Prop Firm Restricted Countries: Where You Live, Not Where You're From

The question always arrives the same way: "I'm from such-and-such country, can I open an account?". And the right answer starts with another question: by nationality or by living there? Because they are not the same, and in most firms only the second one matters.

Below you'll find the complete list: the 168 countries and territories that appear in the restriction lists of the eleven firms we track, with how many block each one and — what actually helps you — which ones still accept you.

The 13 nobody accepts

Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

There's no way around these: all eleven firms block them. And it isn't a commercial decision — it comes from international sanctions and the high-risk jurisdiction lists their payment processors carry.

One nuance worth understanding, because it explains why this list is shorter than it looks: Myanmar misses the cut by a single firm. Ten of the eleven block it and only Funded Futures Family doesn't list it. One exception is enough to take a country out of the impossible group.

Nearly impossible: blocked by 9 or 10 out of 11

Belarus, Burundi, Congo (DRC and Rep. of the Congo), Côte d’Ivoire, Lebanon, Myanmar (Burma), Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ukraine are blocked by 10 of 11. Albania, Central African Republic, Kosovo, Mauritius, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad & Tobago, Uganda, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, by 9.

Here the remaining firm matters a lot: Earn2Trade is the only door open in Belarus, Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire and Congo, and in Myanmar the only one is Funded Futures Family. This is exactly the kind of data the table below answers at a glance.

Yes, there are EU countries on these lists

This is what surprises European readers most, and it's worth saying plainly: being in the EU guarantees you nothing.

Bulgaria is blocked by 5 firms. Croatia and Slovenia by 4. Romania and Malta by 3. Cyprus, Latvia and Lithuania by 1 each. Outside the EU but in Europe: Iceland by 5, Gibraltar by 4, Monaco by 3 and Andorra by 1.

Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, Poland and the Nordic countries, on the other hand, don't appear on any list.

And Asia and the Americas aren't what they look like either

Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore and Thailand are clear across all eleven, which is unusual: in the forex prop firm world India is normally restricted. In futures it isn't.

The ones with a problem in Asia: Vietnam (9), Indonesia (5), the Philippines (5), Cambodia (4), China (3), Malaysia (3), Hong Kong (2) and Taiwan (2).

In the Americas, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic are clear across all eleven. The blocks concentrate in Nicaragua (9), Haiti (7), Panama (6), Ecuador (5), Bolivia (1), Peru (1) and Puerto Rico (1).

Residency or nationality: the real answer

The short version going around — "what counts is where you live" — is true in most cases, but not all.

Apex Trader Funding is the clearest example of the residency criterion. If you've moved from a restricted country to an approved one, you can trade by presenting ID from your current country, proof of address and a bank account in the approved country. Their policy always talks about being "located in" a restricted region, not about your nationality.

But some firms require both: residency and nationality off the list. That's why the only honest answer to "can I open an account?" is: read that specific firm's policy, not the industry's.

The country isn't always the unit of measurement

Some restrictions are regional, not national. Lucid Trading and Tradeify exclude the occupied areas of Ukraine (Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Sevastopol) without blocking the rest of the country.

These are restrictions that appear on no country list and that you discover during KYC, which is the worst possible moment.

What is universal is the checking mechanism. Nobody asks you at signup. They check at KYC, when you go to get paid. If you reside in a restricted country, verification is rejected automatically no matter how clean your paperwork is.

What happens if you travel

Here the firms separate clearly, and it's worth knowing before you board a plane.

Apex temporarily pauses payouts while you're in a restricted country, and they resume on their own when you return to an approved region. You don't lose the account, you lose withdrawal access during the trip.

My Funded Futures gives a more nuanced answer: a trader who already has an account can trade from a restricted country by notifying support beforehand, but can't buy new accounts or run resets from there.

The practical read: if you're going to spend weeks in a country on the list, request your payout before leaving and don't buy anything while you're away.

How many countries each firm blocks

Earn2Trade blocks 25 countries. TakeProfit, 119. If your case is borderline, start reading that list from the bottom.

The complete list

Data from our database, verified on 7 September 2026. The column that matters is the last one: if your country is there, look at which firms are still open to you.