Which prop firms allow deadman-guardian
Sixteen firms. Every quote below was read from the firm's own published page on the date given and is reproduced verbatim, with a link. This table exists to stop you buying a tool your firm forbids — and it is usable whether or not you ever install anything.
Prop firm rules change without notice and without changelogs; several of these pages carry no "last updated" stamp at all. Re-check before you rely on this. If your firm is in the red rows, the honest answer is: do not install it, and do not ask us to help you install it quietly.
How to read the evidence column
Two different kinds of thing are on this page and they are not worth the same:
| Mark | What it means |
|---|---|
| Published rule | Quoted from the firm's own site or help centre, with the URL. It is what the firm has written for everyone — not a ruling about this tool. |
| Written ruling | The firm was asked about deadman-guardian by name, before launch, and answered in writing. Their words are quoted, with the date. Three firms have answered so far and all three said no. |
| Nothing published | No rule was found either way on any first-party page. Silence is not permission. We have asked and are waiting. |
The short answer
Four firms have published rules a third-party, locally-run risk tool clearly survives. One has a formal approval route we have applied to. Four are ambiguous enough to need a written ruling, and we have asked. Seven say no — three of them now in writing, to us, by name.
| Firm | Verdict | Evidence | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| MyFundedFutures | Allowed | Published rule | The clearest permission of the sixteen |
| Topstep | Allowed, local only | Published rule | Third-party tools contemplated; hosting is not |
| Lucid Trading | Allowed | Published rule | Names third party tools and permits them |
| FundedNext Futures | Allowed | Published rule | Explicitly allows EAs and bots, both stages |
| Elite Trader Funding | Approval route | Published rule + application pending | Written authorization exists, with a public allowlist |
| Apex | Asked, awaiting | Published rule, ambiguous | Bans automation and separately requires risk management |
| Earn2Trade | Asked, awaiting | Nothing published | No bot rule found either way |
| Funded Futures Family | Asked, awaiting | Nothing published | Nothing published about automation at all |
| BluSky | Asked, awaiting | Published rule, ambiguous | Bans a purpose, not a category |
| Tradeify | No | Written ruling 2026-08-20 | Sole-ownership requirement; they answered |
| Alpha Futures | No | Written ruling 2026-08-20 | Automation prohibited; they answered |
| Take Profit Trader | No | Written ruling 2026-08-21 | Answered no, although nothing in their published terms says so |
| TradeDay | No | Published rule | Third-party tools forbidden, and there is no API |
| Bulenox | No | Published rule | Bans "publicly distributed automation tools" by name |
| Phidias | No | Published rule | Only semi-automated software, trader places each trade |
| Top One Futures | No | Published rule | Any automated system "strictly forbidden" |
The three written rulings
These are answers to a question about this product, asked by its developer before launch, disclosing in the first two sentences that it is new, has no users, and will be publicly distributed. Those are the facts most likely to produce a no. All three answers are reproduced in full below and none of them is a yes.
Tradeify — no Written ruling 2026-08-20
Bots are allowed at Tradeify, under a condition a distributed tool cannot meet:
"Ownership: You must be able to prove that you are the sole owner of the bot or strategy, and that no one else has access to or is using it. This ensures that the bot/algorithm is not being shared with other traders or firms."
Tradeify — Guidelines for Traders, read 2026-08-20
We asked. They answered:
"Written conclusion: No — a publicly distributed third‑party risk tool owned by someone other than the trader would not satisfy the ownership requirement in our bot/algorithmic trading guidelines."
Tradeify support, by email, 2026-08-20
That is the clearest possible answer and it is a no. Do not install it on a Tradeify account.
Alpha Futures — no Written ruling 2026-08-20
"The use of AI, bots, and other automated trading mechanisms is strictly prohibited across all account types."
"Semi-Automated Trading, such as a custom indicator that gives buy or sell signals, is permissible under the condition that the user manually places, monitors, and manages the trade."
Alpha Futures — Prohibited Trading Practices, read 2026-08-20
The carve-out is the exact inverse of a guardian: it is written around a tool that signals while the human acts. We asked. Their first reply was "Unfortunately, we're unable to approve or endorse the use of this tool." Pressed for the explicit ruling, support answered:
"The use of AI tools or any other automated trading systems is not permitted."
Alpha Futures support, 2026-08-20
Do not install it on an Alpha Futures account. They also ship "personal risk locks" in their own platform, which removes the need.
