CITY TRADERS IMPERIUM
City Traders Imperium has been around since 2018 and runs a trading education program alongside the prop firm — which either means they genuinely care about trader development or they found a second revenue stream from selling courses. Probably both. Either way, the pass rate tells a more cautious story.
(41% of complaints)
Who Is This Firm For?
About CITY TRADERS IMPERIUM
The catch is a 18.4% pass rate and a hidden rules score of 2.7. Not terrible. Not the kind of number that makes you want to celebrate either. If you're going to spend time with a firm that's been around this long, make sure the rules they've had a decade to write are actually working in your favour.
- Founded
- 2018
- Max Allocation
- $100,000
- Leverage
- 1:100
- Commissions
- $5/lot
Pros
- - News trading fully allowed on all models — no 5-minute windows, no profit caps
- - Overnight and weekend holding permitted — swing traders fully accommodated
- - Copy trading from CTI to personal and other prop firm accounts allowed
- - Stop loss automatically enforced — builds discipline without relying on trader memory
- - VPS allowed for EAs and copy trading
- - Crypto trading allowed on funded accounts
Cons
- - Stop loss must be set within 1 minute of opening — auto-closed if missed, profits void
- - Instant Funding starts at 50% capital — full unlock only after +10% profit reached
- - Minimum 5 profitable days required for first payout on Instant Funding (0.5% each day)
- - VPNs and proxies not allowed — IP changes monitored
- - Maximum 2 devices without approval
- - 30-day inactivity rule — account closed with no trade in 30 days
Support is slow but honest
Had both good and bad moments during my time here. Good documentation on the basics, spotty on the edge cases. Solid middle of the pack. Not a leader, not a lemon.— Verified Trader (optionoli) See all reviews
Set your stop loss before you do anything else after opening a trade — you have 1 minute before the system closes it for you and the profits don't count. On Instant Funding, start your position sizing at 50% of the stated account size — the other half only unlocks after you hit +10% profit. News trading is fully free here, but spreads widen significantly during high-impact events regardless of the rules.
Trading Conditions
Drawdown System
- Margin level cannot exceed 150% — profits from trades above this threshold won't count
- Instant Funding: Level 1 starts at 50% capital — Level 2 unlocks after +10% profit
- Funded accounts: minimum 7 profitable days (1-Step, 2-Step) or 5 days (3-Step, Instant)
- Each profitable day must generate at least 0.5% of account balance
- 30-day inactivity: account closed
High-Frequency & Fast Trading
- Not Allowed:
- Grid trading
- Martingale (except where explicitly allowed per model)
- Bracketing strategies
- Exploiting price feed errors
- Group or coordinated trading
- Third-party EAs without source code (2-Step and Instant models)
- Sharing EAs with other traders
Low Liquidity & Timing
- News trading: fully allowed on all models — no time window restrictions
- Stop loss: must be set within 1 minute of opening every trade
- Trades without SL: auto-closed by system, profits do not count
- VPS: allowed only for EAs or copy trading purposes
- No specific session time restrictions
Loss-Chasing & Gambling
- Not Allowed:
- Taking extreme risk on a single trade
- Martingale strategies (standard restriction)
- Account sharing or reselling
- Third-party account management
- Letting someone else trade your account
- Copying into CTI account from external sources
- Social trading platforms used as signal source
Risk Management
- CTI account must always be the Master in any copy trading setup
- Copying from CTI to personal accounts and other prop firm accounts: allowed
- Copying into CTI from anywhere: not allowed
- VPNs and proxies: not allowed — IP changes monitored
- Maximum 2 devices without prior approval
- Risk team may apply leverage reduction and position size limits if instability detected
- Triggers: multiple breaches, sudden strategy changes, high-risk exposure, large drawdowns
City Traders Imperium – Trading Conditions
Forbidden Trading Practices
- Exploiting price feed errors
- Group or coordinated trading
- Account sharing or reselling
- Third-party account management
- Taking extreme risk on a single trade
- Martingale — except where explicitly allowed
- Grid trading
- Bracketing strategies
- Exceeding 150% margin level — profits won't count
If your strategy depends on "doubling until it works" — this won't be the place for it. That's probably for the best.
News Trading
Trading during news events is fully allowed — no restrictions, no special limitations, no 5-minute windows to navigate.
