PropFirmMatch Accused of Cookie Stuffing: 18 Prop Firms Gone in a Day and a Half. Here's What Actually Happened.

A line of JavaScript, a once-a-day redirect, and the fastest partner exodus the prop firm space has seen. The full timeline, the receipts, and what it means for your next challenge purchase.

If you've bought a prop firm challenge in the last two years, there's a decent chance you've been on PropFirmMatch. It's the biggest comparison site in the space by its own numbers: 6 million-plus monthly visits, 70-plus listed firms, and the code MATCH on what feels like half the discount banners in the industry.

On Thursday afternoon a trader posted a 20-second video showing the site quietly firing its own affiliate link when you clicked things that had nothing to do with leaving the site. By Friday night, PFM had admitted it. By Saturday morning, 18 prop firms had cut ties by one widely shared tally, including Apex, Topstep, Tradeify, FundingPips, Lucid, Alpha Capital and Blue Guardian.

Here's the whole thing, with the receipts.

Quick disclosure first. Stock Dads has affiliate relationships with prop firms. When a member buys through one of our links or codes, we get paid. So I'm not a neutral observer here. I'm one of the affiliates this kind of thing takes money from. Keep that in mind and check the sources yourself. They're all linked at the bottom.

What PropFirmMatch is, and how it makes money

PFM launched in 2023. Two traders built a site that lists prop firms, tracks payouts, collects reviews, and ranks firms on a "Best Sellers" leaderboard. Traders use it to compare challenges and grab discount codes. It's free to the trader.

The money comes from the firms. When you click through PFM to a firm and buy a challenge, PFM earns a commission, the same way a YouTuber or a Discord community does with a referral code. PFM's own terms say so. What wasn't public until this week is what else some firms were paying, and we'll get to that.

The tweet that started it

On Thursday, October 29 at 4:33 PM ET, a trader who goes by Kane (@traderkane) posted a screen recording of PFM's site with a simple claim: click a firm's profile, or click the "copy code" button, and your original browser tab gets sent through PFM's affiliate link to the firm's website while the page you actually wanted opens in a new tab. You never clicked an outbound link. The affiliate click fired anyway.

Kane used MyFundedFutures as his example and said he hadn't checked every firm. He also pointed out that PFM's own affiliate terms ban its affiliates from doing exactly this. One thing worth knowing: Kane is building a competing comparison site of his own (Prop Firm Compare). That's a motive to go looking. It doesn't change what the code does.

What the code actually did

This part got checked independently within a day. Alex Firdaus, who edits a competing comparison site (FundedTrading.com) and disclosed that up front, pulled PFM's JavaScript from the Internet Archive going back to January 2025 and published every file and its hash so anyone can verify it.

The function is called useAffiliateRedirect. It was wired to the copy-code button in every archived version from November 30, 2025 through October 24, 2026, and from April 2026 it was also attached to the internal firm profile links. Here's what happened on a click, in order:

• The promo code gets copied to your clipboard, like you'd expect.
• The script checks a list in your browser's local storage called affiliate_redirects. If you've already triggered the redirect for this firm today, nothing else happens.
• If you haven't, it adds the firm to today's list and opens the page you were already on in a new tab. Your browser switches to that tab.
• The original tab, now sitting behind the new one, gets sent to the firm's affiliate URL.

The last two steps are one line of minified code: window.open(w.toString(),"_blank"),window.location.href=v,!0. That reads "open a new tab, then send this tab to v," where v is the affiliate link.

The once-per-firm-per-day check is a big part of why nobody caught it. Click a firm, click again to double-check, and nothing happens the second time. And because the new tab showed the exact page you were already reading, most traders would never notice the tab behind it had changed. It's a clever piece of code. That's the problem.

The archive also shows when it stopped. An archived copy from 9:32 PM ET on October 23 still has the redirect live. The next one, from 8:23 PM ET on October 29, less than four hours after Kane's post, has the same function with its body replaced so it just returns false. So anyone who tried to reproduce it on Friday was testing code that had already been switched off Thursday night. PFM didn't announce that change at the time. Its first public reply came nearly three hours after it.

Is this "cookie stuffing"?

Close, and it's worth being precise because the firms' contracts turn on it. Classic cookie stuffing drops an affiliate cookie with no click at all, usually just from loading a page. That's what put eBay's two biggest affiliates in federal prison for wire fraud (five months for Shawn Hogan, fifteen for Brian Dunning). Kane's "some pretty big affiliates have gone to prison" line is about those cases.

What PFM's code did is closer to a forced click: you clicked something, and a tracking link you didn't choose fired in the tab you'd just left. PFM's own affiliate terms prohibit both. Awin, one of the biggest affiliate networks in the world, says in its publisher code of conduct that click tracking should only start if the user "voluntarily and intentionally" interacted with the tracking link. Copying a discount code isn't that.

Here's what the archive doesn't prove: how many traders it fired for, how much commission came from it, who wrote it, who approved it, or the exact day it went live. PFM can answer all of that. So far it hasn't.

The exodus, in order

Apex moved first, at 11:15 PM ET Thursday night, one minute after PFM's "looking into the questions raised" post.

