Quick Answer — Brightfunded Rules
- • Brightfunded uses a 2-step evaluation with an 8% profit target in Phase 1 and 5% in Phase 2 — no time limit on either phase.
- • Brightfunded's daily drawdown is static at 5% of starting balance (never trails), calculated using an end-of-day high-water mark method for accounts opened after September 22, 2025.
- • Brightfunded's total drawdown is 10% of starting balance — also static, meaning it never moves regardless of how high your balance goes.
- • As of April 2026, Brightfunded has no consistency rule at any stage — evaluation or funded.
- • Funded accounts at Brightfunded restrict news trading within a 10-minute window around high-impact events (5 min before, 5 min after) — evaluation accounts have no news restriction.
- • Trading is prohibited during the daily drawdown rollover window from 11:30 PM to 11:59 PM CET — any open trades during this period risk a breach.
Learned the hard way: I've researched every Brightfunded rule in detail. This breakdown is based on their help center documentation, community reports, and direct verification.
The single most important rule at Brightfunded is the static 5% daily drawdown. For the full picture, read my complete Brightfunded review. For the absolute latest, check Brightfunded's website or their help center.
Brightfunded's rulebook is a static drawdown model with no consistency requirement and no time limit on evaluations. That combination makes it one of the more forgiving structures in prop trading right now, but the details matter. Miss a rollover window or hold through a news event on a funded account and you're looking at a breach.
I've spent hours combing through Brightfunded's help center, cross-referencing with community reports, and mapping every rule that could trip you up. This article is the pillar reference for the entire Brightfunded rules cluster. Every rule, every edge case, every rollover mechanic. I'll link to the deeper dives on specific rules where they exist.
What follows is the complete Brightfunded rulebook as of April 2026. If they change something, I'll update this page. Bookmark it.
How Does Brightfunded's 2-Step Evaluation Work?
Brightfunded runs a 2-step evaluation. Phase 1 requires an 8% profit target. Phase 2 requires 5%. Both phases carry a 5% daily drawdown limit and a 10% total drawdown limit.
There's no time limit on either phase. You could take three weeks or three months. Brightfunded doesn't care, as long as you place at least one trade every 30 calendar days to avoid the inactivity flag.
Each phase requires a minimum of 5 trading days. A trading day counts when you execute and close at least one position held for 60 seconds or more. An add-on (15% surcharge on the challenge fee) lets you remove the 5-day minimum entirely. Whether that's worth it depends on your approach. If you're a swing trader who might nail the target in two big trades, the add-on saves real time. If you're a scalper logging 10+ trades per day, you'll hit 5 days without thinking about it.
As of April 2026, Brightfunded has no consistency rule at any stage. You can make 80% of your profit target in a single trade. No percentage caps per day, no minimum number of profitable days, no distribution requirements. That's genuinely rare in the industry. Most firms I've reviewed enforce at least some consistency constraint. Brightfunded doesn't.
Once you pass both phases, you move into a funded account. Profit targets disappear. The drawdown limits remain identical. A few additional restrictions kick in around news trading, which I'll cover below.
What Is Brightfunded's Daily Drawdown Rule?
Brightfunded's daily drawdown is 5% of your starting balance. It's static. If your account starts at $100,000, your daily loss limit is $5,000 every single day, regardless of how high your balance climbs.
For accounts opened after September 22, 2025, the daily drawdown uses an end-of-day high-water mark method. Brightfunded doesn't track your intraday equity peak. The daily drawdown threshold is based on your balance at the end of the previous trading day.
Say your account closed yesterday at $104,000. Your daily drawdown threshold for today is $104,000 minus $5,000, which equals $99,000. If your equity drops to $99,000 at any point during today's session, that's a breach. I go deeper on the math in my Brightfunded drawdown rules breakdown.
One critical detail: the daily drawdown resets between 11:30 PM and 11:59 PM CET. You cannot have any open trades during this 29-minute window. Trading is prohibited. If you're holding a position and the clock hits 11:30 PM CET, you're risking a violation. Close everything before 11:30 PM. Set a phone alarm if you have to.
The end-of-day high-water mark method is friendlier than intraday trailing. At firms that use intraday trailing, your daily DD floor ratchets up with every new equity peak during the session. Brightfunded only looks at where you closed yesterday. If you spike to +$8,000 intraday but close the day up $3,000, tomorrow's floor is calculated from the $3,000 gain, not the $8,000 peak. That distinction alone saves accounts.
What Is Brightfunded's Total Drawdown Rule?
Brightfunded's maximum total drawdown is 10% of starting balance. Like the daily drawdown, it's static. It never moves.
