Best Prop Firm for Indian Traders (2026): FTMO vs FundedNext vs The5ers vs Blueberry

The Question That Actually Matters

Every list of "best prop firms for India" I have read this year ranks the firms by fee and profit split, as if you were choosing a mobile plan. Here is the fact none of them lead with: FTMO, the most famous prop firm in the world, stopped accepting new clients from India on February 28, 2023 and did not reopen until December 2025. Almost three years. A trader who built a funded income with the biggest brand in the industry woke up one day in 2023 to find the front door closed to his entire country. As I write this in June 2026, FTMO has been back in India for roughly six months.

That changes what this page should be. If you are going to spend months passing an evaluation and then build payout cycles into your income, the question is not only "who charges $19" but "which of these firms will still be taking Indian clients in 2027, and what happens to my route in and out of the country if one of them changes its mind." So I compared FTMO, FundedNext, The5ers and Blueberry Funded on five criteria, in this order: paying from India, getting paid in India, refund economics, the rules that actually terminate funded accounts, and country risk. Pricing is in the table, where it belongs.

One thing you should know before reading, because it shapes how to weigh my words: TradingZenith has a commercial relationship with two of these four firms, The5ers and Blueberry Funded, and earns a commission if you sign up through those links. FTMO and FundedNext pay us nothing; their links here go straight to their official sites. I have kept the analysis symmetrical anyway, and the fact that I can tell you the unflattering parts about all four, including the two that pay us, is the standard I want this page held to. Both paying firms also have full standalone reviews: The5ers review for Indian traders and Blueberry Funded review for Indian traders.

First published in March 2026, this page was rewritten in June 2026 with every figure re-verified on June 10 against the firms' official pricing pages and help centers. Where I could not verify something officially, the table says "not documented" and the text tells you so.

The Four Firms, Side by Side

The columns are the comparison. Cheapest verified entry, whether you can pay by UPI, what happens to your fee if you pass, whether rupees can land in your bank, the news rule that polices your funded account, and the India track record.

Firm	Cheapest entry	UPI checkout	Fee refund	INR payout route	News rule on funded	India record
FTMO Prague, since 2015	€155 ($10K 2-Step)	No	2-Step: 100% with 1st payout. 1-Step: none	Not documented (wire, card payout, Skrill, crypto; no Rise)	No opening/closing trades within 2 min of high-impact news (Normal; Swing exempt)	Blocked new Indian clients Feb 2023 to Dec 2025; accepting again
FundedNext Ajman UAE, since 2022	$59.99 ($6K Stellar)	Via Local Payment, subject to checkout availability; officially stable 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM IST	2-Step: with 1st payout. 1-Step/Lite: 3rd payout. $25 platform fee never refunded	Via Rise (fee up to 3.5%) or USDT/USDC up to $2,000; India bank timing not documented	Profitable trades within 5 min of high-impact news count only 40% toward balance	Accepted; no India block on record
The5ers Since 2016	$19 ($2.5K High Stakes)	No	Staged: 10% + 20% as credits, 70% with 1st qualifying payout	Rise deposits INR into Indian banks (3.5% fee)	Not documented	Accepted; no India block on record
Blueberry Funded Blueberry Markets group, ~10 yrs	$30 ($2.5K Prime 2-Step)	Yes, native: INR checkout via GPay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM	None. All purchases final	USDT/USDC up to $2,000; Rise deposits INR above that	High-impact news prohibited; plus 1.5% per trade idea = instant breach	Accepted; India is its largest market by its own footprint

Notes on the entries before anyone quotes this table out of context. The FTMO figure is the published 2-Step list rate; FTMO prices in euros and runs promotions, so confirm at checkout, and I am deliberately not quoting its 1-Step pricing because I could not verify it against an official source. The FundedNext figure is the Stellar list price from the official pricing page; its Lite program advertises cheaper tiers that I also could not verify officially, so they do not appear here. The5ers and Blueberry prices were parsed from their live pricing and checkout pages on June 10, 2026. "Not documented" means exactly that: the firm's official materials do not establish the point, and I will not fill the gap with a guess.

