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The State of Prop Trading 2026 report from PropTradingVibes.com tracked 178 prop trading firms across 24 countries — manually verified, no scraping, no AI-generated lists. What it found was an industry at a crossroads: growing fast on the surface, consolidating hard underneath.
10x Growth. Then a Reckoning.
In 2020, roughly 15 prop trading firms were operating globally. By Q1 2026, that number had grown to 145 active firms across 24 countries — a 10x increase in under five years. The United States leads with 44 firms (31% of the industry), followed closely by the United Kingdom with 40 firms (28%).
The model driving that growth is straightforward: traders pay $300–$1,000 to take an evaluation challenge. Hit the profit target without breaching drawdown limits, and you get access to a funded account worth anywhere from $10,000 to $400,000. Fail, and you pay again. The evaluation fee is the firm’s primary revenue stream. Most traders fail — repeatedly.
What’s less discussed is the payout reality. According to the report, only 7% of funded traders ever receive a withdrawal. Of those who do, the average payout amounts to just 4% of their funded account size. Between 1–3% sustain payouts long-term. These numbers sit quietly in the background while firms advertise six-figure funded accounts and headline profit splits.
What Actually Caused the Shakeout
The 2024 collapse had a specific trigger: in February 2024, MetaQuotes — the company behind the MT4 and MT5 trading platforms — withdrew support for prop trading firms. Overnight, firms that had built their entire operation on MetaTrader infrastructure had to scramble. Around 80 firms didn’t survive the transition.
MetaQuotes’ market share among prop firms collapsed from 48% to 24%. The average firm, which previously supported 1.8 platforms, now supports 2.6 — a forced diversification that exposed which firms had real operational capacity and which ones were running on the minimum viable setup.
Before MetaQuotes, the regulatory catalysts were already building. In August 2023, the CFTC froze the assets of My Forex Funds — the first major enforcement action against a prop firm. In June 2025, the FCA coordinated an international crackdown across six countries: three arrests, more than 650 social media accounts taken down. The industry’s informal period was ending, whether firms were ready or not.
The $800M Question
Despite the consolidation, the money flowing through the industry is real. The report estimates $800M to $1.2B was paid out to traders during 2025. FTMO distributed $450M over a decade. Apex Trader Funding paid $378M in just three years. SeacrestFunded (formerly MyFundedFX) processed $56M+ in payouts before ceasing prop operations in February 2026 and pivoting to brokerage.
That pivot is part of a larger structural shift. Eleven percent of firms are now broker-backed — a figure growing quickly. Established brokers including VT Markets, IC Markets, TrioMarkets, and Moneta Markets all launched prop arms in 2025. In December 2024, FTMO acquired OANDA for approximately $250M, the largest deal in prop trading history.
The message from the data is clear: the firms with staying power are the ones building regulated infrastructure, diversifying revenue beyond evaluation fees, and treating compliance as a structural requirement rather than an obstacle. The ones that didn’t are largely gone.
Where the Industry Goes From Here
The report tracks 36 total firm closures since 2020, with the UK leading at 14. The average firm age is 2.8 years. Historically, around one-third of new entrants fail within two years — a pattern consistent with most emerging financial markets.
New entrants are still coming. In Q1 2026, five new firms launched. Fundora opened in Japan with 2,200 pre-launch signups — the first homegrown Japanese prop firm. The Prop Association launched in April 2025 as the industry’s first formal self-regulation body. The infrastructure is being built, slowly and unevenly.
For traders evaluating where to place their capital, the report’s data points to one consistent pattern: the firms that pay reliably are not always the loudest, the newest, or the most aggressively marketed. The full analysis, methodology, and firm-by-firm breakdown is available in the State of Prop Trading 2026 report at PropTradingVibes.com.
About the Author
Paul is the founder of PropTradingVibes.com, the largest independent prop firm review site with 25,000+ monthly readers. The State of Prop Trading report is updated quarterly and tracks 178 firms across 24 countries.
Full report: proptradingvibes.com/state-of-prop-trading
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