Prop Firm Match Acknowledges Affiliate Redirects as Partners Cut Ties

Prop Firm Match has acknowledged that interactions with firm listings and promotional-code features opened firms’ websites through its affiliate links, following allegations about how the comparison platform generated referrals. Apex Trader Funding, Tradeify, and Goat Funded Trader are among the businesses that announced the end of their affiliate relationships on October 30.

The dispute followed an October 29 video from trader and comparison-site founder Kane Simons, known online as @traderkane. It has brought scrutiny to the interaction that creates an affiliate referral, how programs allocate commission, and the information comparison platforms provide about their commercial relationships.

Key Takeaways From the Prop Firm Match Affiliate Tracking Dispute

• Prop Firm Match acknowledged that clicks on firm listings and code features triggered affiliate links. The company said it would review the issue with partners and reconcile inaccuracies.
• Apex Trader Funding, Tradeify, and Goat Funded Trader announced partnership terminations on October 30. Apex and Goat Funded Trader also said they had disabled associated tracking codes.
• An archived-code analysis reported copy-code redirects in captures dating back to November 30, 2025. The review’s author, Alex Firdaus, disclosed that he works for a competing affiliate comparison business. Archive findings do not establish how many purchases were affected.
• Commission attribution is central to the community response. Firms and affiliate publishers questioned whether tracking could award credit to a comparison platform at another creator’s or publisher’s expense.
• The financial impact remains unquantified in the company’s response. Prop Firm Match did not disclose the number of affected transactions, the commissions involved, or when the behavior began.

What Happened on the Prop Firm Match Website

Prop Firm Match helps traders compare firms and trading evaluation challenges. Like other comparison publishers, it can earn commission when users make qualifying purchases through its referral links or codes.

In his October 29 video, Simons alleged that clicking a firm profile or copy-code feature could trigger an affiliate visit without the user deliberately selecting an outbound referral link. He demonstrated the behavior using MyFundedFutures and said he had observed it across other listings, while acknowledging that he had not checked every firm.

The reported sequence was:

• A visitor clicked an internal firm link or promotional-code feature.
• The requested page opened in a new tab.
• The original tab was redirected through an affiliate URL to the relevant firm.
• That referral could affect the attribution of a later purchase, depending on the firm’s tracking rules.

Simons is the founder of Prop Firm Compare, a competing comparison business. That commercial relationship is relevant context when assessing his criticism.

The concern has been described as cookie stuffing: triggering affiliate tracking without a deliberate referral interaction. Whether a particular purchase generated a commission, or displaced another partner’s commission, depends on the applicable tracking and attribution rules.

Similar questions about deliberate user interaction emerged in the Phia affiliate attribution allegations. That case involved a shopping extension. Phia disputed parts of the reporting and said it had removed features causing misattribution.

What the Archived Code Review Found

In an archived-code analysis updated November 2, Alex Firdaus disclosed that he leads media at FinMedia Group and edits FundedTrading.com, a competing affiliate comparison site.

Firdaus reported finding the copy-code redirect in captures from November 30, 2025, through October 24, 2026, with internal firm links connected from April 2026. His analysis said it was disabled in an early October 30 capture.

He said it ran once per firm each day, which could explain inconsistent retests.

These findings concern code served on specific archived dates. They do not establish how often the redirect ran, which purchases it affected, or the value of any resulting commissions.

Prop Firm Match Says It Takes Responsibility

In its public response, reported on October 31, Prop Firm Match acknowledged that clicking a firm or code on its site had opened the firm’s website through its affiliate link.

“This should not have happened. We take full responsibility for it.”

The company said it had contacted partners to review the issue and reconcile inaccuracies, and that it respected the decisions firms had made.

The accounts describe the tabs differently. Prop Firm Match described the firm’s website opening in a new tab; Firdaus’s analysis described the original tab being redirected while the requested page opened separately. The company acknowledged affiliate links being triggered, but its statement did not explain the implementation in detail.

Which Prop Firms Have Ended Their Partnerships

Companies gave different levels of detail about their decisions. 

The following are among the departures documented in public statements and subsequent reporting.

