If you were following retail proprietary trading two years ago and have just looked back at it in mid-2026, the industry probably looks unrecognisable. Dozens of firms gone. Platform access redrawn. Regulators that ignored the model for a decade now drafting registration regimes. This guide is a sober look at where things actually stand — what changed, what survived, and what to look for in a firm you would still trust next year.
The headline: consolidation, not collapse
Between 2024 and the first half of 2026, independent trackers count roughly 80 or more prop firms that closed, wound down, or restructured. That is a real number, and several of those firms left unpaid balances and angry communities behind. But the industry as a whole did not disappear. What happened instead is consolidation: smaller and weaker operators were squeezed out, while a tier of well-capitalised firms with long track records — FTMO, FundedNext, FundingPips, The5%ers, Apex, Topstep among others — has emerged stronger and now controls most of the active payout volume.
The healthier survivors share a few traits worth noticing: multi-year operating histories, transparent public terms, real platform partnerships, and a public payout cadence. Almost everything else is noise.
Ten of the most-cited cases — verifiable numbers
“Eighty firms shut down” is an aggregate; the named cases below are ones independent press and bankruptcy filings let us check. All are recorded with sources in the shutdown tracker.
| Firm | Exit date | Direct cause | Verifiable numbers |
|---|---|---|---|
| True Forex Funds | 2024-05-13 | MetaQuotes license revoked | ~$1.2M unpaid, ~300 traders affected (estimates) |
| The Funded Trader | 2024-03-28 | Payout denials | >$2M in denied payouts reported |
| SurgeTrader | 2024-05-24 | MetaQuotes license revoked | Closed within a week of platform loss |
| Skilled Funded Traders | 2024-03-29 | MetaQuotes + failed platform migration | Same week as The Funded Trader |
| Funded Engineer | 2024-07-15 | Insolvency | Dubai-based; lost FPFX license, then brokerage partner |
| Stocknet Institute | 2024-07-04 | Strategic pivot | UK-based; clean wind-down, challenges disabled |
| Smart Prop Trader | 2024-12-29 | Orderly wind-down | Stopped sales 2024-11-27 with refund plans |
| MyForexFunds | Dismissed 2025-05 | CFTC enforcement | $310M alleged, ~135,000 customers; case dismissed with prejudice; CFTC sanctioned |
| Propel Capital | 2025-08-19 | Capital exhaustion | Folded after 14 months; ~£3,000 assets vs £150,000+ liabilities (UK filings) |
| FundingTicks | 2026-01-18 | Retroactive rule changes → exodus | CEO cited $220M+ paid historically; tiered refunds on wind-down |
The pattern is narrow. Three causes do almost all the work — platform-license loss (the MetaQuotes cluster), payout-pressure insolvency, and regulatory enforcement. FundingTicks is a fourth, separate category: paid historically, then rewrote the rules retroactively and lost the room. That “good track record undone by post-hoc rule changes” pattern is covered in its own piece — reading the terms for retroactive change risk before you buy.
What MetaQuotes actually did
The single most consequential event of the recent past was MetaQuotes’ February 2024 decision to revoke MT4 and MT5 platform access from prop firms that were operating in jurisdictions or business models it deemed problematic. Within roughly nine months MetaTrader’s share among prop firms dropped from about 48% to about 24%, and a wave of closures followed within weeks — including True Forex Funds, SurgeTrader, Skilled Funded Traders, and others documented in our shutdown tracker.
The longer effect has been a platform diversification that is still playing out. Firms have moved onto cTrader, DXtrade, Match-Trader, and a small but growing number of proprietary platforms (Topstep’s TopstepX is the most visible). For US traders specifically, the platform picture in 2026 looks like this:
- MT4 / MT5: blocked for US persons under MetaQuotes’ policy.
- cTrader: new US purchases closed as of March 31, 2026.
- Match-Trader: the supported CFD path.
- Futures-native platforms (Rithmic, NinjaTrader, TopstepX): the normal route for futures-only programs.
If you trade from the US, this is the first thing to confirm before paying for an evaluation, not the last.
The FundingTicks case and the “retroactive rule” problem
In late 2025 FundingTicks introduced a set of rule changes — a one-minute minimum hold for scalpers, higher daily profit requirements, reduced profit splits — and applied them in ways traders described as retroactive: previously valid trades and profits were reduced or invalidated. The Trustpilot score fell from roughly 4.1 to 3.2 over the episode. By January 18–19, 2026 the firm announced a strategic wind-down with a tiered refund plan: full refunds for evaluation and Master accounts, 80% reward split for profitable Master accounts, partial refunds and 90% of realised profit for live accounts in profit, and support continuing through January 31, 2026.
The episode matters as a pattern more than a single story. It crystallised a worry traders have been raising for years — that an unregulated firm can rewrite the rules of an active account — and pushed the conversation about consumer protection in this market into the mainstream. It is worth reading every set of terms with one question in mind: what can the firm change, retroactively, while you are already trading?
The regulatory direction
There is no global ban on prop firms. Most jurisdictions still have no specific statute for funded-account programs at all. What is happening is targeted enforcement at the edges and slow drift toward formal oversight at the centre.
- In the United States the CFTC has continued to target firms that look like unregistered CFD offerings dressed as live institutional accounts. The single highest-profile action — against MyForexFunds in August 2023 — saw the underlying fraud case dismissed with prejudice and the CFTC sanctioned in May 2025, which constrains how aggressively the agency can move on similar models without stronger evidence. (Background: our MyForexFunds retrospective.)
- In Europe and the UK, regulators have leaned on warnings and disclosure rather than new statute. FCA consumer warnings against specific firms remain the main lever.
- At least one major jurisdiction is widely expected to move toward mandatory registration for funded-account providers, likely paired with disclosure of pass rates and average payouts. This is a direction, not yet a rule.
- Operationally, futures-adjacent firms had a hard FIXML data-submission deadline of June 3, 2026. Compliance with FIXML is treated as a prerequisite for continued operation in those markets.
The honest summary: regulation is tightening, not arriving. Treat any firm that markets “we are fully regulated” as if it were any other claim — verify it against the relevant register before trusting it.
What to look for in mid-2026
If we strip everything above down to a checklist that would actually have helped a trader avoid the 80+ shutdowns, it comes out roughly like this.
- Operating record. A continuous, public five-year history through the 2024 platform shock is worth more than any other single signal. New firms can be excellent; they are also where the failures are concentrated.
- Platform access in your jurisdiction. Confirm — before you buy — which platform you will actually get and whether it is supported for residents of your country.
- Transparent and stable terms. Read the rules page. Note what the firm can change unilaterally. Look for retroactive-change clauses. If they exist, weight that heavily.
- Public, ongoing payout cadence. Periodic payout reports with named beneficiaries are far more meaningful than a one-off screenshot.
- Drawdown model that fits your style. A 10% static limit and a 4% intraday trailing limit are not the same risk; we cover this in detail in Drawdown limits explained: static vs trailing vs end-of-day.
You can compare the firms we track on every one of these axes — and download the underlying dataset — on the prop firm comparison table, and read the methodology behind every rating on the evaluation criteria page.
Bottom line
The 2024–2026 stretch was painful, and the industry is not finished restructuring. But the firms that came through it are, on average, more transparent, better capitalised, and more accountable than the field they replaced. The basic risk of prop trading — speculative, unregulated, often loss-making for the trader — has not changed. The work of choosing well has just become more important.
This page is informational and is not investment advice. Always confirm the current terms and the platform a firm can actually offer you in your jurisdiction before funding an account.