PROP FIRMS, THE DUE DILIGENCE

Is this prop firm legit? Check before you pay.

TrueBroker is a free broker safety checker, and this page is its method for checking a prop trading firm before you pay for an evaluation: the company behind the brand, the licence claim, the payout receipts, the rules that void a payout, and the free check that runs the lot. The fast version is the live legit check.

Check a prop firm Check

Why is a prop firm a different check from a broker?

With a broker you deposit money that stays yours, held under a licence and, at the better regulators, backed by a compensation scheme. With a prop firm you buy an evaluation: the fee leaves your hands the moment you pay, the funded account is usually a simulation, and the money you hope to see is a share of profits the firm agrees to pay under rules it wrote. So the question is not whether a regulator protects your deposit, because none does. The question is whether the company exists, whether it pays what its rules promise, and whether those rules were written to pay you at all.

How do you check if a prop firm is legitimate?

Six checks, in the order that saves the most money, each one something you can do in minutes with the firm’s own documents open. Where a step cites a firm by name, the receipt is in that firm’s review.

Of the 23 payout claims on TrueBroker’s record across 11 prop firms, 20 are verified in the firm’s own documents, 3 are the firm’s unaudited figures, and none is backed by audited accounts.

1. Find the company behind the brand

   A prop firm is a brand; the company is whatever the terms of service name, usually near the bottom, with a country and a registration number. Look that entity up in the register of the country it names: Companies House for the UK, the Secretary of State for a US state, the commercial register for Prague or Cyprus. You want an active status, an incorporation date older than the payout history the site brags about, and named directors. A site that names no legal entity anywhere has answered the question for you.

2. Test the licence claim on the regulator's own register

   Most prop firms hold no financial licence, and that is normal: you are buying an evaluation, not depositing client money, so no regulator we track licenses the evaluation business itself. What is not normal is a firm that says regulated without a licence number, or with a number that belongs to someone else. Search the number on the register itself, never on a link the firm sends, and check the name and the domain on the FCA and CySEC warning lists. If funded accounts trade real money, ask which licensed broker executes them and check that broker instead.

3. Read the payout claims against receipts

   A payout total on a homepage banner is the firm’s own number until audited accounts back it, which is rarer than the banners suggest. What survives checking is the fine print: whether the challenge fee is refunded and when, the payout cap per cycle, the minimum, any commission on the transfer, and what the advertised profit split requires. The payout record holds every claim we checked, labeled audited, verified at source or self reported, with the date it was read.

4. Read the rules that void a payout before you pay

   Prop firms lose traders money through rules, not theft, and the rules are published. Read the consistency rule, whether daily loss is measured on balance or on equity, the news trading ban, the lifetime payout ceiling and what happens to the account when you withdraw. On our record, Maven Trading‘s own risk disclosure puts the chance of a successful withdrawal below 2.5 percent per transaction, and FXIFY forfeits the funded account when you take your full profit on most of its plans. Both are legal. Both are in the documents.

5. Read the complaints for one pattern

   Ignore the star average and read the one star reviews on Trustpilot and the firm’s own subreddit for a single pattern: payouts denied for a rule breach discovered after the profit was made. One trader arguing about a lot size is noise. Twenty traders describing the same clause in the same month is the business model.

6. Run the name and the website through a checker

   Paste the firm’s name or the exact domain you were sent into the legit check: it answers from the board, the FCA and CySEC warning lists, clone detection, the domain’s registration age and the register of firms that shut down. A firm on the board has a review with the score, the receipts behind it and its payout claims. NOT ON RECORD is not a pass; it means check harder.

What are the red flags of a prop firm scam?

Prop firm scams rarely look like scams. They look like a launch: a discount code and a Discord full of payout screenshots. In the complaint histories behind our verdicts, these are the signals that came first:

• No legal entity, country or registration number anywhere on the site or in the terms.
• A regulated badge with no licence number, or a number that belongs to a different company when you search the register.
• A domain registered in the last year under a brand that claims years of payouts. The legit check reads the registration date for you.
• Payout proof that exists only as screenshots and Discord clips, with no ledger you can query and no audited figure anywhere.
• Guaranteed funding, guaranteed pass rates or accounts with no rules, which is not how an evaluation business survives.
• Resets and retries pushed harder than the funded account itself, because the fee is the product.
• Payment accepted only in crypto, or only through a processor whose receipt carries a different company name.
• Support that lives only on Telegram or Discord, with no ticket system and no postal address.
• A rulebook that changed after you passed, or a rule you supposedly broke that is not in the terms you agreed to.
• Discount codes in every influencer video and not one public complaint the firm has ever answered.

One of these is a reason to keep your card in your pocket. Two together and you are looking at the fee you will not get back.

What makes a prop firm verification score trustworthy?

Any site can print a number beside a logo. A score you can rely on shows its work in five ways. The method exists before the score does, so the number cannot be fitted to the story: at TrueBroker a fixed formula turns five criteria into an unweighted mean, computed before a sentence of the review is written. Every claim carries a receipt you can click, the register entry, the clause, the ledger page, with the date it was read. The score cannot be bought; a firm can rent a labeled slot on the board and that is the only thing money buys. The score moves when the evidence moves, recomputed daily, with its history public in the app so a silent edit would break the record. And it says what it does not know: a firm we hold nothing on answers NOT ON RECORD, never safe.

Hold every verification site to that standard, this one included. The full method is on how we review, and the corrections route is public.

What happens to your money if a prop firm shuts down?

Nothing comes back from a compensation scheme. Investor protection funds cover client money and investments held at an authorised firm, and a challenge fee is neither: it is a purchase from a company that usually holds no licence. The money protection tool spells out what each scheme pays, and a prop firm fee sits outside every row. If a firm goes dark, a dispute with your card issuer is usually the only route, and it runs on a time limit measured in months. The graveyard lists the firms we have verified as gone; a dead firm’s review stays online with a shutdown banner, because the history is the evidence.

Fair questions

THE SHORT VERSION

Six checks before you pay a prop firm: the company in its register, the licence claim on the regulator’s register, the payout terms against receipts, the rules that void a payout, the complaint pattern, and a run through the legit check. TrueBroker holds 232 brokers on record, the prop firms among them with their payout claims checked at source, free and unsponsored, on the site and in the app.