Prop firms, on their own published rules

FTMO’s 1-Step asks half the profit of its 2-Step against the same drawdown, which makes it the easier programme by every published number and the one that fails 97% of the time rather than 78%.

The usual reason to pay more for a second phase is looser caps. Here it is something rarer: 2 Step Standard is the only Blue Guardian plan whose drawdown does not move, and the firm says so in as many words. Four of its five plans trail. So the premium is buying a static floor rather than a second target — and the one-step answers with a smaller cap that follows you, plus a leverage that halves the moment you pass.

At Blue Guardian: the same 4% daily limit on all four evaluations, so every one ends after the same four losses and the profit target is left to explain the whole 44-point spread. The only firm here where the number printed largest is the number that decides.

One firm, four different consequences for breaking a rule — from a warning that leaves the account trading to termination “whether or not it was intentional”. And a strike ladder that deducts the profit and cuts the split before it closes anything.

Skipping a phase costs about 27% more at every one of the five shared sizes — flat to within a fraction of a point across a twentyfold price range, which is a ratio decided once rather than a price set per account. It buys strictly less room: 3% daily inside 6% overall against 4% inside 8%. And the 10% the 1-Step asks is the same 10% the 2-Step’s second phase asks.

Same targets, same minimum days, same split, same drawdown kind. One costs 30% less and allows one point less daily room — and that single absorbed loss makes it 2.4 times more expensive per funded account, at every size both are sold at.

Ordered by price, FXIFY’s failure rates run 78%, 80%, 94%, 94%, 97%, 89% — the two cheapest beat everything above them. And the programme with the harshest target-to-drawdown ratio at the firm absorbs the most losses of any of them.

A 2% profit target — the lowest of 90 evaluations here — behind the same caps as two sibling programmes that ask nine and ten. 8.2 times cheaper per funded account than the dearest sibling that can be priced at all, and the second half of the price is $489 owed within five days of passing, on a deadline the Terms leave as “[X] days”.

The one-phase challenge costs 8% to 34% more, allows less room on both caps and fails more. What it buys is calendar — and HyroTrader publish a threshold under the word “day” that nobody else does.

Maven sell two evaluations on Kalshi and Polymarket contracts that are identical on every published rule but the drawdown, at a premium of 66–68% flat across the ladder. It is the cleanest natural experiment here, and its headline rests on a figure the firm publishes two ways.

Alpha Capital sell the same evaluation at three drawdowns, twice over, and the percentage in each name is the profit target rather than the cap. The variant that sounds hardest models as the easiest of its line, by 16 points on one ladder and 20 on the other.

Breakout price three plans by drawdown and say so, then publish the same 3% daily limit on all three — so the thing the price buys cannot end a bad afternoon, and all three end after the same three losses. On the cheapest, the two caps are the same number.

Moneta Funded sell three instant-funded accounts up to 8.8× apart in price, and the dearest has the tighter daily limit and less overall room. What it buys is the only static cap in the range; the other two follow the intraday equity high.

The product called Pro is the cheap one. Fast Pro costs about half of Fast at both shared sizes, asks 6% instead of 10%, needs four minimum days instead of six, pays the only 90% split this firm publishes anywhere, and has no daily loss limit at all. The single field favouring Fast — a 6% overall cap against 4% — does not mean what it looks like: inside one day Fast Pro tolerates more, across a fortnight Fast does, and neither is simply tighter.

For Traders sell Fast and Fast Static with seven of nine rules identical, so the price gap between them buys exactly one thing — a drawdown that stays put. They charge 28% to 53% for it depending on the account, and the $50K and $100K are charged the same $98.

Loss room between the two is a fixed 2.5× and the price is a wandering 1.5× to 3.3×, so per dollar of permitted loss the cheaper-looking account is the dearer one at three of five sizes and the answer changes as you climb. The larger difference is not price at all: Lite carries a daily cap and Elite carries none, which at 1% risk is two losing trades against ten.

Blueberry Funded’s Flex 1-Step advertises a 12% drawdown behind a 3% daily limit — four times the gap, against a median of two across 79 evaluations here. It costs more than the product it replaced and absorbs one loss fewer, and that product is still on sale.

