The Ordane Journal · Before you pay
Prop Firm Account or Demo? Read the Terms
Prop Firm Account or Demo? Read the Terms, Not the Homepage
The homepage says funded. The terms say demo. You clicked agree on one of those two documents, and only one of them decides what you actually bought.
Ordane accounts operate on simulated capital. No live funds are traded and no deposits are accepted. (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause P-2, retrieved 2026-07-29)
A prop firm demo account is an account that trades a fictitious balance against a mirrored price feed rather than a live exchange, governed by whatever the client agreement or terms of use calls it, regardless of what the marketing page calls it.
Ordane accounts operate on simulated capital: no live funds are traded and no deposits are accepted (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause P-2, retrieved 2026-07-29).
That sentence is not marketing copy. Its first half is clause P-2 of the Ordane Rulebook v1.0, which requires the simulated-capital declaration in every piece of communication; its second half, no live funds and no deposits, is Ordane's own statement of where the money sits, not clause text but the same commitment on a different binding surface. It is also why this article never uses the word funded as a claim about any account, including ours: an account on simulated capital is not funded, and the word does real damage when it travels unchallenged.
Funded on the homepage, demo in the terms: which one binds you
The 45-word answer
The document you accept at checkout governs your account. If its terms call the account demo or simulated, that is what you bought, whatever the headline promised. Funded on a homepage is a marketing word with no contractual weight. When the two disagree, the binding text wins and the headline is noise.
Why the two words coexist
Both words are technically defensible, which is exactly the problem. A firm can write funded in a headline because you receive a balance to trade against and a share of the result. It writes demo in the agreement because the balance is fictitious and the orders never reach a live venue. Neither sentence is a lie in isolation. Together they leave the reader unable to say what they own.
United States regulation 17 CFR 4.41(b) requires any presentation of simulated or hypothetical commodity performance to carry a disclaimer stating that, unlike an actual performance record, such results do not represent actual trading (Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, 17 CFR 4.41, retrieved 2026-07-29). Simulated is a defined regulatory term with a mandated warning attached. Funded is a font size.
Three words, one account: funded, demo, simulated
Three words describe the same object. One of them lives on marketing surfaces, two of them live on binding surfaces. Sorting a page by which surface a word appears on tells you more than reading the page twice.
| Word | Where it typically appears |
|---|---|
| Funded | Homepage headline, ad creative, plan names |
| Demo | Terms of use, client agreement, platform account label |
| Simulated | Terms of use, risk disclosure, performance disclaimers |
| Word | What the reader hears |
|---|---|
| Funded | Someone handed me money that is actually at stake |
| Demo | A practice account |
| Simulated | Not real trading |
| Word | What it commits the firm to | Surface |
|---|---|---|
| Funded | Nothing specific about whose money or which market | Marketing |
| Demo | Fictitious balance, no live execution | Binding |
| Simulated | In the United States, a mandated hypothetical-performance disclaimer under 17 CFR 4.41(b) (Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, retrieved 2026-07-29) | Binding |
Two firms show what this looks like in their own published words rather than in ours.
FTMO's technical FAQ states: "After a client becomes an FTMO Trader, they will be provided with a demo account with fictitious capital" (FTMO.com, technical FAQ, retrieved 2026-07-29). The same FAQ states: "Our clients therefore never actually perform any trades on live markets" (FTMO.com, technical FAQ, retrieved 2026-07-29). That is the firm describing its own post-evaluation account, in its own documentation, as a demo account.
Topstep's Terms of Use state that trades in a simulated account are not made in live markets and do not incur actual profits or losses (Topstep.com, Terms of Use, retrieved 2026-07-29). The same terms tell the trader that the funds provided for Simulated Trading are fictitious and that the trader has no right to possess those fictitious funds beyond the scope of their use within the sites and services (Topstep.com, Terms of Use, retrieved 2026-07-29).
Neither statement is a scandal. Both are the binding surface saying plainly what the marketing surface tends to blur. The finding is not that these firms are hiding something in the terms. It is that the terms are where the answer lives, so that is where you read.
