What a prop firm challenge costs
52 programmes modelled, 35 of them with a fee we could record, from 11 firms. The sticker is the number the pricing page shows. It is not what a challenge costs, because almost nobody passes first time and some fees come back while others do not — a difference no pricing page puts next to the price.
Net one refund across 3 attempts and the list reorders itself: Funding Pips’s 2 Step Pro falls from second-cheapest to fifth — its fee never comes back, while FundedNext’s Stellar 1-Step climbs from ninth to third because its fee does.
Fidelcrest and FTMO price in euros, Lux Trading Firm in pounds, and every other priced firm here in dollars. They are tabled separately and never converted: an exchange rate stamped on today would misprice the whole table tomorrow, so each currency is compared only with itself.
Priced in dollars
Sorted by the sticker at the $25K size — the order the pricing pages give you. The last column is the one they do not: 3 attempts, with one fee netted back where the programme refunds it.
| Programme | $25K fee | $100K fee | Fee returns | 3 attempts, refund netted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The5ers Bootcamp | $95 | $225 | Not published The fee comes in two parts, and the second is the opposite of a refund: $22/$95/$225 to start, then $50/$205/$350 more on passing — $72/$300/$575 all in. | —refund terms not published |
| FundedNext Stellar Lite | $139.99 $104.99 | $399.99 | Yes The fee refund arrives with the third reward, not on passing. | $209.98 |
| Funding Pips 2 Step Pro | $134 | $422 | No Not eligible for the fourth-reward registration-fee refund. | $402 |
| Alpha Capital Group Alpha Pro 6% | $137 | $427 | No | $411 |
| E8 Markets E8 Pro | $148 | $488 | No | $444 |
| FundedNext Stellar 2-Step | $199.99 $149.99 | $549.99 | Yes The fee refund arrives with the first reward. | $299.98 |
| Alpha Capital Group Alpha Three | $157 | $397 | No | $471 |
| Funding Pips 2 Step Flex | $159 | $555 | No Not eligible for the fourth-reward registration-fee refund. | $477 |
| City Traders Imperium 1-Step Challenge | $159 | $449 | No | $477 |
| FundedNext Stellar 1-Step | $219.99 $164.99 | $569.99 | Yes The fee refund arrives with the third reward, not on passing. | $329.98 |
| The5ers High Stakes | $176 | $491 | Yes The fee refund is shown at Step 2, alongside a $2 reward for completing Step 1. | $352 |
| Funding Pips 2 Step Standard | $177 | $544 | No The registration fee is refunded at the fourth reward on the funded account, not on passing. | $531 |
| Funding Pips FundingPips Zero instant funding — no evaluation | $188 | $444 | No | —nothing to retry — you are buying the account itself |
| The5ers Pro Growth | $189 at $20K — nearest size offered | $329 at $50K — nearest size offered | Not published | —refund terms not published |
| Alpha Capital Group Alpha One 10% | $197 | $497 | No | $591 |
| City Traders Imperium 2-Step Challenge | $199 | $549 | No | $597 |
| Funding Pips 1 Step Flex | $210 | $566 | No | $630 |
| HyroTrader Two-Step Challenge | $249 | $579 | Yes | $498 |
| Hola Prime 1-Step Prime | $258 | $695 | Yes The fee refund arrives in four 25% installments with the first four payouts, not on passing. | $516 |
| HyroTrader One-Step Challenge | $299 | $749 | Yes | $598 |
| FundedNext Stellar Instant instant funding — no evaluation | $599.99 $449.99 at $20K — nearest size offered | — | No | —nothing to retry — you are buying the account itself |
| City Traders Imperium Instant Funding instant funding — no evaluation | $849 at $20K — nearest size offered | — | No Nothing is refundable on this programme either, and the reset discount is 10% rather than the challenges’ 15%. | —nothing to retry — you are buying the account itself |
| The5ers Hyper Growth | $850 at $20K — nearest size offered | — | Not published | —refund terms not published |
| City Traders Imperium Direct Funding instant funding — no evaluation | $999 at $20K — nearest size offered | $3,999 at $80K — nearest size offered | No | —nothing to retry — you are buying the account itself |
| Alpha Capital Group Alpha Swing | — | $577 | No | $1,731at $100K |
Fees are the promotional prices displayed on the day each source was read; where the firm showed a struck-through list price beside them, it is struck through here too. Rows whose ladder does not reach a band show their nearest size and say so; ladders nowhere near either band — — are dashed rather than ranked, and their attempts figure is computed at the size they do sell.