On a $100,000 account, your absolute floor is $90,000. Whether your balance runs up to $115,000 or stays flat, that $90,000 floor stays exactly where it is. If your equity touches $90,000, the account is breached. Done.
This is fundamentally different from trailing drawdown firms like Apex Trader Funding or Topstep, where the floor moves up as your balance increases. Static drawdown is more forgiving once you're in profit. Your buffer grows as you make money, whereas a trailing drawdown keeps the leash tight. At $110,000 on a Brightfunded account, you'd have a $20,000 cushion to the total DD floor. On a trailing drawdown account, that cushion might only be $3,000.
| Rule | Phase 1 (Evaluation) | Phase 2 (Verification) | Funded Account |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profit Target | 8% | 5% | None |
| Daily Drawdown | 5% (static) | 5% (static) | 5% (static) |
| Total Drawdown | 10% (static) | 10% (static) | 10% (static) |
| Time Limit | None | None | None |
| Min. Trading Days | 5 (removable +15%) | 5 (removable +15%) | None |
| Consistency Rule | None | None | None |
| News Trading | Unrestricted | Unrestricted | 10-min window restriction |
| Max Allocation | Unlimited | Unlimited | $400K |
| Min. Hold Time | 60 seconds | 60 seconds | 60 seconds |
How Does Brightfunded's News Trading Rule Work?
Brightfunded handles news trading differently depending on your account phase. During evaluation (Phase 1 and Phase 2), news trading is completely unrestricted. Trade NFP, FOMC, CPI. No limitations.
Once you're funded, the rules tighten. Brightfunded enforces a 10-minute restriction window around high-impact news events: 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after the scheduled release time. You can't open new positions during this window. If you do, it's a soft breach. That means a warning, not an immediate account termination. But repeated violations escalate. I cover the exact escalation sequence in my Brightfunded news trading rules deep dive.
There's one exception worth knowing. If you've held a position for 48 hours or longer before the news event, it's exempt from the restriction. Brightfunded classifies this as a swing trade, and swing trades aren't subject to the news window. So if you opened a position on Monday and NFP hits on Friday, you're fine. The 48-hour clock is what matters.
For day traders who rely on news volatility, this funded-phase restriction is a real consideration. During evaluation, you can trade your normal news strategy. Once funded, you'll need to either avoid the 10-minute windows or shift to a swing approach around major releases.
What Are Brightfunded's Hedging and Copy Trading Rules?
Brightfunded allows hedging within a single account. You can hold long and short positions simultaneously on the same instrument, same account. That's fine.
Cross-account hedging is where Brightfunded draws a hard line. If you open a long position on one Brightfunded account and a short on another, that's a violation. First offense is a soft breach (warning on your record). Second offense is permanent account closure. No appeals. I broke down the full hedging policy in my Brightfunded hedging rules article.
Same logic applies to cross-firm hedging. Going long on Brightfunded and short on the same instrument at another prop firm is explicitly prohibited. Whether they can reliably detect it across firms is debated in the community, but the rule is clear: don't do it. It's listed under prohibited strategies, and if Brightfunded flags it, the account is gone.
Copy trading is allowed from your own accounts only. You can copy trades from your personal brokerage account to your Brightfunded account, or between your own Brightfunded accounts, using automated tools. What you can't do is copy trades from someone else's account or subscribe to someone else's signal service that directly executes on your Brightfunded account. Cross-individual copy trading is prohibited.
What Happens if You're Inactive on Brightfunded?
Brightfunded requires at least 1 executed trade every 30 calendar days. Pending orders that never fill don't count. You need an actual executed position that opens and closes.
If you go 30 days without a trade, the account enters a warning state. You've got a window to reactivate by placing a trade. If you don't reactivate and hit the 6-month mark of continuous inactivity, the account is permanently breached. No recovery, no exceptions.
This is easy to forget if you're taking a break from trading or rotating between firms. Set a calendar reminder for day 25. Open a micro position, hold it for 60 seconds, close it, move on. It takes a minute and saves you from losing a funded account over nothing.
Does Brightfunded Allow Overnight and Weekend Holding?
Brightfunded allows overnight holding on all account types. You can carry positions through the close and into the next trading session. Standard swap fees apply unless you've purchased the swap-free add-on.
Weekend holding is also permitted. Brightfunded doesn't force you to flatten before Friday's close. But here's the honest reality: weekend gaps can be brutal. If the market gaps against you on Monday's open, that move counts against your daily and total drawdown. Brightfunded won't protect you from a gap that breaches your account. The rule allows weekend holding. The risk management question is whether you should. I covered positioning for weekends in my Brightfunded overnight and weekend holding guide.
