Prop firm discount codes are real and widely available: most established firms keep one running through their affiliate partners, usually 10% or 25% off the evaluation fee. What a code almost never does is change the decision. It comes off a single entry fee, while the number that decides whether a challenge was worth buying is the total you spend before the firm pays you — every attempt, every reset, every monthly platform and data fee, and the profit split. This guide covers where verified codes come from, how to confirm one before you pay, and how to compare the true cost of getting funded.
Key takeaways
- A code reduces the entry fee on one attempt. It does not reduce the cost of getting funded, which is what you should compare.
- A flat amount beats a percentage on cheap accounts and loses on expensive ones: $50 off a $200 challenge saves 25%; 10% off it saves $20.
- Added value often outweighs cash. A free retry on a $300 challenge is worth $300 if you use it; a 10% code on it is worth $30.
- The most reliable codes come from the firm itself and from affiliate partners under contract. Coupon aggregators are the least reliable and the biggest time sink.
- Discounts far beyond half price signal something other than generosity: a restricted account size, altered terms, or an acquisition problem.
- The only verified code on this page is a single 10% code, shown in full below. Where we list no code, we have none — it is not hidden behind a click.
- A cheap entry into a firm that does not pay reliably is the most expensive purchase in this industry.
Why prop firms discount evaluations at all
A prop firm challenge, or evaluation, is a paid test on a simulated account. You pay a one-off fee and get a profit target, a maximum daily loss, a maximum overall drawdown and rules on news trading, weekend holds and consistency. Clear the target without breaking a rule and you get a funded account paying a share of the profits; break one and the fee is gone.
The fee is the product. For most firms in this sector, evaluation fees are a primary, predictable revenue line and payouts are a cost against it. That is the model, and it explains the discounting: when revenue comes from a high volume of cheap digital purchases, you compete on acquisition, and discounts are the acquisition lever with the shortest feedback loop.
What the discount buys the firm
Three things. Volume when attention is already high — a launch, a platform addition, a sponsorship. Attribution: a code given to a specific affiliate tells the firm which channel produced the sale, which is why partner codes are permanent while campaign codes are short. And price discrimination: full price for impulse buyers, less for anyone who looks for a code first.
What it means for you
Two things. You should almost never pay list price: a code exists for nearly every large firm nearly all the time. More importantly, a discount tells you nothing about whether the firm is worth buying from — discount depth tracks marketing aggression, not payout reliability. We publish our rating criteria on our methodology page, and none of them is the size of the coupon.
The advertised percentage is rarely the saving that matters
Percentages persuade because they are abstract. Convert them to cash: a 10% discount on a $500 challenge is $50 back in your pocket. Worth having, but roughly the cost of one careless entry — not a reason to choose one firm over another.
A percentage scales with price, so it rewards you on large accounts and barely registers on small ones; a flat amount does the reverse. A flat $50 off beats 10% off a $200 challenge — 25% against 10% in effective terms — so the bigger-sounding offer is often the worse one.
| Advertised offer | Challenge price | Cash saved | You pay | Effective discount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10% off | $500 | $50 | $450 | 10% |
| 10% off | $200 | $20 | $180 | 10% |
| $50 off | $200 | $50 | $150 | 25% |
| $50 off | $500 | $50 | $450 | 10% |
| 25% off | $500 | $125 | $375 | 25% |
| 90% off | $500 | $450 | $50 | A warning, not a bargain |
Illustrative round numbers, not quotes from any particular firm.
The cost that matters: total spend to funded
Almost nobody buys one evaluation, passes it and never pays again. Traders fail, reset, retry and switch firms. The honest unit of comparison is the total you hand over before a firm hands anything back — and against that, a 10% code moves the decimal point, not the decision.
| Route to a funded account | Paid attempts | Total at list price | Total with a 10% code | Saved by the code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Passed on the first attempt | 1 | $500 | $450 | $50 |
| Passed on the second attempt | 2 | $1,000 | $900 | $100 |
| Passed on the third attempt | 3 | $1,500 | $1,350 | $150 |
| Failed once, second attempt covered by a free retry | 1 | $500 | $450 | $50 |
Read the last row against the second. Both traders needed two attempts; the one with a free retry paid half as much as the one who took a 10% code. Structure matters more than headline number, and the firm's rules matter more than either.
