Prop firm accounts · Simulated environment

Do prop firms use real money? What each firm puts in writing

For five of the six firms read for this page, the answer is written on their own websites and it is the same one: the environment is simulated and the funds are virtual. You do not have to infer it or take anyone's word for it, because they say so themselves.

The sixth does not fit, which is why it is here. It separates the evaluation programme, which is simulated, from a live account that does reach the market, and it splits the two across two different companies. That is enough to stop "prop firms trade in simulation" from being a law of the industry. It is what a handful of specific documents say, and every one of them is quoted and linked below.

Checked on 31 August 2026 on each firm's own site

Each firm sets its own conditions and can change them

What each firm's own footer says

FTMO: simulated
fictitious funds
The Prop Trade: simulated
virtual capital
Xfunded: simulated
virtual funds
FundedNext: simulated
no live orders
Hantec Trader: simulated
demo accounts
Topstep: both
split by entity

Read at source on 31 August 2026 · every notice is quoted and linked further down

What "simulated" actually means

That the prices are real and your orders are not. The quote you see comes from the market; the position you open stays inside the programme.

The clearest explanation comes from FTMO's own technical documentation, and it is worth reading in full because both halves matter. One of their accounts is "an account with fully fictitious funds, however, with real market quotes from liquidity providers". Those providers "do not provide us or FTMO Traders with any real money (liquidity), only with the market quotes".

Which leads to the sentence that settles the question this page asks: "Our clients therefore never actually perform any trades on live markets". The chart is real, the spread is real, the Sunday gap is real. The one thing that never arrives anywhere is your order.

The same firm describes what it does with that data on its own behalf: it trades "on its own account (outside of the FTMO platform) with real financial means" and may use account data to decide what it executes in its own live accounts, with no "impact on FTMO's clients and their simulated trading". That is its move, in its account and with its money, on the far side of a wall you never cross.

None of this is an awkward discovery or an exposé. It is published, in the open, on the firm's own website. What is true is that it is rarely on the page a buyer arrives through, and the distance between where a thing is promised and where it is qualified is what section 05 is about.

What each one writes, in its own words

Five firms, five notices they published themselves. They say the same thing in different words, and three of them are the ones this site names.

The first three are the prop firms named in how the service works. The other two have no relationship with Fondeobot and are here for one reason: they publish their notice where anyone can read it, so they show that the wording is not a quirk of one company.

None of the five is hiding anything, and saying so matters as much as quoting them. All five notices sit on the home page or in the terms, in the open, with no sign-up and no searching. What it takes to find them is scrolling to the bottom.

FirmWhat its own notice says

FTMOSimulated

Account type: Demo, with fictitious funds
Quotes: Real, from liquidity providers
Orders reaching the market: None
Where it is written: Footer and technical FAQ

“Please note that all accounts we provide to our clients are demo accounts with fictitious funds and any trading is in a simulated environment only.” The same line appears on its home page, in its terms and on its forbidden practices page.

The Prop TradeSimulated

Account type: All of them, in a simulated environment
Capital: Virtual
Orders reaching the market: None
What the fee is: Not a deposit and not an investment

“All accounts provided by thePropTrade are operating exclusively in a simulated trading environment using virtual capital. No actual trades are executed on live financial markets.” And on what you pay: “Program fees are not deposits, do not represent client funds, and should not be considered investments under any circumstances.”

XfundedSimulated

Account type: All of them, in a simulated environment
Capital: Virtual funds
Orders reaching the market: None
What the fee is: A service fee

“All XFunded accounts operate in a simulated trading environment using virtual funds. No real trading is executed on financial markets.” It adds that the fees “do not represent deposits, investments, or client funds” and grant no “ownership, profit-sharing rights, or financial returns”.

FundedNextSimulated

Account type: Demo, with virtual capital
What it says it is not: Broker, dealer, exchange or adviser
Orders reaching the market: None
Client deposits: Neither accepted nor managed

It heads the paragraph “No Client Funds / No Live Trading” and spells it out: “FundedNext is not a broker, dealer, exchange, or investment advisor, and does not accept or manage client deposits. Participants do not trade real assets or place live market orders.”

