Best Prop Firms With Scaling Plans, Ranked by Profit per Step

Key takeaways

We checked 19 prop firms against their own current rules pages to see which ones publish a real ACCOUNT-SIZE scaling plan, the funded balance itself growing on a profit milestone, rather than a contract-size increase or a multi-account allowance marketed under the same word.

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We checked 19 prop firms against their own current rules pages to see which ones publish a real ACCOUNT-SIZE scaling plan, the funded balance itself growing on a profit milestone, rather than a contract-size increase or a multi-account allowance marketed under the same word. Only 7 pass: ranked by our Scaling Ladder metric (cumulative profit required to reach the ceiling, divided by the ceiling), Earn2Trade (TCP50, $50K to $400K, metric 0.05) leads, ahead of FunderPro ($5,000,000 ceiling, the largest published), FTMO ($2,000,000, the most completely documented), Maven Trading ($1,000,000), FundedNext ($4,000,000), FXIFY (marked, only reachable from a $400,000 start) and Alpha Capital Group (marked, a cross-account ceiling). The5ers and AudaCity Capital are disqualified because their own current pages give conflicting ceiling figures. Tradeify, Bulenox and Lucid Trading publish contract-size increases only, the account’s dollar balance never grows. Take Profit Trader, Topstep, Apex Trader Funding, FundingPips, E8 Markets, Phidias Propfirm and MyFundedFutures have no purchasable account-size ladder at all.

Freshness: checked October 3, 2026. Firms change terms without notice; re-check before you buy. Each firm’s Trustpilot figure carries the date we read it. Apex Trader Funding’s site was down sitewide on October 3, 2026, so its scaling mechanics in this post rely on a Wayback Machine snapshot dated June 30, 2026, marked below.

Quick picks for prop firms with scaling plans

• Fastest ladder: Earn2Trade’s TCP50, $20,000 of cumulative profit reaches its $400,000 ceiling, a 0.05 Scaling Ladder metric.
• Highest ceiling: FunderPro, $5,000,000, the largest published figure we found.
• Automatic with no request: Earn2Trade and FundedNext both fire the scale-up on their own, with no application step.
• Best ladder on futures: none. Every published account-size ladder we found sits at a forex/CFD firm; every futures firm checked publishes contract-size growth, a fixed hard cap, or no scaling plan at all.

See the full comparison below. Background reading on the concept itself: how prop firm scaling plans work.

How scaling plans work

A scaling plan has three moving parts: a milestone (the profit percentage or dollar amount a trader must bank, and over what time window), a size step (how much the balance grows when the milestone clears), and a ceiling (the stated maximum the account can reach). Worked example, using FTMO’s own published rule: FTMO’s Scaling Plan pays a flat +25% boost to the account balance every time a trader banks at least 10% net profit (of the current balance) inside a qualifying 4-month window. Starting at $50,000: the first 10% ($5,000) unlocks a +25% boost, taking the balance to $62,500. The second milestone needs 10% of the new, larger balance ($6,250), lifting it to $78,125. Each milestone’s dollar requirement grows with the balance, even though the percentage (10%) never changes. It takes 17 of these milestones, a minimum of roughly 68 months (about 5.7 years) back to back with no missed window, to climb from $50,000 to FTMO’s published $2,000,000 ceiling, banking $868,178 in cumulative required profit along the way. Scaling Ladder metric = cumulative profit required to reach the ceiling, divided by the ceiling itself: $868,178 / $2,000,000 = 0.434. A lower number means a cheaper, faster ladder to a given dollar ceiling; it lets a $1,000,000 ceiling be compared fairly against a $5,000,000 one, instead of the marketing habit of just naming the biggest dollar figure.

The profit split frequently changes as an account scales too, usually rising (FTMO reaches a 90% share; The5ers reaches 100% with a fixed monthly payout at its highest stage), which is worth knowing but is noted here as context, never as part of the ranking metric itself.

Account size vs contract size vs multiple accounts, the common mistake

The single most common mistake searchers make on this topic: three different mechanics all get called “scaling” by prop firms, and only one of them actually grows the dollar size of a funded account.

