Small account, big account

Copying is proportional, so account size should only change the scale, but the help pages show several places where it changes more than that. This page puts the minimums read on 6 November 2026 next to the rule and lists what the pages do not say.

The minimum is a floor, and a lock

The help page on strategies defines the minimum investment as the minimum amount of funds required from the investor's trading account to start copying. It adds a second effect: the funds cannot be withdrawn from the copy-trading account if that would put equity below the minimum investment while the strategy is being copied. A follower who allocates the minimum is therefore not free to take part of it back.

Minimum investment printed on the 20 cards

The minimum investment is the amount of funds required to start copying a strategy, in US dollars as the cards print it. Source: ctrader.com/copy/symbols pages, read on 6 November 2026.

Reading the first table

On 6 November 2026 the cheapest cards asked USD 100 and the dearest USD 50,000. 6 of 20 cards asked USD 100 or less, 9 asked between 101 and 500, 3 between 501 and 1,000 and 2 more than that. The cards are the ones cTrader chose to show on three symbol pages. They are not all the strategies, and the table says nothing about the other strategies; the cTrader front page itself prints "800+" strategies.

Minimum deposit printed for the 24 copy-flagged brokers

Minimum deposit as the list prints it, in US dollars. 24 of the 24 entries carry a figure. Source: ctrader.com/copy/brokers, read on 6 November 2026.

The broker's floor

The broker list prints a minimum deposit for the broker itself. For FxPro it printed USD 100. 5 brokers printed 0, and the largest figure printed was USD 500. A broker's minimum deposit and a strategy's minimum investment are two different thresholds, and an account has to clear both.

What a smaller account changes

Copying follows the ratio of the two equities. A smaller follower's positions are smaller in the same proportion. The help pages do not say what the platform does when the ratio gives a position smaller than the broker's smallest tradable size, and this site found no sentence on it in the four help pages it read. That absence is why it does not say. If the strategy trades a symbol your broker does not offer, the help page's note applies: check that the provider trades symbols available from your broker.

Fees do not scale the way equity does

A percentage fee scales with the account. A fixed element does not. The volume fee is an amount per million copied, and a position cannot be split below the broker's minimum. The help page's example, USD 1,000 allocated, gives USD 0.14 a day of management fee at 5% a year, which is small in dollars and the same share of a larger account.

Leverage and the smaller account

Of the 24 copy-flagged brokers, 3 printed a maximum leverage of 1:30 and 18 printed 1:500 or more. The help page warns that a follower with lower leverage than the provider may lack margin to copy every trade. A smaller account with the same leverage holds the same proportional positions, so the warning concerns leverage, not size. Size matters through the minimums and through rounding to the broker's lots, which the pages do not describe.

Money in rand

All amounts on the pages read are in US dollars. 2 of the 24 copy-flagged brokers list the rand among their base currencies, and the list prints this for FxPro too. This site does not convert the minimums into rand, because the conversion would need a rate it did not read for this page.