Bulenox vs ROMER

What Bulenox sells

Bulenox sells futures evaluations that you pay for once. Its pricing page lists the 50K Qualification Account at $175, which buys 30 days of access and then lapses. “There is nothing to cancel,” the Help Center says. You trade CME Group futures through Rithmic, from E-minis down to Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether.

The 50K target is $3,000, the account fails if it loses $2,500, and there is no minimum number of days: you “can complete the challenge in as little as one day” (rules). When you buy, you pick one of two risk models and keep it for the life of the account. Option 1 trails your highest value in real time, open profit included, with no daily loss limit. Option 2 moves the limit only at the close and adds a $1,100 daily limit on the 50K, which stops trading for the session without failing you. Positions have to be flat by 3:59 PM CT, and news releases are open for trading.

Passing leads to a Master Account, and activating a 50K costs $148 (activation fee). A payout there needs at least 10 trading days, a request of $1,000 or more and a best day no larger than 40% of the period’s profit. The first three payouts on a 50K are capped at $1,500 each (withdrawal rules). Bulenox keeps nothing at first: “The first $10,000 in payouts is 100% yours. After that the split is 90/10 in your favour.” It also sells Fast Track accounts that skip the qualification ($488 for 50K) and a Momentum line ($143 for 50K) whose Master stage is activated free. You can run up to five Master-level accounts at once.

What the FAQ and the terms say about bots

The FAQ answers the automation question in one line: “Yes. Bots, algorithms and trade copiers are permitted.” Two conditions follow. “Only user-built tools intended solely for the account owner’s personal use are permitted,” which rules out commercial, shared, rented or publicly distributed tools. And “If a trader chooses to connect to Rithmic through a Third-Party API or Trader Composite Software, a $100 monthly fee applies.” Our page on API trading at prop firms covers how other firms handle this.

The Terms of Use are older, marked “Updated July 2021”, and they read differently. Their list of abuses includes “using ‘scalping’ algorithms, DTC Protocol Bridge API or automated discretional trading in any of the trading environments” and the line “Open and close hundreds or thousand of rapid trades by using any trading algorithms.” A separate clause says “any third party algorithms must be approved from the Bulenox management team.”

So a home-made bot that trades a few times an hour fits the FAQ, while an algo that trades hundreds of times a day, or one somebody else wrote, runs into the terms. The FAQ is the newer page, but the terms are still published. If your strategy sits anywhere near those lines, ask Bulenox in writing before you trade it.

Neither the FAQ nor the Help Center has a rule that names high-frequency trading. The clause about hundreds of rapid trades covers much of what firms count as HFT, and the terms let Bulenox “refuse to claim any profit” where it suspects abuse. Bulenox publishes no VPS rule that we could find in its FAQ, Help Center, terms or home page on 1 October 2026. Your algo runs wherever your Rithmic platform runs, and each trader gets one Bulenox profile and one Rithmic user ID.

From Master Account to real money

Bulenox never says outright whether the Master Account is simulated. Its Rithmic connection guide sets every account up on “Rithmic Paper Trading”, and its glossary saves the words “real money” for the stage after: a Funded Account is “a real brokerage account funded by Bulenox and traded with real money.” The same glossary calls a Fast Track account “a simulated live account bought without a qualification stage.”

The step up is discretionary. “After completing three successful payouts on your active Master Accounts, your accounts may be considered for transition to a Funded Account,” says the transition page, and “The transition is completed at Bulenox’s discretion and is not automatic after the third payout.” Master profits don’t carry over. A 50K Funded Account starts with a $2,000 end-of-day drawdown, which Bulenox describes as a risk allowance and “not a deposit” (Funded Account setup).

Bulenox’s pages disagree twice on this stage. The 2021 terms state that “Bulenox LLC does not provide live trading,” which conflicts with the current Help Center pages on Funded Accounts. And for Fast Track, the FAQ says “After 3 payouts and 30 trading days the account is reviewed for a Funded Account”, while the Help Center asks for at least three payouts and leaves out the 30 days.

How ROMER compares

Our program, ROMER, assumes from the start that your strategy is code. Every kind of automation is allowed, high-frequency trading included, in both simulated stages and after an algo is funded, and nobody has to sign it off first. We draw the line at spoofing and other market manipulation, and the exchange’s own message limits apply. Orders placed by hand are welcome too.

At Bulenox, your algo runs on whatever machine hosts your Rithmic platform. At ROMER it runs on our hardware, which sits in the exchange’s data centre (see prop firms with colocated servers).

Before any money is at stake, an algo sits two tests, both in simulation. The Evaluation wants a profit target reached without a loss limit being broken, and takes 3 trading days or more. Verification sets the same task on a fresh run of 10 or more trading days. The algos that perform best across both are then given our capital to trade on the real exchange, and you’re paid 80% of what they make there. Funding isn’t guaranteed.

Everything about ROMER on this page is planned and may change. The Starter, Pro and Elite tiers are set at $149, $249 and $399 a month for $25K, $50K and $100K accounts, none of them with an activation fee, and the monthly fee pays for your algo’s place on our hardware at the exchange. On the Pro plan the rules work out at a $3,000 profit target (6%), a $2,000 trailing maximum loss (4%) and a $1,000 daily loss limit (2%). That’s the same target as Bulenox’s 50K, with $500 less room on the drawdown. Bulenox costs less to start, at $175 plus $148 to activate, and 100% of the first $10,000 is more generous than our 80%.

Choosing between them

Bulenox fits a futures trader who has written a bot for personal use, holds trades long enough to stay clear of the rapid-trade clause and is flat before 3:59 PM CT. Hand traders who want to trade the news, pay once and run several accounts will find it a good fit as well. Read the FAQ and the 2021 terms side by side, and get written confirmation if your algo trades often.

ROMER is for the strategies that clause catches: algos that send hundreds of orders, scalp in seconds or depend on sitting next to the exchange. It also suits traders who want the rules on automation to stay the same from the first simulated trade to real capital.