E8 Markets Review

How E8 Markets works

E8 Markets, known until its rename as E8 Funding, sells one-step challenges on simulated accounts it calls SimFi™. You pay a one-time fee, reach the profit target in a SimFi Challenge account, and then trade a SimFi Performance account that pays real-money payouts. All accounts are demo accounts with real market data. There is no time limit, but an account is disabled after 60 days without a completed trade. E8 also runs futures programs (E8 Signature and E8 Zero), covered in our E8 Futures review.

For forex, metals, indices, energies and crypto CFDs ("Classic Markets"), E8 offers two products:

Prices on October 26, 2026, before any discount (E8 One in its default 6% drawdown, 80% setup):

E8's help center calls E8 its always-available discount code, and the website showed it as 30% off the first order: a 100K E8 One then costs $341.60. A failed account can be restarted at 10% off within 7 days. Fees are refundable only within 30 days and before any trade, and never for crypto payments.

E8 Markets rules

E8 One rules

E8 One is the customizable product. At checkout you choose the maximum drawdown (4% to 14%) and the profit split (80%, 90% or 100%); the profit target is 1.5 times the drawdown, the daily drawdown about two thirds of it, and the price changes with your choices. In the default setup on a $100,000 account you need $9,000 profit, with a $6,000 dynamic drawdown and a $4,000 daily drawdown. There is no minimum number of days: you can pass in one day, and there is no consistency rule in the challenge.

The same drawdown and daily limits continue on the funded SimFi Performance account, where a 40% best-day rule applies before each payout and news trading is banned.

E8 Markets dynamic drawdown explained

E8 One's maximum drawdown trails your highest closed balance. It moves up only when you close a profit, never with open profit, and locks for good at the starting balance once your closed profit equals the drawdown amount. On a $100,000 account with a 6% drawdown:

So a losing trade early on eats into a limit that has already moved up: after the first two trades above, you are only $3,000 from a breach, not $6,000. Our trailing drawdown guide compares this with end-of-day and static drawdowns.

The daily drawdown is a fixed dollar amount based on the starting balance ($4,000 on 100K by default), subtracted from the balance at the start of each day (00:00 server time). Touching either level with equity or balance closes the account, even if the trade later recovers.

E8 Pro rules: static drawdown and the 2% daily profit cap

E8 Pro trades a static drawdown (8% by default) that does not move until your first payout, when it is moved up to the starting balance for good. The daily drawdown is 2.5% of the starting balance.

Its key rule is the 2% daily profit cap: only 2% of the starting balance per day counts toward your target or profit, and anything above it is removed from the balance at the daily rollover. On a $100,000 account that opens the day at $102,000 and closes at $105,500, the cap level is $104,000, so $1,500 is taken away. Splitting a winning trade across days to get around the cap is not allowed. With an 8% target, E8 Pro therefore takes at least 4 trading days to pass.

E8 Markets consistency rule

There is no consistency rule in any E8 challenge. On a funded E8 One account, your best day may be at most 40% of total profit when you request a payout. With a $2,000 best day you need $5,000 of total profit before you can request. E8 Pro has no consistency rule, though its daily profit cap has a similar effect. Our consistency rule guide shows how other firms handle it.

News, weekends and other E8 rules

• News: allowed in every challenge and on funded E8 Pro accounts. On a funded E8 One account you may not open, close or have stop losses or take profits filled from 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after high-impact news (or the end of a speech) on the affected instruments; profits from such trades are deducted.
• Overnight and weekend holding is allowed on E8 One and E8 Pro, but gaps that breach a limit are your responsibility.
• EAs are allowed, as long as other traders are not running the same strategy.
• Copy trading between your own accounts is allowed; hedging across accounts, even your own, is not.
• No high-frequency trading: more than half of your trades may not be held for under one minute, and risking your whole daily drawdown on one trade is not allowed.
• Limits: 50 lots per order (20 on gold), 100 open orders, 2,000 server requests a day.
• Allocation: unlimited challenges, but funded E8 One and E8 Pro accounts are each capped at $500,000 per market and per household.
• Platforms: MT5, cTrader, Match-Trader and TradeLocker. US traders can only use TradeLocker and Match-Trader. Forex leverage is 1:30, and 1:15 on indices and metals.

E8 Markets payout rules

E8 One: a payout lowers your balance, but the dynamic drawdown level does not reset. Once it has locked at the starting balance, withdrawing everything would breach the account, so leave a buffer. E8's own example: a $100,000 account at $106,000 can safely take $3,000, leaving $3,000 above the $100,000 loss level.

E8 Pro: every request pays out half your profit and leaves the other half as a drawdown buffer, and your split applies to the half paid out. With $5,000 profit on a $50,000 account and an 80% split, $2,500 is set aside for payout, you receive $2,000, and $2,500 stays in the account.

Payouts go through Rise, WorkMarket or, for US traders, Aeropay; there is no direct crypto payout. E8 charges no payout fee, though the provider may. E8 reported a median of 11 hours from request to approval and 24 hours until the money arrived (January to May 2026), with up to 5 business days in some cases. You can keep trading once the payout is approved.

My experience with E8 Markets

I received two payouts from E8 Markets: $284.74 on December 22, 2024 and $350.57 on January 14, 2025. Below are the certificates E8 issued for them; you can see all my payouts on my author page. E8 has since moved to one-step challenges and changed its rules, so this review is based on its current published terms.

Is E8 Markets legit?

E8 Markets was founded in 2021 (as E8 Funding) and is a US company with offices in Dallas, Texas. It says it has paid out more than $79 million, with a largest single payout of over $216,000, to a base of over 500,000 traders. E8 is open that every account is a demo account: it is not a broker, takes no deposits, and says an affiliated entity trades only the company's own capital. It is not regulated as a financial firm; it says it follows US FTC advertising and consumer-protection standards.

Both of my payouts above were paid. We took every rule in this review from E8's website and help center; see the sources below.

Who E8 Markets is for

Choose E8 One if you want to pass in a single phase, set your own drawdown and split, and withdraw without caps, and you are comfortable with a drawdown that trails your closed profits and a 40% best-day rule. Choose E8 Pro if you prefer a fixed drawdown and daily payouts and trade small, steady gains, since anything above 2% a day is removed. Neither suits news traders on a funded E8 One account, and US traders should check that TradeLocker or Match-Trader works for them.