The account survives, and the allocation may not
FTMO's $100,000 2-step ends at $5,000 of daily loss or at a static $10,000 maximum. Darwinex Zero, regulated in the FCA and CNMV orbit and based between London and Madrid, does not use that kind of hard delete. Drawdown lowers the D-Score and the weight of monthly seed capital. You can be down sharply and still have an account, with less or no investor money following the signal. The 10% figure in the comparison is a seriousness line, not a guillotine.
The engine targets about 6.5% monthly value at risk and talks about a 3.25% daily reference inside that normalization. It runs continuously on the MT5 session, not as a Prague midnight reset you can wait out. Ten minimum trading days replace FTMO's four. A quiet week is not a pass. It is a thin sample.
Fifteen percent of investor profit, paid above the high-water mark
The payout is a 15% performance fee on allocated seed and third-party capital, distributed quarterly above the high-water mark. FTMO pays 80% to 90% of the profit on the funded challenge account, starting 14 days after the first funded trade. A trader who multiplies a Darwinex month by 0.80 is using the wrong contract. A trader who multiplies an FTMO payout by 0.15 is also using the wrong contract.
The subscription is the $38 in this comparison, in the same neighborhood as the firm's €38 monthly quote. It is not a one-time $540 audition, and it does not buy a $100,000 static floor. Capital scales when the attributes say the risk is something an investor can hold. Create a Venasri login if you run both, because one balance is an exam and the other is a public track record.
A lot jump from 0.20 to 3.00 is the actual breach
Algorithmic trading is welcome. Many of the allocations that gather capital are MT5 systems, and there is no news blackout. Weekend holding exists on swing profiles. None of that protects a risk shape that jumps from 0.20 lots to 3.00 lots after a loss. That jump is the documented way to damage Risk Stability and Capacity, which cuts how much DARWIN capital follows the signal. FTMO would more likely just fail you if 3.00 lots spent the $5,000 day. Darwinex can keep you listed and simply stop sending money.
At $10 per pip, 3.00 lots with a 50-pip stop risk $1,500. On a small DARWIN that is the whole personality of the day. On FTMO's $100,000 book it is three tenths of one percent, which is inside the rules and still a violent change of size if you were trading 0.20 lots an hour earlier. Bot controls should hard-lock the maximum lot so a tilt click cannot rewrite the attributes or the FTMO day.
Use the guard to protect the score, not to pass a floor
Equity Guard on the FTMO 2-step still belongs near $4,250. On the DARWIN, the useful flatten is the one that stops a size jump and a 3% down day from becoming the story of the month. A 3.25% reference on a book you are normalizing is a place to stop adding risk, not a finish line that deletes the login. If you only arm a guard for prop breaches, the Darwinex account will never trip it and the score will still decay.
Treat the two reports differently in your own notes. FTMO is binary: inside $5,000 and $10,000, or done. Darwinex is continuous: twelve attributes, a quarterly fee above the high-water mark, and a subscription that keeps the history alive after a bad week. The $502 you did not spend on an FTMO retake is not the same as capital allocated to your signal.
