Prop firm automation compliance checklist before your first alert.

Is automated trading allowed? It depends on the account.

Often yes, but not everywhere and not on every account. Of the five firms we checked on 4 October 2026, FTMO allows EAs and algorithmic trading; FundedNext allows EAs on MT4/MT5 only on accounts below $50,000; FundingPips allows third-party EAs only as trade or risk managers, with full automation reserved for your own EA and proof of ownership; Goat Funded and The5ers expect the EA or strategy to be yours.

Be precise about what you run. From a firm's point of view, the SignalForge EA is third-party software that executes your TradingView strategy. On firms with ownership or third-party rules, describe the setup in a support ticket and keep the written answer. Why firms write these rules and what their risk teams look for is covered in our explainer, prop firm rules for TradingView to MT5 automation. This page is the checklist.

Read the rules that touch automation

• EAs allowed, and whose? Find the firm's EA page. Is automation allowed on your platform and account size? Are third-party EAs allowed, or only your own with proof of ownership?
• Copy trading and signal services. Some firms ban copying trades into the account from an external source, or between accounts of different people. Executing your own alerts is not the same as following someone's signals, but say exactly what you do when you ask.
• VPS and VPN. If the firm bans VPS on your account type, a terminal in a data centre (a VPS, our SFCloud or any hosted MT5) is off the table for that account: run MT5 on your own PC instead.
• News window. How many minutes before and after, which events, which calendar is official, which phase (evaluation or funded), and whether pending SL/TP fills count.
• Hedging across accounts. Opposite positions on two accounts, yours or someone else's, are forbidden at several firms. Never route a buy to one account and a sell on the same symbol to another.
• Lot, allocation and consistency. Maximum lot or capital per strategy, identical trades across accounts, consistency rules and minimum trading days (FTMO 2-Step: at least 4 trading days).
• Weekend and overnight. Must the funded account be flat for the weekend or the daily rollover?
• Inactivity and request limits. Does the account expire after a period with no trades? Is there a cap on server requests (FTMO: an EA making more than 2,000 server requests a day counts as hyperactivity)?
• How the loss limits are measured. Balance or equity, static or trailing, and at what time and in which timezone the day resets.

Five firms, read from their official pages

Verified 4 October 2026 on each firm's own help pages. Cells marked “check the official FAQ” are rules we could not confirm on an official page today; we leave them blank rather than guess. Rules differ by account type, so read the page for yours.

Sources (verified 4 October 2026): FTMO: EAs and strategies, VPN/VPS, News, Weekend, Forbidden practices, Trading objectives; FundingPips: Trading conduct, News and weekend; FundedNext: EAs, News, Copy trading; Goat Funded Trader: EAs, IP/VPS, Prohibited practices, News, Weekend, Weekend gap; The5ers: EAs, News. More context per firm in our prop firm guides and the FTMO hub; to compare firms for automation, see best prop firms for TradingView automation.

Set up the account so the right trade reaches the right login

• One MT5 account, one terminal with the EA. Never run the same login in two terminals at once (for example a hosted one and your PC). We have seen it in production: one webhook, two terminals, two tickets. On a prop account that doubles the risk.
• Right login and server. Check the account number and server in MT5 match the challenge credentials, not an old trial or a demo with a similar name.
• Algo Trading on. The “Algo Trading” button in the MT5 toolbar and “Allow Algo Trading” in the EA properties (F7). If either is off, orders fail with 10027 or 10026.
• Target the account. An alert without the "account" field goes to every live account on your token. If you mix prop and personal accounts, add "account": "12345678" (the MT5 login or the account label).
• Symbol names. The EA resolves common broker suffixes (.a, .pro, .raw, m, #…) on its own. The server only maps GOLD to XAUUSD and SILVER to XAGUSD, so if your firm's broker calls gold GOLD, send that name in the alert.
• Lot size. Choose the sizing mode per account in the dashboard: fixed lot (the lot in the alert is then ignored), risk % (needs a stop loss; without one it falls back to the fixed lot) or lot from the signal. The EA rounds to the broker's minimum, maximum and step. There is no risk field in the alert.
• SL/TP units. Pips (default), points, price or units, per account. Sending prices while the account is in pips mode produces absurd stops or a 10016 error.
• Test first. Fire one alert at a demo on the same broker and server, then read the Experts tab: a [PROC] line (signal received) and a [SEND] line (order sent). Step-by-step setup: documentation.