Priced in euros — Fidelcrest and FTMO
The same columns, in the currency these firms actually charge. These 6 rows are not ranked against the dollar table above, because a comparison across currencies is an exchange-rate bet wearing a table’s clothes.
| Programme | $25K fee | $100K fee | Fee returns | 3 attempts, refund netted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fidelcrest Micro Trader — Normal | €99 | — | Not published | — |
| Fidelcrest Pro Trader — Normal | €149 | €449 | Not published | — |
| Fidelcrest Micro Trader — Aggressive | €179 | — | Not published | — |
| FTMO 1-Step | €199 | €499 | No The fee is not refunded on passing — unlike the 2-Step, whose fee returns with the first payout. | €597 |
| Fidelcrest Pro Trader — Aggressive | €249 | €799 | Not published | — |
| FTMO 2-Step | €250 | €540 €439 | Yes The fee returns with the first payout — recorded in FTMO’s own rules. | €500 |
Account sizes are denominated in dollars on these firms’ own pages; only the fee is in euros.
Not tabled above, for want of anything to rank them against at either band size: Lux Trading Firm’s 1-Step Evaluation — $100K at $100K for £199, Lux Trading Firm’s 1-Step Evaluation — $400K at $400K for £449, Lux Trading Firm’s INSTA at $400K for £699 and Lux Trading Firm’s 1-Step Evaluation — $1M at $1M for £999.
FTMO — programme comparison and pricing — read 2026-08-05
FundedNext — CFD trading objectives — read 2026-08-05
The5ers — challenge programmes explained — read 2026-08-05
FundingPips Help Centre — account models — read 2026-08-05
Alpha Capital — rules explained — read 2026-08-05
E8 Markets Help Center — product overview — read 2026-08-05
HyroTrader — trading rules — read 2026-08-06
Fidelcrest — programs — read 2026-08-06
City Traders Imperium — 2-Step Challenge — read 2026-08-06
Lux Trading Firm — trading rules — read 2026-08-06
Hola Prime — forex trading rules — read 2026-08-05
Why the order changes
The sticker prices one attempt. Nobody buys one attempt — or rather, everybody intends to and most end up buying two or three, because most attempts fail. Across 3 attempts a programme that refunds its fee costs 2 fees and one that does not costs 3, which is enough to move programmes several places in the list.
In the dollar table, Funding Pips’s 2 Step Pro is the second-cheapest sticker at the $25K size and the fifth-cheapest across 3 attempts — its fee never comes back. FundedNext’s Stellar 1-Step runs the other way, ninth on sticker and third across attempts, because a returned fee cancels a whole attempt.
The same figures against the account they buy: recovering the cost of 3 attempts at the published split takes about 0.9% of a $25K account on FundedNext’s Stellar Lite and about 3.0% on Funding Pips’s 1 Step Flex — profit the funded account must produce before it has paid for its own evaluation.
FTMO prices the proof of it
At the entry size, FTMO’s 1-Step costs €79 against the 2-Step’s €89 — the cheaper sticker by €10. But only the 2-Step’s fee returns, with the first payout; FTMO’s own FAQ says the 1-Step’s does not. Pass on the third attempt and the 1-Step has cost €237, the 2-Step €178. The programme that looks cheaper is the one whose attempts you keep paying for.
It is also the programme far more likely to need those retries — the same pair, compared on the chance of finishing at all.
A refund is not one thing
“Fee refunded” covers four different promises in this data, at four different distances from the day you pass. FTMO’s 2-Step returns it with the first payout. FundedNext returns the Stellar 2-Step’s with the first reward, but the 1-Step’s and Lite’s only with the third — two payout cycles further from passing, on the programmes with the cheaper-looking stickers. Hola Prime pays it back in four 25% installments tied to the first four payouts. Funding Pips returns it at the fourth reward, and on the 2 Step Standard alone — the Pro and Flex models are recorded as not eligible. Alpha Capital records no refund on any of its 8 programmes.
