Perps vs Futures Prop Firms

A perps prop firm and a futures prop firm sell the same deal: pay for an account, trade within its loss limits, and keep a share of the profit. The difference is the contract you trade. A futures prop firm funds you on CME futures such as NQ and ES. A perps prop firm funds you on perpetual futures, or perps: contracts that never expire, often trade around the clock and carry a funding cost. That one change runs through everything else, from how you size a trade to how you get paid.

If prop firms are new to you, start with How Futures Prop Firms Work: the evaluation, drawdowns and payouts work the same way at a perps firm, and this guide covers what changes.

What is the difference between perps and futures prop firms?

The difference between perps and futures prop firms is the market underneath the account. The table sets them side by side, as most firms of each kind run them; single firms vary.

What is a perpetual future?

A perpetual future, or perp, is a futures contract with no expiry date. A CME future expires on a set date, so traders roll to the next contract; a perp never does. To keep a perp’s price close to the market it tracks, buyers and sellers pay each other at set intervals, the funding payment.

Perps began on crypto exchanges, and Bitcoin and Ether perps are still the biggest. Many perps venues now also list perps on stock indices, single stocks, Gold, Oil and currency pairs. Some index perps track a CME future directly, following the front-month contract and rolling it for you on set dates, so a perp on NQ moves with the NQ future you would trade at a futures firm. Vest, for example, lists NQ, ES, YM and RTY perps that follow the CME front-month contracts.

Where does the price come from?

At a futures prop firm the price comes from the CME: every NQ trader, funded or not, sees the same market. At a perps prop firm the price comes from the perps market the firm uses, either a crypto exchange or the firm’s own venue, with its own order book.

A perps market tracks an index price, built from the underlying market, and uses a mark price, smoothed from it, to decide liquidations. In quiet trade the perp sits close to its index. In a fast market, at the open, or when the underlying market is shut, it can drift away from it, and a trade can fill at a price the futures market never traded.

This is a risk a futures prop firm doesn’t carry in the same way. A pricing fault at a perps venue can close accounts on prices that weren’t real, and a firm can end up rolling back trades or compensating traders after one. Before you buy, read whether the firm publishes its incidents and how it corrects them.

What does it cost to hold a perps trade?

Holding a perps trade carries funding, a payment between longs and shorts at set intervals, from every hour to every eight hours. When the perp trades above its index, longs pay shorts; below it, shorts pay longs. Some perps firms pass that funding through; others charge a holding fee of their own instead.

As a made-up example: a $20,000 long held for three days, with funding at 0.01% every eight hours and longs paying, costs $2 a period, nine periods, $18 in all. Small against a day’s range, but it comes off your equity, so it uses up drawdown, and on a crowded trade the rate can be many times higher.

A futures position has no funding: the cost of holding is built into the future’s price and closes up as it nears expiry. At most futures prop firms you are flat by the afternoon cut-off anyway.

How do you size a perps trade?

You size a perps trade in units of the market, or in dollars of position value, not in contracts. Firms cap leverage for each market, from 2x on small coins at some to 50x or more on major indices at others, but leverage only sets how much margin a trade uses. What you make or lose per point depends on your size alone.

As a made-up example: on an NQ perp where one unit moves $1 per point, 2 units match the $2 a point of one MNQ. With a 20-point stop, both risk $40, whether the perp account shows 5x or 50x leverage. Size from your stop and your drawdown, exactly as you would with contracts, and treat the leverage cap as a ceiling, not a target.

Our Futures Position Size Calculator works in contracts. To use it for a perp, find the CME contract that matches your unit size, then work back to units.

When can you trade, and when does the day reset?

Crypto perps trade every hour of every day, so a perps firm has to pick when its trading day ends: a daily reset time, often midnight UTC, at which the daily loss limit starts again. A futures firm’s day follows the exchange’s session, around its daily close.

Perps on indices, stocks, metals and currencies differ by venue: some keep the hours of the market they track and lock at the weekend, others trade around the clock. A position held into a lock can’t be closed until the market reopens, so a weekend gap hits it as it would a futures position held over the weekend. Futures firms mostly make you flat before the weekend; perps firms often let you hold, and charge funding while you do.

Check two things: the reset time in your own time zone, and whether the new day’s limit is measured from your balance or your equity at that moment.

How do trading fees compare?

A futures prop firm charges a fixed cost per contract, the same whatever the price. A perps firm charges a percentage of the position’s value on each fill, often lower for orders that rest on the book than for orders that take liquidity.

As a made-up example: at 0.01% a fill, a $40,000 position costs $4 to open and $4 to close. Because the fee is a percentage, it grows with the price and the size of the position, and a trader who scalps many times a day pays it every time.

How do perps prop firms pay you?

Perps prop firms pay in one of two ways: in stablecoins, dollar-pegged tokens such as USDC or USDT, sent to a crypto wallet you control, or in cash through a payout service such as Rise or Wise, the way futures prop firms pay. Many crypto-first perps firms pay only in stablecoins; some, including perps firms run by futures prop firms, pay cash, and a few offer both.

Stablecoin payouts can be fast, sometimes within a day, and some perps firms let you claim profit whenever you like rather than on a schedule. But you need a wallet, you may have to choose the network, a payment to the wrong address can’t be reversed, and turning stablecoins into your own currency is a step, and sometimes a fee, of its own.

Is either one real money?

At both kinds of firm, the funded account is usually simulated, and the payouts are real. Futures prop firms commonly run funded accounts as simulations on live prices; perps firms often do the same, treating your trades as ideas they may copy with their own money, or not.

Read the firm’s terms, not only its marketing: some firms describe accounts as backed by real capital on their website while their contract calls every account simulated. What you can lose is the same either way: the price of the account and any fees, not your own trading capital.

Who can sign up for a perps prop firm?

Who can sign up for a perps prop firm depends on where the firm is based and its terms. Many perps firms are registered offshore, and their contracts are governed by that country’s law, which matters if you ever need to dispute a payout.

Country lists differ between firms, and sometimes between one firm’s own products: a firm can accept you for its prop accounts but bar you from the exchange it runs alongside them. Read every set of terms that applies to you. Never use a VPN to get round a country restriction; firms ban it, and it can cost you a payout.

Which suits you, perps or futures?

Neither is better: they suit different ways of trading. The table pairs how you trade with the kind of firm that tends to fit it.

What should you check before buying a perps account?

Before buying a perps prop firm account, check these on the firm’s own rules pages and its terms:

1. Where does the price come from, and does the firm publish pricing incidents and how it fixed them?
2. Is the drawdown static or trailing, and is it measured on balance or equity, open trades included?
3. When does the trading day reset, in your time zone?
4. Does it pass through funding or charge its own holding fee, and how often?
5. What are the leverage caps, and how is one unit sized against the CME contract you know?
6. What are the trading fees, as a percentage of each fill?
7. Which markets lock at the weekend, and can you hold into the lock?
8. How are payouts made: stablecoins or cash, which networks, how often, and any minimum?
9. Where is the firm based, does it accept your country, and do its terms call the account simulated?

Then size every trade to the drawdown before your first order, and log what each account costs you in the Prop Firm Expense Tracker.

For one firm of each kind worked through in full, see our guides to Vest, a perps prop firm, and MyFundedFutures, a futures prop firm.