Darwinex Zero review 2026

Darwinex Zero sells a membership that gives you a virtual trading account on which you build a track record. It is not a pass/fail evaluation: the firm says "This isn't a prop challenge" and that there are no "'pass' or 'fail' evaluations" and no "arbitrary profit targets". Your trading feeds a DARWIN, an investable index whose risk is standardised by the firm's Risk Engine. You can earn 15% performance fees on virtual allocations won in its monthly DarwinIA competition and, once you reach DarwinIA GOLD, also on real investor capital.

The pricing page listed a Forex & CFDs membership at $50 a month and says trading capital is not required. The firm says its accounts are virtual accounts with virtual funds hosted on real servers, not demo accounts.

Everything in this review comes from Darwinex Zero's own web pages, saved on 7–8 October 2026. Rules and prices change, so check the firm's site before you buy.

Before you subscribe you choose the assets and platform for your account. The pricing page listed these monthly memberships:

The pricing page says all prices include taxes. Its billing selector showed Monthly $50, Yearly $40 a month and 3 years $35 a month, with a "Promo" label. You can cancel whenever you want.

The pricing FAQ gives euro prices: €45 a month for FX/CFD and crypto CFD accounts, and €50 a month for futures (€45 membership plus a €5 market data fee). It lists a 1-year plan at €420 and a 3-year plan at €1,080. It says USD pricing varies and that USD memberships are only available to users outside Europe and the UK. The capital allocation page showed a promotion: sign up for a 3-year plan and get a €25,000 Booster allocation for six months.

If you cancel, you keep full access until the end of the current billing period. For 1-year and 3-year plans the pricing FAQ says you can cancel at any time but refunds aren't available; the refund policy (below) sets out specific cases. Restarting gives you a fresh trading account and a new DARWIN ticker. Restarts are not included in 1-year and 3-year plans and are charged separately; the pricing page says accounts can be restarted on demand from $50. You can pay by credit card, PayPal or with performance fees you have earned. The help-centre account-opening article refers to a "Sign Up fee"; we did not see a separate sign-up fee on the pricing page we saved.

Optional add-ons

Boosters are temporary virtual capital allocations of €25K, €50K, €100K or €200K that you buy and apply to your DARWIN for 3, 6, 12 or 36 months. You can buy one Booster a month and stack them up to €500K in Booster capital at once. Permanent Allocations are virtual allocations with no expiry date (€25K, €50K or €100K) that stay active unless you reset your account, and come as instant or target-based. The help-centre "What is Zero?" article mentions only a €100,000 permanent allocation; we used the pricing FAQ, which lists three sizes. We could not see Booster or Permanent Allocation prices on the pages we saved.

CFD accounts start with $100K of virtual equity and futures accounts with $1M, by default. The firm says there are "no evaluations, no arbitrary rules and no getting kicked out". The support FAQ gives these default leverage levels:

Risk Engine (applies to every DARWIN)

Risk is managed at the DARWIN level: the docs say the Risk Engine "manages the risk of DARWINs independently of the risk taken by the trader". The capital allocation page says all DARWINs are standardised to a 3.25–6.5% target monthly VaR. The docs set a maximum D-Leverage of 16.25 for positions under 30 minutes, 13 for positions of 30 to 60 minutes and 9.75 for positions over 60 minutes. They say the Risk Engine can partially close a position at any time so that the DARWIN's target risk never goes above 6.5% monthly VaR. The firm says you "still trade freely" while the engine monitors exposure. DARWIN drawdown is calculated from the DARWIN's quote, which the docs say is updated every 30 seconds.

After about 15 days of trading activity the system creates your DARWIN, which then joins DarwinIA SILVER automatically. The firm says you can stay in SILVER indefinitely.

DarwinIA SILVER

The SILVER rating uses your current month's return, your cumulative return over the previous five months and your maximum loss over the prior six months. A DARWIN needs a Rating of 75 or more to receive a SILVER allocation. When we saved the rules page, €14,415,000 was to be distributed among the first 260 DARWINs, and from position 261 a rating over 75 carried a guaranteed €30,000 allocation. SILVER allocations are kept for three months. The help centre says that if your DARWIN gets no DarwinIA allocation in its first six months, a €25,000 allocation is invested the following month for three months.

DarwinIA GOLD

To reach GOLD you need at least 8 months in SILVER, consistent strong performance with a minimum 20% annual return, and to meet all criteria. In GOLD only the monthly return is used to allocate seed capital. The top DARWIN in a month can receive up to €500,000, awarded for six-month periods. Reaching GOLD opens your DARWIN to real investors, and it stays open even if it later drops back to SILVER.