• Account-size scaling (what this post ranks): the funded balance itself grows on a published profit milestone, for example FTMO’s $50,000 account becoming a $62,500 account, then larger still.
• Contract-size scaling (Tradeify, Bulenox, Lucid Trading): the account’s dollar size never changes; only the maximum number of contracts or lots a trader may hold rises as trading profit grows.
• Multi-account allowance (Tradeify’s widely quoted “$750K funding”, Topstep’s up-to-5-XFA figure): a trader may buy and hold several separate accounts at the same fixed size; no single account’s balance grows, and the headline dollar figure is really that size multiplied by the account count.

Tradeify is a clear real-world example of the confusion: its own homepage headline, “Trade with $750K funding,” is a 5-account household allowance, not one account’s ceiling. The only thing that actually grows on any single Tradeify funded account is its maximum contract count, 2 minis up to 4 minis at $50,000, triggered automatically by end-of-day equity. We treat Tradeify exactly like every other firm in this comparison.

How we checked prop firms with scaling plans

1. Sources: each firm’s own current scaling-plan page, rules page or help article, read October 3, 2026; never a competing roundup or a homepage tagline alone.
2. Test: a product passes only if the firm’s own current page states an account-SIZE growth mechanism, a milestone, and a ceiling, all at once; contract-size increases and multi-account allowances are noted but routed to their own tables, named plainly.
3. Metric: the Scaling Ladder, cumulative profit required to climb from $50,000 to the published ceiling, divided by the ceiling; lower is a cheaper, faster ladder.
4. Conflicts: where a firm’s own current pages state two different ceilings for the same product, we quote both and route the firm to a correction table rather than silently choosing one or excluding the firm.
5. Live call-ups: a discretionary move to a live account is noted as a fact to weigh, never a reason to rank a firm lower.

Scaling plans compared, checked October 3, 2026

Seven firms publish a real account-size scaling ladder on their own current pages. Sorted by the Scaling Ladder metric, lowest (cheapest, fastest) first.

Notes on this ranking: ^* FXIFY’s own worked example starts from a $400,000 account, not the $50,000 this table standardizes on, and only the first of its four scale-up events restates its profit percentage; the metric shown uses the firm’s own literal worked dollar figures. ^† Alpha Capital Group’s $2,000,000 figure is stated on the firm’s own page as a cumulative total across all of a trader’s scaled accounts combined, not a confirmed single-account ceiling; this table treats it as a single-account cap, the clearest literal reading of the ranking formula, and flags the ambiguity here. FTMO (row 3, 0.434) and Maven Trading (row 4, 0.435) sit within a hair of each other; a small change in how either firm resolves its own final, capped scale-up cycle could swap their order.

Ranked prop firms with scaling plans

Full detail on each of the seven ladders above, in the same order, including the exact milestone wording and what to watch for.

Earn2Trade’s Trader Career Path turns a $50,000 account into $400,000 for the lowest profit outlay we found

Verdict: First by a wide margin: climbing Earn2Trade’s entire published ladder from $50,000 to its $400,000 ceiling needs only $20,000 of cumulative profit, a Scaling Ladder metric of 0.05, the cheapest dollar-for-dollar climb we checked.

Video: “How Does The Trader Career Path Work? Learn About Earn2Trade's Scaling Plan,” Earn2Trade official YouTube channel, February 23, 2022. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: Earn2Trade’s own official explainer of the Trader Career Path growth plan, the exact mechanic this post ranks; the split figures shown in the 2022 upload are stale after the July 2026 split change, noted here so a viewer is not misled.

The mechanic is a dollar-goal ladder, not a flat percentage: hit the profit goal on the current size, withdraw the profit share, and the account upgrades on the spot. $50,000 needs $3,000 profit to reach $100,000; $100,000 needs a $6,000 profit to reach $200,000; $200,000 needs $11,000 profit to reach the $400,000 ceiling. Summed, that is $20,000 of cumulative profit for a $350,000 gain in account size. No fixed calendar window limits any step, so a fast trader is not forced to wait months between upgrades the way a timed plan (FTMO, FundedNext) requires. The split drops to a fixed 60% trader / 40% Earn2Trade once an account reaches the $400,000 size, down from the smaller sizes’ withdrawal-based 50% to 80%.

