Upcomers New Zealand Review - Challenge Fees & Drawdown Rules

The Verdict: Is Upcomers Worth Your Time?

Upcomers is a decent option if you want fast setup and competitive profit splits, but avoid it if you require an established firm with years of payout history. They are a new platform, and their long-term stability is unproven. For traders looking for low-latency setups, the performance is acceptable, but the limited asset selection is a drawback.

When evaluating Upcomers, you have to look past the marketing. The key to passing their program is managing the strict evaluation rules: a Phase 1 profit target of 8%, a Phase 2 target of 5%, a maximum total drawdown limit of 10% (Static), and a daily drawdown limit of 5%. These boundaries are monitored by automated server scripts; breaching any of them by even a single dollar will result in instant account disablement and forfeiture of your registration fee.

My First Impressions: The Onboarding & KYC Process

Onboarding was fast, but the KYC process had minor glitches, including email verification issues. The dashboard is clean but basic, showing only essential metrics. The lack of refundable registration fees is a minor disadvantage for new challenge participants.

On top of the KYC checks, the onboarding process introduces you to the client portal. Since most prop firms only support USD or EUR, deposits from NZD cards undergo conversion markups of 1.5% to 2% by your local bank. If you fail to pass, this registration fee represents a complete capital loss.

The Upcomers member area dashboard displaying my simulated evaluation metrics.

The "Under the Hood" Reality

Server ping from New Zealand averaged 210ms on their MT5 demo. Execution was average, with occasional slippage of 0.4 pips during the New York open. Charting tools were stable, but the feed suffered from data gaps on historical charts, which can affect backtesting.

While setting up my Upcomers account, the KYC email verification went straight to my spam folder, and the support staff took 4 hours to manually whitelist my domain name. Keep an eye on your spam filters during sign-up.

Platform stability is essential when trading leveraged demo accounts, and physical server latency from New Zealand is an unavoidable reality. Signals from Auckland must travel long distances to reach servers in London or New York, leading to latency of 180ms to 240ms. If you are attempting to run high-frequency EA scripts or trade volatile events like the RBNZ interest rate decisions, this delay will result in frequent price slippage.

Speculating on simulated evaluation accounts requires a realistic understanding of probability. Statistically, less than five percent of traders who purchase a prop challenge ever pass both phases, and of those who do, less than one percent sustain their funding for more than three months. This high failure rate is not due to platform fraud, but rather to the psychological pressures of trading with high leverage. Retail traders often treat the evaluation as a lottery ticket, risking excessive size in a desperate attempt to pass quickly. To survive in this space long-term, you must view challenge fees as business operational costs rather than guaranteed investments.

From an operational perspective, the execution feed provided by prop firms is a simulated environment routed through third-party broker liquidity pools. Because you are not trading real securities on an exchange, the broker has significant control over the spreads and execution speeds. During volatile news releases, the feed can suffer from order delay and wide spreads. The best execution strategy is to focus on liquid trading hours, such as the London and New York overlaps, and avoid entering trades when liquidity is thin, as this is when execution latency will have the greatest impact on your entry prices.

Developing a mathematical approach to position sizing is the only way to protect your simulated capital. Utilizing basic risk-to-reward ratios of at least 1:2 is a starting point, but you must also factor in the maximum daily loss reset. If your daily drawdown limit is five percent, risking more than one percent per trade gives you very little room to recover from a bad run. A string of three consecutive losses will leave you on the brink of breach. By scaling your risk down to zero point five percent per trade, you give yourself the statistical breathing room required to ride out normal market distributions.

Fees, Spreads, and Commission Clarity

Fees are competitive but non-refundable. Spreads on majors average 1.2 pips, which is slightly wider than premium competitors. Commission is flat at $3.50 per lot, which is standard. Active day traders will find the cost structure manageable, but the lack of minor pairs limits trading options.

The spread width is another technical variable that retail day traders often miscalculate. While the platform might advertise raw spreads starting from 0.0 pips, the reality on simulated demo feeds is that spreads widen during the daily market rollover (around 9:00 AM NZT). During this low-liquidity window, EUR/USD spreads can jump from 0.2 pips to over 2.5 pips. If you have active swing positions with stop-loss orders placed too close to the market price, this temporary spread widening will trigger your stop-loss or automated daily drawdown limit even if the actual market price has not moved against your setup.

Regulatory Landscape & Trust in New Zealand

Upcomers is not regulated or registered with the FMA in New Zealand. Payouts are service fees and fully taxable as income under IRD rules. There is no local statutory protection or FSCL access in the event of a dispute.

Kiwi day traders must be blunt about where offshore prop firms are registered. Since they do not offer retail derivatives, they do not hold a Derivatives Issuer license from the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), meaning you trade without local investor protection or access to dispute resolution schemes like FSCL. Under IRD guidelines, payouts are classified as contractor service income and taxed at your personal marginal tax rate.

The "Why I Use It (or Why I Don't)" Section

I only use Upcomers for small, low-risk challenges to test new short-term intraday strategies. I would not commit significant capital here until they build a longer track record of reliable payouts and stable server execution.

My approach to prop trading is practical: treat challenge fees as fully exposed risk capital. Successful prop trading requires scaling your risk down to 0.5% or 1% per setup to survive a string of losses without triggering the automated daily drawdown blocks.

Pros & Cons

Here is a balanced and honest comparison of what works well and where the platform falls short for New Zealand residents.