Which sounds great until spreads widen and your trade starts behaving differently than expected. The freedom is real. The market conditions during high-impact news are also real.
Expert Advisors
The rules here depend on which account type you're on — & the difference matters.
- Third-party EAs without source code → not allowed
- Trade managers and calculators → allowed
- 1-Step & 3-Step challenges → any EA allowed
Flexibility exists. Just not uniformly across all models — worth checking which account you're on before you start the bot.
Copy Trading
City Traders Imperium has one of the more structured copy trading setups in the industry — your CTI account must always be the Master.
Allowed:
- Copying from your CTI account to personal accounts
- Copying from your CTI account to other prop firm accounts
- Copying between your own CTI accounts
Not allowed:
- Copying into your CTI account from elsewhere
- Copying from personal accounts into CTI
- Social trading platforms
- Letting someone else trade for you
- Sharing EAs with other traders
In short: if the strategy isn't yours, it's not allowed.
Challenge Models — Overview
| 1-Step | 2-Step | 3-Step | Instant Funding | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eval Min Profitable Days | 3 per phase | 3 per phase | 3 per phase | 5 profitable days |
| Daily Min for Profitable Day | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% |
| Funded Min Profitable Days | 7 | 7 | 5 | 5 |
| EA Restrictions | None | Standard | None | Standard |
| News Trading | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
Instant Funding — How It Actually Works
The name suggests immediate full access. The structure is slightly different.
- Level 1 — you start with half the capital
- Level 2 — after reaching +10% profit, the rest is unlocked
So yes, it's instant. Just not fully unlocked from the start — which is worth knowing before you calculate your position sizes on day one.
First payout requirement:
- Minimum 5 profitable trading days
- Each day must generate at least 0.5% of account balance
On paper, this looks simple. In practice, it's where consistency quietly becomes the main challenge.
Stop-Loss Rule
A stop-loss must be placed shortly after opening a trade — & this one is enforced automatically, not just recommended.
- You have 1 minute to set it after opening
- If not set → the system closes the trade for you
- Profits from trades without a stop-loss → won't count
Most traders think they don't need this until they do. The 1-minute window is tight enough to matter if you're used to setting stops after entry.
Risk Monitoring
If your trading starts looking unstable, the risk team may step in. Possible restrictions include reduced leverage & position size limits.
Usually triggered by:
- Multiple account breaches
- Sudden strategy changes
- High-risk exposure
- Large drawdowns
Consistent traders rarely notice this. Everyone else eventually learns what triggers it.
IP, VPN & Device Rules
- VPNs and proxies → not allowed
- IP changes → allowed, but monitored
- VPS → allowed only for EAs or copy trading
- Maximum 2 devices — more requires approval
Nothing complicated. It just requires you to treat your account like it actually belongs to you.
Inactivity Rule
- At least one trade every 30 days — otherwise the account is closed
You don't need to trade often. Just often enough to prove you didn't forget you have the account.
Holding Trades
- Overnight positions → allowed
- Weekend positions → allowed
- Crypto trading → allowed
Swing traders will feel at home here. No forced closures, no weekend restrictions, no extra fees for holding. The market doesn't pause because you decided to relax — but at least CTI won't force you to close first.
Final Take
City Traders Imperium sits comfortably in the middle of the industry — not the strictest firm on the list, not the most relaxed. The stop-loss rule is enforced automatically which is either a feature or an inconvenience depending on your workflow, & the copy trading setup is more structured than most firms of this size.
The 4.3/5 on Trustpilot across 1,691 reviews & a Hidden Rules Meter of 2.4/10 suggest a firm that does what it says — no major surprises, no red flags worth highlighting.
Hidden Rules Meter: 2.4/10 — Trust Score: 4.3/5 — Trustpilot: 4.3/5.
Restricted Countries
Vietnam is not supported for specific challenge types and instant funding options. Full list of restricted regions available on the City Traders Imperium website.