We spend more effort on payout verification than on coupon collection. We track prop firm payouts on-chain on our payout tracker: the gap between a firm that pays and one that does not dwarfs any discount code ever printed.
The types of discount prop firms run
Offers come in five shapes. Which one you are looking at tells you where the value sits and what to check before buying.
Percentage-off codes
The default. A code takes a fixed percentage off the fee, so it is worth most on larger accounts. Verify whether it applies to every account size or only a subset, and whether it covers resets and retries as well as first purchases. Firms frequently restrict a headline percentage to new evaluations — when you are least likely to need it.
Flat-amount codes
Flat-amount codes deliver a fixed sum rather than a proportion, and are strongest on smaller accounts where a percentage produces a trivial number. The catch is a minimum spend: a $50 discount gated behind a $300 minimum is a percentage discount in disguise, and if the account you want costs $200 the offer does not exist for you.
Added value instead of a lower price
Rather than cutting the fee, a firm adds to the package: a free retry after a failure, an extended evaluation period, an extra reset, a better profit split, or a bonus on the first payout. The benefit only pays if you need it, but a contingent benefit worth a full second attempt beats a certain saving worth a tenth of one: if a challenge costs $300 and includes a free retake, you have saved $300 on a second attempt you had a real chance of needing. Read the conditions — free retries are often limited to traders who failed on the profit target rather than drawdown, or expire quickly.
Flash sales and seasonal campaigns
Time-boxed campaigns carry the largest headline numbers of the year and cluster on predictable dates — quarter ends, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, New Year, Ramadan and Eid for firms with a large Middle Eastern client base, and firm anniversaries. If a genuine seasonal code appears for 25% off and you had already settled on that firm and that size, buy. A campaign is a good reason to accelerate a purchase you were going to make, not to make one you were not.
Referral and affiliate codes
Firms give codes to partners — affiliates, communities, creators, review sites — and pay commission on attributed sales. Traders also get referral links to share, sometimes benefiting both sides. These codes are contractual rather than promotional, which makes them the most stable baseline when no campaign is running. The trade-off: anyone earning commission has a financial interest in you buying. We publish affiliate links, we mark them, and we rate firms the same way whether they pay us or not.
| Offer type | Typical form | Where the value sits | What to verify first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage off | 10% or 25% off the fee | Larger account sizes | Whether all sizes qualify; resets included? |
| Flat amount off | A fixed sum rather than a percentage | Smaller, cheaper accounts | Minimum spend threshold |
| Added value | Free retry, extra time, better split | Only if you actually use it | Eligibility conditions and expiry |
| Flash or seasonal | Weekend or holiday campaign | Biggest headline percentages | Whether the deadline is real or rolling |
| Referral or affiliate | A partner's permanent code | Always-on baseline discount | Whether a campaign currently beats it |
Where verified prop firm discount codes come from
Six sources, in descending order of reliability.
The firm's own website and checkout
Start here, always. Active campaigns are announced on the homepage banner, the pricing page or the checkout itself, and some firms pre-apply the current promotion — so entering a different code can make the price go up. When a code and a campaign conflict, the checkout total is the fact and everything else is marketing.
Firm social channels and email lists
Discord, X, Telegram and Instagram are where flash campaigns break first, often with a code that appears nowhere else. Email is where account-level offers arrive: abandoned-cart discounts, win-back codes after a failed evaluation, birthday offers. Subscribing to your shortlist costs nothing and surfaces offers that never reach the public web.
Trading communities and forums
Discord servers, subreddits and forum threads are fast — traders post working codes the day they appear — and where dead codes live forever, because nobody edits a two-year-old post. Treat community codes as leads: check the date, then verify at the checkout. The valuable material there is not the codes but the payout complaints and rule-change arguments.
Affiliates and content creators
Creators, newsletter writers and review sites carry permanent partner codes, usually valid and usually the best always-on rate. Apply one filter: does this person publish anything critical, ever? Someone who has never met a firm they disliked is a distribution channel, not a source. Take the code, then verify the rules yourself.
Coupon aggregator sites
The generic coupon databases are the weakest source in this market by a distance. They scrape, they rarely verify, they leave expired codes up because dead listings still earn ad impressions, and some auto-generate plausible-looking codes that never existed. Fifteen minutes spent typing codes that all expired last month is fifteen minutes of nothing.