Crypto weekend trading is allowed if the instrument is open for trading during the weekend session. Some crypto pairs trade 24/7 on Brightfunded's platforms, so you can use weekends to trade those without the gap risk that comes with forex or indices.
What Trading Styles and Strategies Does Brightfunded Prohibit?
Brightfunded maintains a list of explicitly prohibited strategies. These result in account termination:
- Latency arbitrage — exploiting price feed delays between brokers or platforms
- Tick scalping — ultra-short-term scalps designed to capture single ticks
- Grid trading — automated grid strategies that layer orders at fixed intervals
- HFT bots — high-frequency trading systems executing large volumes at microsecond speeds
- Gap trading — strategies specifically designed to exploit opening gaps
- Cross-firm hedging — opposing positions at Brightfunded and another prop firm simultaneously
- Account rolling — cycling through new accounts to exploit evaluation mechanics
All trades must be open for a minimum of 60 seconds. Anything closed before the 60-second mark gets flagged and doesn't count toward your trading day requirement. It's not an instant breach, but consistent sub-60-second closes will draw attention.
EAs (Expert Advisors) and automated trading systems are allowed on all Brightfunded platforms, as long as they don't fall into the prohibited categories above. If your EA executes normal strategies with reasonable hold times, you're fine. No platform restriction either.
What Is Brightfunded's Maximum Allocation?
As of April 2026, Brightfunded caps funded account allocation at $400,000 per trader. You can run multiple funded accounts, but the combined capital can't exceed $400K.
During the challenge phase, there's no allocation cap. You can run as many simultaneous evaluations as you want. Whether that's smart from a risk-management perspective is another conversation, but Brightfunded won't stop you.
The $400K funded cap puts Brightfunded in a similar range to most mid-tier prop firms. Some firms cap lower (Topstep at $150K), others go higher (Apex has scaled to $600K+). For most traders, $400K is more than enough capital to generate meaningful returns.
Does Brightfunded Allow VPNs and VPS?
Brightfunded allows both VPN and VPS usage. You can connect through a virtual private network and run your trading platform on a virtual private server without restrictions.
The one non-negotiable rule: the account must be operated by the registered owner only. You can't hand your login to another trader, let a friend manage your account, or outsource your trading to a signal service that takes control of execution. One profile per person, one person per profile.
This single-account policy means you can't create multiple Brightfunded profiles under different names or email addresses. If Brightfunded detects duplicate profiles, both accounts get terminated. If you're trading from multiple devices or locations, use a VPN for consistency but don't let anyone else touch the account.
How Does the Minimum Trading Days Add-On Work?
Brightfunded's default requirement is 5 minimum trading days per evaluation phase. You can remove this requirement with an add-on that costs 15% on top of the challenge fee.
Without the add-on, you need to trade on at least 5 separate calendar days during each phase. A trading day counts when you open and close at least one position that's held for 60+ seconds.
With the add-on, you could theoretically pass Phase 1 on day one and Phase 2 on day two. Swing traders and position traders benefit most here. If your strategy involves taking one or two high-conviction trades per week, removing the 5-day minimum eliminates forced filler trades that don't align with your edge. For a $100K account, you're paying an extra 15% of the challenge fee for that flexibility. Whether the math works depends on how much filler trading costs you in drawdown versus how much the add-on costs in dollars.
What Happens During Brightfunded's Daily Drawdown Rollover?
The daily drawdown at Brightfunded resets between 11:30 PM and 11:59 PM CET. During this 29-minute window, all trading is prohibited. You cannot have any open positions.
This isn't a suggestion. It's a rule. If the rollover catches you with an open trade, you're risking a violation. The safest approach: close all positions by 11:25 PM CET at the latest. Give yourself a buffer. Don't try to squeeze in one more trade at 11:28 PM.
After the rollover completes at 11:59 PM CET, a new trading day begins and the daily drawdown resets to 5% from your end-of-day balance. If you closed the day at $107,000, your new daily floor for the next session is $102,000.
Traders in US time zones deal with this around 5:30 PM ET / 2:30 PM PT. If you trade US session hours, you're probably done long before the rollover. Asian and European session traders need to be more careful.
What's the Difference Between Soft and Hard Breaches at Brightfunded?
Brightfunded distinguishes between soft breaches and hard breaches. A soft breach gives you a chance to correct course. A hard breach terminates the account. Knowing the difference before you trade is non-negotiable.