Conditions for taking part

To take part you must have completed calibration, have an active subscription at the end of each month, and keep correlation with other DARWINs below 0.95. If two or more DARWINs are correlated at 0.95 or more, only the one with the higher cumulative return over the previous five months and the current month takes part. DarwinIA allocations, Boosters and Permanent Allocations are all notional (virtual); investor capital is real.

We did not find a list of prohibited trading strategies on the pages we saved; the refund policy refers to separate Darwinex Zero Terms of Business, which we did not capture, so read those before subscribing. The DarwinIA correlation rule above means near-identical DARWINs do not all take part. The website Terms of Use say each registration is for one person, and you may not share your name and password. Either side may end the service with 30 days' written notice, and the firm may end it immediately for a breach of the Terms. The refund policy says a chargeback ends any refund eligibility, and the firm will automatically cancel your account and revoke access to add-on services.

You earn 15% performance fees on both virtual and real capital. The capital allocation page explains the split: Darwinex collects 20% performance fees and 1.2% management fees, and you receive 15% performance fees. Fees use a high-water mark. For investor capital, the help centre says traders are paid 15% of profits based on the high-water mark on a quarterly basis.

You can withdraw performance fees from within the platform once you have earned at least €100. The firm says that once fees are paid, a withdrawal arrives in 1 business day. Payments to some countries may not be available in local currency, so you may need to accept EUR, GBP or USD.

Investor capital comes from three sources, per the help centre: independent investors, Darwinex proprietary allocations and the Darwinex INDX portfolio. Independent investments start from 500 euros.

The firm offers TradingView, MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. According to the support FAQ, TradingView covers Forex, Indices and Commodities CFDs only, while stock CFDs, ETF CFDs, crypto CFDs, futures, and spot stocks and ETFs are on MetaTrader 5 only. The platforms page lists Expert Advisors on MT4 and MT5 and Pine Script on TradingView. The assets page says you can trade from phone, desktop or browser. The help-centre accounts article names only MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, not TradingView; we used the platforms page and support FAQ, which include TradingView. The help-centre accounts article lists these instruments:

The pages differ on the total: the pricing page says "Up to 1,500 tradeable assets" and the assets page says "1,500+ tradable assets". The assets page says swaps are charged daily at 17:00 New York time, with Wednesday swaps charged in triple size (Thursday for USDCAD).

You can cancel and get a refund if you have placed no trades in your virtual account and email a cancellation request within 14 calendar days of your initial subscription. If you forgot to cancel before a new billing period started and were charged for it, you can cancel and ask for a refund within the first 3 calendar days of that period, provided you have placed no trades in that period and had no open positions at its start. When a 1-year or 3-year plan renews, you can switch to a shorter plan within 10 calendar days and be refunded the difference; this does not apply to the first payment of such a plan. Virtual Capital Options are refundable only if you have not traded since buying, had no open positions when buying, and request the refund within 2 calendar days.

The site footer says Darwinex Zero is a commercial name used by Tradeslide Technologies Limited, registered in the UK with company number 14398381. It says Tradeslide Technologies Ltd is an introducer appointed representative of Tradeslide Trading Tech Ltd, "which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 586466)". The support FAQ says Tradeslide Trading Tech Ltd (trading as Darwinex) "holds an asset management licence from the UK's FCA and Europe's CNMV".

The Terms of Use give the registered office as 20 Fitzroy Square, London W1T 6EJ; the same page's footer also says 24 Fitzroy Square, London W1T 6EP. The Terms of Use say all performance claims on the site about trading systems or strategies must be regarded as hypothetical. They are governed by the law of England and Wales. The account-opening article says you do not need to upload documents: you register with your email, username and country of residence, then enter basic personal information and pay by card or PayPal. We did not find a list of restricted countries on the pages we saved.

Darwinex Zero fits traders who want to build a verified track record on a virtual account over months rather than pass a one-off challenge. It suits traders comfortable with a recurring membership and a 15% fee share, and with the Risk Engine resizing their DARWIN. It is less suited to traders who want quick access to real capital, because investor capital opens only at DarwinIA GOLD, after at least 8 months in SILVER.

MyPropGenius Rating: 3.2/5 — its Transparency Index score of 65/100 ÷ 20, rounded down

The rating measures how openly Darwinex Zero discloses its rules, pricing, payouts and ownership (our Transparency Index methodology). It does not measure how likely you are to pass or be paid.