Hantec TraderSimulated

Account type: Demo accounts
Balance: Simulated
Language of the notice: The visitor's, Spanish included
Where it is written: Footer, linking to the terms

Its footer states that all accounts are demonstration accounts holding a simulated balance for trading, and that all trading takes place in a simulated environment. Paraphrased and not quoted on purpose: the notice was read in Spanish, which is the version its site serves, and a translation of somebody else's notice is not their notice.

And one firm that does separate the live account

Topstep does not say one thing or the other: it says both, and keeps them apart. It is why this page cannot end on “the industry runs on simulation”.

In its own footer, Topstep splits its activity between two companies and says which does what. On one side, the "simulated trading program services, comprising the Trading Combine, and the Express Funded Account", operated by TopstepTrader, LLC. On the other, the "live funded proprietary trading firm services", operated by TopstepFunded LLC.

That second entity is described with a condition attached: it offers the live account "for individuals demonstrating proficiency in TopstepTrader's simulated trading evaluation program". So the step from one to the other exists, it is explicit, and the firm decides it by watching what you did in the simulator. It is not a stage you age into and not something you can buy.

One firm built that way changes the useful question. It stops being "is this real or is it a simulator?", which a prejudice can answer, and becomes "what does this particular firm's contract say, in today's version?", which only reading can. Both architectures are legitimate and neither is, on its own, a sign of anything.

Where the difference comes from is worth noticing, because it is not virtue. Topstep trades futures in the United States, where its brokerage arm is registered and supervised; the other five offer mostly CFDs and forex from jurisdictions with no equivalent obligation. The corporate structure follows the framework rather than the other way round. What that framework means for you — which supervisor stands behind it and which protections never reach you — is covered in the page on whether prop firm accounts are legit.

What a simulated environment changes for you

Less than the word “simulated” suggests, and somewhere other than where people fear. What moves is not the quality of the trading: it is who decides what you get paid.

The price does not change, and that is the good part
The quotes come from the market, so the volatility, the spread, the opening gaps and the behaviour around a release are the real ones. A strategy that breaks on a weekend gap breaks here too. As an evaluation environment it is a reasonable one, and anyone telling you a simulator "does not count" is confusing the price with the execution.
What does change is that your order never reaches a book
There is no counterparty looking for you, you consume no liquidity and you supply none. In practice that means the slippage and the rejections you would meet with real size in a real market depend here on the platform's execution model rather than on the market. And it means an excellent result in the simulator does not prove that the same size could have been traded outside it.
What you collect is not your profit: it is a contractual reward
This is the underlying change and the one that is almost never written down. In a simulated account there is no profit of yours to split, because no trade reached the market. What exists is a payment obligation the firm takes on if you follow its rules, calculated on a result its own system measures. Xfunded puts it the other way round and in plain words: the fees grant no "ownership, profit-sharing rights, or financial returns".
And what you pay is real money, with both consequences
The evaluation fee is a firm payment for a service, not a refundable deposit, and the three firms that write it down write it in those terms. The good consequence is that you cannot lose more than that: there is no negative balance to reach because there is no balance of yours. The uncomfortable one is that if something goes wrong you are not an investor with an account, you are a customer with an invoice.

How to check a particular firm's environment

Four steps, all of them over public documents, none of which needs asking anyone. They take ten minutes and they work for any firm.

Scroll to the footer before you look at the pricing
That is where all six notices on this page were, without exception. Look for the words "simulated", "demo", "virtual" and "fictitious". If the footer says nothing about the environment, that is information in itself: it means the answer lives in the terms and you have to go and find it there.
Check whether the notice separates the funded stage from the evaluation
It is the difference between the first five firms and the sixth, and it is the one question that genuinely changes what you are buying. A notice saying "all accounts" is answering for the funded stage as well. One that names a simulated programme and a live account separately is telling you both exist and that somebody decides the step between them.
See whether the same footer points at a rule on simulated results
Two of the six reproduce on their sites the warning that rule 4.41 of the US CFTC regulations imposes on anyone showing hypothetical results: that they do not represent real trading, that the trades were never executed, and that they are designed with the benefit of hindsight. A firm reproducing it is not an alarm; it is a reliable clue about the nature of the numbers it shows you.
Compare the register of the footer with the register of the landing page, and trust the footer
On half the sites read here, the landing page talks about unlocking capital and funded accounts while the footer talks about a simulated environment and virtual funds. Both sit on the same page and they do not contradict each other in law: one is the product's commercial name, the other its exact description. But if you have to pick one to decide on, pick the one the firm wrote expecting a lawyer to read it.

