Blue Guardian Futures Review 2026: Standard, Reserve, Express and Direct Tested
Blue Guardian Futures Review · Updated August 2026
Blue Guardian Futures logo - futures prop firm 2026 4.0 / 5 Our Verdict

Blue Guardian Futures
Read Rule by Rule

Standard, Reserve, Express and Direct, tested.

Four evaluation routes, one 90% profit split, and a rulebook that does not always agree with itself. We priced every account from the plan selector and traced every rule back to the firm's own documentation.

★ Independent Review ⚡ EOD Drawdown 💰 90% Split 🔒 4 Programs
90%
Profit Split
4
Evaluation Models
$110
Cheapest Entry
24h
Payout Target

Strong mechanics, documentation still catching up.

Blue Guardian Futures is a well built product wrapped in documentation that has not kept pace with it. The mechanics are good: end of day trailing drawdown on every model, a flat 90% split with no tiering, one phase evaluations, no monthly or activation fees, and consistency rules positioned on the challenge rather than the funded account on two of the four programs. What costs it the fifth star is not the offer, it is the number of places where the plan selector and the help centre state different things about the same account.

Read the rules before you read the prices. On this firm they matter more. This review prices every account from the plan selector (captured August 2026) and traces every rule back to the firm's own documentation, including the places where that documentation contradicts itself.

Two brands, two help centres, and why it matters.

Blue Guardian sells two products that share a logo and almost nothing else. One is a CFD proposition documented at help.blueguardian.com, built around Instant, 1 Step, 2 Step and 3 Step models with an 85% default split. The other is Blue Guardian Futures, documented at helpfutures.blueguardian.com, built around Standard, Reserve, Express and Direct, with a 90% split and sizes from $25,000 to $150,000.

This is not a pedantic distinction. Search for a Blue Guardian rule and you will land on the CFD help centre roughly as often as the futures one, and the answers there are wrong for a futures account. The payout add-ons, the fourteen day cycle, the scaling plan running into the millions: none of it applies. If you trade futures with this firm, bookmark the futures help centre and ignore the other one entirely.

The $400,000 figure: The homepage advertises funding of up to $400,000. The plan selector's largest account, on any of the four programs, is $150,000. The larger figure refers to what a trader can reach through the funded scaling process, not to anything you can buy.

The four routes at a glance.

The four programs are not four difficulty levels. They are four different answers to the same question: how do you want to be constrained. Standard constrains you after funding. Reserve and Express constrain you before it. Direct removes the evaluation and constrains you continuously. Every one of them ends at the same 90% split.

DetailStandardReserveExpressDirect
EvaluationOne phaseOne phaseOne phaseNone
Profit target6%6%6%None
Time limitNoneNoneNoneNone
Consistency40% funded50% challenge40% challenge20 to 30% funded
Daily loss limitFrom $50KOptionalYesYes
DrawdownEOD trailingEOD trailingEOD trailingEOD
Sizes$25K to $150K$25K to $150K$50K to $150K$25K to $150K
Entry price$154$110$178$307

Standard prices, all programs

Prices taken from the plan selector on the official product page in August 2026. These are the standard prices for each account. Prop firm pricing changes frequently, so confirm the figure at checkout before you buy.

SizeStandardReserveExpressDirect
$25,000$154$110Not offered$307
$50,000$209$154$178$494
$100,000$330$248$282$659
$150,000$424$398$386$824
One line worth pausing on: Reserve is the cheaper program at $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000, undercutting Standard by 29%, 26% and 25% respectively. At $150,000 the gap collapses to 6%. Reserve 150K is also the only account whose reset fee, at $312, is higher than the equivalent Standard reset of $286. Whatever the reason, the $150,000 Reserve does not follow the logic of the rest of the range.

Standard: the conservative route.

Standard is the model to pick if you want the evaluation to be easy and are willing to be watched afterwards. The evaluation itself has no consistency requirement, no time limit and no minimum trading days. News trading is permitted throughout. The first payout can be requested three days after your first trade, which is the fastest first payout clock of the four models.

