Price feeds for prop firms
A prop firm’s challenge results are only as fair as the prices behind them. One bad tick can breach a drawdown rule on an account that did nothing wrong. Here is where prop firms get prices, what goes wrong and what to check.
The four parts of a prop firm
Most attention goes to the rules engine and the sign up flow. The price feed is the part every result depends on.
- 01
Trading platform
Usually MetaTrader 5 or 4, or a web platform, split into challenge, evaluation and funded servers or groups.
- 02
Rules engine
Tracks daily loss, maximum drawdown, profit targets and trading days, and passes or fails each account.
- 03
CRM and payments
Sign ups, challenge purchases, KYC for funded traders and payouts.
- 04
Price feed
The prices every rule is measured against. If they are wrong, every result built on them is wrong too.
Where prop firms get prices
Four common setups, from quickest to most controlled.
A broker partner’s feed
Quick to start, but the spreads, symbols and outages are someone else’s decisions.
Your own LP
Real market prices under your control, with one LP as a single point of failure unless you add a second.
Market data
Prices without an LP contract. A good fit when challenges run on simulated accounts and nothing is hedged.
A bridge in front of all of them
Combines sources with failover, sets spreads per server and watches every feed in one place.
Six ways bad prices fail a challenge
Each of these ends in a support ticket, a refund or a dispute.
A spike
One bad tick from one LP touches a stop or breaches a drawdown limit on an account that did nothing wrong.
A frozen price
A feed that stops updating leaves traders on a price that no longer exists, in their favour or against it.
Spreads that are not real
Too tight and results look better than live trading would allow. Too wide and traders fail on costs and complain.
Servers that disagree
Challenge and funded servers fed differently, so a strategy that passed behaves differently once funded.
Gaps at the open
Sunday and session opens jump, and without trading hours set, alerts and rules treat a closed market as broken.
No record for disputes
A trader says the price was wrong, and nobody can show what the feed was doing at that moment.
A fair price checklist
If your feed does all six, most price disputes never start.
- 01
Two sources, with failover
A second LP or market data behind the first, so one outage does not freeze every account.
- 02
Staleness thresholds
An old price is never sent as fresh; the symbol fails over or shows that it has no price.
- 03
A spike filter
On the symbols where one bad tick does the most damage, such as gold and indices.
- 04
Spreads per server
Challenge, evaluation and funded servers priced deliberately, not by accident.
- 05
Trading hours and holidays
Markets close when they really close, and alerts stay quiet when nothing is meant to trade.
- 06
Alerts your team sees
Email, Telegram, Slack or Teams the moment a feed goes quiet, before traders open tickets.
In XiroLink
Every server its own taker, every feed watched
Each challenge, evaluation or funded server connects to XiroLink as its own taker, over the MT4 and MT5 datafeeds, FIX, TCP or WebSocket, with its own markup profile and spike filter. All of them draw on the same LPs, with staleness thresholds and priority failover per symbol.
XiroLink does not track challenge rules; it keeps the prices they are measured against clean.
Standard includes 2 takers, Professional 5 and Enterprise is unlimited, all at a flat monthly price. See pricing or what a bridge costs.
Prop firm price questions
Where do prop firms get price feeds?
From a broker partner’s feed, their own liquidity provider, a market data plan, or a liquidity bridge that combines these with failover and spreads per server.
Do prop firms need real market prices if challenges are simulated?
Yes. Even on simulated accounts, traders expect prices that track the real market. Unrealistic prices produce results that do not hold up once a trader is funded, and lead to disputes.
Can challenge and funded servers have different spreads?
Yes. With XiroLink each server connects as its own taker with its own markup profile, while all of them draw on the same LP prices.
Does XiroLink track challenge rules?
No. Rule tracking happens in your platform or challenge software. XiroLink supplies the prices those rules are measured against and keeps them clean with staleness thresholds, failover and a spike filter.
What happens if an LP feed freezes?
XiroLink treats a quote past its staleness threshold as stale. In priority mode the next source takes over and switches back when the first recovers, and your team is alerted both times.