It may be a good opportunity if a trader has spent the time to learn how to be consistently profitable.  Otherwise, it can be an expensive way to learn how to trade futures.  But, even as an expensive way to learn futures, they do provide a challenging way to learn and a lot of support to help traders learn.

Which Programs Are Best?

 Well, I can’t tell you which are best.  But I can tell what other people are saying.  After quite a lot of research, I find these three programs to be very popular and worth your consideration.  There are others that may be just as good or better, like LeeLoo Trading, which has many good points,  but the three that I will discuss here are TopStep Traders, Earn2Trade and OneUp Trader.  Another program that may be quite good, but has some negative reviews, is SpeedTrader.  One reviewer says that in his research he has not found one person who has ever withdrawn money from SpeedTrader, so that doesn’t look very good.  Now, regarding the three above that I say are especially worth your consideration, there is one main difference.  Earn2Trade and OneUp Trader only require a trader to pass one evaluation to get an opportunity to get funded, whereas TopStep Traders requires the passing of two evaluations to get an opportunity to be funded.  So, that is a significant consideration according to all those that I have heard giving YouTube reviews.  At the same time, Topstep has great customer service and a lot of good aspects to their program.  They all cost around $150 for the lowest price programs, but you can get discounts for your first try on TopStep Traders and Earn2Trade. And if you give your email address to Earn2Trade, they will send you half price offers every month, they do to me.

So, Which is the Best?

Overall, it seems that OneUp is currently the favorite among YouTubers.  Among other things, one big plus going for OneUp is that there are no data fees during the evaluation or after getting funded.  Some others charge around $100 per data group after getting funded. 

It seems that Earn2Trade is the second most liked, partly I think because, like OneUp, there is only one evaluation, not two steps in the process.

There is one other program that only does forex, at least at this time.  I will choose them for my top recommendation of any funded trader program.  Yes, only forex, but profitable futures strategies will often work on forex too.  This company does things differently.  They fund every trader from the start, but they charge a little more to do it this way.  It is not much more.  They start at $275.  They also only offer a 50% commission split.  They are The5ers.com.  I may make a small commission if you use my link, but you may just go directly to avoid that if you would like.  The5ers refers to the 5% of traders who make money.  The5ers have very high reviews by many students and look very good to me.  There is also an interesting interview with the founder on the   All of these programs have free trials, except for Earn2Trade.

What About Discounts?

At this time I only know of discounts with TopStep and Earn2Trade.  If you want to get a $50 discount on your first visit to TopStep Traders, you may use the link I just added.  The5ers just above and this link are the only links in my whole futures course that offer me a benefit.  But I may as well accept the benefit if anyone would like to use them.  If you use my $50 discount link, you will get $50 off of your first “combine” and I will supposedly get a $50 credit for their program, which they say is good for one year.  I don’t know that I would ever use the credit, but this is the way their link discount works.  It is the only way that I can offer the discount.  Otherwise, if you would like a discount without using the above offer, you can go to their website, give them your email and they will offer you 20% off your first combine, which for the most popular $50K option is $33 off of $165.

Are These Programs A Good Use Of Your Time And Money?

These program have a lot of good stuff going for them.  They re-inforce the importance of using good risk management and provide an interesting way to learn the necessary skills to trade futures.  And, of course,  if you pass the test they provide, you get an opportunity to trade a large account with their money, no risk of your own, except that some programs require you to pay about $100 a month for professional data fees for each data group that you want.

So, is this a good use of your money?  Maybe.  That depends on what you think and if you end up learning well or making money.  I think it would be better to practice trading on a simulator for a month or more before paying for this, but that is up to you.  Also, you may want to know that many of these programs offer forex as well as futures.