Prop Firm Rules on Copy Trading: What's Actually Allowed

If you hold an evaluation or funded account and want to repeat your own trades onto it, only one document decides whether that's permitted: the rulebook of the programme that issued the account. Some allow it plainly, some cap how similar your positions across accounts may be, some ask you to declare any external tool that places orders. No general article can tell you which applies to you, this one included. What this page can do is show you which clauses decide it, and how to read them. It isn't legal advice.

Do prop firms allow trade copiers?

Some do, some limit it, and nobody but the programme that issued your account can tell you which applies to you. Every programme writes its own terms, and they differ: between firms, between account types at the same firm, and between revisions of the same document. A page that tells you copying is "fine" is guessing about paperwork it has never read. Trepeat is no different: it's a tool that places the orders you configure, and it neither reads nor enforces the rules of the accounts you connect. That responsibility stays with you, which is why the actual text is worth twenty minutes.

The clauses that actually decide it

Five kinds of clause decide whether a copier is permitted on an evaluation or funded account: an explicit copy-trading clause, correlated-account limits, total exposure caps, tool disclosure, and account access rules. Open the current terms for the account type you hold and search for them, roughly in the order they tend to matter:

• An explicit copy-trading clause: the fastest answer when it exists. Check whether it distinguishes replication between accounts one person owns from following another person's calls. Many draw that line; some treat all replication identically.
• Correlated or grouped accounts: limits on how similar the positions held across several accounts may be, or on coordinating accounts between different customers. Often the binding clause, because copying makes accounts maximally correlated by design. That is the point of it.
• Total exposure caps: some firms count maximum lots or per-symbol risk across every account you hold with them, not per account. One trade repeated onto four accounts counts four times against a ceiling like that. It is easy to breach without noticing.
• Third-party tool disclosure: a requirement to declare external software that connects to the account or places orders. If you're asked, answer plainly: you operate a copier that repeats your own orders onto your own accounts.
• Account access and credential rules: usually written to stop another person trading your account. Read it closely, because software you operate yourself is a different situation from handing an account to someone else, and not every document words it carefully.

Copying yourself is not the same as following someone else

Repeating your own trades and following another trader are two genuinely different activities, though a single clause sometimes covers both with one phrase. Repeating your own trades means you decide the trade, you place it once, and a tool you operate repeats that order onto other accounts you own. Following another trader means a third party's decisions arrive in your account: decisions you didn't make and often can't see coming.

Restrictions on "copy trading" are frequently aimed at the second case, where one person's decisions land across many customers' accounts at once. But the wording may not make that distinction, and your reading of the intent isn't binding. The text is. If the difference itself is new to you, copier vs copy trading vs signal-following sets out the three models side by side.

"It's just my own orders, placed twice": true, but not permission

It is mechanically accurate that a copier only places your own orders a second time, but accuracy is not permission. A copier sends the same order to a second account that you could have sent by hand with two terminals open: an ordinary market order on your own account, placed through the platform's API and labelled as the copier's. That ground is covered in is copying your own trades allowed.

It is not, however, an argument that wins anything. A programme can restrict conduct that is mechanically unremarkable, because these rules are written around the firm's own risk model, not around whether a tool is legitimate. "It's only my orders" describes what happens; it isn't a permission granted by the document you signed. Check the text. Don't reason from the plumbing.

How to get an answer you can rely on

Get the answer from the programme itself, in writing, before you connect the account.

• Start from their own words. The prop-firm rules directory quotes what each listed firm's own pages say on copiers, copying your own accounts, caps across accounts, servers and IP rules, with the link and the date checked. It is where to start reading, not a ruling: the firm's current terms win.
• Read the current version. Terms get revised. The PDF you downloaded when you bought the account may not be the one you're held to now.
• Ask in writing if it's ambiguous. Quote the clause and describe exactly what you'd do: you hold several accounts with them, you trade one manually, and a tool you operate repeats those orders onto the others, all of them yours.
• Keep the reply. A written answer from support is what you'd point at later; a chat message you half-remember isn't.
• Ask before you connect, not during a review after the fact.

What the tool decides: nothing

A copier decides nothing about your trading: it repeats the orders you place on your source account. Be precise about this when you ask a firm. It's the part people describe wrongly. You trade your source account exactly as you would anyway; every open, close and partial close is repeated onto the follower accounts you've linked, sized by a fixed multiplier or equity ratio, filtered by a symbol allowlist, with names remapped where two brokers disagree. Nothing is chosen for you.

Two controls matter here. Per-follower pause lets you take a single account out of copying without touching the others, useful when one programme's terms differ, or while you wait on a written answer. And one action closes the source position and every copy of it, which matters when an exposure cap is the clause you're managing against. If you're setting several accounts up at once, running multiple evaluations at once and copying one account to many cover the mechanics.

One detail that surprises people: many evaluation and funded accounts are issued on demo accounts: MetaTrader demo servers, or a cTrader demo account where the firm offers one. Trepeat currently connects demo accounts and refuses live ones at connect time. Demo is the account type it was built for, not an exception it tolerates.

Rule by rule: what Trepeat does and what you set

Rules a firm may write that touch copying, each with what Trepeat does about it and the setting that is yours. Your firm's rules decide whether any of it is allowed; the table only says what the tool does.

If copies are open when you press Stop, Trepeat asks what to do with them. Flatten and stop closes the source trade and every copy of it, then stops the repeater. Stop, leave open keeps them open, and they no longer close when the source closes, even after you press Run again, so you close them yourself. If the rule covers holding a trade through the event, pick Flatten and stop, and check afterwards that nothing was left open: a close request can fail.

Not legal advice: read your own rulebook

Nothing here is legal advice, and it can't stand in for the terms of the accounts you hold. Before you connect an evaluation or funded account, read that programme's rules and your broker's agreement, and confirm anything unclear with them in writing. They decide what's permitted on their accounts; a copier only places the orders you've told it to place.