There’s a reason the best traders don’t go it alone. Sure, the stereotype is some lone wolf staring at 6 monitors, surviving on caffeine and chart patterns. But talk to consistently profitable futures and forex traders long enough, and you’ll hear the same thing: community matters more than most people admit.
I don’t just mean accountability groups or signal chats (actually, skip most signal chats). I mean the real communities where traders share payout screenshots, argue about consistency rules, warn each other about firms that are going sideways, and talk through why they blew 3 challenges in a row before figuring out their risk was just too aggressive for trailing drawdown structures.
Finding those communities is genuinely valuable. Here’s where the largest and most useful ones live in 2025.
Reddit: Still the Most Unfiltered Source Out There
Look, Reddit gets dismissed a lot. It’s messy, moderation is inconsistent, and you’ll wade through some genuinely terrible hot takes before finding gold. But that messiness is actually the point. Nobody’s paying to post there. Nobody’s running an affiliate deal that makes them say a firm is great when it isn’t.
r/PropTrading is the obvious starting point with over 30,000 members and growing. Traders post payout proof, compare challenge rules, and sometimes light firms up publicly when payouts get delayed. The signal-to-noise ratio is decent if you know how to filter. Search for specific firms before you buy a challenge and you’ll usually find 5-10 real trader experiences. That’s worth more than any review site that’s collecting referral fees.
r/Futures skews toward more experienced traders, mostly discussing ES, NQ, CL, and GC setups. Prop firm talk happens here too, especially when there’s a notable firm update, payout issue, or when someone wants to debate whether trailing drawdown structures are inherently predatory (that thread appears every 3 months, clockwork). Over 150,000 members. Useful for strategy discussion if you’re a futures trader, less useful if you’re forex-only.
r/Daytrading is enormous at 800,000+ members, but prop firm content gets buried fast. More useful for trading psychology discussions, risk management debates, and the occasional thread where someone posts their funded account P&L. If you’re newer and still figuring out position sizing, the threads here on risk management are genuinely solid.
r/Forex has 300,000+ members and is worth bookmarking if you’re trading currency pairs. A lot of overlap with prop firm traders now, especially around FTMO, The5ers, and similar forex-focused firms. MetaTrader and cTrader discussions are common. The subreddit has good institutional content if you dig.
One thing Reddit gets right that almost no other platform does: firm representatives actually engage there. You can sometimes tag a firm’s account and get real answers publicly. That kind of transparency tends to self-regulate bad behavior over time.
Topstep Discord: 160,000+ Members and One of the Most Active in Futures
Topstep’s Discord is legitimately impressive for a prop firm community. Sitting at over 160,000 members, it’s probably the single largest organized prop trading community tied to one firm. And here’s the thing that separates it from most firm Discords: it’s not just a support ticket queue dressed up as community.
They run structured daily coaching sessions, something called “Futures Fundamentals” and strategy identification events. Trader Ambassadors (funded traders) hang around in The Lobby channel and actually answer questions. Combine passes and payout milestones get celebrated publicly, which creates a weirdly motivating energy. If you’re newer to futures, just being in the environment where other traders are passing evaluations and hitting withdrawals does something for your mindset that’s hard to quantify.
The community is open to non-customers too. You don’t need an active Topstep account to join.
Worth noting: Topstep runs their Trading Combine on TopstepX (their platform built on ProjectX technology, with TradingView integration). Traders discuss platform-specific stuff like the Tilt Indicator and Coach T analytics constantly. If you’re figuring out whether Topstep is right for you, joining the Discord before buying anything is a legitimate move. You’ll get real trader takes on whether the consistency rule is manageable or whether the monthly fee structure makes sense for your timeline.
The drawback is scale, honestly. 160,000 members means the general channels move fast. Finding a specific answer can require knowing which channel to look in.
Apex Trader Funding Discord: 65,000+ Members
Apex’s Discord community sits at 65,000+ members, smaller than Topstep’s but probably more homogeneous in terms of trading style. Apex attracts traders who specifically want the no-daily-loss-limit structure and the ability to run up to 20 accounts simultaneously, so the conversations tend to be tactical and specific around that ruleset.
Traders here talk a lot about the trailing drawdown mechanics (the intraday trailing system that Apex uses is different from end-of-day models, and it catches people off guard). Lots of discussion about account sizing strategy, when to run micro accounts alongside full accounts, and how to manage the 5-payout threshold before scaling to 90% profit split.
Community reports indicate Apex’s Discord is active enough to be genuinely useful, but it’s more Q&A and shop talk than the structured coaching environment Topstep runs. Different vibe, different utility. If you want tactical futures trading discussion from people running Rithmic and Tradovate, this community fits well.