Take Profit Trader — no Written ruling 2026-08-21
This is the one case where the written answer is stricter than the published rules, and that is worth saying plainly. No prohibition appears anywhere in their Terms of Service. The only relevant clause sits under Limitation of Warranty:
"Traders are fully responsible for the use of any trade copiers or third-party automation tools connected to their TakeProfit Trader accounts. […] TakeProfit Trader is not liable for losses, violations, or account actions arising from trade copier activity, and all such activity will be treated as the trader's own execution."
Take Profit Trader — Terms of Service, read 2026-08-21
A liability disclaimer is not a permission, so we asked. The answer:
"Based on our current rules, deadman guardian would not be permitted. It automatically monitors account activity and takes trading actions by flattening positions and blocking new entries. Take Profit Trader does not allow automated, algorithmic, AI, or bot trading; trading must be completed manually by the user. […] Please do not recommend connecting deadman guardian to Take Profit Trader accounts unless our rules are formally changed."
Take Profit Trader support, 2026-08-21
Two caveats we are obliged to attach to this one, and they cut in both directions.
The reply was signed by "Mira", disclosed as "your Take Profit Trader AI Agent". It is an answer from the firm's own support channel, but it is not a human ruling, and it reads their rules as prohibiting the mechanism rather than the supplier — a prohibition that does not appear on the published terms page we cited above.
We are treating it as a no anyway, because it is the answer the firm's own channel gave to a direct question naming the product, and it ends with an explicit instruction not to recommend the tool there. If a human at Take Profit Trader later rules differently, that ruling will replace this one on this page, quoted the same way.
Do not install it on a Take Profit Trader account.
Allowed on published rules
MyFundedFutures Published rule Allowed
"Traders may make use of automated trading strategies tailored to their own specific settings so long as these automated tools do not aim to exploit the favorable fills offered in the Simulated Environment."
MyFundedFutures — Fair Play and Prohibited Trading Practices, read 2026-08-20
A tool that only closes positions and cancels orders exploits no fills. No sole-ownership clause, no third-party-tool ban and no VPS ban appears on that page. High-frequency trading is separately prohibited.
Topstep — on your own machine only Published rule Allowed, local only
"If you use third-party tools built by others, no coding required — just plug in your credentials."
"All trading activity must originate from your personal device. The use of VPS, VPNs, and remote servers is prohibited by Topstep's Terms of Use."
Topstep — TopstepX API Access and Prohibited Conduct, read 2026-08-20
deadman-guardian runs locally inside NinjaTrader on your own machine and opens no socket, which is what that second rule requires. Never run it on a VPS for a Topstep account.
Lucid Trading Published rule Allowed
"Automated strategies and in-platform/third party trade copiers are permitted, but traders are responsible for any software errors or unintended outcomes."
Lucid Trading — General FAQ, read 2026-08-21
The only firm of the sixteen that says third party and permits it in the same sentence. Their limits are elsewhere and both are easy to respect: high-frequency trading is prohibited, and microscalping is "flagged if more than 50% of profits come from trades held 5 seconds or less".
Worth knowing: a 25K LucidPro account carries no firm daily loss limit at all (LucidPro Daily Loss Limit), so on that plan your personal limit would be the only daily limit in force.
FundedNext Futures Published rule Allowed
"FundedNext Futures allows the use of automated trading systems, including Expert Advisors (EAs) and trading bots"
FundedNext Futures — Is the usage of automated trading systems (EAs and bots) allowed?, read 2026-08-21
Explicit, unconditional, and it covers challenge and live phases. They provide no support for such tools and disclaim responsibility for them, which is the correct posture for software they do not control. The one prohibition is exploitation: "latency abuse or order flooding".
Set your limit against the right number here. Their maximum loss limit updates at end of day but is enforced against floating loss in real time — "if your floating loss reaches the maximum loss limit during an active trade, your account will be instantly breached" (Maximum loss limit). A limit set against the daily loss limit alone protects the wrong figure.
An approval route, not a guess
Elite Trader Funding Published rule Approval route — applied, awaiting
ETF prohibits automation by default and then names the exit:
"…artificial intelligence (AI), bots, automated trading systems, trade copiers, or other automated trading strategies that are not expressly authorized in writing by ETF."
Elite Trader Funding — Terms of Service, read 2026-08-21
And their approved list is public, naming four tools that passed — Tradesyncer, Tradecopia, Affordable Indicators' Duplicate Account Actions, and Replikanto Flowbot ("compliance version only"), plus "Any trade copying functionality native to your trading platform" (approved automated programs).
