Prop Firms and Brokers Are Converging

Between May 2025 and March 2026, five prop firms added regulated brokerage arms, and brokers moved in the other direction with prop products of their own. FTMO completed its acquisition of OANDA on 1 December 2025. Topstep launched Topstep Brokerage, registered with the CFTC and a member of the NFA under ID 0567079. The two businesses are joining at the payout channel, not inside a single account.

The reversals are the more useful half of that record. Two brokers opened prop arms and shut them. One group that came to own both halves pulled them apart. And one firm built a single product on a real live account, on economics unlike anything else in the category.

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Why both sides are moving at once

The two businesses start from opposite ends of the same customer. A prop firm sells an evaluation to someone who has no capital and wants access to size; a retail broker sells market access to someone who already has capital. Each side owns a stage of the customer’s life the other does not.

One hard mechanical driver sits on top of that, and it is not a regulator. In February 2024 MetaQuotes withdrew MT4/MT5 licences from prop operators and stopped accepting white-label arrangements underneath existing brokers, serving only licensed brokerages directly. That made a brokerage licence the entry ticket to a MetaTrader-based prop product — Wall Street Funded’s documented response was to open a broker in St Lucia to get MT5 back. Firms on Match-Trader, DXtrade or cTrader are not bound by that constraint, which is why the same period also produced prop brands that never went near a licence.

The trade record shows a second driver: the prop funnel meets a trader early and cheaply. The only public conversion figure we found for the whole industry comes from ATFX, whose chief strategy officer Drew Niv stated that more than 10% of the firm’s South American prop traders converted into ordinary brokerage clients (Finance Magnates) — and ATFX closed its prop arm anyway.

What the two businesses actually earn from

A prop arm and a brokerage arm sit awkwardly inside one legal entity because they are paid in different ways.

A retail broker’s income is spread, financing and interest on customer balances. Trading 212’s own help centre states that its main streams are a 0.15% FX conversion fee and share-lending income on the investing side, and overnight interest and CFD spread on the CFD side; its filed FY2025 accounts for Trading 212 UK Ltd (Companies House 08590005) show revenue of £277.6 million, of which £20.6 million is net client interest income. Its published order execution policy discloses that the firm may act as principal and execute through its own systematic internaliser.

A prop firm’s income is the evaluation fee. One business is paid when a customer trades; the other is paid before the customer trades.

Where the two halves actually join

Across the cases we reviewed, the connection is a one-way money route out of the prop programme and into a brokerage account, not a shared account or a shared wallet.

Topstep Brokerage, per Topstep’s own About page, is “a retail-focused introducing broker” whose clients “have the option to fund their accounts by traditional methods, as well as through a direct transfer of their prop earnings from the Topstep prop firm” (topstep.com). ThinkCapital’s marketing describes withdrawing up to 90% of profits “directly to your personal ThinkMarkets brokerage account”. Blueberry Funded added a route in April 2025 under which a payout is withdrawn straight to a Blueberry Markets brokerage account. Atmos Funded transfers a payout to a live Taurex account instantly and with a 10% uplift.

Legally these are two contracts with two different companies; for the person using the product they are one path. That is our reading of the documented cases, not a claim any firm makes about itself — and it fits the geometry set out in the jurisdiction map, where the Czech National Bank’s dividing line turns on whether the trader’s instructions are actually executed and settled.

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The map, as of 31 July 2026

The operating entity behind Atmos Funded is given differently by different sources. The licences behind Tradin® are asserted by the firm without being listed. And a second source dates the Vantage closure to 30 November 2024, against the 31 December date on the firm’s own FAQ used here.

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The cases that went the other way

Two brokers opened prop arms and closed them

ATFunded launched in October 2024 and stopped operating on 6 June 2026, about twenty months later. The firm’s statement was that “the prop trading industry has evolved considerably” and that it had chosen to “pause, stabilise, and evaluate alternative models that better align trader success with company sustainability”. Active accounts were refunded in full, outstanding payouts were executed, and MT5 was put into close-only with all trades closed by 13:00 EST the same day.

The conversion figure quoted earlier came from that same firm. By ATFX’s own account the funnel was working, and the arm closed anyway.

Vantage Elite Challenge closed on 31 December 2024, per Vantage’s own FAQ page, which describes the decision as part of a “broader strategic initiative to align our offerings with market trends”. The product had been functional: up to $200,000 of simulated capital, two phases, an 80% split, and a fee refunded on the first payout.

One group owns both halves and pulled them apart

FTMO signed to buy OANDA from CVC Asia Fund IV in early 2025 and closed on 1 December 2025, after roughly eight months and the approval of five regulators. On 2 March 2026 the group announced that OANDA Prop Trader would move to FTMO Group; the programme concluded on 31 March 2026, and traders who chose not to migrate were refunded in full (FTMO). OANDA’s own statement is that it “will continue developing its award-winning core brokerage services, while FTMO remains fully dedicated to advancing its specialised modern prop trading model”.

