Prop firms & compliance · updated 2026 · policies last verified 2026-08-12

Copying across firms and copy detection

The question behind this page: "If I copy my own trades to accounts at two different firms, will a payout review flag me as a copy-trader?" It is a reasonable worry. Here is what is actually written down, what is enforced, and what is rumor.

What is verified

Every firm we checked bans copying other people. Signal services, coordinated groups, trading someone else's account — banned at all ten, usually with closure of every account involved.

Identical trades across your own accounts are, at most firms, the permitted case — that is what "own-account copying allowed" means in the policy matrix. The firms' concern is direction and identity, not sameness: your accounts taking the same trade the same way is what a copier is for.

But several firms do look across accounts, households, and even firms. Verified on their own pages, 2026-08-12:

• Lucid Trading bans opposing positions across your accounts, across different users — and explicitly across different firms and platforms (prohibited hedging). Same-direction across firms is not the banned case; opposite-direction is.
• Apex counts its 20-funded-account cap across your whole household and companies, and lists sharing computers, IPs, or cards with other traders as a prohibited activity (prohibited activities).
• Topstep bans trading in concert with other people or unconnected accounts — pooling risk or running the same or opposite strategy together (prohibited conduct).
• Tradeify requires that an automated strategy be solely yours, not shared with other traders and not used across multiple firms, and says it scans for matching orders across unrelated accounts (guidelines). That clause is written for bots; how far it reaches into copier use is not spelled out.
• TakeProfitTrader describes surveillance that weighs device and infrastructure clustering, while stating no single signal — a shared IP, say — is a violation by itself (Independent Trade Execution Policy).

What is rumored

Community stories about cross-firm "mimicry sweeps" — one firm detecting your fills at another firm and denying a payout over same-direction copying of your own accounts — are not something we found in any firm's published rules. What firms publish is narrower: correlated activity reviews aimed at multiple people acting as one, and hedging checks aimed at opposite-direction risk offsetting. Treat the broader version as unconfirmed, and treat the firms' own words as the rule.

Staying clearly inside the lines

• Read each firm's terms — both firms' rules apply to you at once, and the strictest clause wins in practice.
• Keep every copied account under your own name (or your own business, where the firm allows it).
• Same direction everywhere. Opposite-direction across firms is explicitly banned at Lucid and risky everywhere — see hedging between accounts.
• Do not share setups, devices, IPs, or strategies with other traders. Most "copy detection" stories that end badly involve two people, not two firms.

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