Forex Prop Firms That Allow EAs and Bots (2026): Rules for 10 Firms

As of 12 November 2026, these forex and CFD prop firms allow fully automated EAs on their evaluations and funded accounts: FTMO, The5ers, E8 Markets, Funded Trading Plus and Blue Guardian. FXIFY allows them with pre-approval on its phase-based plans, and FundingPips allows your own EA if you can prove you own it. FundedNext allows EAs only on accounts under $50,000, on MT4 and MT5, with a paid add-on. Alpha Capital allows EAs only for risk management, after pre-approval. Maven bans EAs and automated trading on every platform. Almost all of them ban high-frequency trading, latency arbitrage, tick scalping and hedging across accounts.

The details below come from each firm's own help pages, checked on 12 November 2026. Where a page wouldn't load directly and we read it through a search snapshot, we say so. Rules change often, so confirm on the firm's site before you buy a challenge.

Nothing here recommends a firm. A strategy that's allowed can still fail a challenge, and leveraged trading carries a high risk of loss.

The summary table

FundingPips' and E8's rule pages were read through search snapshots because the direct pages didn't load for us; check them directly.

Firm by firm

FTMO

FTMO's FAQ allows "discretionary trading, algorithmic trading or EAs". Its forbidden practices page (updated 2 November 2026) bans more than 2,000 server requests a day, exploiting platform errors or delays, opposite positions across accounts and letting third parties trade for you. Third-party EAs that many traders run can be refused a funded account under FTMO's capital allocation cap. News trading is restricted 2 minutes either side of high-impact releases on FTMO Accounts and Instant accounts, but not in the Challenge or Verification. See FTMO's algo trading rules and FTMO 1-Step vs 2-Step for algo traders.

The5ers

The5ers allows any EA on evaluation and funded accounts, as long as you own the source code. It bans high-frequency trading (most trades lasting a few seconds or less), tick scalping, latency, reverse and hedge arbitrage, third-party EAs that other traders run, copy trading with other traders and stealth stop-losses. Its futures program is different: it bans algorithmic trading. See our guide to The5ers EA rules.

E8 Markets

E8 allows EAs unless several users are running the same trades, bans HFT, feed abuse, news straddling and hedging across accounts, and limits trades held under a minute to 50% of your trades. Martingale is explicitly allowed. News trading is restricted on E8 One funded accounts but allowed in the challenge.

FundedNext

FundedNext's CFD accounts allow EAs only below $50,000 in account size, only on MT4 and MT5, and only with a paid add-on. Accounts of $50,000 and above must be traded manually, and there are no EAs on cTrader or Match-Trader. Five named challenge-passing EAs are banned outright.

Alpha Capital

Alpha Capital allows EAs only for risk management and trade assistance, on MT5, after you send the EA file for approval. Fully automated EAs are not approved.

FundingPips

FundingPips allows your own EA to trade fully automatically if you can prove you own it with the source code (a compiled file alone isn't enough). Third-party EAs can only manage trades or risk.

FXIFY

FXIFY allows EAs on its 1, 2 and 3-Phase plans and their funded stage with pre-approval, and bans them on Instant, Instant Lite and Lightning accounts. It bans "herd trading", where many traders run the same vendor EA.

Maven

Maven prohibits EAs and automated trading on all its platforms.

What gets algo traders banned

Across the firms, the same practices come up:

• High-frequency trading and trades lasting only seconds.
• Latency arbitrage and exploiting slow price feeds.
• Hedging across accounts, including opposite positions at two firms.
• Running the same EA as many other traders, which firms treat as group trading.
• Too many server requests, from bots that modify orders constantly.
• News straddling, where pending orders are placed either side of a release.

Off-the-shelf "passing" EAs often break several of these at once. See prop firm passing EAs.

Futures prop firms

Futures firms have different rules: Topstep allows bots only through its API, and Apex bans automation on every account. See futures prop firms that allow algo trading, Topstep's algo rules and Apex's automation rules.

Test your EA against the rules before you pay

An EA that's allowed can still fail on the daily loss limit or the consistency rule. The prop firm challenge simulator in Strategy Lab replays a strategy's backtest through FTMO, The5ers or custom rules from every week or month start, checking limits inside every candle, and shows the pass rate, days to pass and the deepest dip against the daily limit. The consistency calculator checks a best-day rule on your daily P/L.