An FTMO customer says the proprietary-trading firm withdrew the $200,000 Swing account variation attached to their evaluation only after they had spent nearly ten months completing its first stage, raising questions about how legacy challenges are handled when a product is removed from sale.
The claim comes from an updated Trustpilot review published October 2. The reviewer says they purchased a $200,000 FTMO Swing Challenge on December 1, 2025, and completed Phase One on September 29, 2026 after 208 trades, with what they describe as a 94% discipline score.
According to the review, FTMO contacted the trader on October 1 and said it had decided to discontinue the $200,000 Swing variation, including equivalent account sizes in other currencies.
The trader says FTMO offered two alternatives: continue with a $200,000 Standard account and receive a 15% discount coupon toward a future order, or receive a refund of the evaluation fee and close the account.
The emails and support conversations described in the review have not been independently authenticated. FTMO has also not published a public statement addressing this individual case.
Trader Says New $200K Swing Sales Had Stopped Months Earlier
The most significant part of the complaint concerns timing.
The reviewer says FTMO support separately confirmed through its Discord community that the company had stopped selling new $200,000 Swing accounts in March 2026.
If accurate, that would mean the customer continued trading an existing evaluation for roughly seven months after the product combination was allegedly removed from new sales without being proactively informed that the corresponding Swing account might no longer be available at the end of the process.
That March cutoff has not been independently confirmed through a public FTMO announcement.
FTMO’s current website continues to describe Swing as an available account type exclusively through its 2-Step Challenge, while its broader 2-Step product pages continue to advertise account sizes up to $200,000. Those public pages do not clearly establish whether a new customer can currently combine the maximum $200,000 size with the Swing variation.
The distinction matters because FTMO evaluations have no maximum trading period. A trader can therefore remain in an evaluation for months while the company’s underlying product catalogue changes.
That creates a potentially awkward category of legacy accounts: evaluations purchased under specifications that are no longer offered to new customers.
Swing and Standard Accounts Are Not Identical After Evaluation
The customer’s objection is not simply about receiving a differently named product.
Under FTMO’s current Swing account rules, Swing accounts are specifically designed for traders who need to hold positions overnight, through long market rollovers and over weekends. They also avoid restrictions around selected economic-news releases.
Standard FTMO Accounts operate differently.
Once a trader reaches the FTMO Account stage, Standard users must close positions before weekends and before market breaks lasting longer than two hours. Standard accounts are also restricted from opening or closing affected instruments during defined windows around selected high-impact economic announcements.
Swing accounts are exempt from those restrictions.
There is also a leverage difference. FTMO currently lists leverage of up to 1:100 for Standard accounts and up to 1:30 for Swing accounts.
For a trader whose strategy depends on holding positions for days rather than hours, the distinction can fundamentally change how the strategy operates.
This is similar to why apparently technical changes such as changes to MT4 order-management rules matter to active traders: what looks like a small account or platform specification can alter how positions must actually be managed.
The Evaluation Stage Makes the Dispute More Complicated
There is an important complication, however.
FTMO’s own rules state that the overnight, weekend and selected-news restrictions attached to Standard accounts do not apply during the Evaluation Process.
That includes both Phase One and Verification in the 2-Step Challenge.
In other words, changing the customer from Swing to Standard before the second evaluation phase would not necessarily stop the trader from continuing to use their swing-style approach during Verification.
The material change would arrive later, if the trader completed Verification and progressed to an FTMO Account.
At that point, the Standard restrictions would begin, while the Swing exemptions the customer originally selected would no longer be available under the proposed replacement.
This is why the dispute is less about whether the trader could technically finish Phase Two and more about what they believed they were working toward during nearly ten months of evaluation.
FTMO Reportedly Says Passing Does Not Guarantee Specific Account Characteristics
The reviewer updated the complaint after receiving a response from FTMO on October 2.
According to the customer, FTMO said successful completion of the evaluation does not create an entitlement to an FTMO Account with specific preselected characteristics and that provision of the subsequent account remains subject to the company’s terms and discretion.
The reviewer says FTMO characterized the refund and Standard-account alternatives as goodwill options rather than remedies it was contractually required to provide.