Paying From India: UPI, Cards and the RBI Default

The first filter is brutally practical. Since 2020, RBI rules require Indian cards to ship with international usage switched off by default, so the basic question "can I actually complete this checkout from Mumbai" sorts the four firms immediately.

Blueberry Funded is the clean answer. Its help center documents a native UPI flow: switch the checkout to INR, select Local Payment, the IG Pay gateway hands you to your own UPI app (GPay, PhonePe, Paytm or BHIM), you approve the payment like any other UPI transaction, submit the 12-digit UTR number, and the account is issued within 1-2 hours. The site runs a Hindi version and a dedicated India landing page. No international card setup, no forex markup on a card statement. At the time of writing, the $550 account displays as ₹52,570 at checkout. The full step-by-step is in my Blueberry Funded review.

FundedNext also documents UPI, and this is where you need the fine print, because I found it in the firm's own help center. UPI appears as a Local Payment option, with the account released in around 30 minutes, and the official article carries this warning verbatim in spirit: UPI is stable only between 10:00 AM and 10:00 PM IST. Outside that window, expect failures. There is a second wrinkle: FundedNext's own list of countries with Local Payment support, updated February 2026, does not include India, even though the India UPI article exists. Two official documents that disagree with each other. My reading: treat FundedNext UPI as available subject to what the checkout actually shows you, never as guaranteed. If UPI does not appear, the alternatives are card, PayPal, Skrill, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or crypto (USDT, USDC and several others), with card and crypto issuing credentials instantly.

The5ers has no UPI and no Google Pay. You pay by card in your own name, PayPal, or crypto via Confirmo (USDT, USDC and other major coins). The site displays prices in INR through a currency selector, but that is display only; settlement happens by the three methods above. The card route works fine once you enable international usage in your banking app before checkout, which takes two minutes and trips up almost every first-timer who skips it.

FTMO likewise has no UPI, and no INR pricing that I could verify. Documented methods: Visa and Mastercard (instant, no fee), Apple Pay and Google Pay, Skrill with a 3% fee, crypto (BTC, ETH, LTC, USDT, USDC) with a 3% fee and up to 24 hours, or bank wire taking 2-5 business days. For an Indian trader whose card refuses international charges, the documented fallbacks are Skrill or crypto; whether your specific card clears is between you and your bank, and I will not promise it.

Scorecard for this criterion: Blueberry first by a distance, FundedNext second with documented caveats, The5ers and FTMO tied on the standard card-or-crypto gymnastics. One compliance note that applies to all four, consistent with everything I write on this site: a challenge fee is a payment for an evaluation service under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, not a margin remittance to an offshore broker. That structure is the reason funded trading is the cleaner route for Indian residents. It is legal under LRS; it carries no SEBI or RBI blessing, because no prop firm has one.

Getting Paid in India: Rise, Rupees and Wires

Money out matters more than money in, and it splits the field the same way.

The5ers has the most India-complete documented exit. Payouts process in 5-8 business days; through Rise, which supports India, the money then clears in 1-2 days and lands as INR directly in your bank account, for a 3.5% fee. Crypto (3.5%, capped at $1,500 per request) and wire (3.5% plus your bank's receiving charges) are the alternatives. First withdrawal unlocks 14 days after the funded account activates, minimum $150 after the split, KYC before the first payout. The split starts at 80% and scales to 100% on High Stakes.

Blueberry Funded runs the same Rise rail with a stablecoin band underneath: payouts up to $2,000 are paid in USDT or USDC on TRC-20, and anything above that goes through RiseWorks, which converts and deposits INR into an Indian bank account. The cycle is 14 days, with a minimum of $100 profit and at least 3 active trading days in the cycle, and the split is a flat 80% from the first payout, rising to 90% through scaling. The stablecoin band puts the conversion problem on you for smaller payouts; if you do not already have a clean way to convert USDT, factor that in.