This is better than a yes from a support agent. A place on a published list is a permission that survives staff turnover and can be checked by anyone. We have written to ETF asking for the review process rather than for an opinion. Until deadman-guardian is on that list, it is not authorized at ETF — the default in their terms is prohibition, and an unanswered application is not an approval.
See also the ten-second problem: ETF is one of the two firms where it matters.
Asked, awaiting an answer
Apex — bans automation, requires risk management Published rule, ambiguous Asked, awaiting
"No Automation or Algorithm Usage allowed: Rewards are intended to recognize human traders actively participating in the learning process, not to reward automated systems executing preprogrammed logic."
"Trading Without Stop Losses or Risk Management: All trades must have either pending or mental stop losses and a well-defined risk management strategy. Trading without these measures is strictly prohibited."
Apex — Prohibited Activities, both quotes from the same page, read 2026-08-20
The automation rule's stated rationale is about who does the trading, not who enforces the limits. That is arguable. Do not install it on an Apex account on the strength of an argument.
Earn2Trade — no rule found, and the highest stakes Nothing published Asked, awaiting
No blanket bot or EA rule appears on any first-party page. The nearest prohibition targets advantage-seeking:
"Utilizing software, artificial intelligence, or ultra-fast data entry techniques that could potentially manipulate the trading environment or provide an unfair advantage."
Earn2Trade — Prohibited Conduct, read 2026-08-20
Earn2Trade is where a guardian would matter most: their daily loss limit is measured on floating P&L and it fails the account outright rather than pausing it —
"If your PnL ever hits the [daily loss] limit (even if you don't close your position), your evaluation fails and will be suspended from further trading."
Earn2Trade — How is My Daily Loss Calculated?, read 2026-08-20
Highest stakes, least clarity. That is why we wrote rather than guessed.
Funded Futures Family — nothing published either way Nothing published Asked, awaiting
No automation rule in the FAQ, and none in the Terms & Conditions — all 48,430 characters of them were read, and they contain only generic third-party-services boilerplate. Silence is not permission.
Worth knowing while you wait: FFF has no daily loss limit on any plan.
"No. None of Funded Futures Family's plans have a daily loss limit. The only hard risk limit is the maximum drawdown."
Funded Futures Family — FAQ, read 2026-08-21 (terms: Terms & Conditions)
So your personal limit would be the only daily limit on the account.
BluSky — bans a purpose, not a category Published rule, ambiguous Asked, awaiting
"using automated software (AI, ultra-high speed, bulk data entry) to unfairly influence outcomes"
BluSky — Ethical Trading & Conduct Policy, read 2026-08-21
That is a purpose test, and a tool that only reduces your own exposure fails it comfortably. But nothing affirmative is published. You may see it claimed elsewhere that BluSky "welcomes all kinds of semi-automated and full automated trading" — we could not find that sentence on any BluSky page and are not relying on it. We asked instead.
No, on published rules
Three more firms have answered no in writing; they are quoted above. The four below are refused by their own published rules, with no ruling needed.
TradeDay — no, twice over Published rule No
"Algos and Bots purchased from a third party and employed by the trader are forbidden."
"We do not make platform APIs available to traders."
TradeDay — Automated, Algo and Bot Trading and Prohibited Trade Practices, read 2026-08-20
Two independent blockers. TradeDay has also already solved the problem inside the venue: their traders can self-impose a daily loss limit in Tradovate, with automatic liquidation, that once set "cannot be overridden or adjusted by our team" (Can I access risk settings?, read 2026-08-20). That is stronger than this product — it does not depend on your machine being on. Use it.
Bulenox — the most permissive bot policy, and the clearest ban on this product Published rule No
"Yes. Bots, algorithms and trade copiers are permitted."
"Only user-built tools intended solely for the account owner's personal use are permitted. Commercial, shared, rented or publicly distributed automation tools are not allowed."
Bulenox — FAQ and Help Center, read 2026-08-20
Read the four words "publicly distributed automation tools". An openly distributed guardian anyone can install is named by that sentence whether or not it ever opens a position. Bulenox also charges $100/month for third-party API or composite software connections.
Phidias Published rule No
"The use of robots, fully automated trading algorithms, or any other form of automated trading is not permitted. Only semi-automated software is permitted, provided the trader actively monitors and manually adjusts all trades."
Phidias — All Our Rules, read 2026-08-21
Same shape as Alpha Futures: the carve-out requires a human placing each trade.