Asking support directly
Underrated and occasionally effective. A polite message to live chat — that you are deciding between two firms, buying a larger account, or returning after a previous evaluation — sometimes produces a code published nowhere, because support teams often have discretion within a band.
| Source | How current the codes are | Main risk |
|---|---|---|
| Firm website and checkout | Always current | Only shows public campaigns |
| Firm email and social channels | Current, often first | Short windows, easy to miss |
| Affiliate and creator codes | Stable, contractual | Commercial incentive to oversell the firm |
| Trading communities and forums | Mixed | Undated screenshots, long-dead codes |
| Coupon aggregator sites | Frequently stale | Expired and sometimes fabricated codes |
| Support chat | Case by case | No obligation to offer anything |
The codes we can verify
We list a code only when we hold it directly from the firm or its affiliate programme and can confirm it applies at checkout. That produces a short table, which is the point.
| Firm | Code | Discount | Applies at |
|---|---|---|---|
| FTMO | CRITIC | 10% off | The FTMO evaluation checkout |
To use it, open the FTMO checkout, select the account size you want, enter CRITIC in the promotional code field, apply it, and confirm the total has fallen by 10% before you pay. FTMO publishes its pricing and rules on its own site, and that checkout total — not this page, not any aggregator — is the authority. Our breakdown of the firm's rules, fees and history sits on the FTMO firm profile, and we have written separately on how FTMO's discounting actually behaves.
For every other firm on this site, we list no code. That is a statement of fact, not a tease: if a firm is absent from that table, we do not have a verified code for it. Anything that changes appears on our current offers page, maintained against the firms' own live terms rather than scraped. Never enter a code from a page that will not say where it came from.
Applying a code at checkout
This should be trivial and frequently is not — checkout flows here are built quickly and tested lightly. Three steps people skip.
Find the code field before entering payment details
The field is labelled inconsistently — "Coupon code", "Promo code", "Discount code", "Have a code?" — and is often collapsed behind a small link near the order summary; on mobile it regularly sits below the fold. Locate it before you type a card number: on some platforms a code cannot be added once payment has begun without restarting the order.
Apply the code, do not merely type it
The most common failure is a code typed into the box and left there while the buyer clicks through to pay. Almost every checkout requires an explicit "Apply" click; until you make it, the code is inert text. The signal that it worked is a change in the order summary — a discount line, a struck-through price. No change means no discount.
Confirm the discounted total on the final screen
Read the amount you are about to be charged, not the discount badge. Check that the total reflects the percentage you expected, that it applied to the size you selected, and that no fee has been added elsewhere. Changing the account size or add-ons after applying a code silently voids the discount on several platforms. Fix a wrong number before paying.
Why a code gets rejected, and what to do
It has expired
By far the most common cause, and the reason aggregator sites waste so much time: campaign codes commonly run for days, not months. If the code came from a forum post, a video description or a coupon site, check the date — if it predates the current quarter, assume it is dead rather than testing variations of it.
A typo, or the wrong case
Some checkouts are case-sensitive, some are not, and you cannot tell from the outside. Type the code manually in the case it was published — pasted text routinely carries a trailing space or a non-breaking character the field rejects without explanation. Watch the classic confusions: zero against the letter O, one against a lowercase L, hyphens that are actually en dashes.
The terms exclude your purchase
Codes carry conditions, and that is where the exclusions live: new evaluations only, specific account sizes only, one product family only, not combinable with a site-wide sale, first purchase only, or restricted by region. A "50% off" offer that applies only to the smallest challenge size is real, and worthless if you wanted the largest. Read the terms before concluding the code is broken.
It has already been used
Many codes are single-use per account or per customer. If you tested it on a previous purchase, or an earlier attempt consumed the redemption, the second use fails. Referral codes are often one-per-new-customer, so a code from a friend will not work on an existing account.
Browser, cache and extension problems
Stale sessions cause genuine false rejections. If a code should work and does not: reload the page, clear the cart and rebuild it, disable coupon-hunting and ad-blocking extensions, then try a private window. Auto-apply coupon extensions are a specific culprit — they overwrite your code with one of their own, then report failure.