Friday morning it turned into a line. Lucid Trading at 8:59 AM, citing "a full investigation into PropFirmMatch's cookie practices."

Take Profit Trader at 9:30 AM.

Then FundingPips. Khaled, the CEO, didn't just terminate. He said they'd caught the cookie practices back in August, that FundingPips' rank dropped from number one best seller to number ten after they pushed back, and that PFM told him traders picking FundingPips over other firms "costs them money." He's forfeiting PFM's commissions for the month and pursuing financial claims.

Read that August line again. If Khaled's timeline is right, at least one major partner caught this and acted on it two months before it went public, and the code stayed live until a trader put it on X.

Vest went a step further than anyone. They called it a "confirmation of cookie stuffing," said PFM's commissions "undeniably include siphoning commissions from others," and since there's no way to figure out which affiliates got shorted, they're putting PFM's accrued commissions into the prize pool for their November trading competition.

Blue Guardian at 9:51 AM, with a "DELISTED" graphic.

Goat Funded Futures at 10:12, Alpha Capital Group at 10:32, Goat Funded Trader by 10:42.

Finotive Funding at 10:52 AM, and theirs is the one to read closely, because it isn't mainly about cookies. Finotive says it had been fighting PFM for months over its ranking, that PFM's own analytics team confirmed a "negative ranking penalty" was being applied to Finotive and admitted shortcomings in the scoring, and then gave contradictory answers about whether the penalty was still on. The cookie story was the last straw, not the first.

Tradeify at 12:13 PM, with a line that cost PFM something beyond commissions: PFM is out as sponsor of the Premier Trading League.

Then Michael Patak, Topstep's founder, with the post that changed what this story is about.

Topstep had no affiliate code with PFM. They were paying $10,000 a month to be listed, their best rank was sixth, and Patak says he heard first place costs $100,000 a month. That last part is hearsay and he says so. The $10,000 is his own invoice.

Why that matters: PFM's published policy says listings can't be purchased and that commercial agreements don't determine rankings. PFM hasn't explained how a $10,000 monthly listing fee fits that policy. For balance, Lucid replied to a commenter the same day: "we did not nor would we ever pay to be listed anywhere." So it wasn't universal. But it existed.

FXIFY at 12:43 PM wrote the clearest explanation of who actually gets hurt by this, so I'll let them have it:

Funded Futures Family paused their codes in the morning, investigated, and terminated at 3:15 PM.

By Saturday morning, the tally from the account Prop Firm Eye stood at 18: Apex Trader Funding, Lucid Trading, Take Profit Trader, Vest Exchange, Goat Funded Trader, Goat Funded Futures, Alpha Capital Group, BrightFunded, FXIFY, FundingPips, Blue Guardian, Finotive Funding, Funded Futures Family, Tradeify, FundedElite, FuturesElite, BrightFunded Futures, and Topstep.

I verified 14 of those directly from the firms' own posts (the screenshots above). The other four (BrightFunded, BrightFunded Futures, FundedElite, FuturesElite) I'm taking from that tally and couldn't find a primary post for, so treat them as reported, not confirmed.

Timeline

• Thu Oct 29, 4:33 PM ETKane posts the video
• Thu Oct 29, 8:23 PM ETArchived copy of PFM's code shows the redirect switched off
• Thu Oct 29, 11:14 PM ETPFM says it's looking into it, promises a statement within 24 hours
• Thu Oct 29, 11:15 PM ETApex Trader Funding terminates
• Fri Oct 30, 8:59 AM ETLucid Trading
• Fri Oct 30, 9:30 AM ETTake Profit Trader
• Fri Oct 30, 9:43 AM ETFundingPips (Khaled)
• Fri Oct 30, 9:49 AM ETVest
• Fri Oct 30, 9:51 AM ETBlue Guardian
• Fri Oct 30, 10:12 AM ETGoat Funded Futures
• Fri Oct 30, 10:32 AM ETAlpha Capital Group
• Fri Oct 30, by 10:42 AM ETGoat Funded Trader
• Fri Oct 30, 10:52 AM ETFinotive Funding; Funded Futures Family pauses codes
• Fri Oct 30, 12:13 PM ETTradeify
• Fri Oct 30, 12:41 PM ETTopstep (Michael Patak)
• Fri Oct 30, 12:43 PM ETFXIFY
• Fri Oct 30, 3:15 PM ETFunded Futures Family terminates
• Fri Oct 30, 10:10 PM ETPFM publishes its full statement
• Sat Oct 31, 9:48 AM ETProp Firm Eye's tally reaches 18 firms

PFM's response

Thursday at 11:14 PM, PFM responded by quoting Kane's post: trust is at the heart of what we do, we're looking into the questions raised, full statement within 24 hours.

The full statement landed Friday at 10:10 PM ET. It opens with two paragraphs of history and numbers (25 million lifetime visits, 370,000 members, $1.4 million in free challenge accounts given away, 100-plus firms applying each year) and then gets to it:

We also got something wrong. Until yesterday, when someone clicked on a firm or a code on our site, a new tab would open the firm's site through our affiliate link. This should not have happened. We take full responsibility for it. We have reached out to each of our partners to review this together and reconcile any inaccuracies. We respect any decisions firms have made based on this.