Facebook Groups: Older, Surprisingly Active
I’ll be honest, Facebook feels outdated for this kind of thing. But the prop trading groups there have real size and a demographic that skews slightly older than Reddit or Discord, which sometimes means more experienced traders.
The main ones worth knowing are groups like “Forex Prop Trading” and a handful of challenge-specific Facebook communities. Some report thousands of active daily users. The format works reasonably well for long-form discussion, screenshot sharing, and the kind of back-and-forth that gets buried in fast-moving Discord channels.
The moderation in some of these groups is… inconsistent. You’ll see promotional posts from firms, occasional spam, and threads that go sideways. But the size means you’ll also find traders who’ve been at this for 8+ years sharing nuanced perspectives on rule changes at major firms. The wheat-to-chaff ratio is manageable if you’re a bit selective about which threads you engage with.
Traders regularly post payout screenshots, challenge pass confirmations, and occasionally very public complaints when things go wrong with specific firms. That last part is actually valuable. Nothing tells you about a firm’s payout reliability faster than a Facebook group thread where 40 people are comparing how long their withdrawals took.
Telegram: Fast, Messy, Occasionally Brilliant
The “Forex Prop Trading” Telegram channel and similar groups move at a completely different speed than Reddit or Discord. Think real-time chatter. Screenshots getting posted within minutes of something happening. Polls about which firm is performing best right now. Quick-fire Q&As.
Community feedback suggests this is the best format for time-sensitive information. When a firm changes their rules mid-month, or when someone notices payout delays are suddenly taking 2 weeks instead of 3 days, Telegram channels tend to surface it first. Sometimes before the firm even announces it officially, which is either impressive or alarming depending on how you look at it.
The downside is that Telegram groups are chaotic by design. Misinformation spreads fast too. Someone posts a screenshot that looks like a firm is scamming traders, and the thread takes on a life of its own before anyone verifies anything. Treat Telegram as breaking news, not primary research.
That said, for traders who are actively managing multiple challenge accounts and want to stay plugged into real-time community chatter, Telegram is essential.
Elite Trader Forum: Where the Old Guard Still Hangs Out
EliteTrader.com has been around since 2000, which in internet years is basically ancient. The forum format is old-fashioned compared to Discord, but there’s a certain value in that. Threads are searchable, organized, and don’t disappear into a feed after 24 hours.
The prop trading subforum has active threads specifically about futures prop firms. People are comparing Topstep vs Take Profit Trader, discussing Apex’s 2025 rule changes (removing bracket bans, adding a 5:1 risk-reward cap), and debating whether instant funding models are worth it. The demographic skews toward traders who’ve been in the game long enough to remember when prop firm challenges weren’t even a thing.
If you have a specific nuanced question about rules, drawdown structures, or unusual edge cases in challenge evaluation, posting on Elite Trader often gets you a more considered response than the quick-hit answers on Discord. Slower, but sometimes that’s what you need.
Firm-Specific Communities Worth Knowing About
A few other communities that have developed meaningful scale:
FTMO has a significant following across Reddit and various Discord communities, though their own official community presence is smaller than Topstep’s or Apex’s. Given FTMO’s brand recognition (they’ve been around since 2015 and are headquartered in Prague), trader discussions about them are scattered across every platform listed above. The Trustpilot review section for FTMO also functions as a de facto community with traders sharing detailed experiences.
For The5ers specifically, there are trader communities on Reddit and Discord that discuss their scaling model (start at $20K, scale through 8 levels to $4 million) and the 100% profit split at the top level. Niche but active.
My Funded Futures, Leeloo Trading, and TradeDay each have pockets of community presence on Discord, usually 1,000-5,000 member servers that function as support channels with some genuine trader discussion mixed in.
What to Actually Do With These Communities
Here’s the practical part. If you’re choosing between prop firms, join Reddit (r/PropTrading, r/Futures) and the Discord of any firm you’re seriously considering before you spend money on a challenge. Read through recent threads. Look for patterns.
Warning signs: lots of posts about payout delays, vague support responses when traders post problems publicly, sudden rule changes with no explanation. Multiple traders posting about the same issue in the same week is a meaningful signal.
Green flags: firm representatives engaging publicly and constructively, traders sharing consistent payout timelines that match what the firm advertises, experienced traders defending the firm’s rules as legitimate rather than just working around them.
The best communities for pure trading education are Topstep’s Discord (if you’re doing futures) and r/Daytrading for risk management fundamentals. For real-time intel on what’s happening across multiple firms, Telegram and Reddit are your best tools. For nuanced long-form discussion and historical context, Elite Trader still has a role.
Nobody said you can only be in one. Most traders follow a handful of these in parallel, and the signal that matters usually surfaces in multiple places at once.