Which prop firms allow Expert Advisors? Rules with sources

By the Trading Journal team · Updated October 28, 2026 · 4 min read

Three things the rules tell apart

• An EA that trades for you. Strategy robots. Some firms allow any, some only your own code, some only after approval.
• An EA that manages risk or only reads. Trade and risk managers, and read-only tools such as a journal connector: it reads the history and never places, modifies or closes orders.
• Access from outside. A service that logs in to your account from its own servers, usually with your investor password. FTMO and FundedNext forbid it; the other firms here leave it unclear, so ask.

A rule that bans the first can still allow the second — that is why the list shows two verdicts for each firm.

Firm by firm

• FTMO

  MT4 · MT5 · cTrader · DXtrade

  Expert Advisors are allowed; third-party access to the account is not.

  A read-only EA in your own terminal

  Allowed

  A service that logs in to your account

  Not allowed

  Checked 2026-10-24 · Source ↗ · See the details →

• FundedNext

  MT4 · MT5 · cTrader · Match-Trader

  No third-party access; EAs are restricted on accounts of $50k and more and on cTrader / Match-Trader.

  A read-only EA in your own terminal

  Ask the firm

  A service that logs in to your account

  Not allowed

  Checked 2026-10-24 · Source ↗ · See the details →

• The5ers

  MT5

  EAs with someone else’s code are not allowed; our connector is open source — show them the link.

  A read-only EA in your own terminal

  Ask the firm

  A service that logs in to your account

  Ask the firm

  Checked 2026-10-24 · Source ↗ · See the details →

• FundingPips

  MT5 · cTrader · Match-Trader

  Third-party EAs are allowed only as trade or risk managers; ours only reads the history — ask support.

  A read-only EA in your own terminal

  Ask the firm

  A service that logs in to your account

  Ask the firm

  Checked 2026-10-27 · Source ↗ · See the details →

• E8 Markets

  MT5 · cTrader · Match-Trader

  Any EA may be used unless many users run the same trades; copying between E8 accounts is not allowed.

  A read-only EA in your own terminal

  Allowed

  A service that logs in to your account

  Ask the firm

  Checked 2026-10-27 · Source ↗ · See the details →

• Alpha Capital

  MT5 · cTrader · DXtrade

  EAs need approval first and only on MT5; send them the connector before running it.

  A read-only EA in your own terminal

  Ask the firm

  A service that logs in to your account

  Ask the firm

  Checked 2026-10-27 · Source ↗ · See the details →

These are our readings of each firm’s public rules on the date shown — not the firm’s answer and not legal advice. Rules change; the firm decides.

Before you run an EA on a challenge

1. Read the rule on the firm’s own page — the source link above — and look at the date. A rule from last year may no longer hold.
2. Ask support in writing and keep the answer. It is what you can point to if the account is ever reviewed.
3. For a read-only tool, send them its source code. Each firm page in our rule check has a ready message for support with a link to our connector’s source and checksums.

Trade copiers

We have not checked copier rules for every firm. The one rule in our notes: E8 Markets does not allow copying trades between E8 accounts. Ask your firm before you link accounts.

Nothing may run on your account?

Then upload the report file instead: nothing runs on the account, and the journal still gets every trade — how to export your MT5 trade history. And to see how much you can still lose today, use the daily loss limit calculator.

More on the daily limit: how FTMO calculates its daily loss limit. The whole picture: How to keep an MT4/MT5 trading journal.

Already failed one? A 20-minute review of a failed prop challenge.

How the journal works for prop-firm challenges →