Brokerage infrastructure for prop and evaluation firms
NinjaTrader Connect provides prop trading and evaluation firms with the brokerage infrastructure they need to help move funded traders from simulation into regulated live futures and event-contract trading—without becoming an FCM. A prop (proprietary) firm backs traders with its own capital, an evaluation firm runs an assessment that traders pass to earn that backing, and a funded trader is the trader who clears the evaluation and trades the firm’s capital.
NinjaTrader Connect is a brokerage-in-a-box purpose-built for retail-first prop and evaluation firms moving from simulation to regulated live trading.
Brokerage accounts are held through NinjaTrader Clearing, LLC. NinjaTrader Clearing, LLC d/b/a NinjaTrader is a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and an NFA Member (NFA ID: 0309379).
If you run evaluations today and want to graduate your best traders to live markets, NinjaTrader Connect’s brokerage infrastructure can help you do it on one platform, on your brand, in weeks.
Built for firms graduating funded traders from sim to live
Prop and evaluation firms have already proven they can attract traders and run evaluations at scale. The hard part comes next: turning a passed evaluation into real, regulated trading without building a brokerage from scratch. NinjaTrader Connect is built for retail-first platforms—including prop and evaluation firms—not for institutional desks, which is why its risk, onboarding, and partner success model are tuned for high-volume retail trader populations.
Where prop and evaluation firms hit infrastructure walls
Most firms run evaluations in a simulated environment, where the experience feels real but no orders reach an exchange. Going live introduces a different set of problems that traditional brokerage stacks were never built to solve at retail scale:
- Building or licensing a regulated brokerage stack, then maintaining it
- Real-time risk monitoring that can keep pace with thousands of active traders at once
- Onboarding and funding fast enough to match what retail traders now expect
- Surveillance and reporting based on regulatory expectations from day one
What it means: The gap between a strong evaluation business and a live brokerage is mostly infrastructure, and that gap is what NinjaTrader Connect is designed to close.
What you get with NinjaTrader Connect
NinjaTrader Connect packages the rails a firm needs to take traders live, so your team can focus on traders instead of plumbing:
- Regulated brokerage access to live futures and event contract markets
- Real-time, pre-trade risk and surveillance tuned for large retail trader bases
- Retail-native onboarding and funding your traders already understand
- A unified API for trading and account workflows through TradeAPI, our unified futures trading API
Firms that already run assessments can map their process onto our evaluation services solution rather than rebuilding it.
Put together, these pieces let a firm offer regulated live trading without taking on the cost and timeline of becoming a broker itself.
Move traders from sim to regulated live trading
NinjaTrader Connect supports the full prop firm lifecycle on a single platform: evaluation in simulation, transition to live, and ongoing risk and surveillance—so firms can keep their existing evaluation workflows while adding regulated brokerage.
Carry your existing evaluation workflows forward
Your traders learn on the NinjaTrader trading platform during the evaluation, then keep the same platform and tools when they go live. Because evaluation happens in simulated futures trading, there’s no relearning step and no second login when a trader graduates to live markets.
Simulated trading is hypothetical and does not reflect actual trading or real-world results.
One platform, two phases (evaluation and live)
The same platform spans both phases of the funded-trader journey. What changes is the engine behind it, from simulated rules to regulated live execution:
| Evaluation phase | Live trading phase | |
|---|---|---|
| Risk | Simulated risk limits enforce firm rules; nothing reaches an exchange | Real-time pre-trade checks, intraday margin, and automated liquidation on live orders |
| Onboarding | Sign up to start an evaluation, no funded account required | Open and fund a live futures account in roughly one minute |
| Surveillance | Activity tracked for evaluation scoring and rule enforcement | Trade surveillance built for regulated live markets |
| Reporting | Internal evaluation reporting and trader analytics | Regulatory reporting handled through the brokerage stack |
| Trader experience | The same platform and tools traders learn during evaluation | The same platform carried forward, now on live markets |
Across both phases, traders stay on one platform while your firm gains regulated brokerage behind the scenes, which helps keep the trader experience consistent from evaluation through funding.
Real-time risk and trade surveillance, built in
Prop and evaluation firms use NinjaTrader Connect for real-time pre-trade risk checks, intraday margin, automated liquidation, and trade surveillance—the controls required to manage risk when graduating evaluated traders to live markets.
Pre-trade checks, intraday margin, automated liquidation
These controls run on live orders the moment a trader acts, so risk is managed as it happens rather than after the fact:
- Pre-trade risk: A check that validates an order against firm and account limits before it reaches the exchange, so out-of-bounds orders are stopped at entry.
- Intraday margin: Margin tracked in real time through the session, not just at the open or close.
- Automated liquidation: A rules-based process that automatically closes positions when an account breaches its limits, which helps protect both the trader and the firm’s capital.
These three work together to help keep every live order inside firm rules from entry through exit.
Surveillance and regulatory reporting handled
Trade surveillance and regulatory reporting are built into the brokerage stack, so your firm can meet its obligations without standing up a separate compliance system. That lets your team add live trading while keeping the oversight regulators expect.
Taken together, these built-in controls give firms the real-time guardrails that help make graduating evaluated traders to live markets manageable.
Fast, retail-native trader onboarding and funding
Funded traders on a NinjaTrader Connect partner can open and fund a live futures account in roughly one minute, which is the same retail-grade onboarding experience traders expect from modern fintech apps. That speed matters: when a trader passes an evaluation, the moment to convert them to live trading is right then, not days later after paperwork. NinjaTrader Connect keeps that path short, so newly funded traders can move into futures trading on NinjaTrader with as little friction as possible.
Fast onboarding can help firms convert more passed evaluations into active live accounts.
Stay on your brand with a white-label experience
NinjaTrader Connect runs behind your brand, so traders experience your firm, not NinjaTrader’s. A white-label model means the platform, onboarding, and funding flows can carry your name and look while NinjaTrader Connect provides the regulated infrastructure underneath.
Behind that branded experience, your traders can be held in an omnibus account, a single brokerage account that holds many traders’ positions together under one umbrella, which simplifies how a firm manages a large, active trader base. The result is a consistent, retail-first experience that can help reinforce your brand at every step.
Launch in weeks, not years
Standing up a regulated brokerage from scratch is typically a multiyear project. With NinjaTrader Connect, firms can launch in 6–12 weeks instead of 12–24 months. Because the brokerage, risk, onboarding, and surveillance layers already exist, your team integrates rather than builds, which can compress the timeline from years to weeks.
Ready to take your funded traders live? See how NinjaTrader Connect’s brokerage infrastructure can help your firm move from simulation to regulated live trading on one platform.
FAQs on brokerage structure for prop and evaluation firms
Simulated trading does not represent actual trading and is based on hypothetical conditions. Actual trading results may differ significantly due to factors such as market conditions, liquidity, execution, and the emotional and psychological impact of risking real money. Simulated trading is provided for educational and platform-familiarization purposes only and should not be relied upon as an indication or expectation of results in a live trading environment.