Top One Futures Published rule No
"Use of any automated trading system, script, bot, Expert Advisor (EA), or high-frequency execution tool is strictly forbidden."
Top One Futures — Can I Use EA's/Bots? and Prohibited Trading Practices, read 2026-08-21
All trades must be "entered manually or semi-manually". The most categorical of the sixteen.
The ten-second problem, if your firm has one
Two firms require every individual trade to stay open for a minimum time. If your personal limit is hit within ten seconds of opening a position, the guard flattens it — and at those two firms that flatten is itself a rule violation. The guard would cause a breach you did not commit. This is a known limit of the tool, documented in the specification (§17.5), and it is your decision to accept before you install, not a surprise for a bad day.
"All trades executed by you on ETF's platform shall have a minimum duration of ten (10) seconds—no exceptions"
Elite Trader Funding — Terms of Service, inside its HFT clause, read 2026-08-21
"All trades must remain open longer than 10 seconds."
"Closing any portion of a trade before 10 seconds violates this rule."
Top One Futures — Prohibited Trading Practices, read 2026-08-21
That second sentence closes the obvious escape: a partial flatten breaches too, so there is no smaller action that avoids it.
How big is this really? Smaller than it sounds, and we would rather size it honestly than sound brave about it. A lockout happens at most once a day and fires on a limit you set, so the overlap needs the limit to be hit within seconds of entry. Top One's rule adds that "Occasional minor violations are tolerable", and ETF's sentence sits inside a clause aimed at "a high number of transactions in a short amount of time in an abusive manner". Neither of those is a permission, and neither firm has written anything about risk tools — so treat it as real but rare. Top One is moot in practice today, since they prohibit the tool outright.
Not the same thing: MyFundedFutures, Funded Futures Family and Lucid Trading apply a proportional test — broadly, a majority of your trades and profit must come from positions held past a threshold. One early exit cannot breach those.
What the tool does about it: nothing, on purpose. v1 flattens regardless of position age. The alternative — holding a position that is already past your limit until a timer expires — is its own risk, and a fast market can take more in those seconds than the violation would cost. It would also make the guard something that keeps you in a trade past your own limit, which is the exact behaviour it exists to remove. The ledger records each position's age at the flatten, so you can see whether a lockout could have tripped the rule. "Min-hold awareness" is a v2 candidate with those objections attached, not a roadmap promise.
Three things the firms say that we are obliged to repeat
Three of them tell their own traders not to trust the firm's daily loss limit as a stop.
"NEVER use the DLL as a stop loss. The DLL is not a hard stop — losses may exceed the limit before the system triggers protection."
Tradeify — Rules: Daily Loss Limit, read 2026-08-20
"DLL should NOT replace a stop loss nor will it return exact fills of a 2% loss."
Alpha Futures — Daily Loss Guard, read 2026-08-20
"The Daily Drawdown Limit (DLL) is a risk management tool, not a stop loss. It should never be relied on to close your trades at a specific loss amount."
Top One Futures — Daily Drawdown, read 2026-08-21; the same page adds that it "can execute late, early, at a different price than you expect, or fail to trigger"
That is three firms documenting, in their own words, the gap this product addresses.
And it is equally the limit of this product. A guardian that closes positions at market inherits the same slippage. Measured inside the running platform, the whole detect-and-cancel cycle took 315.9 milliseconds, of which 14.4 were ours and the rest belonged to the platform and the venue. A gap or a fast market moves through that. This bounds your exposure and removes your discretion; it does not bound your loss.
Status of the written rulings
| Firm | Asked | Answered | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tradeify | 2026-08-20 | 2026-08-20 | NO, quoted above |
| Alpha Futures | 2026-08-20 | 2026-08-20 | NO, quoted above |
| Take Profit Trader | 2026-08-21 | 2026-08-21 | NO, quoted above |
| Earn2Trade | 2026-08-20 | — | awaiting |
| Bulenox | 2026-08-20 | — | awaiting |
| Elite Trader Funding | 2026-08-21 | acknowledgement only | approval request, pending |
| Funded Futures Family | 2026-08-21 | acknowledgement only | awaiting |
| BluSky | 2026-08-21 | routed to support | awaiting |
| Apex | drafted | — | web form, pending |
| TradeDay | drafted | — | web form, pending |
Each request quotes the specific rule that creates the doubt and names the tool, so the answer rules on this product rather than on a hypothetical. This table will be updated with the answers, quoted verbatim, including the ones we do not like — all three so far are ones we do not like.
Until a firm answers, its row above is what its published rules say — not what we hope they mean.