Soft breach examples at Brightfunded:
- First-time news trading violation on a funded account
- First-time cross-account hedging violation
- Trading during the drawdown rollover window (first offense)
Hard breach examples at Brightfunded:
- Daily drawdown hit (5% from starting balance)
- Total drawdown hit (10% from starting balance)
- Second cross-account hedging violation
- 6-month inactivity without reactivation
- Using prohibited strategies (latency arb, HFT, tick scalping, grid trading)
Soft breaches go on your record and the next occurrence of the same violation escalates to a hard breach. Hard breaches end the account permanently. No reset, no appeal. The distinction is straightforward: drawdown violations and prohibited strategies kill accounts instantly. Policy violations around news and hedging get one warning.
| Violation | First Offense | Second Offense |
|---|---|---|
| News trading violation (funded) | Soft breach | Hard breach |
| Cross-account hedging | Soft breach | Permanent closure |
| Daily drawdown hit | Hard breach | — |
| Total drawdown hit | Hard breach | — |
| Prohibited strategy | Hard breach | — |
| 6-month inactivity | Hard breach | — |
| Account rolling | Hard breach | — |
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Brightfunded Have a Consistency Rule?
No. Brightfunded does not enforce any consistency rule on evaluation or funded accounts as of April 2026. There is no daily profit cap, no requirement that profits be distributed across multiple days, and no minimum number of profitable sessions. You can make your entire profit target in a single trading day on a single trade.
What Is Brightfunded's Daily Drawdown Limit?
Brightfunded's daily drawdown limit is 5% of the starting account balance. It's a static limit, meaning it doesn't increase as your balance grows. For accounts opened after September 22, 2025, Brightfunded calculates the daily drawdown using an end-of-day high-water mark method, not an intraday equity peak.
Can You Trade News on a Brightfunded Funded Account?
Brightfunded restricts news trading on funded accounts within a 10-minute window around high-impact events (5 minutes before, 5 minutes after). Violating this window results in a soft breach on the first offense. The exception is swing trades held for 48+ hours before the event, which are exempt from the news restriction. Evaluation accounts at Brightfunded have zero news trading restrictions.
What Time Does Brightfunded's Daily Drawdown Reset?
Brightfunded's daily drawdown resets between 11:30 PM and 11:59 PM CET. Trading is prohibited during this 29-minute rollover window. No open positions allowed. After the rollover completes, the new daily drawdown threshold is calculated as 5% below your end-of-day balance from the previous session.
Does Brightfunded Allow Hedging?
Brightfunded allows hedging within a single account. Same-account hedging (long and short on the same instrument simultaneously) is permitted. Cross-account hedging at Brightfunded is prohibited, and the first violation results in a soft breach. A second cross-account hedging violation leads to permanent account closure.
How Long Can You Be Inactive on Brightfunded?
Brightfunded requires at least one executed trade every 30 calendar days. Pending orders that don't fill don't count toward this requirement. If an account reaches 6 months of continuous inactivity without reactivation, Brightfunded applies a hard breach and the account is permanently terminated.
What Is Brightfunded's Maximum Funded Allocation?
Brightfunded caps total funded allocation at $400,000 per trader as of April 2026. You can hold multiple funded accounts, but combined capital cannot exceed this limit. During the evaluation/challenge phase, Brightfunded places no limit on how many simultaneous challenges a trader can run.
Does Brightfunded Allow Expert Advisors and Automated Trading?
Yes. Brightfunded allows Expert Advisors (EAs) and automated trading systems on all platforms. The restriction is that EAs cannot execute prohibited strategies such as latency arbitrage, tick scalping, grid trading, or high-frequency trading. All automated trades at Brightfunded must respect the 60-second minimum hold time.
Can You Hold Trades Over the Weekend at Brightfunded?
Brightfunded permits weekend holding on all account types. Positions can be carried from Friday through Monday's open. Brightfunded does not force traders to flatten before the weekend close. Any gap risk on Monday's open counts against your daily and total drawdown limits. Crypto weekend trading is also allowed at Brightfunded if the instrument remains open during the weekend session.
What Strategies Are Prohibited at Brightfunded?
Brightfunded prohibits seven specific strategy categories: latency arbitrage, tick scalping, grid trading, HFT bots, gap trading, cross-firm hedging, and account rolling. All trades must be held for a minimum of 60 seconds. Brightfunded also prohibits cross-individual copy trading, meaning you cannot copy trades from another person's account to your Brightfunded account. The bottom line: Brightfunded's rulebook is cleaner than most prop firms I've reviewed. Static drawdowns, no consistency rule, no time limit, and unrestricted news trading during evaluations. The funded news window and the 11:30 PM CET rollover are the two rules most likely to catch you off guard. Know when to stop trading, close before rollover, and don't open new positions around high-impact events on funded accounts. If you can handle those two constraints, Brightfunded's rules won't be the thing that kills your account. Your position sizing will.