FundedNext pays in USDT (minimum $20, maximum $2,000 per transaction), USDC (minimum $50, maximum $2,000), or RiseWorks (minimum $50, processing fee up to 3.5%). Rise is the same processor The5ers and Blueberry use and supports the INR route, but FundedNext's own documentation does not spell out India-specific bank timing, so I describe it as "via Rise" and stop there. The cadence is genuinely aggressive: Stellar 1-Step accounts can request a payout every 5 business days, while 2-Step and Lite take their first payout 21 days after trading starts and every 14 days after. The firm advertises payout processing within 24 hours or it pays $1,000 extra; that is their promise, quoted as such, not my measurement. The split is 80% base rising to 90% via Scale-Up; the "up to 95%" on the homepage is a paid add-on at purchase, not the standard deal. There is also a detail nobody else offers: 15% profit share on gains made during the challenge phase itself.

FTMO is the outlier, and for an Indian recipient, not in a good way. No Rise. Documented payout methods are bank wire (minimum $20), Visa Direct and Mastercard Send (up to $20,000), Skrill (up to $3,000), and crypto (minimum $50). Nothing in FTMO's documentation establishes an INR deposit route, so plan on receiving USD by wire and converting at your bank's rate, with your bank's foreign-inward charges. The mechanics are otherwise solid: payouts on demand from day 14 after your first funded trade, you issue an invoice, review takes 1-2 business days and the transfer 1-2 more. Splits: 80% rising to 90% on the 2-Step, and a flat 90% from the start on the 1-Step.

Scorecard: The5ers and Blueberry have the documented rupees-in-your-bank path, FundedNext gets there via the same processor with less India-specific paperwork, FTMO asks you to do the conversion work yourself.

What the Refund Is Actually Worth

"Refundable fee" is the most abused phrase in prop firm marketing, because the refund almost always sits at the end of a conditional chain that most buyers never complete. Here is the chain at each firm, uncompressed.

FTMO has the cleanest version, with one big asterisk. On the 2-Step Challenge, 100% of the fee comes back with your first payout from the funded account. Full stop, and the fee is one-time with no recurring charges. The asterisk: this applies to the 2-Step only. The 1-Step has no refund at all; in exchange, its profit split starts at 90% instead of 80%. If the refund is what you are buying, buy the 2-Step.

FundedNext looks similar in the headline and differs in the mechanics. The Stellar 2-Step fee returns with the first payout, matching FTMO. But on the Stellar 1-Step and Lite, the fee only comes back with the third payout, which on a 14-day cycle means surviving and staying profitable on a funded account for multiple cycles before seeing it. And if you chose cTrader or Match-Trader as your platform, the $25 platform fee is never refunded for traders outside the US, on any program.

The5ers runs a staged mechanism on High Stakes that I covered at length in the full review: 10% back as hub credits after passing Step 1, another 20% after Step 2, and the remaining 70% converted into an equity credit that becomes withdrawable with your first payout, which itself requires at least $150 in profit and 14 days of account activity. Partial rewards along the way instead of all-or-nothing at the end; the full amount still requires finishing the whole chain, and Hyper Growth refunds nothing.

Blueberry Funded does not play this game. The official purchase policy, dated May 11, 2026, says all purchases are final, and UPI and crypto payments are excluded even from the narrow exceptions that exist for card payments. The rupees you send by GPay are gone the moment the UTR clears, including in the scenario where you pass everything. That is not hidden; it is policy, and you should price the fee as spent money.

The honest summary for all four: if you fail the evaluation, which is the most common outcome everywhere, the refund is zero everywhere. The refund question only differentiates the firms for the minority who pass and reach payouts. For that minority, FTMO 2-Step and FundedNext 2-Step return the most, fastest; The5ers pays in stages; Blueberry returns nothing and competes on entry price and checkout convenience instead.