Standard$25,000$50,000$100,000$150,000
Fee$154$209$330$424
Profit target$1,500$3,000$6,000$9,000
Max position1 / 104 / 408 / 8012 / 120
Daily loss limitNone$1,000$2,000$3,000
Max drawdown$1,000$2,000$3,500$5,000
Consistency, funded40%40%40%40%
1st payout cap$1,500$2,500$3,000$4,000
2nd payout cap$2,000$3,000$3,500$4,500
Reset$104$141$223$286
Reactivation$450$750$900$1,200

Position sizes are quoted as minis over micros, and one mini equals ten micros throughout.

Soft breach mechanics: The daily loss limit is a soft breach. Hitting it closes your open positions and locks the account until the next session, but does not end it. The $25,000 account carries no daily loss limit at all, which reads generous until you notice its maximum drawdown is $1,000 and its contract allowance is a single mini.
Reactivation deserves a paragraph: If you breach a funded Standard account before taking your first payout, you can buy it back at the reactivation price, a maximum of twice, within thirty calendar days. At $1,200 for the 150K that is 2.8 times the original evaluation fee, and the arithmetic almost always favours buying a fresh evaluation instead. Reactivation exists for the trader who has already built equity on the account and does not want to start the target again.

Reserve: cheapest seat, strictest gate.

The selector's own tagline for this program is that it is the easiest to pass, and on the raw numbers that is defensible: the same 6% target as Standard, a larger contract allowance at $25,000, no buffer balance to clear, and no funded consistency rule at all. Reserve is the cheapest way in. It is not the fastest way out.

Reserve$25,000$50,000$100,000$150,000
Fee$110$154$248$398
Profit target$1,500$3,000$6,000$9,000
Max position2 / 204 / 408 / 8012 / 120
Consistency, challenge50%50%50%50%
Consistency, fundedNoneNoneNoneNone
Daily loss limitOptionalOptionalOptionalOptional
Optional DLL level$600$1,200$1,700$3,000
Max drawdown$1,000$2,000$3,500$5,000
Buffer balanceNot requiredNot requiredNot requiredNot required
Payout cap$1,000$2,000$2,500$3,000
Payout eligibility$100$150$200$250
Reset$75$104$167$312
Reactivation$300$600$750$900
Optional DLL: Reserve has no daily loss limit by default. At purchase you choose between running without one and opting into the level shown in the table, at which point it behaves as a soft breach.
The catch sits in the challenge: Reserve carries a 50% consistency rule during the evaluation, softened by what the firm calls a Consistency Cushion, an additional one percent of tolerance, so a largest day reaching 51% of total profit still passes. The help centre publishes the resulting maximum single day figures as $765, $1,530, $3,060 and $4,590 across the four sizes. In practice this means your evaluation cannot be one good day and a lot of waiting.
The second catch is payout eligibility: A Reserve payout requires five winning days, each worth at least the amount shown, non consecutive, and the counter resets after every payout. On the $150,000 that is five separate days of $250 or more before any money moves. The firm also applies a net profit threshold to payouts two through five on accounts purchased from 27 July 2026 onward.

Express: the middle path.

Express takes the 40% consistency rule and puts it on the challenge rather than the funded account, which is the single most valuable thing about it. It keeps a daily loss limit as a soft breach at every size. Its payout mechanic is a daily ceiling rather than a per request cap, and the selector pairs that with a $500 daily minimum cadence, so a trader who withdraws often is less constrained here than on Reserve. Express is the model for traders who want the constraint over with before the money is real.