Risk limits: what is automated and what is on you

• Daily loss, automated. Prop Firm Shield (Trader plan and above, set per account) takes a daily loss limit in $ or %, measured on equity against the day's starting balance. When it is hit, the EA closes the open positions and stops taking signals until it re-arms.
• Compare the clocks. The Shield re-arms at 00:00 broker server time, not your local time. Firms define the day their own way: FTMO recalculates its Maximum Daily Loss at 00:00 CE(S)T and measures equity. When the two midnights differ, the days do not line up, so set the Shield below the firm's limit. As an illustration, a 4% Shield on a 5% firm limit leaves room for slippage and the clock gap; choose your own margin.
• Maximum drawdown, on you. Honestly: SignalForge does not enforce a maximum, total or trailing drawdown today. Size risk per trade so that a run of losing days cannot reach the firm's limit, write down the equity level where you stop, and check the firm's dashboard every day.
• Daily profit target. The Shield can also stop trading for the rest of the day once the day's profit reaches a target you set, so a strong day is not given back in the same session. The challenge's overall profit target and minimum trading days are still yours to track.
• Defaults that help. Pyramiding is limited to 1 trade per direction per symbol, and an opposite signal first closes the existing position (no hedging inside the account). Both are configurable, so check them before going live.

News windows: keep a margin

• The news filter (Trader and above) blocks new entries by default from 30 minutes before to 15 minutes after high-impact events on the ForexFactory calendar, and can close opposite positions. That default is wider than the 2 to 10 minute windows in the table above.
• Indices need manual currencies. In Auto mode the filter takes the currencies from the chart symbol. US30, NAS100 or GER40 have no currency to detect, so set the currencies by hand (USD for US indices, EUR for GER40).
• It fails open. If the calendar does not respond, the filter does not block. On firms with strict windows, know the release times yourself and keep a margin.
• Calendars differ. FundingPips treats the calendar in its own dashboard as the only official source; The5ers refers to Forex Factory. An event your firm tags as restricted but ForexFactory does not rate high impact will not be blocked.
• Entries only. FTMO's rule on Standard FTMO Accounts also covers stop loss and take profit fills inside the window. A filter that blocks new entries cannot stop a pending SL or TP. If that matters, be flat before the release or use an account type without the restriction. More in our news filter guide.

What SignalForge does not do

Better to know it now than after a breach:

• No maximum or trailing drawdown guard. Only the daily loss limit and the daily profit target are enforced.
• No daily trade count limit. If your firm caps trades or requests, control it in your Pine Script or alert frequency.
• No automatic weekend close. The time filter can stop new entries on Friday afternoon, but it does not close open positions.
• It does not know your firm's rules. It cannot tell a Standard account from a Swing one, or an evaluation from a funded account. The settings are yours.
• No late fills. A signal waits 120 seconds for your EA and then expires. If the terminal is off longer, that trade is missed, not executed later at a worse price.

Keep evidence before anyone asks

• Signal log. The dashboard lists every signal as EXECUTED, FILTERED, FAILED, NOT_DELIVERED or PENDING, with the reason. Screenshot the days that matter.
• MT5 logs. The Experts tab shows [PROC], [SEND], [NEWS] and [SHIELD] lines. Since EA v4.02 the log is quiet by default; switch to verbose when you need the detail.
• The firm's written answer. Save the ticket or email in which support confirms your setup.
• A dated copy of the rules. Save the rules pages as PDF with the date. Firms update them, and the version you agreed to is the one you want to show.
• Your strategy. Keep the Pine Script source and the alert messages. If a firm asks how the trades are generated, that is your answer.

FAQ

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