The Rules That End Funded Accounts

Evaluations get all the attention, but the rules that decide whether you ever build an income are the funded-stage rules, and the news rules in particular, because high-impact releases are exactly when retail strategies make and lose the most money. The four firms police this in four different ways.

FTMO: on the funded Normal account, you may not open or close trades, including pending orders, stop losses and take profits triggering, in the window from 2 minutes before to 2 minutes after a high-impact news event on the affected instruments. Break it and the result of the trade is in question, not just the trade. During the Challenge and Verification phases, news trading is free. The Swing account variant removes the news restriction entirely, along with overnight and weekend limits, at the cost of leverage (1:30 versus 1:100 on Normal). The evaluation itself: 10% then 5% targets, 5% daily loss, 10% maximum, minimum 4 trading days per phase, unlimited time, no consistency rule on the 2-Step.

FundedNext took a different route, and you should read it twice because it is unusual. There is no outright ban. Instead, under the News Reward Share Rule, any profitable trade executed from 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after a high-impact event, pending orders included, has only 40% of its profit counted toward your account balance. Losses remain 100% yours. So news trading on a funded FundedNext account is permitted and structurally taxed at 60% of the upside. On the challenge, news trading is free. Evaluations: the 2-Step asks 8% then 5% with a 5% daily and 10% max; the 1-Step asks 10% with a tight 3% daily and 6% max; no time limits, no consistency rule.

Blueberry Funded is the strictest of the four once you are funded, and I documented this in detail in the full review. High-impact news trading is prohibited outright on funded accounts. On top of that sits the rule that actually kills accounts: risking more than 1.5% of the initial account size on a single trade idea is a hard breach, meaning immediate termination, no warning, no soft-violation tier. Leverage is 1:30. A checkout add-on (+30% on the fee) raises the cap to 2%, which tells you exactly which rule the firm knows bites hardest. The evaluations themselves are fair: no time limit, no consistency rule, 4-5% daily limits depending on program.

The5ers is the gap in my table, stated plainly: the official materials I reviewed for this comparison do not document a funded-account news restriction, so that cell reads "not documented" and I will not invent one in either direction. Check the current rulebook before you trade news there. What is documented is the evaluation discipline: 10% (or 8% on Classic) then 5% targets, a 5% daily loss measured from the previous day's close, 10% absolute maximum, and a minimum of 3 profitable days per step, with unlimited time and a 30-day inactivity expiry.

If your edge lives in the minutes around RBI policy, NFP or CPI prints, this section just made your choice for you: Blueberry has banned your strategy, FTMO confines it to a Swing account, FundedNext lets you run it and keeps 60% of the news-window upside, and The5ers requires you to go read the current rulebook before assuming anything.

The India Risk: Who Might Leave Again

Now the criterion that motivated this rewrite. Prop firms are not brokers with local licences and local obligations; they are offshore companies selling evaluations, and they can switch a country off overnight. For an Indian trader, the durability of your access is a real input, so here is each firm's file.

FTMO is the proven flight risk, and also the firm with the deepest institutional roots. Both things are true. It blocked new Indian clients from February 28, 2023 until December 2025, nearly three years in which the industry's biggest brand simply did not serve this market, and it reopened roughly six months before this update; today India is absent from its official restricted list, which still includes Indonesia, Russia, Kazakhstan and others. On the other side of the ledger: founded in Prague in 2015, the longest track record here, and in December 2025 it completed the acquisition of the broker OANDA after clearance from five regulators. That is real corporate substance. Be precise about what it is not: FTMO the prop firm is not regulated, and OANDA's licences belong to OANDA, not to the challenge product you would be buying. The company says it has paid over $500 million in rewards; that is its own claim, not an audited figure. My framing: FTMO has shown you both that it can leave India and that it survived long enough to come back. Price both halves.