What the word changes in practice: three consequences
Whether your orders reach the real market
On a simulated account your orders fill against a mirrored price feed rather than reaching an exchange order book. FTMO puts this in one sentence about its own clients: "Our clients therefore never actually perform any trades on live markets" (FTMO.com, technical FAQ, retrieved 2026-07-29). The practical consequences are that your size cannot move the market, and that execution quality is a property of the firm and its data provider rather than of the venue. Ordane runs on Match Trader (Ordane Markets, confirmed by the owner, retrieved 2026-07-29).
What a losing trade actually costs you
A loss on a simulated account is a loss to a fictitious balance. Topstep's terms say the trader acknowledges "the funds provided to you for Simulated Trading are fictitious and that you have no right to possess those fictitious funds beyond the scope of their use within the Sites and Services" (Topstep.com, Terms of Use, retrieved 2026-07-29). What you can actually lose is the fee you already paid, plus the account. This article stops here on purpose: pricing that exposure properly, including whether a firm's other fees add to it, is covered in our article on whether prop firms charge hidden fees beyond the ticket price, and we are not going to do it twice here.
Whether the resulting payout is real money
Simulated result, real payment. Those are not in tension, because the money comes from a different place than the trades. At Ordane, payouts are paid in real money from company fee revenue, no client deposits are taken and no client capital is traded, and Rulebook v1.0 clause PR-1 further commits Ordane to hold the payout reserve at a publicly verifiable address, which is not published yet (ordanemarkets.com FAQ and Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause PR-1, retrieved 2026-07-29). That last clause matters and we return to it below. How the timing of that payout works, once it is owed to you, is covered separately in our piece on how long a prop firm takes to actually pay. Boundary stated: this page settles what the account is and which document says so. It does not price your downside and it does not audit the cash flow.
The control case: a firm that uses the same word in both places
Here is a proposition you can test on any firm in the industry, including this one. If the binding document and the homepage use the same word for the account, there is no contradiction left to resolve, and nothing about the account type can surprise you at withdrawal.
Ordane accounts operate on simulated capital. No live funds are traded and no deposits are accepted (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause P-2, and the site's payout statement, retrieved 2026-07-29). Clause P-2 requires the simulated-capital declaration; the no-deposits half is Ordane stating on its own surface where the money is not, and both are commitments the firm has to answer for rather than a headline it can walk back. The governing document is Ordane Rulebook v1.0, published 2026-07-23 (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, section 6 Changelog, retrieved 2026-07-29). The rulebook is public, numbered and versioned, no rule is ever applied retroactively to an open account, changes produce a new version with a dated changelog entry, and the version you sign up under is the version that governs your account (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, notice above section 0, and section 6 Changelog, retrieved 2026-07-29). There is one product: Ordane sells one product, Ordane Direct, an instant account with direct access, no evaluation phase and no challenge (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, section 1, retrieved 2026-07-29). It comes in four sizes: $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000 (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, section 1, retrieved 2026-07-29).
Now the concessions, stated before anything else about us gets read.
Ordane is new and has no payout history. There is nothing to show yet, and no payout history will be manufactured (ordanemarkets.com, payout ledger section, retrieved 2026-07-29). The reserve is a written commitment and not yet a verifiable object: Ordane's payout reserve will be held at a public on-chain address, published on ordanemarkets.com before the first account is sold, and as of 2026-07-25 that address is not published yet, with checkout staying closed until it is (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause PR-1, and ordanemarkets.com reserve section, retrieved 2026-07-29).
And a gap in our own document, since the argument of this page is that you should read the binding text critically. Rulebook v1.0 states that each prohibited practice is defined with examples in Appendix A, and Appendix A is published on ordanemarkets.com as of 2026-08-01 (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause R-6, retrieved 2026-07-29). Appendix A was published on 2026-08-01; the reference in R-6 is no longer unfinished.
