Evaluation Fee Refunds: When Futures Prop Firms Return the Fee and What It Takes

At the time of writing, none of the eleven futures prop firms checked for this post refunds the evaluation fee when a trader passes or with the first payout from a funded account. "Fee refunded with your first payout" is a common promise of forex and CFD challenges, which is where most search results about it come from. In futures, the fee is the price of the attempt. The closest thing is Elite Trader Funding's credit bonus, which adds the first month's evaluation price to the starting balance of a passed trader's simulated funded account; that's a credit on a simulated balance, not money back. How the fee fits into the rest of the process is in prop firm evaluations explained.

What exists instead are short refund windows, and most of them close once the account has been traded.

• Topstep: a 14-day satisfaction guarantee on a trader's first Trading Combine, covering up to one monthly renewal, as long as the Combine hasn't been passed. A renewal the trader forgot to cancel can be refunded within 28 days if the account wasn't traded and that renewal's reset credit wasn't used.
• MyFundedFutures: a refund request within 14 days of purchase, if no trades were placed and the account is still active.
• Elite Trader Funding: a guarantee on a new user's first purchase within 7 days, with fewer than five trades and the account not failed: a swap, a refund or store credit.
• Take Profit Trader: a change-of-mind refund on an account that hasn't been used or traded, minus a $75 fee, paid within 72 hours.
• Alpha Futures: the return policy says all sales are final, but the service agreement allows a refund request within 14 days if no trade has been placed.
• Lucid Trading: no refund once an account has been traded, simulated trades included; an untraded account is at the firm's discretion.

Apex Trader Funding, Tradeify, Bulenox, Earn2Trade and FundedNext Futures describe their fees as final in their current terms, with narrow exceptions. Earn2Trade turns the idea around: its funded-account activation fee is deducted from the first withdrawal instead of being paid up front. A refund can also come at the other end: when a trader is moved to a live account, Lucid, MyFundedFutures and Apex refund the evaluation fee on some of the accounts that don't make the move. Reset and activation fees aren't refundable in any of the policies read for this post.

Chargebacks

A card dispute can look like a shortcut to a refund, and every firm with a written policy treats an unjustified one as a serious breach. Tradeify freezes all of the trader's active accounts and bans future purchases. Lucid calls it a material breach, with a permanent ban and recovery of costs. MyFundedFutures bars the trader and can forfeit balances and payouts. Topstep opens an account review that can end in removal, and Earn2Trade charges $25 per chargeback and can send the debt to collections. A funded account with a payout pending is the most expensive thing to lose this way.

With no refund on passing, the whole evaluation and activation cost belongs in the total cost to a first payout, and a reset counts as a new purchase. The one decision a refund window does affect is timing: a trader unsure about an account should decide early, and at most firms before the first trade.