Upcomers is facing a new dispute over the rejection of a funded trader’s payout following extensive trading with an Expert Advisor, even though the firm’s published rules say automated trading is permitted when it follows the same conduct and risk restrictions as manual trading.
An October 25 Reddit post in the PropFirmTester community says the customer passed an evaluation using an EA, switched off the software on the funded account before requesting payment, and received a payout-denial explanation. Commenters examining the uploaded notice discussed approximately 1,525 trades in 11 days and raised questions about position stacking. The notice itself has not been independently authenticated against server-side trade records, and the public discussion does not provide a reliable accounting of which specific trades were deemed prohibited.
A separate October 21 Trustpilot reviewer said Upcomers rejected a withdrawal request after 49 trades generated $2,180.47 in net profit, then reset the account to its starting funded balance. Upcomers responded that requests are reviewed under the applicable trading rules and invited the customer to contact support for a case-specific explanation. Neither allegation independently demonstrates improper denial of a contractual reward.
What Did the October 25 Expert Advisor Complaint Allege?
The trader wrote in an October 25 Reddit post that they had completed an evaluation with an Expert Advisor, obtained a funded account and turned off the program before requesting a payout. The customer also claimed to have passed a $100,000 FTMO evaluation using the same EA, although that separate assertion has not been independently verified.
The Reddit post refers to an attached payout-denial explanation. Discussion participants highlighted what they interpreted as roughly 1,525 trades over 11 days and mentioned position stacking among the apparent issues. Dividing that count across eleven trading days would imply about 139 trades per day, but the denominator and trade count come from the forum discussion rather than an independently verified execution report.
One commenter suggested that stacking might refer to pyramiding or repeatedly adding to an existing position. Other readers argued that the volume of trading made close compliance scrutiny unsurprising. Those are participants’ interpretations, not verified findings by the firm’s risk team.
The user’s decision to disable the EA before requesting payment does not erase earlier activity if the trading program’s rules apply to the full evaluation or funded history under review. Equally, the use of software during an evaluation is not by itself prohibited if the rules explicitly permit Expert Advisors.
The central unresolved fact is which precise order patterns triggered the rejection, how the strategy was classified and whether those patterns violated rules in effect when the customer traded.
Does Upcomers Officially Allow Expert Advisors?
Yes. The firm’s official EA policy states that Expert Advisors, trading bots and automated tools are allowed subject to the same trading rules as manual activity. It also says an EA alone does not cause account closure and that the company may request information on the strategy, ownership and settings during payout review.
Its prohibited strategies page provides additional qualifications. Trading tools cannot be used to copy other people’s accounts, exploit platform defects or execute other prohibited methods. The policy permits copying between accounts owned by the same individual but restricts shared trading among unrelated account holders.
The firm says it evaluates accounts at the payout stage according to the same standard whether the trading was manual or automated. It does not promise that an EA-funded strategy will necessarily be approved merely because the trader previously passed an evaluation.
The difference between tool permission and strategy permission is central. A company can authorize automation while still restricting martingale schemes, cross-account hedging, arbitrage, excessive risk concentration or attempts to evade a maximum drawdown rule. Such violations must, however, be identified using the actual contract and trading records, not inferred automatically from the label ‘EA’.
A related debate emerged in DaveFinances’ earlier coverage of OFP Funding payout denials, where customers rejected claims that they used unauthorized automated strategies. That dispute concerned another company and does not validate Upcomers’ position or the current customer’s complaint.
Is Position Stacking Automatically a Rule Violation?
Not necessarily. Position stacking can describe adding positions in the same market or direction while a trade moves favorably, a technique often called scaling in or pyramiding. In ordinary trading, the risk depends on the aggregate size of the exposure, stop placements, margin, volatility and the account’s permitted loss limits.
The same visual pattern can also arise from automation designed to evade an account’s limits or to create a set of superficially separate executions that collectively express one oversized bet. Distinguishing those possibilities requires the order sequence, market data, account equity and the rule the firm says applies.
Upcomers’ futures strategy guidance prohibits all-or-nothing maximum-size gambles and cross-account strategies intended to evade trailing drawdown limits, while saying bots and indicators can be used within normal trading objectives. That futures document must not automatically be applied to a CFD account or a different product type unless its terms actually govern the affected program.
