format. It reports more than $650m paid out to traders. Everything is simulated — you are assessed on a demo environment and rewarded on the results, rather than being handed a live brokerage account — and FTMO has been clearer about that wording than most of its competitors.
Two routes, and they are not the same product
The 2-Step Challenge is the original: 10% in phase one, 5% in the Verification phase, a 5% daily loss limit and a 10% maximum loss. That maximum loss is static — fixed against your starting balance, so it never follows your equity up. In practice that single property is worth more than any headline number on this page, and it is the reason the 2-Step scores as well as it does on rule fairness.
The 1-Step Challenge looks like a shortcut and is not one. It asks the same 10% but on a 3% daily loss limit, against a maximum loss that trails your end-of-day balance upward and only stops moving once it reaches your starting capital. It also carries a best-day rule: no single day may account for more than 50% of the profit made on your winning days. Three constraints the 2-Step does not have, for one phase less work.
What you are actually paying for
Account sizes run from $10,000 to $200,000, priced in euros, with a one-time fee that is refunded in full when you take your first reward withdrawal. Neither route has a time limit, and both need a minimum of four trading days. The reward share is 90% on the 1-Step from the beginning; on the 2-Step it starts lower and reaches 90% through the scaling plan, which also raises the account by 25% every four months — up to $2,000,000 — for traders holding 10% net profit and two processed rewards over that period.
Rules, instruments and platforms
Trading runs on MT4, MT5 and cTrader, with TradingView available through an OANDA broker profile. The instrument list covers forex, indices, metals, energies, other commodities, crypto and stocks, all as CFDs. Leverage is not uniform: 1:100 on forex, 1:50 on indices, metals and energies, and 1:3.33 on crypto and stocks — worth checking against your position sizing before you buy rather than after. Commissions are published per class, including $5 per lot on forex.
FTMO also operates a separate futures product on CME contracts, listed here as FTMO Futures. It is a different business with a different rulebook — monthly subscription, trailing drawdown, its own consistency rules — and nothing on this page applies to it.
Where it sits
If you are choosing on drawdown structure, which is where you should start, the FTMO 2-Step is one of the more forgiving large-firm products available, and the track record behind it is real. If you are choosing on entry price, it is not the cheapest and does not try to be. See static vs trailing drawdown for why the two routes here are further apart than their price difference suggests.