FundedNext is the youngest firm here, launched in March 2022, a subsidiary of Next Ventures with its official seat in Ajman, UAE, and by its own help center wording it is "not subject to conventional financial regulations." India is accepted and there is no India block on record. The instructive detail is who is not accepted: the restricted list includes Bangladesh, where the founding team itself came from, alongside Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Malaysia. I do not raise that as a jab; I raise it because it shows these lists are drawn by payment rails and compliance pressure, not sentiment, and they can move without notice. The public complaint record for 2025-2026 includes payout disputes the firm later conceded as errors; aggregators put payout complaints at a small share of total reviews, and I found no India-specific pattern, but no payout anywhere in this industry is guaranteed, this firm included.

The5ers has the quietest file, which is itself information. Operating since 2016, second-oldest here, India accepted, INR in the site's currency selector, no documented India exit, and in my search of the 2025-2026 public record, zero India-specific payout complaints; the one documented dispute, from December 2025, concerned a conduct-rule call at payout time, covered in the full review. No prop firm earns the word "safe" from me, but a decade of serving the market without leaving it is the closest thing this industry offers to a durability signal.

Blueberry Funded presents the most interesting risk profile, because its India exposure runs the other way: by its own market footprint, the largest share of its traders already comes from India. The Hindi site, the India landing page and the UPI rail exist because India is the business. A firm whose revenue is concentrated here has a strong commercial reason to stay, and also a concentration risk if Indian payment rails or rules shift. Corporate substance: it is operated and backed by the Blueberry Markets group, roughly ten years old, whose Australian arm is a broker holding an ASIC licence (AFSL 535887). The entity you contract with is Blueberry Markets (SVG) LLC in St Vincent and the Grenadines, the accounts are simulated, and the fee is a subscription, in the site's own words; the ASIC licence belongs to a related broker, not to this product. The complaint file mirrors the customer base: the payout-denial cases I found on public record are concentrated among India and Pakistan traders, one resolved and one still open in 2026. Small numbers, in the category that matters most, in the market where most of its customers are. Keep your own trade logs.

Verdict by Trader Profile

There is no single best prop firm for India in 2026. There is a best firm per constraint, and you know your constraint better than I do.

If UPI is non-negotiable, the answer is Blueberry Funded, and it is not close. Rupees in via GPay or PhonePe, INR back via Rise, $30 entry. The price of that convenience is the strictest funded rulebook here (1.5% hard breach, news banned, 1:30 leverage) and a fee that never comes back. Disciplined small-risk grinders fit it; conviction sizers and news traders do not. Full review here. FundedNext is the conditional runner-up: UPI exists in its documentation, with an official stability window of 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM IST and conflicting internal country lists, so let the checkout decide.

If track record is what you are buying, it comes down to FTMO (2015) versus The5ers (2016), and the India lens splits them. FTMO has the bigger name, the OANDA acquisition behind it, and a three-year India exit in its recent past, plus no documented INR payout route. The5ers has the smaller name, a documented Rise-to-INR path, a staged refund, and no history of leaving this market. For an Indian trader specifically, I weight The5ers ahead on that pair of facts; a trader who values the biggest brand and trades through a Swing account to escape the news rule can reasonably pick FTMO. My full The5ers review is here.

If refund economics drive you, the 2-Step programs at FTMO and FundedNext return 100% of the fee with the first payout, the cleanest deals on paper. FundedNext is also the only firm even conditionally offering UPI and a refund together, on the Stellar 2-Step, if Local Payment shows up at your checkout. Avoid its 1-Step and Lite if the refund matters to you, because there it waits until the third payout, and skip cTrader or Match-Trader unless losing the $25 platform fee is acceptable.

