Prop firm challenge calculator: what are your chances of passing?

Where the numbers come from:

• Win rate, average win and average loss: from your trading journal or a backtest, before costs. Your average loss is your risk per trade. If they come from a backtest, check it isn’t overfit first, because a backtest’s win rate is often better than what you’ll get live.
• Costs per trade: commission plus slippage for a round trip, in dollars, at your usual size.
• Trades per day: how many trades you take each trading day, or a number below 1 if you trade less often (0.5 is a trade every other day). It sets how fast the account moves and when a daily loss limit stops you.
• Payout: your profit split, and how much of the profit the firm lets you withdraw at the first payout (several firms cap it at half).
• The rules: copy them from your firm’s rules page. The starting values are a common $50,000 futures evaluation: a $3,000 profit target and a $2,000 end-of-day trailing max loss that stops at the starting balance.

The chart under the result shows the same strategy at other trade sizes, so you can see how much size changes your odds.

Why passing a challenge doesn’t prove you have an edge

Passing doesn’t prove an edge, because a strategy with no edge passes a typical evaluation surprisingly often. Take a strategy with no edge at all: it wins $200 or loses $200, with even odds. With a $3,000 target and a $2,000 static max loss, it passes 40% of the time. That’s a classic result in probability, the gambler’s ruin: with no edge, the chance of reaching the target before the max loss is the max loss divided by the two added together.

Chance of passing with no edge = 2,000 ÷ (3,000 + 2,000) = 40%

So out of every 10 traders with no edge, about 4 pass an evaluation like this one. Give them funded accounts and some will get paid. Under the calculator’s starting rules, its luck check (a strategy with no edge after $20 costs) goes from one evaluation to a first payout 10.7% of the time.

That’s why the calculator shows a luck check under every result: the same rules, for a strategy with no edge after costs. If your chance isn’t much higher than the luck check, a pass won’t tell you much. It’s the same problem as a lucky backtest, and the reason “passing proves an edge“ is a myth.

Static, end-of-day and intraday trailing drawdown: why trailing is harder

A trailing drawdown is harder than a static one of the same size, because every new high pulls the max loss level up behind you. The max loss rule comes in three main types. Here’s each one on a $50,000 account with a $2,000 max loss:

• Static: the level never moves. You fail at $48,000, whatever happens first.
• End-of-day trailing: after each day’s close, the level moves up to $2,000 below your highest close so far, and never moves down. Close a day at $51,200 and it moves to $49,200. At most firms it stops rising once it reaches the starting balance, or $100 above it.
• Intraday (real-time) trailing: the level follows your highest balance during the day, often including open profit on a trade that’s still running. A trade that runs up $1,500 lifts the level to $49,500. If it then closes at +$200, you have only $700 of room left.

At the firms we checked, even an end-of-day level is enforced during the day: if an open loss takes your balance down to it, the attempt ends.

Good days shrink your room to lose. Here’s the same $3,000 target and $2,000 max loss under each type. Both strategies take 3 trades a day:

The calculator’s “Per trade” option follows the balance after each closed trade. Real-time trailing that counts open profit is stricter still, so for those accounts treat the calculator’s answer as a best case.

How much should you risk per trade on a prop firm challenge?

There’s no safe fixed amount. With a real edge, smaller trades raise your chance of passing but take longer, and with no edge, no size helps. Here’s the strategy with an edge from the table above at three trade sizes, with its wins and costs growing in step. All three use the calculator’s starting rules: a $3,000 target, a $2,000 end-of-day trailing max loss that stops at the starting balance, at least 2 trading days and 3 trades a day. The no-edge version has the same wins and losses but a 44% win rate, which exactly breaks even after costs.

With a real edge, smaller trades raise your chance of passing. More trades give the edge time to show before a losing streak reaches the max loss. The cost is time. Halving the trade size here more than doubles the typical days to pass. With a 30-day time limit, $100 trades pass only 11.2% of the time because most attempts run out of days, while $200 trades pass 55.5% of the time. Monthly fees turn time into money in the same way.

With no edge, trade size changes little. The chance stays between 26% and 31% here, and no size turns the odds in your favor. Bigger trades end the attempt sooner, one way or the other.

This isn’t advice on what to risk. It’s what the arithmetic says if your numbers are right. The question that decides everything is whether your edge is real after costs, and the chart under the calculator shows the same comparison for your numbers.

Costs: the line most calculators leave out

Commission and slippage come off every trade, and on a prop account they add up fast. Take the same example: 50% wins, a $300 average win and a $200 average loss. Its chance of passing is 89.9% with no costs, 72.6% at $20 a trade and 42.9% at $40. At $20, 40% of the edge is gone: it falls from $50 to $30 a trade. For more on why small costs matter so much, see how costs eat an edge.

Passing isn’t getting paid: the funded account

A pass gets you a funded account with its own rules. The max loss is usually the same size, sometimes a stricter type. Before the first payout you usually need a cushion of profit, often the max loss plus $100 ($2,100 here), and a set number of trading or winning days. Some firms add a consistency rule: no single day can be more than, say, 40% or 50% of your profit. Where it exists, it usually doesn’t fail the account. It means you need more profit or more days before you pass or get paid.

In the calculator’s starting example, the strategy with an edge passes the evaluation 72.6% of the time, and its funded account reaches a first payout 77.7% of the time. So one evaluation leads to a first payout 56.4% of the time, about 1.8 evaluations bought per payout. The same strategy with no edge after costs gets there 10.7% of the time: about 9 evaluations, or about $930 in fees at $100 each, for every first payout.

That’s why the calculator shows fees per payout, not just the price of one evaluation. It also shows the average result per evaluation: the chance of a first payout, times what that payout pays you, minus the fees. With a 90% split and half of the $2,100 profit withdrawable, the first payout pays $945. For the starting example’s strategy with an edge, the model puts that at about +$430 per evaluation: an average over many attempts, and only if your live numbers really match these. For the same strategy with no edge after costs it’s about break-even: luck roughly pays for the $100 fee and no more, so a higher price, a monthly charge or a reset pushes it below zero. It counts only the first payout.

What the calculator can’t see

The answers come straight from the model, and the model is simpler than a real market:

• Your numbers are estimates. If they come from an overfit backtest, every answer here is too optimistic.
• Real trades aren’t all the same size, and losing streaks bunch up when the market changes.
• It counts a trade when it closes. A winner that first dips toward the max loss level, or a trade whose open profit lifts a real-time trailing level, can end an attempt the calculator would pass.
• Some rules aren’t modelled: consistency rules, contract limits, news rules and payout caps in dollars.
• You. A revenge trade after a loss, or a skipped stop, isn’t in your win rate.

Before you try to pass a prop firm challenge: five checks

1. Get your win rate and your average win and loss after costs from live trades or an honest backtest.
2. Enter them with the firm’s exact rules.
3. Compare your chance with the luck check. If the two are close, you don’t know yet whether you have an edge.
4. Compare the typical days to pass with any time limit or monthly fee.
5. Judge the fees per payout, not the price of one evaluation.

Kwaant’s prop firm mode goes further than a calculator. It replays the strategy you actually use on historical data under the challenge and funded rules. It includes daily loss limits, consistency and payout rules, and shows how often it passes and gets paid.

Sources and further reading

• Damian Chmiel, Exclusive: Only 7% of 300,000 Prop Trading Accounts Achieved Payouts (Finance Magnates, September 2024)
• Gambler’s ruin (Wikipedia): the probability result behind the no-edge numbers
• Pass and payout figures: the firms’ own published disclosures, read in October 2026. Firm rules: the rules pages of ten futures prop firms, read in October 2026.