Last verified fees: July 13, 2026. The sticker price of a challenge is not what getting funded costs — because that depends on resets, activation fees, subscription months, refund policies, and above all your realistic pass rate. This calculator does the math the sticker price hides.
Fees verified against official pages July 13, 2026 (see firm profiles for sources). Pass rate is your assumption — firms rarely publish real pass rates. Expected attempts = 1/p (geometric); the 90% budget is the number of attempts needed for a 90% chance of at least one pass. FTMO prices in EUR; others USD. Coupon pricing (Apex runs near-constant 80–90% codes) not included — apply it mentally to the Apex rows.
A worked example, in numbers
Take a $50,000 one-time evaluation with a $249 list fee and a $59 activation fee, and assume you pass one attempt in five (a 20% rate, close to the only figure a firm has publicly disclosed: MyFundedFutures reported 20.35% of evaluations passing). Because you pay for every failed attempt, the expected cost to reach a funded account is not $249 but roughly five attempts plus activation:
| Scenario (50K account, 20% pass rate) | Cost |
|---|---|
| Sticker price (one evaluation) | $249 |
| Activation fee | $59 |
| Expected cost to get funded (~5 attempts) | ~$1,304 |
| Budget for a 90% chance of passing (~11 attempts) | ~$2,798 |
Two things move this number a lot. Coupons cut it: firms like Apex run near-constant 80 to 90% off codes, so the real per-attempt fee is often a fraction of list. Refundable fees change the logic entirely: at FTMO the fee is returned with your first payout, so only your failed attempts cost you. Set the sliders above to your own account size and honest pass rate to see your figure.
How to read this honestly
The single most important input is the pass rate, and it is the one number no firm advertises. Regulatory filings and the few disclosed figures in the industry suggest most traders pass far less often than they think — if you have never passed an evaluation, 10–25% per attempt is a more honest starting assumption than 50%. Notice what the math does: at low pass rates, FTMO\u2019s refundable 2-step fee becomes surprisingly competitive (you only ever pay for failures), Apex\u2019s cheap coupon evals stay cheap but the payout ceiling caps the upside, and Topstep\u2019s subscription quietly compounds with every month you don\u2019t pass.
Fee sources: Apex profile · FTMO profile · Topstep profile — each links to the firm\u2019s official documentation. Found a stale number? It will be corrected in our next weekly verification sweep.
The questions behind the number
The calculator answers what getting funded costs. These answer the questions people ask right before or right after running it — using figures we verify against each firm’s own documentation, and saying plainly where no honest figure exists.
How do prop firms make their money?
Prop firms make most of their money from trader fees, not from trading profits. The revenue lines are visible in their own pricing: evaluation fees (one-time at Apex, Tradeify, Goat, FTMO, The5ers, FundingPips and FundedNext; monthly at Topstep, MyFundedFutures and Take Profit Trader), activation fees when you convert to a funded account (for example $69–$159 at Apex depending on size and drawdown type, $149 at Topstep, $130 for Take Profit Trader PRO), reset fees where resets exist, and paid add-ons. Most funded accounts are also simulated rather than live market positions, so payouts are generally a performance reward paid from company revenue. That is the industry’s structure and firms document it themselves — it is not a hidden catch, but it does explain why the fee side deserves as much attention as the advertised profit split.
Do prop firms charge monthly?
Some do and some do not, and it is the single biggest cost difference between them. Of the ten firms we track, three bill monthly: Topstep ($49/$99/$199 per month for 50K/100K/150K Trading Combines), MyFundedFutures, and Take Profit Trader ($150–$360 per month by account size). The other seven charge a one-time evaluation fee — Apex, Tradeify, Goat Funded Trader, FTMO, The5ers, FundingPips and FundedNext. A monthly plan is cheaper to start and more expensive to fail slowly with; a one-time fee costs more up front and stops billing you. Which is actually cheaper depends entirely on how long you take to pass, which is what the calculator above works out.
Is using a prop firm worth it?
It depends on a number most marketing avoids: how many attempts you will need. A prop firm is worth it when the total expected cost of getting funded — evaluation fees plus activation plus the attempts you fail — is less than the capital you would otherwise need to trade the same size, and when you can actually trade inside the rules. The honest counterweight is the pass rate. MyFundedFutures is the only firm we track that has ever published one: 20.35% of evaluation accounts passed between January 2024 and July 2025 (a disclosure it has since removed from its site). If roughly four in five attempts fail, budgeting for a single attempt understates your real cost by a wide margin. Run your own attempt estimate through the calculator above rather than trusting a sticker price.
Are prop firms worth it for beginners?
For a beginner the arithmetic is worse, because pass rates apply to you before your skill does. Two things follow from that. First, the cheapest way to learn a firm’s rules is not to buy the biggest account — it is to use a free practice route where one exists (FTMO publishes a Free Trial) or the smallest account that shares the same rulebook. Second, judge a first firm by how survivable a mistake is, not by the advertised profit split: entry cost, whether hitting a daily loss limit fails you or just pauses you, and whether there is a time limit. Splits only matter after you have passed, and most beginners spend far more on evaluation attempts than they ever earn in split percentage points.
How much do day traders with $100,000 accounts make per day on average?
There is no credible average, and we will not invent one. Published per-day figures for funded traders are almost always marketing selections — the winners — not audited averages across all accounts, and no firm we track publishes a verified distribution of trader earnings. What is knowable is the cost side and the odds. The only official pass-rate figure any firm we cover has published is MyFundedFutures’ 20.35% (January 2024–July 2025, since removed from its site). Payout mechanics are documented too: minimum payouts range from $100 at Goat Funded Trader to $500 at Apex, with payout cycles from daily (Take Profit Trader) to every 14 days. Those are the numbers we can source. Anyone quoting you a reliable daily average for $100K accounts is estimating, not reporting.
Can you actually make money with prop firms?
Yes, traders do get paid — the firms document payout mechanics in detail, and payouts are their core marketing claim. But two facts belong next to that. Most evaluation accounts do not pass (the one published pass rate in this industry is 20.35%). And we have not personally taken a payout from any firm we cover, so we report documented terms rather than promising outcomes. The practical way to think about it: the cost of getting funded is knowable in advance and is what this calculator estimates. What you earn afterwards is not knowable in advance, from us or from anyone else.