DNA prices the whole difference at a flat ten dollars — 11% of the fee at $10K, 3% at $50K — and then at $100K the direction reverses and the open-ended product becomes the dearer one. The ten dollars buys less room, not more: tighter on both caps and carrying a ten-day clock the other has none of. What it buys is half the profit target.

DNA Funded price their 1 Phase above their 2 Phase at all six shared sizes, and the dearer product allows less room on both caps and fails more. What it buys is calendar — five minimum trading days against ten.

Two accounts separated by exactly two published numbers, priced five to six times apart. Because the Standard’s drawdown is exactly double the Lite’s, a Standard at half the size allows the identical dollars of loss — and at those matched rungs the Lite costs about a third as much while giving twice the balance to trade. Strip the drawdown out and the premium is buying permission to have one very bad day.

FXIFY sell two Two Phase assessments at the same price at all six sizes both are offered at, for the same 15% target behind the same 10% cap. One is static and refunds nothing; the other trails and returns the whole fee at your first withdrawal.

Both stop you at the same place — a 6% static cap, so identical dollars at every shared size — and Instant costs 25% to 57% more for that same floor while carrying the tighter daily cap. What the premium removes is real: Flash asks 10% against 6% of room, the steepest single hurdle the firm sets. The premium peaks in the middle of the ladder rather than at either end.

OneFunded sell three evaluations on one price list, and reordering it by what a funded account actually costs moves every position. The cheapest sticker is the dearest route to funding, by two and a half times, at both sizes the three share.

Funded Trading Plus publish eight rules for their two evaluations and six of them are identical. Of the two that differ, the drawdown cannot end a losing session on either account — the daily limit is below both caps, so it binds first at any risk per trade. That leaves 10% against 14%.

Every rule that can end either account is identical — 2% in a day inside a 3% drawdown following the session high, no evaluation on either. Mini is dearer at all six sizes, pays ten points less of the profit, and closes after one withdrawal. What it sells instead is a 24-hour clock, which makes it a different product rather than a worse one — but the two sit on one page with the same caps printed against both.

The widest gap inside one price list: every Maven Trading evaluation that publishes a daily loss limit ends in a losing streak between 91% and 100% of the time, at one, two and three phases alike. The one that publishes no daily limit ends 2% of the time. Same firm, same week, ninety-eight points.

Bootcamp costs a fraction of High Stakes at every shared size and imposes no daily loss limit at all during the evaluation — it wins twice on what a buyer checks first. It also halves the overall drawdown, adds a third phase, and charges the second half of its fee when you pass, while High Stakes refunds its fee instead. Passing reverses which one was cheaper.

The cleanest version of that finding sits inside one firm: The5ers sell two programmes with identical published rules, and one pauses the account where the other ends the attempt.

The softest difficulty ratio the measure can produce, 1.00, belongs to the hardest programme in this data — because a 2.5% daily cap ends the attempt two losing trades in.

Lux hold one drawdown across every account size and raise the target with the capital, so the biggest account is the hardest test rather than the same test scaled.

The firm whose two best-looking models we will not rank, because their drawdown trails inside the session and the figures flatter them.

A price ladder usually means the dearer product is the better one; here it means the opposite. Stellar Lite costs less at every size both ladders sell and is the more forgiving programme on both caps that end an attempt. What the dearer 1-Step buys is time — one phase instead of two, and two minimum trading days instead of five.

FundedNext line their three Stellar evaluations up by daily loss cap and the odds follow exactly — so the one asking the least profit is the hardest to pass.

Side by side the two ladders look a few per cent apart. They are not comparable: Instant Funding starts you on half the account you paid for, at 50% of the profit rather than 70%. Corrected for that, Instant costs about twice what Direct charges for the same balance actually traded — and this site published the opposite claim on four pages until the ladders were divided out.

City Traders Imperium sell a challenge with half the drawdown of its sibling, and no daily limit at all. It is the safer of the two by a wide margin.