When to contact support
If the code is current, correctly typed, within its terms, unused and still failing, it is the firm's problem. Send support a screenshot of the checkout error, the exact code and where you got it; they can often apply a discount manually. Do not pay list price expecting a retroactive refund.
How to get the largest legitimate saving
Timing: buy into a campaign, not out of impatience
The biggest lever is when you buy. Deep discounts cluster on a predictable calendar, so if you are within a few weeks of one of those dates, waiting is usually worth more than any code available today. The counterweight: waiting three weeks to save $125 only makes sense if you spend them testing the strategy rather than refreshing the pricing page.
Stacking: usually not permitted
Combining two codes is prohibited on most checkouts, which reject the second or silently replace the first. The genuine opportunity is stacking different types of benefit: an automatic campaign discount, plus a bundled free retry, plus a first-payout bonus. Do not hunt for exploits — traders who manipulated codes or opened duplicate accounts have had accounts closed and profits withheld.
Newsletters and account-level offers
Subscribe to the firms on your shortlist and, if you are genuinely undecided, add an item to the cart and leave it. Abandoned-cart sequences are standard e-commerce practice and prop firms run them too, frequently producing a code within a day or two that beats the public one.
Free retries and second chances
Worth repeating because it is the biggest number on this page. A free retake on a $300 challenge is worth the full $300 if you use it, which no percentage code will match. When two firms' fees are close, the one that includes a retry or a free reset is usually cheaper in practice, even if it is dearer on the price list. The same applies to reset pricing: a firm charging a fraction of the original fee for a retry is cheaper across a realistic sequence of attempts.
Does a larger account get a larger discount?
Often the percentage is identical across sizes and only the cash saving grows — the same deal on a bigger number. Occasionally firms tier the discount so larger accounts carry a deeper percentage. Check the actual percentage at each size: buying more account than your risk management can handle to unlock a better rate is how a discount becomes a loss.
Group buys and shared accounts
Communities occasionally organise bulk purchases, and some firms will quote a group rate for a large enough order. Where this turns bad is one person buying and several people trading. Account sharing, copy trading across accounts and third-party management are prohibited by most firms' terms and are among the most reliable ways to have a payout denied after you have passed.
When a cheap entry is a false economy
Discounts too large to be real
If a code promises 90% off a challenge that normally costs hundreds of dollars, treat it as a signal rather than an opportunity. Legitimate campaigns stay within a band that still covers acquisition costs. A discount far outside it usually means the code is fake, it applies to a stripped-down product you would not want, the firm is running an acquisition push it cannot fund, or the discounted account's terms differ from the standard ones in ways that matter after you pass.
Chasing expired codes
The time sink is the hidden cost. Working through a page of aggregator codes, entering each one and waiting for the error, is a poor use of an hour. Set a limit: the firm's site, your inbox, one trusted partner code, then buy or wait. Sixty minutes to save $50 is a bad hourly rate.
Misleading marketing and altered terms
The bait-and-switch here is rarely a fake price — it is a real price attached to different terms. A "50% off" offer might apply only to the smallest challenge size, or arrive with a modified profit split or a slower scaling plan that costs far more over a funded year than the discount saved. Compare the discounted product's rules against the standard ones line by line: profit target, daily loss, overall drawdown, minimum trading days, payout frequency, split. If the offer changes any of those, it is not a discount but a different product.
Manufactured urgency
Countdown timers that reset when you reload, "last 3 spots" counters on an unlimited digital product and permanent "ending soon" banners are pressure devices, not deadlines. Note the date, close the tab, look again in a week. A firm worth trading with this month will still be there next month with a comparable promotion; the ones that behave as though the door is closing are telling you how they will treat you after you have paid.
The costs the discount does not touch
A cheap entry can be the most expensive purchase you make. If a firm's payout process is slow, arbitrary or conditional in ways that only become visible once you are profitable, the discount is irrelevant — you paid a reduced fee for an outcome that never arrives. Read a firm's write-up in our review directory before you read its coupon.
Costs a discount code cannot reduce
Skill is the real discount
The largest saving available to any prop trader is passing on the first attempt. A trader who clears an evaluation once at full price has spent less than one who takes 25% off and needs three attempts, and the gap widens with every reset. The weeks before a purchase are better spent building a documented process — a defined edge, position sizing that respects the daily loss limit, a written rule for when to stop — than hunting codes. Evaluations are failed on risk management far more often than on strategy.