• Starting size used: $50,000 (TCP50; TCP25 starts at $25,000 and tops out lower, at $200,000, a separate row)
• Published ceiling: $400,000 (TCP50/TCP100). Past that, hitting the $400,000 ceiling’s own goal earns only an unpublished “custom offer,” not a stated higher number.
• Automatic or on request: Automatic. The upgrade fires the moment the trader withdraws the required profit share at each step, with no application or review step.
• Choose it when: You want the cheapest published path, in cumulative profit required, from $50,000 to a six-figure funded balance, with no fixed waiting period between steps.
• Watch out for: The $400,000 ceiling is not a true end point; its own goal leads only to an unpublished custom offer, and funded traders are moved off the simulated LiveSim account to a partner-assigned Live account, either at the firm’s discretion or automatically once the LiveSim profit target is hit, with no published way to decline.
• Trustpilot: 4.6/5 on 5,010 reviews. rules, payouts.

FunderPro publishes the largest scaling ceiling we found, five million dollars, on its entry-level Classic plan

Verdict: Second: FunderPro’s $5,000,000 ceiling is the largest published figure we found, and even with a cautious reading of its own vague scale-up math, the ladder lands near the cheap end on a profit-per-dollar-of-ceiling basis.

Video: “FunderPro's Consistency Rule,” FunderPro official YouTube channel, September 20, 2024. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: FunderPro’s own explainer of its Consistency Rule, the closest official video to its account mechanics; no dedicated scaling-plan video exists on the channel.

FunderPro’s own wording is simple to quote and hard to compute precisely: “Achieve a 10% profit target each trading month, for 3 consecutive months,” after which “your account balance is increased by 50%,” repeatable to $5,000,000. FunderPro never publishes a worked numeric example of its own math, so this post applies the stated 10% and 50% figures sequentially to the compounding balance, the clearest literal reading, and flags that a second reading (applying the reward to the original $50,000 base each cycle instead) would change the result. On that reading, roughly 11 complete 3-month cycles get a trader to just under the $5,000,000 ceiling.

• Starting size used: $50,000 (Classic 2-Phase; the firm-wide Scale-Up Plan also covers One-Phase and Pro Daily/Weekly Rewards once funded)
• Published ceiling: $5,000,000, quoted identically on two separate FunderPro help articles.
• Automatic or on request: Not published either way. No FunderPro article uses the words automatic, apply, request or review in connection with the scale-up.
• Choose it when: You want the single largest published ceiling we found and are comfortable with a firm that does not show its own scaling math step by step.
• Watch out for: FunderPro has no live, real-money stage at any size; every dollar in this ladder, including at the $5,000,000 ceiling, stays inside a simulated account.
• Trustpilot: rating hidden (“breach of our guidelines” banner), 1,560 reviews. rules, payouts.

FTMO’s Scaling Plan is the most completely documented ladder we checked, reaching $2,000,000 in 17 steps

Verdict: Third: the most widely recognized name on this list, and the only firm whose milestone, ceiling and compounding math all check out cleanly against the formula above with no ambiguity.

Video: “FTMO 1-Step Challenge Explained: All 4 Rules You Must Know,” FTMO official YouTube channel, March 22, 2026. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: FTMO’s own Challenge-rules explainer; no dedicated Scaling Plan walkthrough video exists on FTMO’s official channel.

A flat +25% boost to the account balance every time a trader banks at least 10% net profit within a rolling 4-month window, with at least 2 processed payouts in that same window. See the worked example above: 17 such milestones, banking $868,178 of cumulative required profit, carry a $50,000 account to the $2,000,000 ceiling, a Scaling Ladder metric of 0.434. At a strict minimum of 4 months per milestone with no missed window, that is roughly 68 months, nearly six years, of back-to-back qualifying periods.

• Starting size used: $50,000 (2-Step Challenge)
• Published ceiling: $2,000,000, stated on FTMO’s own Scaling Plan page.
• Automatic or on request: Not published either way. FTMO’s current Scaling Plan page states the requirements and the reward but does not say whether the +25% boost applies automatically once they are met, or needs a separate request.
• Choose it when: You want the most widely recognized brand’s balance-growth plan, fully documented on one page, and accept a multi-year realistic timeline to the full ceiling.
• Watch out for: FTMO does not say whether the scale-up applies automatically or needs a request; confirm directly with FTMO before counting on a specific date.
• Trustpilot: 4.8/5 on 53,448 reviews. rules, payouts.