The5ers’ Bootcamp inverts the idea entirely: its fee comes in two parts, and the second — larger than the first — is charged on passing. A programme that bills you for succeeding sits at the far end of the same axis the refunders occupy, and its sticker understates the all-in price accordingly. And every netted figure on this page treats a refund as certain money: in practice it is conditional on the funded account surviving to the payout that carries it, so the netting flatters the programmes that refund late.
The fees nobody publishes
35 of the 52 programmes modelled on this site carry a citable fee. The gap is not laziness — it is firms whose prices could not be read from a page we could cite, and recording a number that cannot be traced is the failure this site exists to avoid.
- · Alpha Capital Group — no fees for 4 of its 8 programmes: the newer Alpha One variants have no published fee ladder, and the Alpha Pro sizes are priced only through worked examples that depend on the payout type chosen at purchase.
- · E8 Markets — no fees for 1 of its 2 programmes: E8 One’s displayed price attaches to a checkout configuration whose rules differ from the preset recorded here — the firm’s own help centre carries two different “standard”s, and a price cannot honestly be tied to rules it does not price.
- · Funded Trading Plus — no fees for any of its 3 programmes: the fee could not be read from a page we could cite.
- · Goat Funded Trader — no fees for any of its 6 programmes: the fee could not be read from a page we could cite.
- · Audacity Capital — no fees for any of its 3 programmes: the fee could not be read from a page we could cite.
What this comparison does not tell you
- · The prices are snapshots. Most of these are promotional prices, several shown beside a struck-through list price, and a promotion ends without notice. Every figure carries the date it was read, in the source notes above — a price older than the current promotion is the firm’s to confirm, not ours.
- · 3 attempts is our number, not a pass rate. No honest pass rate exists to derive one from, so the arithmetic is shown at 3 and it is linear: at two attempts every no-refund programme costs one fee less, and the refunders’ advantage shrinks by the same fee.
- · “Cheapest” ignores the odds. Price does not track difficulty: the difficulty ratios of the priced programmes here run from 1.00 to 3.60, and the cheap end of this table is not the survivable end of the ranking by what actually ends an attempt. A fee paid four times for a programme you cannot finish is dearer than any sticker on this page.
- · Fees are compared per currency and never converted. A euro figure next to a dollar figure ranked as one list would be a claim about the exchange rate on the day you read it, which is not a claim this data can make.
The other half of the decision
Cost is the half of the decision firms advertise. The other half is whether you finish: every single-phase challenge ranked by the chance a losing streak ends it, FTMO’s own pair compared, and the arithmetic that turns published rules into a probability. Every programme we have read is here, with its sources and the dates they were read.
Questions
- What does a prop firm challenge cost?
- At the $25K account size, the fees we hold run from $95 to $299 among the firms pricing in dollars, and from €149 to €250 at Fidelcrest and FTMO, which price in euros. At $100K: $225 to $749, and €439 to €799 in euros. Those are promotional prices as displayed on the day each was read, and the sticker understates the real figure anyway: most people do not pass first time, so the realistic cost is two or three fees, less a refund where one exists — and only some programmes have one.
- Which prop firm has the cheapest challenge?
- Among programmes priced at a comparable $25K size, FundedNext’s Stellar Lite has the cheapest sticker at $104.99, and it stays cheapest across 3 attempts at $209.98 net of its refund. Below the top the order changes: Funding Pips’s 2 Step Pro is the second-cheapest sticker and only fifth-cheapest across attempts — its fee never comes back. Fidelcrest and FTMO price in euros and are compared separately: Fidelcrest’s Micro Trader — Normal has the cheapest euro sticker at $25K (€99), while across 3 attempts the cheapest is FTMO’s 2-Step (€500). And “cheapest” says nothing about the odds of passing, which is the other half of the price.
- Do prop firms refund the challenge fee?
- Some do, and when matters as much as whether. FTMO returns the 2-Step’s fee with the first payout and never returns the 1-Step’s — its own FAQ says so, and the 1-Step is the cheaper sticker. FundedNext returns the Stellar 2-Step’s fee with the first reward, but the 1-Step’s and Lite’s only with the third. Hola Prime pays the refund in four 25% installments across the first four payouts. Funding Pips returns it at the fourth reward, on the 2 Step Standard alone. Alpha Capital records no refund on any of its 8 programmes. Each of those is a different distance between passing and seeing the money, and a refund that arrives with the fourth payout is only worth its face value if the funded account lives that long.