Expert Advisors and Algo Trading on Prop Accounts: What's Allowed
Automation is not banned at most prop firms. Specific kinds of automation are, and the distinction is worth understanding before you deploy anything.
Usually allowed
- Personally developed EAs that express a discretionary strategy
- Risk management tools: trailing stops, break-even scripts, auto-close at a daily loss limit
- Trade copiers between your own accounts, where permitted
Usually prohibited
- Latency and arbitrage bots that exploit pricing delays rather than market direction
- Tick scalping strategies that depend on execution artefacts, not price movement
- Mass-copied commercial EAs run across many accounts at the same firm
- Group trading — multiple traders running an identical bot to farm the statistics
Why the second list exists
Those strategies do not make money from markets. They make money from the firm's pricing infrastructure. No firm will fund that, and it is the most common reason a passing account gets reviewed and rejected.
Before you run a bot
- Read the account rules on automation in full — not the FAQ summary.
- Confirm the EA respects the daily drawdown as a hard stop, in equity terms.
- Backtest against the actual rules: does it ever exceed 3% in a day?
- Test on the smallest tier first. A $5 evaluation is a cheap way to find out that your bot ignores the daily floor at 3am.
The risk-management use case nobody talks about
The best use of automation on a prop account is not entries — it is protection. A simple script that flattens the account at a set daily loss removes the single largest cause of failed evaluations: a human deciding to trade one more time.
Passwords and account access
On funded accounts, do not change the account password. Doing so breaks the desk's ability to monitor the account and is a rule breach in its own right. If your automation setup needs credentials, use them as issued.