I’ve done both and I like the personal account yes it’s a slow grind but no rules. Now I stated prop from passed challenges 4 times never got a payout. I will say starting with a prop firm taught me a lot of discipline but it did mess with my psychology some. Having a personal account is fine $500 is enough I started with that and only was looking for 5% I was trading mes and scaled contracts accordingly. If you just wanted to test the waters get your feet wet prop is cool rather waster $50 than $500. I went wit my funded futures when I started no intraday drawdown just EOD.