Express$50,000$100,000$150,000
Fee$178$282$386
Profit target$3,000$6,000$9,000
Max position4 / 408 / 8012 / 120
Consistency, challenge40%40%40%
Consistency, fundedNoneNoneNone
Daily loss limit$1,000$2,000$3,000
Max drawdown$2,000$3,500$5,000
Buffer balance$52,100$103,600$155,100
Max daily payout$1,100$2,200$3,300
Min payout cadence$500 daily$500 daily$500 daily
Reset$121$191$261
Reactivation$649$999$1,499
No $25,000 Express: The plan selector does not offer one and the Express rules article does not describe one, though the general Payout Policy article does list Express figures for a $25,000 account, which is one of the inconsistencies catalogued in the contradictions section below.
The buffer balance row is the one to memorise: An Express funded account does not release a payout until the balance clears the figure shown, which is the starting balance plus a fixed cushion of $2,100, $3,600 and $5,100 by size. That is $155,100 on the $150,000 account. Note the number, because the help centre states it differently in one article and the selector is the version we trust.
Harshest reactivation in proportional terms: $1,499 to reactivate a 150K account that cost $386 is a ratio of nearly four to one.

Direct: instant funding, priced accordingly.

Direct removes the evaluation and replaces it with a first payout goal identical to the profit target you would otherwise have had to hit. You are paying roughly twice the Standard fee to skip a step you effectively still have to complete, the difference being that you complete it on a funded account under live scoring rather than on a challenge, and that a breach costs you the whole fee rather than a reset. Direct buys you time, not ease. The goal is the same, the surveillance is heavier.

Direct$25,000$50,000$100,000$150,000
Fee$307$494$659$824
Max position1 / 104 / 408 / 8012 / 120
Daily loss limit$1,000$1,250$2,500$3,000
Max drawdown$1,500$2,000$3,500$4,500
1st payout consistency20%20%20%20%
2nd payout consistency25%25%25%25%
3rd+ payout consistency30%30%30%30%
1st payout profit goal$1,500$3,000$6,000$9,000
2nd+ payout profit goal$1,000$2,000$3,500$4,500
The ratcheting consistency rule: 20% before the first payout, 25% before the second, 30% from the third onward. That is unusual and worth understanding correctly. A 20% ceiling means your best single day may account for no more than a fifth of cumulative profit, so reaching a $1,500 first goal requires no day above $300. On a $25,000 account with a one mini limit, that is a genuinely demanding constraint.
The drawdown asymmetry: Direct is the only program whose maximum drawdown does not track its Standard equivalent. At $25,000 it is $1,500 rather than $1,000, which is more generous. At $150,000 it is $4,500 rather than $5,000, which is less. The 150K is the only account in the range where instant funding gives you less rope than the evaluated version.
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How the drawdown actually moves.

Every Blue Guardian Futures account uses end of day trailing, and getting this right is the difference between passing and being confused about why you failed. The maximum loss level is recalculated once per day, after the close, based on the highest end of day balance the account has reached. It does not follow your unrealised profit during the session. An account up $800 intraday that closes flat has not moved its floor.

The practical consequence is that intraday give back does not compound against you the way it does under an intraday trailing model. You are judged on where you finish, not where you peaked. That is meaningfully more forgiving than the intraday trailing drawdown still used across much of this segment, and it is the strongest structural feature of the product.

Where the trail stops: On Standard and Express the trail stops once the account clears its buffer balance, after which the loss level is fixed. On Direct, accounts purchased from 27 July 2026 onward trail until the balance exceeds the initial trail level and then hold static. On Reserve there is no buffer requirement at all, which the selector states explicitly.

Consistency rules translated into dollars.

A percentage is abstract. Here is what each rule means as a hard ceiling on your single best day, expressed against the relevant profit figure for that account.

Model$25,000$50,000$100,000$150,000
Standard, 40%$600$1,200$2,400$3,600
Reserve, 51%$765$1,530$3,060$4,590
Express, 40%Not offered$1,200$2,400$3,600
Direct, 20%$300$600$1,200$1,800

The Reserve row is taken directly from the firm's own worked example and reflects the 50% rule plus the one percent cushion. The other three rows are the stated percentage applied to the profit target or first payout goal for that size.

Read the Direct row again: On a $25,000 Direct account you must reach $1,500 without any single day exceeding $300, using a maximum of one mini contract. Consistency rules are not a formality on this firm. On Direct in particular they are the binding constraint, more so than the drawdown, and any trader whose edge concentrates into a few large sessions should treat that program as unsuitable regardless of price.