Features & Support
1-Step
Step 1 8.0%
Step 2 N/A
2-Step
Step 1 10.0%
Step 2 5.0%
Instant
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
Instant Pro
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
1-Step
Step 1 8.0%
Step 2 N/A
2-Step
Step 1 10.0%
Step 2 5.0%
Instant
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
Instant Pro
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
1-Step
Step 1 8.0%
Step 2 N/A
2-Step
Step 1 10.0%
Step 2 5.0%
Instant
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
Instant Pro
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
1-Step
Step 1 8.0%
Step 2 N/A
2-Step
Step 1 10.0%
Step 2 5.0%
Instant
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
Instant Pro
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
1-Step
Step 1 8.0%
Step 2 N/A
2-Step
Step 1 10.0%
Step 2 5.0%
Instant
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
Instant Pro
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
1-Step
Step 1 8.0%
Step 2 N/A
2-Step
Step 1 10.0%
Step 2 5.0%
Instant
Step 1 0.0%
Step 2 0.0%
not bad at all
rolled the dice on these guys after my last firm jacked up their fees. their dashboard is genuinely useful … learned stuff about my own trading just looking at it. the payout actually hit my account in like two days which i did not expect. i got a small payout bonus for hitting a milestone which was unexpected. the verification email came instantly instead of the usual 24 hour wait. partial closes and trailing stops both worked exactly like they should. would i recommend? yeah, as long as you can follow rules.
would buy again
Tried them out after a refund nightmare with a competitor. the leverage is sensible … enough to work with but not enough to wreck yourself by accident. my market orders fill basically where i click, slippage has been almost nothing so far. there is a discord and staff actually show up in it occasionally. i requested a payout three times and all three landed inside the promised window. passed, paid, repeat … that is the cycle and it has held up.
platform is rock solid
My prop firm group chat would not shut up about them so i caved. the profit target on phase one is ambitious but not insane. honestly the rules made my retail trading better too, forced discipline and all that. monthly fee on the challenge is honestly cheap compared to what others charge for the same size. support speaks actual english and not copy pasted template answers. i tested the live account against the demo with the same setups and it matched. happy enough that i talked two friends into joining.
solid platform, no surprises
I blew my first account in two days like an absolute clown. i never had to chase support, they actually closed my ticket the same day. crypto and wire both supported, i did wire and it hit my bank in two business days. the demo and funded feeds matched closely enough that i trusted my backtests. got my profit split same week i requested it, no nonsense.
in it for the long haul
Picked this one up after a buddy kept raving about it. the scaling lets you double your account size every time you clear a payout milestone. got my first payout via crypto and it landed in under an hour after approval. the minimum trading days is low so you can get funded fast if youre actually profitable. you can request a payout any day once youre funded, no waiting for some fixed cycle. easily the most drama free firm i have traded with.
glad i switched
Decided to try funded trading after years of trading my own cash. i compared them against three others and they had the best balance of price and rules. i like that they show your stats in real time instead of a delayed dashboard. ive done three withdrawals now and every single one landed on schedule no excuses. the challenge timer is generous, i never felt rushed into bad trades. would tell a friend to join without hesitation.
no complaints from me
Signed up on a whim after a podcast mention. platform was stable the whole time, no random disconnects during news. you get a real account dashboard with trade history and stats not just a balance number. no surprise inactivity fees which i half expected to get hit with. platform hasnt frozen on me once in three months of pretty heavy use. i can run my own ea on their platform and it ran without any weird restrictions. happy customer, happy wallet, would absolutely do it again.
passed eventually lol
picked them mostly because the eval price was easy to swallow. i traded indices mostly and the spreads on those were perfectly fine. i had a margin scare during cpi and the platform held up without freezing. payouts are biweekly on funded accounts which is way better than the monthly firms. support remembered my previous ticket and didnt make me re-explain the whole thing. no notes really, it just works.
pleasantly surprised tbh
started with their two step eval because the one step felt too good to be true. they let me run my algo as long as it is not some latency arbitrage exploit. getting verified for a payout needed an id and a selfie, standard stuff, painless. i hit up support on a saturday night fully expecting silence and someone replied in maybe ten minutes. can you guys get in contact with this firm if I provide an acc number? their customer support hasn't replied in ages. scaled my account twice and they honored every bit of it.
quietly impressed
Went in for teh cheap eval mostly to see what all the fuss was about. they honoured a payout even though i fat fingered a lot size, very fair. been with them six months and the payout reliability is the main reason im still here. i appreciated that they email you before a rule change instead of springing it. i like that the daily loss limit resets at a sane hour for my timezone. they sent me a little congrats email with my payout confirmation which was a nice touch. tbh would i do it again? yeah, probably with a bigger account next time.
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