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Prop Firm Survival Rates: A 5-Year Cohort Analysis

Mahir Nath

September 23, 2026

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Prop Firm Survival Rates: Your Questions Answered

How many prop firms fail?

There is no official figure, because no regulator or registry counts prop firms. The best estimates sit in a range. Brokeree Solutions tracked 82 firms through 2024 and found 71 still operating by the fourth quarter, so roughly 1 in 7 closed in a single year (FX News Group, November 2024). The vendor Track360 estimates that cumulative closures equal around 40% of the industry’s 2023 peak. In JoinProp’s own cohort sample, 26% of firms launched since 2021 have closed, paused or been absorbed.

When in its life is a prop firm most likely to fail?

Early, or during an outside shock. Firms launched in 2024 that failed did so within about a year, one of them within a week. Firms launched in 2021 and 2022 that failed mostly lasted two to three years and then went down together in 2024, when platform access was cut from under them.

Which launch year has the worst survival rate?

The 2024 cohort. Six of the ten 2024 launches in our sample are still operating, a 60% survival rate after less than two years. The 2023 cohort is the strongest at 93%, with 13 of 14 firms still trading.

Does an older firm mean a safer firm?

It helps, but it guarantees nothing. My Forex Funds was nearly three years old and serving more than 135,000 customers when the CFTC and Ontario Securities Commission shut it down in August 2023. Age filters out the flimsiest launches. It does not tell you how a firm funds its payouts.

How We Built the Cohort Sample

JoinProp tracked 53 prop firms launched between 2021 and 2025, grouped them by the year they started selling challenges, and recorded each firm’s status as of 23 September 2026. We included forex and CFD evaluation firms, futures evaluation firms and a small number of crypto evaluation firms. A firm only entered the cohort table if we could find a source for its launch year and its current status.

Status falls into four buckets. Operating means a live product and a live listing on a major comparison database, or a 2026 report of the firm trading. Closed or wound down means a reported closure, insolvency or a formal wind-down. Paused or suspended means the firm stopped operations and has not verifiably resumed full service. Absorbed means customers were moved to another firm and the brand stopped operating on its own. Kraken’s purchase of Breakout in September 2025 counts as surviving, because Breakout still operates under Kraken’s ownership. The full list of 53 firms, with launch year and status, is at the end of this article.

One limitation matters more than any other. This sample is biased toward survivors. Most of the firms that closed in 2024 were small, and many vanished so quietly that no reliable launch date exists for them. Firms like Funds For Traders, Traders With Edge and Rev One closed in the period but are excluded because their launch year could not be confirmed. Read the survival rates below as a ceiling, not an average. Where a firm’s own launch date was not published, we used the listing date recorded by PropFirmMatch, which may run a few months later than the real launch.

Survival Rates by Launch Year, 2021 to 2025

Three out of four tracked firms launched since 2021 are still operating, but the rate swings from 60% to 93% depending on the year a firm launched. The table shows each cohort, and the diagram below traces where every firm ended up.

The 2023 number looks like an outlier until you notice when those firms opened. Most 2023 launches were still young and small when the February 2024 platform crisis hit, and several, including AquaFunded and Goat Funded Trader, were among the firms affected but managed to move to other platforms. The 2021 and 2022 cohorts had more customers on MetaTrader and more to lose when access disappeared.

Two judgement calls could move the numbers. The Funded Trader paused in March 2024 and partly resumed five months later, according to Finance Magnates, but we could not verify full operation in 2026. Counting it as active would lift 2021 to 77%. Counting Breakout as out after its acquisition would drop 2023 to 86%.

A wider sample gives lower numbers. PropTradingVibes’ State of Prop Trading report (August 2026), which tracks smaller firms too, puts survival at 58% for its 2021 cohort, 54% for 2022, 73% for 2023 and 72% for 2024, with a median lifespan of about two years. The two datasets agree on the shape: the 2021 and 2022 cohorts took the heaviest losses. They differ mainly because our sample only includes firms well known enough to document, and our 2024 cohort is small at ten firms.