Credit where it's due: that's an admission, not a "we're investigating," and they didn't attack Kane.

Now the things it doesn't say. It doesn't say when the redirect went live (the archive says at least eleven months). It doesn't say who built it or whether leadership knew. It doesn't address Khaled's claim that FundingPips caught the cookie practices back in August. It doesn't address Topstep's $10,000 listing fee or Finotive's ranking penalty. And "a new tab would open the firm's site" is a softer description than what the code did, which was redirect the tab you were on. Those are the questions the firms are going to ask in the "reconcile any inaccuracies" meetings, and they're the ones that decide whether PFM survives this.

The other side

Not everyone piled on. Ruben (@PropRuben), who says he spent a year as a PFM executive until October 2025, posted Saturday that the founders, John and Martin, "were never money-driven," that PFM left real revenue on the table to protect credibility, and that he sees what people are calling CookieGate as "an enormous business mistake rather than an attempt at wrongdoing." He also had a point about the competitors who turned Friday into a marketing campaign within hours: "That's not professionalism. That's embarrassing."

He isn't excusing it, and he says the firms leaving are within their rights. But it's a reminder that the people inside believed in the thing, and that "mistake" and "fraud" are different accusations with different consequences. The archive can't tell you which one this was. Only PFM can.

The money, roughly

Two hard numbers came out this week. Topstep paid $10,000 a month for a listing with no affiliate code. Finotive says it was paying PFM around $20,000 a month in affiliate commissions (a 15% commission, per their follow-up post) while getting pushed from sixth to twenty-fourth in the rankings.

That's one mid-ranked firm and one listing-only firm. PFM listed 70-plus. I don't know the other 68 invoices, and the "millions a month" number one commenter threw out on X is nobody's receipt. But if the average listed firm was worth even $5,000 a month to PFM between commissions and fees, that's $350,000 a month, or about $4.2 million a year, before a single free challenge account gets given away. At a $10,000 average it's $8.4 million. Those are my assumptions, not reported figures. The point is the business was big enough that 18 partners walking in a day and a half is an existential event.

What this means for you

Nothing about this touches your funded account or your payouts. The firms disabled PFM's codes, not your login. But a few practical things.

If you have a PFM code saved, assume it's dead at Apex, Lucid, Take Profit Trader, Blue Guardian, Goat, Alpha Capital, FXIFY, Vest, Finotive, Tradeify and the rest of the list above. Go straight to the firm's own site and use code SD at checkout at the firms on our SD affiliate-code list below. Finotive put its PFM commission into a sale, and Vest is putting its share into a competition. Firms are going to use this as a promo week. Fine. Just don't let a discount pick your firm for you.

Stock Dads' SD affiliate-code list on Propper Prop Firms includes MyFundedFutures, Tradeify, Lucid Trading, Apex Trader Funding, TradeDay, Take Profit Trader, Top One Futures, 10Four, FundedSeat, Options Funding and FundedNext. That is our SD list, not every firm named in this story. Offers and eligible plans can change; confirm the code is accepted and check the final price before paying.

If you bought through PFM recently and were promised something by PFM (a bonus account, loyalty points, a free challenge), that's a PFM obligation, not the firm's. Ask PFM. Traders are already asking this under the firms' posts, and expect the firm to send you back to PFM, because it isn't theirs to give.

If you use a creator's or community's link to support them, understand what this week exposed. In most affiliate setups the last cookie wins. If you clicked a YouTuber's link on Monday and copied a code on PFM on Tuesday, PFM likely got paid and the YouTuber didn't, and neither of you would know. If you want Stock Dads credited, go through our link right before you buy and use code SD at checkout at one of the firms on our SD list. We may earn a commission on qualifying purchases, subject to the firm's attribution rules. That's the whole deal, and it's the only honest version of affiliate marketing.

And the bigger lesson: comparison sites are affiliates with a leaderboard. "Best Sellers" means best sellers through their links. A firm's rank can move because of a dispute over the site's own practices (FundingPips says it dropped from first to tenth after pushing back), an undisclosed penalty (Finotive says it did), or money that has nothing to do with traders (Topstep paid $10,000 a month and never got above sixth). None of that tells you whether the firm pays out. Use these sites for the rule tables if you want. Use code SD for the discount at the firms on our SD list. Make the decision yourself, from the firm's own terms and from people who've actually been paid by them.

Where this goes

PFM promised reconciliation with every partner. Those are the conversations that matter. If firms audit their PFM-credited sales from late November 2025 through October 29 and find a pile of orders where a trader used another partner's coupon but PFM's cookie took the credit, that's clawback money, and for the affiliates who lost it, a reason to ask the firms for it. Vest already did the math and decided it couldn't be untangled.

PFM also has a delisting history of its own. James Glyde of PipFarm, which PFM delisted last year, didn't pretend to be neutral about this week: "the vampires of this industry, sucking value while convincing everyone they're creating it." Whether that's fair or just the sound of a grudge, PFM built its brand on holding firms to a standard. This week it got held to one.

I'll update this post as the firms publish what they find.