Platform and data fees
Once funded, and sometimes during the evaluation itself, recurring charges appear: monthly platform fees for MetaTrader 4 or 5, cTrader or a proprietary terminal, and market data fees, a particular feature of futures accounts where exchange data carries its own monthly cost. Small individually, material over a year, untouched by any discount code. Ask what the monthly total is before you buy.
Profit split and withdrawal policy
This is where the real money is decided. Understand the profit split — 80/20 in your favour is common — and read the withdrawal policy alongside it: how often you may request a payout, the minimum amount, processing time, supported methods and what each charges. A slightly worse split with a fast, reliable payout process usually beats a headline split the firm makes difficult to realise.
Choosing an account size you can actually trade
Discounts push people up the price list, and that is where the false economy bites hardest. Committing to a $200,000 account challenge when your experience amounts to a $10,000 demo account is a larger fee attached to the same probability of failure — often worse, because the drawdown numbers are unfamiliar. Buy the size you can trade to your existing plan. Reaching a large account through a scaling plan costs less than buying into one and failing.
| Cost | When it hits | Can a discount code reduce it? |
|---|---|---|
| Evaluation fee | Once per attempt | Yes — the only thing codes touch |
| Reset or retry fee | Each additional attempt | Sometimes, if the terms include resets |
| Platform fee | Monthly | Rarely |
| Market data fee | Monthly, mainly futures | No |
| Profit split | On every payout, permanently | No |
| Withdrawal and processing fees | Per payout | No |
| Buying too large an account | Once, then repeatedly | No — a discount makes it likelier |
Frequently asked questions
Do prop firm discount codes actually work?
Yes. Codes issued by a firm or its affiliate partners apply at checkout and reduce the evaluation fee immediately, and most large firms have one available at any time. The failures people run into almost always trace to an expired campaign code, a code from a coupon aggregator that was never valid, or a code typed into the field but never applied.
Where can I find verified prop firm discount codes?
Check the firm's own website and checkout first, then its email list and social channels, then a partner code from a source that publishes critical reviews as well as promotions. Generic coupon aggregators are the least reliable source and are best used last, if at all. Whatever the source, the checkout total is the only proof that a code is live.
Is there a discount code for FTMO?
Yes. The code CRITIC gives 10% off at the FTMO evaluation checkout, and it is the only code listed on this page. Enter it in the promotional code field, click apply, and confirm the total has dropped by 10% before completing payment.
Can I combine two prop firm discount codes?
Almost never. Most checkouts accept a single code and will either reject the second or silently replace the first, and stacking is usually prohibited in the terms. What can sometimes combine is a code plus a non-code benefit: an automatically applied site-wide sale, a bundled free retry, or a first-payout bonus.
Why was my discount code rejected at checkout?
In order of likelihood: it expired, it was typed with a typo or in the wrong case, its terms exclude the account size or product you selected, it has already been used, or a browser extension overwrote it. Work through those in order; if the code passes all five, send support a screenshot rather than paying full price.
Is a bigger discount always the better deal?
No, and this is the most expensive assumption in the category. A percentage only matters relative to the price it comes off, a flat amount can beat a larger-sounding percentage on a cheap account, and a free retry is usually worth more than either. An unusually deep discount is a reason to read the terms more carefully, not less.
Do discount codes apply to resets and retries?
Frequently not. Many codes are restricted to new evaluations, so the discount is unavailable at exactly the moment you most want it. If you expect to need more than one attempt, the reset price matters more than the code — compare what each firm charges for a retry before comparing what each takes off the first purchase.
Before you buy
Challenge fees are real money you do not get back if you break a rule, and most people who buy an evaluation do not pass it. Treat the fee as an amount you can afford to lose entirely, size the account to the trading you have actually demonstrated, and never let a countdown timer decide when you are ready.
Use codes — there is no reason to pay list price when a valid one exists. But choose the firm first and the discount second, on the rules, the fee structure across a realistic number of attempts, and the evidence that the firm actually pays. Our full firm comparison table puts fees, targets, drawdown rules and splits side by side, which is worth considerably more than any percentage on a banner.