Apex did not publish detailed findings in its announcement. Tradeify explicitly said it had found a breach of its terms, and indicated that the review would extend beyond this relationship:

“We’ll be looking closely at all of our affiliates going forward.”

How the Affiliate Community Has Responded

Comments from affected firms and affiliate publishers have focused on who earned the commission and what comparison platforms owe their audiences.

Credit for Creators and Communities

FXIFY said it had ended its partnership after reviewing sales attribution. In its public statement, the firm described the principle behind its affiliate program:

“Commission goes to the partner who genuinely introduced the trader.”

FXIFY’s wider statement recognized that a trader might encounter a creator’s video, an educator’s community, and a comparison site before purchasing. It argued that taking credit away from the partner entitled to it discourages those doing the work.

BrightFunded co-founder and CEO Jelle Dijkstra made a similar point while announcing his firm’s departure. In a public post, he wrote:

“Affiliates put in the work: the content, the community, the trust.”

His comment connected the tracking dispute with the effort publishers and creators invest before a transaction is recorded.

Dependence on Partner Trust

Truvos, a prop trading account that says it earns affiliate revenue, discussed the commercial dependence of comparison publishers in a post responding to the controversy:

“Partnerships can disappear, affiliate agreements can change, and platforms can remove you at any time.”

That response places the issue within the economics of affiliate publishing. Referral tracking supports a commercial agreement between parties; continued access to the program depends on that agreement and the trust behind it.

Paid Listings Raise a Separate Transparency Question

Topstep founder Michael Patak also said the business was dropping Prop Firm Match. He described paying $10,000 a month for a listing and said Topstep did not have an affiliate code with the platform.

That account concerns a paid listing arrangement and should be distinguished from firms announcing the termination of commission-based affiliate relationships.

Prop Firm Match’s published transparency policy says commercial agreements do not determine ranking positions or listing eligibility. Its Best Sellers methodology says that ranking reflects purchase activity through its own platform, rather than total market share.

Patak’s statement and the platform’s policy raise questions about how commercial placements are presented. They do not, on their own, establish how a particular ranking position was determined. A fuller assessment would require the relevant agreements and ranking records.

The Attribution Questions Still to Be Answered

Prop Firm Match’s acknowledgment does not provide a complete account of the financial consequences. Its statement leaves several questions open:

• When was the redirect introduced, and how was it approved?
• How many visits and purchases were affected?
• Which transactions would have been attributed differently without the redirect?
• What will reconciliation involve for prop firms and other affiliates?
• Will partners receive an audit explaining any commission adjustments?

The platform’s own affiliate terms, which govern people promoting Prop Firm Match, prohibit forced cookies and artificial referrals. Those terms are separate from the agreements governing Prop Firm Match’s relationships with individual prop firms, but they show that the platform itself recognizes these practices as unacceptable for its partners.

Verifying Affiliate Referrals

For affiliate managers, the practical issue is whether a credited referral arose from an interaction permitted by the program’s terms. A conversion report can show that a sale was recorded without explaining what the user clicked to create that referral.

Affiverse’s coverage of the PMA’s proposed affiliate toolbar and software standard examines expectations around deliberate user interaction, cookie overwriting, and enforcement. The proposed framework addresses browser-based shopping software and is voluntary and non-binding.

Our reporting on ShopMy and cross-network commission deduplication explores another attribution challenge: deciding which referral should receive commission when separate platforms record the same purchase.

Teams reviewing similar concerns can start with four checks:

1. Test the user interaction. Review profile links, copy-code buttons, and outbound offer links, including what happens in each browser tab.
2. Inspect the referral path. Compare the visible action with redirects, click records, and the event that creates attribution.
3. Reconcile disputed orders. Examine timestamps, referral IDs, and applicable code rules before deciding whether another partner should receive credit.
4. Document the outcome. Explain any commission reversals or repayments and the evidence supporting them.

For Prop Firm Match and its former partners, the next substantive development will be the scope and outcome of the reconciliation the company has promised. That accounting would help establish how the acknowledged behavior affected the commissions programs paid.