FTMO in the US: simulated capital, not a funded account

What changed, and when

In early 2024 MetaQuotes moved against firms offering grey-label MetaTrader access to US traders, and prop firms lost US MT5 access more or less overnight. FTMO returned around August–September 2025 through a partnership with OANDA, a US-regulated broker, which made it one of very few firms offering MetaTrader 5 to US traders.

This is a year old at the time of writing. It gets recycled as breaking news, and it is not — treat any source presenting it as a fresh development with the scepticism you would apply to any other stale claim.

Two companies, two products

The US offering is split between separate entities, and the split is the thing worth understanding:

So "passing FTMO" in the US does not hand you an account with the firm you evaluated with. It makes you eligible for a product operated by a different company.

The Rewards Account is simulated, and that is stated plainly

FTMO's own US material describes all accounts as demo accounts with fictitious funds, trading in a simulated environment only. A successful participant becomes eligible for an FTMO Rewards Account carrying simulated capital — the word simulated is theirs, not ours. Published figures for the maximum size differ between their pages, so confirm the current one rather than trusting any number quoted in an article.

The reward mechanism is the part that most surprises people. Payment is described as being made in exchange for the data generated by your trading activity in the simulated environment. You are not managing capital and taking a cut of the profit; you are producing a data stream and being paid for it, with your simulated performance deciding how much.

The trading objectives, as published

Read from FTMO's own US objectives page on 13 August 2026. Firms change these without notice, so treat the date as part of the figure and re-check before you buy.

Two of these matter more than they look. The 1-Step daily limit is 3%, not the 5% usually quoted for prop firms generally — a bot sized against a 5% assumption is sized wrong. And the Best Day rule is a consistency constraint: a system that makes most of its money in one session can hit the profit target and still fail, which is a real risk for a strategy that trades rarely and wins big when it does.

What it means if you run a bot

• ·The platform is MetaTrader 5, so an EA or external system can run — but see prop firm FIFO rules, because US-regulated MT5 is not the same execution model as an offshore one.
• ·The objectives above were correct on the date stated. Read them off FTMO's own objectives page immediately before you buy, not from any article including this one.
• ·A breach ends the evaluation and the fee is not returned, which is why drawdown matters more than return on an evaluation account.
• ·Our own worst measured drawdown is around 21%, which would fail a 10% total-drawdown rule outright. That is published on the prop firm page rather than buried, and it is the reason we do not sell this as a challenge-passer.