Futures Firms Survived Far Better Than Forex and CFD Firms

Eleven of the 12 futures evaluation firms in our sample are still operating, a 92% survival rate, against 68% for forex, CFD and crypto firms. The one futures exit was FundingTicks, which wound down in January 2026 after cutting its profit split.

The likely reason is platform exposure. Futures firms run on futures platforms and data feeds, not MetaTrader, so the February 2024 MetaQuotes crackdown that triggered most of the forex and CFD exits did not reach them. Futures firms carry other risks, including CFTC attention to the model, but the platform shock of 2024 passed them by.

2024 Was the Extinction Event

Eleven of the 14 exits in our sample happened in 2024. One followed in 2025 and two in early 2026. Prop firm closures were not spread evenly across five years. They were concentrated in one year and one set of triggers.

The first trigger landed in February 2024, when MetaQuotes, the company behind MetaTrader 4 and 5, pressed the brokers that license its software to stop serving prop firms with US clients. True Forex Funds lost its MetaQuotes licences on 6 February (FX News Group). A second wave hit the replacement platforms: SurgeTrader closed in May, a week after losing its Match-Trader licence, and in August Eightcap stopped supporting MetaTrader for prop trading, closing Funds For Traders the same day.

Across the industry, Finance Magnates Intelligence estimated that 80 to 100 prop firms disappeared in 2024. Justin Hertzberg, CEO of the prop technology provider FPFX, told the publication in February 2025: “I expect many more prop firms to close, cease or halt operations and/or find themselves on the wrong end of lawsuits and social media attacks.” The full story of that wave, and the warning signs it left, is in our analysis of the 2024 to 2026 prop firm collapse.

How Long Failed Firms Actually Lasted

The failed firms in our sample lasted about two years on median, but age at death depends heavily on launch year. Older firms died at two to three years, usually in the 2024 shock. Newer firms died fast, often before their first anniversary.

The Funded Trader is left out of this table because it paused rather than closed, and partly resumed later in 2024. Ascetic Capital is the extreme case. It opened on 28 November 2024, sold four challenges, and closed on 3 December when its backers pulled out, as reported by Finance Magnates. It is a useful reminder that in a crowded market, launching is cheap and staying open is not.

What Ends a Prop Firm: Causes of Exit by Cohort

Losing access to a trading platform was the most common cause of exit in our sample, and it hit the 2021 to 2023 cohorts. The 2024 and 2025 launches failed for commercial reasons instead. Grouping the 14 exits by their main reported cause shows the split.

Platform risk is the one most traders overlook. A firm can be solvent and well run and still stop functioning overnight if the software licence underneath it is withdrawn. Brokeree’s 2024 data shows how the survivors responded. MetaTrader’s share of firm platforms fell from 48% in the first quarter to 24% in the fourth, and the average firm went from offering 1.8 platforms to 2.6.

Money problems sit underneath almost every category, though. FPFX Tech data covering more than 300,000 accounts at 10 firms showed about 14% of traders passed a challenge and roughly 7% of all traders reached a payout, according to Finance Magnates (September 2024). A firm living on challenge fees looks healthy while sales grow. When sales slow, or a platform switch costs a month of revenue, the gap between fees coming in and payouts going out is what breaks it.

What the Survivors Have in Common

The firms still standing from the 2021 and 2022 cohorts share three habits: more than one platform, published payout data, and rules that stayed broadly stable. None of these is a guarantee on its own, but the pattern is consistent.

• Platform redundancy. Funding Pips was cut off in February 2024 and was back within a week on a different platform. Firms that could switch survived the year. Firms tied to one licence mostly did not.
• Visible payouts. Survivors such as FundedNext, Alpha Capital and Apex Trader Funding put payout figures in public, which forces the business to keep them flowing. Our guide to prop firm payout proof explains what those figures can and cannot prove.
• Stable terms. FundingTicks is the counter-example. Its wind-down followed profit-split cuts and new trading limits within its first year. Sudden rule changes are often the first public sign that the numbers no longer work.

The long-running reference firms tell the same story over a longer horizon. Topstep (2012), FTMO (2015) and The5ers (2016) all predate the 2021 boom and are all still operating. They survived several platform cycles, not just one.

