The prop trading industry has run on the same challenge-based model for years: traders pay fees to enter evaluations, clear one or more phases, and only then receive access to a funded account. RaiseMyFunds is leaving that model behind. From September 2026, the firm offers instant funding and nothing else.

The platform provides funding of up to $400,000 with no challenge phase. Traders apply through a form, RaiseMyFunds reviews each application, and a member of the team makes contact only if the candidate is selected. What used to be bought is now earned on profile. The account also offers a profit split of up to 85 per cent for the trader.

The decision is more than a new product line. Challenge fees are the revenue base of the prop trading sector, and RaiseMyFunds is removing that line from its own accounts. Instead of asking traders to prove themselves at their own expense, the firm carries the qualification cost itself and releases capital from day one.

How Instant Funding Works

Instant funding removes the evaluation layer that defines traditional prop trading. There are no challenges to purchase, no profit targets to hit against a deadline, and no sequence of testing phases. Selected traders receive access to trading capital from day one.

The terms are deliberately plain. A single fixed maximum loss, calculated once on the starting balance, replaces the usual stack of daily limits, trailing thresholds and profit targets. It does not move as the account grows, so a trader in profit never finds the floor rising behind them.

The filtering has not disappeared. It has moved from the trader’s wallet to the application file: candidates are assessed individually, and only those selected are contacted.

Problems with Challenge-Based Models

Challenge-based models dominate prop trading today, and they are drawing growing criticism. The structure looks reasonable enough: traders pay for an evaluation phase, hit a profit target while respecting risk rules, and get funded if they pass. Fail, and the next attempt is another purchase.

The difficulty lies in how this plays out in practice.

First, the incentives sit awkwardly. Industry pass rates are often cited in the single digits, which means the majority of buyers fund the firm without ever managing its capital. Whatever any individual firm intends, the revenue arrives at the moment of failure rather than the moment of success.

Second, challenges impose artificial conditions that do not match live trading. Time limits and mandatory profit targets push traders toward risks they would not otherwise take. A patient trader can perform poorly in an evaluation simply because the format does not suit the strategy, not because the strategy does not work.

Third, the upfront cost falls entirely on the trader. Fees are paid per attempt, while the firm supplies assessment rather than capital until the phase is cleared. For many traders, that means spending hundreds or thousands of dollars before reaching a funded account, if they reach one at all.

RaiseMyFunds ran challenges itself and watched these patterns develop from the inside. The company concluded that the problem is structural rather than a question of how individual firms run their evaluations, and that the only consistent response was to stop selling them.

Why RaiseMyFunds Is Making This Change

Challenge fees have proven reliably profitable across the sector. RaiseMyFunds has decided that the cost to the industry’s credibility outweighs that revenue, and has given it up rather than argue the point.

Trader dissatisfaction has become difficult to ignore. Forums and social media carry steady complaints about evaluation conditions, failed phases and the suspicion that rules exist to produce failures. That sentiment attaches to prop trading as a category, regulated firms included.

Moving to instant funding exclusively serves three purposes: it differentiates RaiseMyFunds in a market where most offers look alike; it ties the firm’s revenue to trader performance rather than trader attrition; and it puts the company in the position of questioning an industry standard rather than inheriting it. A firm with no challenge income has no interest in traders failing at the evaluation stage.

What Changes for Traders

The practical change is where the barrier sits. Traders no longer spend money on repeated attempts, and those funds can go toward their own trading approach or education instead.

The model also removes time pressure. With no evaluation deadline forcing quick decisions, traders can run strategies that follow market conditions rather than challenge requirements, and a fixed loss limit gives them a boundary they can plan around rather than one that moves while they trade.

Selection replaces the paywall. Challenge models favour whoever can afford the most attempts, while RaiseMyFunds assesses the profile instead. The question becomes whether a trader is ready, not how many times they can pay to find out. The programme is smaller as a result, and deliberately so.

What This Means for the Industry

RaiseMyFunds’ move tests whether a regulated prop firm can operate successfully with no challenge revenue at all, building a business aligned with trader performance rather than evaluation volume.

Other firms will need to decide how to respond. Some will keep their challenge structures, but they will face the question of why they maintain barriers that a regulated competitor has removed entirely.

The larger shift is transparency becoming a competitive argument. Being explicit about costs, limits and expectations appeals to traders who have grown tired of reading the fine print for the clause that ends their account.

This extends beyond instant funding itself. It reflects how RaiseMyFunds views prop trading’s future: less weight on elaborate evaluation systems, more on actual trading partnerships; less revenue from fees, more from shared trading profits.

By aligning its own results with those of its traders, the firm is betting on partnership over probability. Whether the rest of the industry follows will say a good deal about whether challenge fees were ever really about managing risk.

Apply for RaiseMyFunds Instant Funding

Applications are open and reviewed individually. Places are limited, and only selected candidates are contacted.

Apply for instant funding at RaiseMyFunds: https://raisemyfunds.co/instant-funding

This article was written by FM Contributors at www.financemagnates.com.Thought LeadershipRead More

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