Maven Trading’s scaling rule is a near-mirror of FTMO’s, with a lower million-dollar ceiling

Verdict: Fourth, within a hair of FTMO: a 10%-profit, +25%-balance cycle almost identical to FTMO’s, repeatable to a $1,000,000 ceiling, with no stated product exceptions anywhere on the firm’s site.

Video: “Maven Challenge Add-Ons Explained,” Maven Trading official YouTube channel, September 13, 2026. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: Maven’s own explainer of its challenge add-ons; no dedicated scaling-plan video exists on the official channel.

Profit 10% over 4 months (2.5% a month), with at least one payout processed every month of that window, earns a +25% balance increase, repeatable to $1,000,000. Applied sequentially from $50,000, reaching the cap takes roughly 434,747 dollars of cumulative required profit across its final, capped cycle, a Scaling Ladder metric of about 0.435, almost identical to FTMO’s 0.434. The same FAQ answer that states the ceiling also contains an unresolved, apparently self-contradicting sentence about the withdrawal cap scaling and not scaling at once; quoted here because Maven’s own page does not clarify it.

• Starting size used: $50,000 (Standard 2-Step)
• Published ceiling: $1,000,000, the only ceiling figure published anywhere on maventrading.com.
• Automatic or on request: Not published by name. Maven’s FAQ describes only the qualifying conditions and says the account “will be rewarded”, with no application or approval language either way.
• Choose it when: You want a rule nearly identical to FTMO’s largest-name scaling plan, on a cheaper evaluation, accepting a smaller $1,000,000 ceiling and a firm that does not say whether the step-up is automatic.
• Watch out for: The monthly payout requirement means a trader must also keep clearing Maven’s own payout-eligibility steps every single month of the qualifying window, not just hit the 2.5% monthly profit number.
• Trustpilot: rating hidden (“breach of our guidelines” banner), 5,209 reviews. rules, status.

FundedNext Pro scales a Stellar account to $4,000,000 but asks for the most cumulative profit of any ladder here

Verdict: Fifth: a published, automatic ladder to one of the largest ceilings we found, $4,000,000, but it also demands more cumulative profit along the way than any other ladder that qualifies for this table.

Video: no official FundedNext video addresses its scaling program specifically, and we do not substitute an unrelated upload just to fill the slot.

Each scale-up event needs 4 Performance Reward cycles at a minimum 4% growth each, roughly 16% of the current balance in cumulative profit per event, after which the balance jumps by +25%. Carrying that sequentially from $50,000 to $4,000,000 takes 20 scale-up events and about $2,743,558 of cumulative required profit, a Scaling Ladder metric of 0.686, the highest (least efficient) of every firm that clears this post’s test with a clean ceiling. Reaching FundedNext Pro unlocks a 90% split, with a paid add-on raising it to 95% permanently, including after further scale-ups.

• Starting size used: $50,000 (Stellar 2-Step, the FundedNext Pro Scale-Up Program)
• Published ceiling: $4,000,000, stated identically on two FundedNext Pro program pages.
• Automatic or on request: Automatic, once 4 Performance Rewards are received with at least 4% growth in each qualifying cycle over a minimum 2 months.
• Choose it when: You want the largest clean, non-conflicting ceiling at $4,000,000 and do not mind a slower, costlier ladder to get there than FTMO’s or Maven’s.
• Watch out for: This is explicitly a simulated capital allocation increase, never a live balance; Stellar Lite is excluded from the FundedNext Pro program entirely and follows a separate, slower plan instead.
• Trustpilot: 4.5/5 on 80,485 reviews. rules, payouts.

FXIFY’s scaling plan reaches $4,000,000 but only from a $400,000 starting size, not the $50,000 this post standardizes on

Verdict: Sixth, with a mark: FXIFY’s own worked example starts from a $400,000 account, not $50,000, and only the first of its four scale-up events shows its percentage math; the remaining three are described only as the balance doubling.

