The question worth asking: whose product is the prize? If the organiser is a prop firm and the prize is that firm's own challenge, you have won a voucher on their shelf. That is legitimate and extremely common — it is simply not the same thing as an account bought for you from somebody else.
Three families of prize
Once you sort competitions this way, most of the confusion disappears.
- Symbolic cash. Small amounts, typically tens of dollars for the top places. Real money, modest sums, no evaluation attached.
- The organiser's own challenge. By far the most common. A prop firm runs the contest and awards its own evaluation account. Marginal cost to them is close to zero, and the winner enters the same product the firm sells to everyone else.
- A third-party evaluation, bought for the winner. Rare, because it is an actual expense. This is what TradeWars does: it has no challenge of its own and buys a Crypto Fund Trader evaluation for each winner — $58 per weekly prize, $240 for the monthly one.
What lower ranks actually receive
This is where a prize table and a promotion diverge, and it is worth reading to the bottom of any leaderboard before entering.
Audacity Capital rewards 100 ranks in its trading competition. The top 10 receive its own Ability Challenge and Ability One accounts — $200,000 for first place. Ranks 11 to 100, however, receive discount vouchers on its paid challenges: 50% off for ranks 11-25, 30% for 26-50, 20% for 51-100 (checked 17 August 2026).
That is disclosed openly and it is a legitimate promotion. It is also worth naming plainly: 90 of the 100 "prizes" are discounts on something you would then buy. A leaderboard where most positions win a coupon is a marketing campaign with a ranking attached.
TradeWars rewards three ranks a week, and nothing below them. Fewer winners, and every one of them receives something bought rather than discounted.
Entry requirements beyond an email
"Free" usually means no money changes hands. It does not always mean nothing is asked of you.
- A vote or review. Audacity Capital's competition requires participants to vote for Audacity Capital as favourite firm on Prop Firm Match in order to take part (checked 17 August 2026). Disclosed, and a genuine condition of entry.
- A payment method on file. Some contests ask for a card "for verification". Worth asking what happens when the free period ends.
- Nothing but an email and a free demo. This is TradeWars: no card is ever stored, so nothing can renew or upsell.
How often can you try again?
Underrated, and probably the most important line for anyone still learning. Most competitions run monthly — twelve attempts a year, and a bad month costs you the whole cycle.
TradeWars runs weekly, Monday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 UTC. Fifty-two scoreboards a year, and a bad week is over in days. If your aim is to build habits under real pressure rather than to win once, frequency beats prize size comfortably.
What to check before entering any of them
- Whose product is the prize? The organiser's own, or bought from a third party?
- What do ranks below the podium get? Prizes, or discount codes?
- What is required to enter? Email only, a vote, a review, a card on file?
- How often does it run? Weekly, monthly, one-off?
- Are past winners named with dated, verifiable results?
- Is the prize funded capital, or an evaluation you must still pass? Almost always the latter — including here.
Apply all six to us as readily as to anyone else. Winners are named, the rules are published in full, and this page answers the awkward questions including why we ask for an investor password.
A note on this page
Competitions change their terms often, so everything above carries the date it was checked. If you find something out of date, tell us at [email protected] and it will be corrected — a comparison nobody maintains is worse than none.
We also have an obvious interest in this comparison, which is why it contains no adjectives about anyone. Every competitor claim is a fact taken from their own public page on the date shown, and all of these are legitimate businesses running legitimate promotions. The point is not that one is dishonest, it is that "free trading competition" describes several quite different arrangements, and the prize is where they differ.
Related: who pays for the prize · the real cost of getting funded · free trading competitions