Contract limits and the funded scaling question.

The plan selector states one maximum position per account and applies it to both the challenge and the funded account. On a $150,000 Reserve or Express that is twelve minis or a hundred and twenty micros throughout, with no reduction on funding.

The help centre articles for those two programs describe something different: a reduced allocation at the start of the funded account, one to three minis by size, with a scaling ladder that restores the full allowance as profit accumulates. On Standard and Direct there is no such tension, because both documents describe a flat allowance from day one.

Our position: We publish the selector figures because they are what a buyer sees at the point of purchase, but this is the most consequential disagreement in the documentation and we would not commit capital to a Reserve or Express account without asking support which version governs. If the help centre is right, your first funded weeks on a 150K are traded at a quarter of the size the checkout page implied.

The profit split is 90% on every funded model. There is no scaling of the split, no tiered improvement and no reduced rate for early payouts. That is above the segment median and is the strongest single number on the offer.

Payout MechanicHow It Works
StandardPer request cap, rising from the first payout to the second. First request available three days after the first trade.
ReservePer request cap, plus five qualifying winning days at the eligibility amount for that size, non consecutive, counter resets after each payout.
ExpressDaily ceiling rather than per request cap, with a $500 daily minimum, and a buffer balance that must be cleared first.
DirectProfit goal before each payout, high for the first and lower thereafter, with a consistency percentage that tightens at each of the first three requests.
Two deductions apply to everything: All payouts carry a 2% processing fee, so the amount that lands is slightly below the figure on the payout certificate: a $1,000 gross withdrawal nets roughly $882 once the split and the fee are both taken. And KYC must be complete before any payout is released, meaning proof of identity, a live selfie and proof of address dated within three months, with one verified profile per person and third party payment methods refused outright.
The 24 hour guarantee: The firm operates a 24 hour payout guarantee, with the clock paused over weekends and the office running Monday 09:00 to Friday 17:00 Dubai time. The remedy for a missed guarantee is described two different ways in two different places, which is covered in the contradictions section.

The Live account.

The Live account is the part of this product that is genuinely uncommon, and it cannot be bought. Traders enter a Live Review Pool by reaching a fifth payout, by accumulating significant lifetime payouts, by exceptional performance, or by prior Live history, and promotion is at the discretion of the risk team. This is the clearest published route from simulated to real execution in the futures prop segment. It is also entirely discretionary.

Live Account$25,000$50,000$100,000$150,000
Live drawdown$1,000$2,000$3,000$4,500
Max position2 / 204 / 406 / 6010 / 100
Transition bonus$1,000$2,000$3,000$4,500
What you get: A Live account starts at zero balance with real CME execution, daily payouts, no payout caps, no daily loss limit, no consistency rule and no fee. The transition bonus is paid once per account on first promotion, on reaching a small profit threshold slightly above the bonus itself. All eligible funded accounts with at least one payout convert together.
The constraints are different rather than absent: News trading is prohibited on Live where it is allowed everywhere else. Hedging carries a permanent ban. A breach means a two week cooldown with no reset and no repurchase, because a Live account cannot be bought back. Twenty seven countries are restricted to simulated funding only and cannot be promoted at all. Contract allowances then scale by exchange according to accumulated profit.

Legacy accounts and the July 2026 changeover.

Blue Guardian Futures replaced its previous product line in July 2026. The old models were Standard, Rapid, Pro and Instant Standard, and accounts bought under them keep their original rules. If you hold one, the current documentation does not describe your account.

The differences are not cosmetic. Legacy accounts pay a 100% profit split on the first $15,000 earned and 90% thereafter, which is more generous than the current flat 90%. Legacy maximum drawdowns are larger at several sizes, with the Rapid and Pro 150K carrying $6,000 against the current $5,000. Legacy Pro carried no consistency rule at all during evaluation. Legacy payouts ran through RiseWorks only, on a request window closing at 3pm CST, with a $500 minimum.