The trader also proposed receiving two $100,000 Swing accounts instead. According to the review, FTMO rejected that option because the account size could not be changed in that manner.
The customer explicitly says they are not claiming FTMO breached its contract and ultimately chose the refund.
The complaint instead focuses on whether customers should be told earlier when the product they are working toward has been withdrawn.
The Real Issue Is What Happens to Legacy Evaluations
That is the more interesting question for the wider prop-trading sector.
Companies change products all the time. Platforms disappear, leverage changes, account sizes are adjusted and trading conditions evolve.
FTMO itself has made other product changes this year. In March, it discontinued DXtrade for new selection while initially allowing active clients to continue using existing accounts. It also updated trading conditions and terms during 2026.
The important issue is how those changes interact with customers already midway through a potentially unlimited evaluation.
If a product disappears from new sales, there are several possible approaches. Existing customers could be grandfathered into the original specification. They could be notified immediately and offered migration or refunds. Or the company could allow the evaluation to continue while reserving the right to offer different specifications later.
Those approaches create very different expectations for the trader.
Financial firms increasingly face scrutiny not only over what their terms technically permit but over how clearly product conditions are communicated. The same broader transparency issue has appeared in the regulated CFD market, where the FCA has intensified scrutiny of CFD firms and how their services are represented to retail customers.
Unlimited Evaluations Make Advance Notice More Important
FTMO markets the absence of a time limit as an advantage of its 2-Step Challenge.
For traders, it clearly can be. Someone does not have to force trades simply to reach a profit target before an arbitrary deadline.
But unlimited evaluation periods create another problem: the longer an evaluation remains open, the greater the chance that the company changes its product lineup before the trader finishes.
A ten-month evaluation is not necessarily unusual under a no-time-limit model. A company therefore needs some policy for customers whose original account specification is withdrawn during that period.
The economic loss is also difficult to measure purely through the evaluation fee.
A refund returns the money paid for the challenge. It does not compensate for the time spent completing hundreds of simulated trades or for the opportunity cost of focusing on one evaluation instead of another trading account.
That does not mean FTMO is legally required to compensate for that time. It does mean a refund and a like-for-like continuation solve different problems.
Product Specifications Matter More in Prop Trading Than They First Appear
Retail trading businesses are increasingly differentiating themselves through product design rather than simply platform access.
That can mean new instruments, as seen in Trading 212’s expansion of its product set, or it can mean rules governing leverage, drawdowns, news trading and when positions must be closed.
For prop traders, those rules are arguably even more important because they determine whether a strategy can survive the transition from evaluation to the reward-generating stage.
A day trader may see little practical difference between Standard and Swing. A trader holding positions through central-bank meetings or over several weekends may see them as entirely different products.
That makes account type part of the strategy rather than a cosmetic preference.
FTMO Needs a Clearer Answer on How Many Legacy Accounts Remain
One customer complaint does not establish a broader pattern.
The key unanswered question is how many evaluations remain active for account configurations FTMO no longer sells.
It would also be useful to know whether the company routinely contacts customers when a product variation is retired, whether existing challenges are normally grandfathered, and whether treatment depends on how far a trader has progressed through the evaluation.
There may be perfectly practical reasons for discontinuing a particular account size or risk configuration. Prop firms continuously adjust the products they are willing to support as trading conditions, risk models and customer behavior change.
But the moment of notification matters.
If the reviewer’s chronology is accurate, the trader purchased a $200,000 Swing evaluation in December, the product allegedly stopped being sold to new customers in March, the trader continued for another six months, passed Phase One on September 29 and learned of the issue only on October 1.
That sequence is what turns an otherwise routine product retirement into a more interesting customer-policy story.
FTMO’s current public materials make clear what Swing accounts are designed to offer. What they do not clearly explain is what happens when that exact specification ceases to be available while a customer is still working through an unlimited evaluation.
For traders buying long-duration prop challenges, that may now be a question worth asking before the first trade rather than after the first stage has already been passed.
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.
His work focuses on identifying market-moving events, company developments, regulatory changes, product launches, and shifts in trading and financial infrastructure.
Johan contributes news and analysis designed to help readers understand not only what happened, but why a development matters and how it may affect the wider financial landscape.