If you are simply starting, ignore brand gravity and buy the cheapest honest test of your discipline: $19 at The5ers or $30 at Blueberry, both running the same rulebooks as their $100K tiers. Treat the fee as tuition, expect to fail the first attempt like most buyers do, and read the funded rules before the evaluation, not after. And whichever firm you choose, the income that eventually arrives is foreign business income with filing obligations; my India trading tax guide covers that side.

For completeness, the two firms that pay us nothing: FTMO's official site and FundedNext's official site carry the current pricing and rulebooks, and FTMO's free trial is unlimited if you want to test its platform and rules without paying anything, which is a sensible first step regardless of which firm you end up choosing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did FTMO ban Indian traders?

Yes. FTMO stopped accepting new clients from India on February 28, 2023 and only reopened in December 2025, almost three years later. As of June 2026, India is not on FTMO's official restricted-countries list, so Indian traders can sign up again. The episode matters because it is the clearest proof in this comparison that a prop firm can exit your market with your trading career attached to it.

Which prop firm accepts UPI payments from India?

Blueberry Funded is the only firm of the four with native UPI checkout: you pay in rupees through GPay, PhonePe, Paytm or BHIM, submit the 12-digit UTR number, and the account is issued within 1-2 hours. FundedNext documents UPI as a Local Payment option, but with two caveats from its own help center: it officially describes UPI as stable only between 10:00 AM and 10:00 PM IST, and its Local Payment country list does not currently include India, so treat it as subject to availability at checkout. FTMO and The5ers have no UPI; both route Indian traders through international card, wallets, or crypto.

Which prop firm refunds the challenge fee?

It depends on the program, not just the firm. FTMO refunds 100% of the fee with the first payout, but only on the 2-Step Challenge; the 1-Step has no refund and compensates with a 90% split from the start. FundedNext refunds the Stellar 2-Step fee with the first payout, but 1-Step and Lite fees only come back with the third payout, and the $25 platform fee for cTrader or Match-Trader is never refunded. The5ers refunds in stages on High Stakes: 10% and 20% as credits for passing each step, with the remaining 70% released alongside the first qualifying payout. Blueberry Funded refunds nothing; its purchase policy states that all purchases are final.

How do payouts from these firms reach an Indian bank account?

The5ers and Blueberry Funded both use Rise, which converts payouts and deposits INR directly into an Indian bank account; Blueberry pays amounts up to $2,000 in USDT or USDC first, with Rise handling larger payouts. FundedNext pays through USDT, USDC or RiseWorks, and Rise supports the same INR route, though FundedNext itself does not document India-specific bank timing. FTMO has no Rise option: payouts go by bank wire, Visa Direct or Mastercard Send, Skrill, or crypto, and an INR deposit route is not documented, so plan on receiving USD and converting at your bank.

Are these prop firms regulated by SEBI, RBI or ASIC?

No prop firm is registered with or endorsed by SEBI or RBI, including all four here. FTMO is an unregulated Czech company; owning the broker OANDA does not transfer OANDA's licences to the FTMO challenge product. FundedNext operates from Ajman, UAE and says in its own help center that it is not subject to conventional financial regulations. Blueberry Funded is operated and backed by the Blueberry Markets group, whose Australian arm is a broker holding an ASIC licence (AFSL 535887), but the entity you contract with is registered in St Vincent and the Grenadines and the accounts are simulated. The legal footing for an Indian trader in every case is the same: the challenge fee is a service purchase under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme.

What is the cheapest way to start funded trading from India?

The5ers at $19 for the $2.5K High Stakes account is the cheapest verified entry of the four, followed by Blueberry Funded at $30 for the $2.5K Prime 2-Step, which you can pay in rupees over UPI. FundedNext starts at $59.99 for the $6K Stellar account; its Lite program advertises cheaper tiers, but I could not verify those prices on the official pricing page. FTMO's safest quotable entry is €155 for the $10K 2-Step Challenge. In every case, start at the tier you can afford to lose outright, because most buyers fail the evaluation.