Tools and firms we actually use

TradersPost sits between TradingView and your broker. When a Pine Script alert fires, TradersPost receives the payload and routes the order to your connected broker in real time. Without a bridge like it, hands-free Pine Script automation isn't possible on most platforms.

It's a recurring cost on top of whatever the prop firm charges, which is the honest downside. In exchange you get a setup that's reliable day to day and documentation that makes the initial webhook wiring straightforward.

Our take: essential if you want to automate rather than click every alert manually.

Tradovate is the execution broker several prop firms route funded accounts through. You don't choose it directly — the firm assigns you to it — but it's worth knowing what it is and what it offers.

The platform itself is solid: low latency, clean order entry, and account-level risk controls including a daily loss limit you can set independently of your firm's rules. We recommend setting one as a second backstop behind whatever kill switch your script already has.

Our take: not something you sign up for on its own — just use its risk dashboard once your firm puts you there.

Apex is the firm we point automated strategies at most often. The evaluation carries no daily loss limit at any account size, so a script that takes several signals in a session isn't fighting a hard intraday stop. The drawdown floor is intraday-trailing, which does require careful sizing, but there's no separate circuit breaker to engineer around.

Apex also runs frequent promotions, which keeps the cost of a reset attempt low even outside a sale.

Our take: best overall pick for algorithmic strategies, specifically because of the daily-loss-limit-free evaluation.

Topstep is one of the longest-running futures-native prop firms, and its end-of-day trailing drawdown is easier to reason about than an intraday floor — the number that matters is only checked once, at the close, rather than moving against you all session. That's a real advantage for a strategy that shows unrealized swings intraday.

The catch is the daily loss limit — $1,000 on the 50k tier — which is tight for a script taking multiple trades a day. Build a kill switch into the Pine Script and set a second limit at the broker level.

Our take: a well-run firm best suited to lower-frequency strategies. See our Topstep evaluation guide for the full rule breakdown.

FTMO popularized the modern evaluation model. Its drawdown is static rather than trailing — fixed at account opening and never moving down as you draw on it — which makes it straightforward to code a hard floor for. The two-phase Challenge and Verification process takes longer than a single-stage eval, and FTMO trades CFDs on index and metal instruments rather than direct CME futures contracts, which is worth knowing if you're specifically building for futures.

Our take: a good fit for a disciplined, low-variance system that doesn't need a fast single-stage pass.

MyFundedFutures focuses exclusively on CME futures — no forex, no stocks — and its evaluation drawdown is static and explicitly never trails. There's no consistency rule and no minimum number of trading days on the evaluation, which gives a strategy more room to clear the profit target on its own schedule.

Our take: a solid second option for running multiple evaluation accounts side by side without a rigid pacing requirement.

TradingView is the charting platform, backtesting engine, and alert system every script here depends on. There's no substitute — it's the only platform that runs Pine Script natively, and it's what fires the webhook alert that TradersPost picks up.

A paid plan is required for webhook-based automation; the free plan doesn't support webhooks.

Our take: not optional. If you don't already have a paid plan, get one before automating anything.