The microscalping trap: The legacy rule required at least half your trades to be held longer than thirty seconds. The current rule instead requires that less than half your profit comes from trades held under ten seconds. Those are different tests measuring different things, and a trader can comfortably pass one while failing the other.

Costs that are not the evaluation fee.

RECURRING

The payout fee

2% of every withdrawal, on top of the 10% the firm keeps as its share. A $1,000 gross request nets roughly $882 after both deductions.

RECURRING

Market data

CME level one is included. Level one for CBOT, COMEX and NYMEX costs $5 for all three together. Level two runs $12.10 per exchange or $36.50 for the full CME Group set. Small numbers, but recurring, and easy to forget when comparing entry prices across firms.

CONDITIONAL

Resets and reactivations

Resets run from $75 to $312 depending on program and size. Reactivation, available only on a funded account breached before its first payout, runs from $300 to $1,499 and is capped at two uses within thirty days. On every account in the range, reactivation costs more than double the original evaluation fee.

PER TRADE

Commissions

Charged per side on every contract. They are modest in absolute terms but disproportionate on micros, which matters because the smaller accounts here are effectively micro accounts. On a $25,000 Standard with a one mini allowance, commission is a meaningful fraction of a typical winning day.

What gets an account closed.

The prohibited list is conventional for the segment and worth reading before you trade rather than after: hedging between accounts or between traders, copy trading and account sharing, group trading and the household rule (which treats accounts at one address as connected), high frequency and latency arbitrage, exploiting platform or pricing errors, and microscalping as defined in the legacy section above.

The CME price limit rule deserves expansion: Trading within two percent of a CME price limit is prohibited, a rule specific to this firm and easy to breach accidentally on a fast day. Price limits reset daily at 5:05pm EST and are published by CME. Overnight limits on the equity index products, ES, MES, NQ, MNQ, RTY, M2K, YM and MYM, have been extended from five to seven percent. If a limit move is in progress, the two percent buffer means you must stop trading well before the market itself halts.
Account limits: You may hold a maximum of five funded accounts at once. Evaluations are unlimited, but an evaluation that passes while five funded slots are occupied waits inactive until a slot frees.

Where the documentation contradicts itself.

None of these is evidence of bad faith. Taken together they are evidence of a product that moved faster than its documentation, which is common at this stage of a futures division's life and is nonetheless a reason to confirm anything that matters to you in writing before you buy.

PointOne Source SaysAnother Says
Funded position size, Reserve and ExpressSame as the challenge, on the plan selectorReduced at funding with a scaling ladder, in the help articles
Express 150K buffer balance$155,100 on the plan selector$156,100 in the help centre
Minimum withdrawal$100 crypto and $500 Rise, in the model articles$500 flat in the Payout Policy, $1,000 for Direct
Express $25,000Not offered on the selector or in the Express rulesListed with figures in the Payout Policy
24 hour guarantee$200 bonus, in the help articleAn additional 10% profit split, on the product page
MicroscalpingUnder 10 seconds, measured by profitOver 30 seconds, measured by trade count, on legacy
Maximum fundingUp to $400,000 on the homepage$150,000 is the largest account on the selector
Legacy cutoff datePrior to 6 JulyBefore 15 July, in the same paragraph
One pricing detail sits alongside them: Reserve is 25% to 29% cheaper than Standard at $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000, but only 6% cheaper at $150,000, and its reset fee at that size is higher than Standard's. Either the $150,000 Reserve is deliberately priced apart from the rest of the range or something is wrong on the page. It is the single figure we would most want confirmed.

Is Blue Guardian Futures worth it in 2026?

What is genuinely good

End of day trailing across every model, with no intraday floor movement to manage. A 90% split with no tiering and no conditions. One phase evaluations with no verification stage, no time limit and no minimum trading days. No monthly, renewal or activation fees. A documented progression to real execution that is earned rather than sold. Reset fees that are genuinely low, from $75. Consistency rules positioned on the challenge rather than the funded account on two of the four models.