A customer reporting 1,525 executions may have submitted many small orders, repeated similar signals or repeatedly increased a position. The number alone does not establish manipulation, excessive leverage or a breach of the firm’s terms. Nor does a claim that the software was turned off afterward settle the matter.
The firm would need to identify whether the account’s trade count reflects individual orders, partial fills, repeated additions or other events, and explain why the pattern failed the applicable compliance test.
What Did the Trader Claim About $2,180.47 in Profit?
The October 21 Trustpilot reviewer said they completed 49 trades and generated $2,180.47 in net results before their withdrawal request was rejected and the funded account was reset to its original balance.
Upcomers publicly acknowledged the customer was disappointed and explained that payout requests are checked against applicable terms. It asked the reviewer to contact its support team with an account reference so the firm could provide more detail.
That response does not independently confirm the $2,180.47 profit figure, specify the alleged breach or admit that the payout rejection was incorrect. The customer’s allegation also does not show whether they had satisfied requirements regarding trading days, position concentration, consistency, drawdown or other eligibility criteria.
The timing raises a practical issue. An evaluation may show an account passing or a dashboard may show positive simulated performance, but neither necessarily proves a reward is payable before compliance review. Traders may see that distinction as surprising if the account rules are not obvious and the review’s grounds are not documented clearly.
Related concerns surfaced in an Apex Trader Funding complaint about accounts closed after first payout requests. That case also lacked independent trading records, underscoring why allegations that payout timing caused closure require more evidence than the chronology alone.
Why Do EA Reviews Become Contentious at the Payout Stage?
Automated trading generates large amounts of data, which can help compliance teams reconstruct conduct in detail. Execution timestamps, lot sizes, trade-entry patterns, shared indicators, unusual correlations and repeated short holding times can reveal potentially prohibited behavior, but such indicators may have benign explanations.
For a trader, the difficult part is receiving an explanation that translates those data into a recognizable contractual breach. A statement that a robot placed many orders is insufficient when robots are expressly allowed; the firm must explain which strategy characteristics were prohibited.
For the provider, releasing its complete detection algorithm might invite attempts to game the system. A workable compromise is to identify selected trade IDs, the applicable rule and a reproducible risk calculation without disclosing every internal detection threshold.
The separation between evaluation performance and reward eligibility can also encourage disagreement. A trader may invest time or account-purchase fees, pass an assessment and only later discover that a particular strategy will not qualify for withdrawal under a broader prohibition.
Upcomers says its payout reviews use the same rules for EA and manual traders. That published standard can be tested only if the firm explains how it applied the rule to specific activity. A different enforcement outcome is not necessarily discrimination, but unexplained outcomes make meaningful appeals difficult.
What Information Would Resolve the Upcomers Disputes?
For the Reddit case, the decisive records would be the full notice, the affected program’s trading rules as accepted on the purchase date, actual order IDs, size and timing of positions, and any aggregation used to classify position stacking. It would also be important to establish whether the strategy operated during the funded stage or only during the evaluation.
For the $2,180.47 Trustpilot complaint, the key documents would be the payout request, exact company denial rationale, trading history, account eligibility metrics and the basis for resetting the simulated balance. The company invited further review but did not publicly release those findings.
These are not confirmed losses of investor capital or judgments against Upcomers. Traders buy access to programs whose reward entitlements depend on contractual conditions, and a nominal funded account balance is not equivalent to customer-owned cash.
Another recent multi-account dispute covered by DaveFinances involved Funded Futures Family and its account-rolling policy. There, too, the essential question was whether an alleged pattern across transactions supported a payout denial under the rule in force.
As of October 26, the verified public record supports a narrow finding: an EA user alleges a payout denial following very active trading, another customer reports a rejected $2,180.47 reward, and Upcomers’ written policy says Expert Advisors are allowed when traders observe its restrictions. There is not enough public evidence to establish that either decision was improperly made. The quality of the account-specific explanations and appeals remains the central issue.
Johan Shamshad is a financial markets writer at Dave Finances covering cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, financial regulation, and developments across global markets. He previously worked at Gulf News, adding newsroom experience to his coverage of fast-moving financial and digital-asset markets.
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