What This Means If You Are Choosing a Firm in 2026

Treat a firm’s launch year as a risk factor, not a verdict. A firm under a year old carries the highest failure risk in our data. A firm that has already been through 2024 has passed the hardest test the industry has set so far.

Before you buy a challenge, run four checks. First, find the launch year and ask whether the firm operated through February 2024. Second, count the platforms it offers. One platform means one point of failure. Third, look for payout data you can verify, not a lifetime total on the homepage. Fourth, read the terms history. If the profit split, drawdown or consistency rules have changed more than once in a year, find out why.

Then limit your exposure. Do not leave a large payout balance sitting with any firm longer than you need to, and avoid holding several accounts with the same firm when you could spread them across two. Firm failure is a separate risk from your own trading risk, and our guide to prop trading risks covers both. If you want a shortlist of established firms to start from, see our best prop firms ranking. Our JoinProp Trust Index scores leading firms on these signals every quarter, and our regulated vs. unregulated framework covers the legal side.

Verdict

Most well-known prop firms that launched after 2021 are still around. In our sample, 74% survived. But that figure describes the firms popular enough to track, not the market as a whole, where estimates of closures run from about 1 in 7 in 2024 alone to roughly 40% of the 2023 peak. The deaths were not random. They clustered in 2024, they hit the youngest firms fastest, they spared futures firms almost entirely, and they were most often triggered by a lost platform rather than a single bad month. For a trader, the practical lesson is simple: favour firms that have already survived a shock, and never trust a firm with more of your money than a shutdown could cost you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the survival rate of prop firms?

In JoinProp’s sample of 53 well-known prop firms launched between 2021 and 2025, 74% were still operating in September 2026. Industry-wide rates are lower. Brokeree found 86.6% of 82 tracked firms survived 2024, a single-year closure rate of about 13%, and Track360 estimates cumulative closures at roughly 40% of the 2023 peak.

What is the median lifespan of a failed prop firm?

About two years. The firms that closed or were absorbed in JoinProp’s 2021 to 2025 sample lasted roughly two years on median, ranging from one week for Ascetic Capital to about three and a half years for MyFundedFX. PropTradingVibes’ wider August 2026 dataset also puts the median lifespan at about two years.

How long do new prop firms usually last?

Most new firms survive, but the ones that fail tend to fail fast. In JoinProp’s sample, three of the four failed 2024 launches were gone within months, and the fourth, Funded Unicorn, lasted about a year. Firms launched in 2021 and 2022 that failed usually lasted two to three years.

Which prop firm launch year has the lowest survival rate?

2024. Six of ten firms launched in 2024 in JoinProp’s sample are still operating, a 60% survival rate. The four exits included Ascetic Capital, which closed one week after opening in November 2024.

Do futures prop firms survive longer than forex prop firms?

In JoinProp’s sample, yes. Eleven of 12 futures evaluation firms launched between 2021 and 2025 are still operating, a 92% survival rate, against 68% for forex, CFD and crypto firms. Futures firms did not rely on MetaTrader, so the 2024 MetaQuotes crackdown did not reach them.

Are older prop firms safer?

Older firms have a better survival record but are not risk-free. Topstep, FTMO and The5ers have operated since 2012, 2015 and 2016. However, My Forex Funds had served more than 135,000 customers over nearly three years before the CFTC shut it down in August 2023.

How can I tell if a prop firm might close?

Watch for a firm under one year old, reliance on a single trading platform, no verifiable payout data, and repeated changes to profit splits or trading rules. FundingTicks cut profit splits and added trading limits in the months before it announced its wind-down in January 2026.

The Full Cohort Dataset: 53 Prop Firms, 2021 to 2025

Every firm in the sample, with launch year, firm type and status as of 23 September 2026. Firm types: futures evaluation firms, forex and CFD firms, and crypto firms. Where a firm did not publish its launch date, the year comes from its PropFirmMatch listing.

Methodology note: status verified 23 September 2026. Sources include firm disclosures, PropFirmMatch listings, Finance Magnates, FX News Group, Brokeree Solutions, Track360 and the CFTC. If you run a firm listed here and a date or status is wrong, contact JoinProp with a source and we will correct it.