Opinions about the prop company Pipfarm (pipfarm.com) vary widely. Sometimes it feels like people are talking about entirely different companies.🙂 I decided to add my own perspective to this mix. I’ve only been familiar with the company for a couple of months, but there are already plenty of impressions.
The Good Stuff
I’ll start, as expected, with the positives, to contrast with later.
Challenge Prices
Honestly? I haven’t seen such cheap ones yet, especially for small accounts. For example, a $5000 account can be bought for a symbolic $9.99. Quite a price, isn’t it?
True, there’s an important nuance here. At that price, you have to buy the account during special promotions, which they run frequently. So it’s not about buying a challenge at full price, as if you purchased it at the price listed on the prop company’s homepage. The company regularly holds some promotions; almost every month you can catch a discount coupon if you’re in theiаr Discord or Telegram groups. Moreover, the discounts are so frequent that over time you get used to a world where 50% off stops being «wow» and becomes «meh, pretty average».
In addition to these time-specific promotions, there are permanent discounts and one-time vouchers for ranks, which are given to specific users for achieving a rank in the experience program (see below), and they usually stack with temporary discounts. Thus, adding it all up (one-time discount + rank discount + rank voucher), even an expensive account often turns into «it feels almost wrong not to grab it!» One of my acquaintances recently bought a $100,000 account for some symbolic $37:
In this case, he combined a temporary discount on the 100K consistency challenge of $191, + a gift voucher for reaching the third rank of $150, + a lifetime 3% discount.
Lively Support!
Santiago seems to never sleep at all. He responds 24/7. I’m starting to think he lives inside the server and survives solely on support tickets.))) I write to him in English; I haven’t checked how Russian communication works.
cTrader Platform
At first, it seemed like a separate adventure. I’m used to MT5, so initially I looked at it like a new interface in my favorite app: looks nice, but I couldn’t figure out where anything was at first? Once I figured it out, it turned out the platform is advanced. Not perfect in everything, of course; MT5 has its strengths too, but overall cTrader wins in terms of advanced functionality.
Responsive Admins
I want to separately note the admins of various Pipfarm groups. I’ve reached out to them several times for help and each time got not just an answer, but a normal human explanation of what’s what. Always available and ready to help, even if you come with a question like «why is my whole dashboard red?» )). This builds rapport. Special respect to @indie_fx!
No IP Policy or News Trading Rules
Anyone who’s ever had a trade’s profit canceled due to some boring statistic that accidentally fell into the «red» category on Forex Factory will understand why this matters. It feels trivial — until it happens to you. Then you lose profit once because the trade closed in the 10-minute window around such a news release, and you immediately start appreciating trading freedom like never before! I won’t even mention IP; it’s very relevant for Russian residents right now. Without VPN, you can’t get into many places; many props block it, but Pipfarm doesn’t make it an issue.
XP Experience Program
A separate universe. I haven’t seen anything like it anywhere, and it seems like Pipfarm’s proprietary development. It has logic, I must admit: you register, buy the first challenge, and they solemnly hand you 1 XP and zero rank. So you start as the «poorest relative» at a level where profit split is only 70%, commissions are noticeable, and max drawdown is like a strict diet before vacation. But everything changes as you gain XP (in other words, experience).а
So the number one task is to climb their experience ladder as fast as possible. How? The standard way is achievements on accounts. For example, a consistency challenge gives 5 XP right away: 1 for purchase and 4 for passing. You can also get XP for each payout, account scaling, and so on. On paper, it looks complicated. It seems very hard to reach the third rank with 85% profit split. But there’s good news. If you’re in their groups and an active participant, you can randomly receive XP during giveaways. They gave me a little, and my friend got a whopping 50 XP right away, just because he was in the right place at the right time. )
In the end, almost no active group participants linger on the first rank for long. It’s more like a temporary stop — everyone passes through it, but now they live at least at the second rank, more often third and above.
Power-Ups
During special promotions, you can buy a challenge with a specific power-up or get a random one. These bonuses add «magical» abilities to your account that aren’t there by default. For example, activating RESPAWN restores an account that exceeded daily or max risk. And you start trading from a clean slate.
Power-ups aren’t tied to one specific account. They appear on the right in the app and become available only when conditions for activation are met for the currently selected account. In the screenshot example below, you see three power-ups: Gold Rush, Shortcut, and Respawn. You can only activate the one whose conditions are currently met (Shortcut), as shown by the active Apply button.
After pressing Apply, the power-up triggers, moves to the bottom block, and becomes inactive. A detailed description of all power-ups is available on the Power-Ups page.
The Bad Stuff:
Low Starting Profit Split
As I already wrote, all new prop traders start at the first rank, where the profit split is 70/30, i.e., 70% to the trader. That’s very low compared to other prop companies where you can get up to 100% from the start without any ranks (for example, in FundingPips, by the way, I’ll write about them separately). Add to that the fairly complicated advancement up the rank ladder if you plan to earn them through actions, not as gifts, as I described above.
Payouts Once a Month
To get profit more often than once a month, you have to pay by buying a challenge with a so-called addon, which costs 10-25% more. Recently they added the option for an already funded account to buy the right to withdraw profit more often than every 30 calendar days, but for that you’ll pay 10x, i.e., not 10%, but 100% of the account’s cost.
Complaints About Payout Delays
The main scourge of props! You start reading reviews or join some prop traders’ group, and it’s always about someone not getting paid something. But there’s a working lifehack: join Vladislav Wagner’s group. If you have issues, just state them in the chat. Vlad cares about such matters and, as they say, can «sort it out.» He’s not a magician, but sometimes it feels like he is. Plus, a Pipfarm rep @indie_fx is constantly in his group. He’s not just «for show,» but really helps within his powers. So if trouble happens, it’s best to solve it where at least someone will look at it, rather than cursing at the monitor alone.
Absence from Propfirmmatch Rating
Propfirmmatch is not just a catalog of «here’s a list of firms we know.» It’s like an independent auditor in the prop world. They don’t add companies «by connection»—they have their own requirements for transparency, honesty, payouts, terms, and reputation. And if a prop company wants to get on their list, it needs to meet those criteria. Plus, what’s very valuable—they don’t allow fake reviews on propfirmmatch. Leaving a review there is a whole quest; they require proof that the challenge was bought, payout was received, including checks and full user data. On other sites, reviews can be faked, which some props exploit. But even there, the company’s rating isn’t too high. So traders clearly have valid complaints about the company, and that’s something to consider.
Constant Updates to Terms
Just like Windows: they’re always «improving,» «optimizing,» «overhauling» something, and along the way quietly eroding trust in themselves as a stable service. You just get used to the rules, and bam—everything’s new! Sometimes it feels like they have a dedicated employee whose job is «Chief Everything-Changer.» In such a reality, reading their FAQ isn’t optional — it’s self‑preservation. Skip it for a week, and you risk suddenly finding out you’re trading by last season’s rules while the company is already in the next era. A special attraction is comparing the English and Russian FAQ versions. The English one holds up, but the Russian… they edit it as the mood strikes. So cross-checking both versions isn’t paranoia—it’s normal safety technique.
Summary:
For a newbie, I think it’s a decent start. There are nuances with the platform and payouts, but the discounts more than make up for it!