What we would want fixed

The disagreement between the plan selector and the help centre on funded position sizes, which is the sort of thing that decides whether a program suits you. The three different statements of the minimum withdrawal. The $150,000 Reserve pricing. And the general problem that the futures help centre is harder to find than the CFD one, which sends new traders to the wrong rulebook.

Who it suits

Traders who want an evaluation with no clock and no minimum days, who are comfortable with a consistency rule, and who value end of day trailing enough to accept a firm whose paperwork needs a second pass. Reserve at $50,000 or $100,000 is the sharpest entry in the range. Express is the choice if you would rather clear the consistency requirement before the money is real. Direct is defensible only if you understand that its 20% first payout ceiling is a harder constraint than anything on the other three programs.

4.0
FuturesPropTrading Verdict
Strong mechanics, documentation still catching up

Blue Guardian Futures FAQs.

1. Is Blue Guardian Futures the same company as Blue Guardian?

Same brand, different product and different rulebook. The CFD side runs Instant, 1 Step, 2 Step and 3 Step models on an 85% split. The futures side runs Standard, Reserve, Express and Direct on 90%. They have separate help centres and the rules do not transfer.

2. What is the cheapest way to start?

Reserve at $25,000, at $110. It carries a 50% consistency rule during the challenge and a five winning day requirement before payouts, so it is the cheapest seat rather than the easiest ride.

3. Is there a time limit on the evaluation?

No. None of the four programs imposes a time limit or a minimum number of trading days on the evaluation.

4. Can I trade the news?

Yes on all four evaluation and funded programs. No on a Live account, where news trading is prohibited.

5. How does the drawdown work?

End of day trailing on every model. The loss level is recalculated once daily from your highest end of day balance and does not follow intraday unrealised profit. On Standard and Express the trail stops once the buffer balance is cleared.

6. What is the consistency rule?

It depends on the program. 40% on the funded account for Standard. 50% plus a one percent cushion on the challenge for Reserve. 40% on the challenge for Express. 20%, then 25%, then 30% on Direct, tightening at each of the first three payouts.

7. How long does a payout take?

The firm targets 24 business hours and operates a guarantee if it misses. The office runs Monday 09:00 to Friday 17:00 Dubai time and the clock pauses over weekends. Two different remedies for a missed guarantee are described in two different places.

8. What is deducted from a payout?

The firm keeps 10% as its share of profit, and a 2% processing fee applies to the withdrawal itself. A $1,000 gross request nets roughly $882.

9. Can I fail and get the account back?

On an evaluation, reset it from $75 to $312 depending on program and size. On a funded account breached before your first payout, reactivate it, at more than double the original fee, twice at most, within thirty days. On a Live account, no.

10. How many accounts can I run?

Five funded accounts at once. Evaluations are unlimited, but an evaluation that passes while five funded slots are full waits inactive until one frees.

11. What is the Live account?

A real execution account, earned rather than purchased, with a zero starting balance, daily payouts, no caps, no consistency rule and a one time transition bonus by size. Promotion is discretionary and twenty seven countries are excluded from it.

12. What should I confirm before buying?

The funded position size on Reserve and Express, since the selector and the help centre disagree. The minimum withdrawal for your model, stated three different ways. And on Reserve $150,000, the price itself, which does not follow the pattern of the rest of the range.

Four routes. One split. Read the rules first.

Blue Guardian Futures runs EOD trailing drawdown on every model, a flat 90% split, one-phase evaluations with no time limits, and a documented Live account path. Confirm the details that matter to you before you buy.

90% Flat Split · EOD Drawdown · 4 Programs · No Time Limits · 24h Payout Target

Related comparisons and reviews.

Deciding between firms? These guides break down the key differences.

Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss. Evaluation and funded accounts described here are simulated unless and until a trader is promoted to a Live account. Figures were checked in August 2026 and may change without notice. This review is independent and is not affiliated with Blue Guardian.

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