In FinanceFeeds’ analysis of the separation — the publication’s characterisation, not the companies’ — the move “removes evaluation-based prop trading from OANDA’s regulated entity, limiting compliance overlap” and “provides structural clarity at a time when regulators are examining evaluation-based funding models more closely” (FinanceFeeds).

The group best placed in the world to build a single combined product acquired the second half, then moved the prop business out of the licensed entity.

The5ers bought into a broker and kept the brands apart

The founders of The5ers, through the wholly owned Trade Set Go Holdings Ltd, took a minority stake in TSG Brokers Ltd, an existing CySEC-licensed broker, rather than applying for a licence. Reported on 4 December 2025, live from January 2026. In the same Finance Magnates interview, co-founder Gil Ben Hur described the combination as a single ecosystem — and separately stated that the group would not run prop and brokerage services under one brand, calling that both a regulatory requirement and a reflection of its management philosophy. He also said TSG would not necessarily process prop flows, and that The5ers keeps separate liquidity and technology providers.

Blueberry isolates rather than integrates

Blueberry Funded’s evaluation contract is with Blueberry Markets (SVG) LLC in St Vincent and the Grenadines. The ASIC-licensed entity, Blueberry Australia Pty Ltd (AFSL 535887), is not a party to it. Every account is simulated at every stage: the firm’s help centre states that “fees are charged for access to a simulated trading environment and evaluation framework. No real capital is allocated and no investment services are provided.” Australia — the jurisdiction of the group’s licence — is on the prop product’s restricted-territories list, and there is no migration path from the funded account to a live brokerage account.

Axi Select is the one documented model on a real live account

Axi Select has no challenge and no fee. The trader must already hold a live Axi account, have at least 20 unique closed trades, an Edge Score of at least 50, and at least $500 on the account. Axi then opens a separate Allocation Account and funds it with Axi’s own money; the terms state that “any funds in the Allocation Account remain the property of Axi” (Axi Select Terms of Service, PDF). Trades placed on the trader’s own live account are copied into the Allocation Account with a multiplier. Axi’s own comparison material describes the programme as using a real trading account, against demo elsewhere in the category.

The programme is contracted from AxiTrader LLC in St Vincent and the Grenadines and is not available to residents of Australia, New Zealand, the EU or the UK — the markets where the group’s licences sit. Published figures: 49,000+ traders and 16 traders at the top Pro M tier as of March 2026, $400 million-plus allocated and $10 million-plus paid out as of September 2025. The published split is 80%; parts of the trade press have reported “up to 90%”.

What disappears here is the evaluation fee, and with it the revenue line that funds the rest of the category. Whether any other funded account is real is settled in the same place — the terms — and is taken up in is a funded account a real account.

Exness is a documented absence

We found no prop product from Exness — one of the largest retail FX brokers by volume. No product page, no subdomain, no press release, and no coverage in Finance Magnates, FinanceFeeds, LeapRate or TradeInformer, all of which covered competitor launches closely. Third parties state directly that the only route to an “Exness funded account” is through separate prop firms using Exness as an execution broker.

We record this as an absence and stop there; no public statement from the company explains it. Set against IC Markets, which did launch IC Funded, the reading is narrow: two of the largest brokers by volume faced the same option and chose differently, so a prop arm is not a requirement for a broker at scale.

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What the record shows

The join is the payout channel. Where a bridge exists — Topstep, ThinkCapital, Blueberry, Atmos — money moves out of the prop programme and into a brokerage account. No case we found merges the account itself, and in every one of them the counterparty on the evaluation and the holder of the licence are different companies: the two-entity pattern.

A licence does not fix the unit economics. ATFX closed its prop arm with a working funnel; Vantage closed one that worked as designed. See where prop firm revenue comes from and firm closures 2024–2026.

”Broker-backed” is not a product claim. Blueberry’s licensed entity is not a party to the prop contract, and its home jurisdiction is restricted for the prop product.

No jurisdiction we checked licenses the evaluation itself, whatever licence sits elsewhere in the group.

Terms with a firm-specific meaning — funded account, allocation, payout — are defined in the glossary.

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Written by the upme.com research desk. Every entity, licence number and date in the map above links to the company’s own publication or to the trade report of the transaction. Where sources disagree — the Atmos operating entity, the Vantage closing date — we say so rather than picking one silently. Figures are as of 31 July 2026. Corrections to the address on our sourcing page. Nothing here is investment advice.

Sources

Every factual claim above is drawn from one of the documents below. Where a document has been superseded since the date given, tell us and the piece is corrected with a dated line.

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