The four steps apply just as well to whoever sells you a program to trade those accounts, and there would be no sense in writing them here and not turning them on what this site sells: what the price includes in writing, who signs the contract, and what exactly is claimed about results. Fondeobot sells software, and what it publishes about its system are backtests — which are, precisely, simulated results.

If what you need is the step before this one — what a prop firm is, where the term comes from and how an evaluation runs end to end — it is in the page on what a prop firm is.

Sources · read on 31 August 2026

Frequently asked questions

Why does a prop firm use a simulated environment?

Because it lets the firm evaluate a lot of people at once without exposing capital in the market and without the obligations it would carry if it accepted deposits and executed orders on someone else's behalf. FTMO describes it in its technical documentation: its accounts hold fictitious funds but carry real market quotes from liquidity providers, who supply prices rather than money, so its clients never actually trade on live markets. The firm trades on its own account with real means outside that platform, and may use what it sees in client accounts to decide what it executes in its own. It is a legitimate and fairly widespread architecture, and all you need is to know that it is the one in front of you.

If my order never reaches the market, are the results realistic?

The prices are and the execution is not, and the two are worth separating because they almost always get mixed up. The quotes come from the market, so the volatility, the spreads, the opening gaps and the behaviour around a release are the real ones: a strategy that breaks on a weekend gap breaks inside the simulator too. What you cannot treat as proven is that the same size could have been traded outside it, because in a simulated environment you neither consume nor supply liquidity, and slippage and rejections depend on the platform's model rather than on the order book. As evidence of discipline and risk management it holds; as evidence of execution capacity it does not.

Can I lose more than the evaluation fee?

Not in the account, and that is the reassuring part: there is no balance of yours, so there is no negative balance to reach and no debt that can grow against you. What you have spent is the fee, which is a firm payment for a service rather than a refundable deposit, and that money is real. The loss to plan for is that one, plus the fees for any retries, plus whatever you paid for the software or training you use. It is a bounded exposure known in advance, which is the opposite of the risk carried by a leveraged account of your own.

How do I check whether the account I am offered is simulated?

By scrolling to the footer of the home page before you look at the pricing, which is where all six notices cited on this page were, without exception. Look for the words "simulated", "demo", "virtual" and "fictitious", and pay particular attention to whether the notice says "all accounts" or names an evaluation programme and a live account separately. The first is answering for the funded stage as well; the second means both exist and that the firm decides the step between them. If the footer says nothing about the environment, the answer lives in the terms and you have to go and find it there.

Is it legal to call a simulated account a funded account?

That is not a question this page can answer with a yes or a no, because it depends on each country's advertising rules and on the specific case. What can be described is what the firms do: they use "funded" as the commercial name of the product and publish the exact description of what it is in their own footers, so both sit on the same website. That is why the useful check is not arguing about the word but reading the notice beside it. And if you have to pick one of the two texts to decide on, pick the one the firm wrote expecting a lawyer to read it.

Does a bot behave the same in a simulated environment as in a live one?

Against the price yes, against the execution not necessarily. Because the quotes are real, the signals the program generates and the risk limits it trips are the same ones it would trip outside, which is why the firm's targets and drawdowns apply to it exactly as written. What can change is how its orders get filled: slippage, rejections and behaviour with larger size depend on the platform's execution model. A system that is very sensitive to those details can produce different results outside the simulator, and that is one of the things worth asking in writing of whoever sells you the program.

Before you automate, compatibility

A simulated environment does not change the rulebook you have to meet, and it does change what can be automated on top. The process is written out step by step, and compatibility is confirmed before anything is charged.

See how the installation works

Continue reading

Three more guides on this, or on what sits next to it.