Video: “How to Trade Your FXIFY Account Inside TradingView,” FXIFY official YouTube channel, September 30, 2025. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: No official FXIFY video addresses its scaling plan specifically; reused a platform walkthrough as the closest official content.

The FAQ states the first event clearly: a 10% return over 3 months, with 2 of those months profitable, earns a +25% scale-up (its own example: $400,000 to $500,000). The next three events are described only as the balance doubling every further 3 months ($500,000 to $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 to $4,000,000), without restating what profit percentage each doubling requires. Taking the firm’s literal worked numbers, reaching $4,000,000 needs at least $3,700,000 of cumulative profit and 12 months minimum, a Scaling Ladder metric near 0.925, though the unstated percentage for 3 of the 4 steps means this figure is less certain than the other rows in this table.

• Starting size used: $400,000, not $50,000. FXIFY’s own worked example begins at this size; the smaller $5,000 to $100,000 sizes we could confirm sold on the Two Phase Classic checkout do not reach the full 4-step ladder in the firm’s own example.
• Published ceiling: $4,000,000, per FXIFY’s own scaling FAQ worked example.
• Automatic or on request: Not published either way.
• Choose it when: You already hold, or plan to buy, a $400,000-starting-size FXIFY product specifically to walk this ladder; the smaller sizes most buyers purchase were not confirmed to reach the full $4,000,000 path.
• Watch out for: A buyer comparing FXIFY’s $4,000,000 headline against FTMO’s or Maven’s $1 to $2 million ladders should know it needs a much larger starting account to even begin, and that FXIFY’s own page does not fully explain the math after the first step.
• Trustpilot: 4.3/5 on 6,345 reviews. rules, status.

Alpha Capital Group’s two-million-dollar ceiling is a combined cap across every scaled account, not one account alone

Verdict: Last among the qualifying ladders, with a mark: Alpha Pro’s scaling rule does not compound, so every dollar of profit buys exactly one dollar of account growth, and the firm’s own $2,000,000 figure is stated as a total across all of a trader’s scaled accounts combined, not a single account’s ceiling.

Video: “Skip the Evaluation. Keep 90%. Start from Day 1.,” Alpha Capital Group official YouTube channel, July 26, 2026. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: Alpha Capital Group’s own explainer of its live-funding path; no dedicated scaling-plan video exists on the official channel.

Unlike every other firm in this table, Alpha’s required gain per cycle is pinned to the account’s ORIGINAL starting balance, not its current one: a flat $5,000 (10% of $50,000) every single cycle, added as a flat dollar amount rather than compounding. Read literally for one account, reaching a $2,000,000 ceiling this way needs about 390 cycles and $1,950,000 of cumulative profit, a Scaling Ladder metric of 0.975, the least efficient ladder that still clears this post’s account-size test. No published time window governs how long a trader has to earn each cycle’s flat $5,000, only a 24 to 48 business hour processing time for the request itself.

• Starting size used: $50,000 (Alpha Pro 10% 2-Step; the plan also covers Alpha Swing, and explicitly excludes Alpha One and Alpha Direct)
• Published ceiling: $2,000,000, but stated as a cumulative total across all of a trader’s scaled accounts combined, a materially different claim from a single-account cap.
• Automatic or on request: Request-based. Each scale-up must be separately requested and takes 24 to 48 business hours to process.
• Choose it when: You specifically want Alpha Pro or Alpha Swing (not Alpha One or Alpha Direct, both explicitly excluded) and are prepared for a flat, non-compounding ladder with no automatic trigger.
• Watch out for: The headlined $2,000,000 figure is a cross-account aggregate, not a single account’s ceiling; read literally for one account it would take roughly 390 flat $5,000 cycles, practically unreachable on a single account, and Alpha publishes no time window for earning each cycle’s required gain.
• Trustpilot: rating hidden (“breach of our guidelines” banner), 21,810 reviews. payouts, status.

Ceiling figures that conflict on the firm’s own pages

Two firms publish a real, automatic scaling mechanism, but their own current pages disagree on the ceiling itself, the single most load-bearing figure in this topic. We quote both figures rather than silently picking one.

The5ers’ homepage claims a $4M ceiling, but the High Stakes product it is most likely to sell you caps at $500,000

Verdict: The5ers’ High Stakes page publishes a compl