| What the check asks | Ordane's answer, as of 2026-07-25 |
|---|---|
| Same account word on the homepage and in the binding document | Yes: simulated capital, clause P-2 verbatim in both (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause P-2, retrieved 2026-07-29) |
| Binding document published, numbered and versioned | Yes: Rulebook v1.0, published 2026-07-23, no retroactive changes (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, section 6 Changelog, retrieved 2026-07-29) |
| Payout source stated | Yes: real money from company fee revenue, no client deposits (ordanemarkets.com FAQ, retrieved 2026-07-29) |
| Payout reserve independently verifiable | Not yet: address unpublished, checkout closed (Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause PR-1, retrieved 2026-07-29) |
| Payout history to inspect | None: firm is new, none will be fabricated (ordanemarkets.com, payout ledger section, retrieved 2026-07-29) |
| Every referenced annex actually published | Yes: Appendix A for R-6(a)–(f), published 2026-08-01 (Ordane Rulebook v1.0) |
| Verification source | Where you check it |
|---|---|
| Account-word match | ordanemarkets.com and the rulebook |
| Rulebook version and changelog | Rulebook section 6 Changelog |
| Payout funding statement | ordanemarkets.com FAQ |
| Reserve address status | Rulebook clause PR-1 |
| Payout ledger | Payout ledger section |
| Appendix A reference | Rulebook clause R-6 |
Three yeses, three noes, all dated. Run the same six rows against any firm you are considering, using the same checklist we lay out in how to audit a prop firm before you pay.
Run the check yourself in two minutes
This is one narrow procedure, not a full trust audit. It answers a single question: which word governs the account?
- Open the firm's terms of use, client agreement or trading agreement. Not the homepage, not the FAQ, not a plan comparison page.
- Search the page for four words: funded, demo, simulated, virtual. Note which of them appears in the binding text and in what sentence.
- Write down the word used in the headline you arrived from. Compare the two.
- Open the risk disclosure, if there is one, and check whether it contradicts either.
The tell to look for: a homepage saying funded next to an agreement that calls the same product a demo trading agreement is one account described in two voices, and the agreement is the voice that binds. FTMO's own FAQ language and Topstep's own Terms of Use both show the industry's binding surface saying demo and simulated in plain words (FTMO.com, technical FAQ, retrieved 2026-07-29; Topstep.com, Terms of Use, retrieved 2026-07-29).
The second tell is quieter. If the terms are not published at all, there is no binding surface to read, and that is your finding: you would be buying a headline. Note it and move on, and if the terms are published but read like they were written to leave room for interpretation, that itself is worth checking against whether prop firms are legitimate businesses in the first place.
For the wider document check, covering the rulebook, the payout clauses and the changelog rather than only the account-type word, see our guide on how to audit a prop firm. When the binding text is published but deliberately vague, the question becomes whether a firm can enforce a rule it never wrote down, which we handle separately.
Questions traders ask about funded, demo and simulated accounts
Does funded mean the firm gave me real money?
Not by itself. Funded is a marketing word with no fixed contractual meaning. FTMO's technical FAQ describes the account an FTMO Trader receives as "a demo account with fictitious capital" (FTMO.com, technical FAQ, retrieved 2026-07-29). Read the binding document for the account type; the headline word tells you nothing enforceable.
My terms say demo trading agreement. Did I buy a demo?
Yes, in the only sense that matters legally. The agreement you accepted defines the product, and the headline does not override it. Topstep's Terms of Use, for example, state that trades in a simulated account are not made in live markets and do not incur actual profits or losses (Topstep.com, Terms of Use, retrieved 2026-07-29).
Do my orders reach the real market?
On a simulated account, no. Orders fill against a mirrored price feed rather than an exchange order book. FTMO states directly that its clients "never actually perform any trades on live markets," even while using real market quotes from liquidity providers (FTMO.com, technical FAQ, retrieved 2026-07-29). Your size cannot move the market.
If the trades are simulated, why is the payout real money?
Because the payout is paid from the firm's own revenue, not from your trades. At Ordane, payouts are paid in real money from company fee revenue, no client deposits are taken and no client capital is traded, with clause PR-1 committing to a publicly verifiable reserve address that is not published yet (ordanemarkets.com FAQ and Ordane Rulebook v1.0, clause PR-1, retrieved 2026-07-29).
Which document wins if the homepage and the terms disagree?
The document you accepted at checkout. A marketing page makes no commitment you can enforce; the agreement does. If they use different words for the same account, treat the agreement as the fact and the homepage as the pitch, then decide whether you are comfortable with a firm that needs two vocabularies. This article is for information only and is not investment, financial, or tax advice. Ordane accounts operate on simulated capital. No live funds are traded and no deposits are accepted. Payouts depend on simulated performance under Rulebook v1.0; no level of performance is typical or assured.