Three published figures match exactly — 4% daily, 6% overall, 80% split — and Alpha One costs 20% to 48% more anyway. The premium buys one phase instead of three and pays for it with the one thing the panels do not show: Alpha One’s 6% follows your high-water mark up, while Alpha Three’s sits still and resets at the start of each phase.

Alpha Capital, which sells eight and never says what breaching the daily limit does — eight of the eleven programmes here whose figures are our reading rather than the firm’s.

The rule most buyers check first — a 12% static drawdown — is identical on both, so they look like the same product. Every rule after it differs and they all point one way: the one-step costs more at every size both sell — by 84% at $5K narrowing to 2% at $100K, allows a tighter daily loss, pays a smaller share, and adds a funded-account rule the two-step does not have. What the premium buys is one phase instead of two.

Flex gives a bigger drawdown, costs less at most sizes and drops the minimum trading days entirely. It is the more generous product on almost every row a buyer compares, and it fails far more often, because the one rule that decides it moves the other way.

Or the trap that is only in the naming: Funding Pips’ “Pro” asks a smaller profit target than Standard and costs less, and halves both loss caps.

Every rule that can end an attempt is identical on the two plans — daily cap, overall cap, drawdown type, minimum days, time limit and split all match to the figure — and Micro asks half the profit target. So difficulty has one answer. The reason to take the harder one is that the ladders never meet: Micro stops at $15K and Pro starts at $25K, which is also why this page carries no price comparison.

The case against the difficulty ratio itself: Fidelcrest’s Aggressive programmes ask up to three times the profit, compute to the same ratio, and are far likelier to be passed.

FundedNext’s Stellar 1-Step and The5ers’ Hyper Growth publish the same 10% target, the same 6% drawdown and the same 3% daily limit. One ends the attempt when that limit is hit and the other pauses the account, which at 1% risk is the difference between failing 97% of the time and 43%.

Taking the best evaluation at each of 23 firms covers 93 points of modelled failure. Maven’s own shelf covers 98 — one firm wider than the whole field of best products. The median firm has 19 points inside it, and 11 of 23 have twenty or more.

Both markets answer the same question — how long may an attempt take — with different instruments. Forex very nearly abolished the deadline; futures replaced it with a meter, selling most of its priced plans by the month. A deadline ends the attempt and a subscription bills for it: one takes the account, the other takes the money.

Five companies here sell an evaluation in forex and in futures, read separately in each. Every one offers a static drawdown in forex and none offers one in futures — which removes the explanation that the two datasets simply hold different firms. Where both sides publish a profit split it is the same number, so the pay travels with the brand and the risk model belongs to the market.

Most forex evaluations here carry a drawdown that never moves, and not one futures plan does — every futures drawdown on this site follows the equity high. It decides what profit is for: under a static cap profit is permanent distance from failure, under a trailing one it buys none until the trail locks. The finding is availability rather than harshness, and it is only visible with both markets read together.

Five firms sell an evaluation you pay for mostly on passing, and four of them make it the easiest thing they sell — by 22 to 57 points. On a conventional challenge the fee is revenue from failure; on this one it is revenue from success, and four price lists out of five show it. The fifth runs the other way.

Ranked by the chance a losing streak ends them, the single-phase programmes span nearly the whole range — on rules that look almost identical.

The whole field in one order: every firm whose rules we have read, sorted by the odds its best challenge gives you rather than by anything editorial.

The two biggest names, compared whole: the flagship 2-Steps are near-twins on every rule that governs losing, and everything that differs is commercial.

The fees: the sticker prices one attempt, almost nobody passes in one, and netting the refund across three reorders the list.

The two-step field behaves the other way round: there the difficulty ratio mostly holds, and the one programme that breaks it is the cheaper, roomier, more flexible one.

Three phases sounds like three chances and prices like a discount. Ranked against the one- and two-step programmes, the extra phase is another target to clear inside the same drawdown.

The products with no evaluation at all, which every ranking here leaves unranked because there is no attempt for a losing streak to end — they agree on nothing except the absence of a target.

The fee prices one attempt. Price the attempts the odds expect and the order changes: the sticker ladder does not predict what a funded account costs.

Of 45 multi-phase evaluations, 28 ask less in phase two and 12 ask the same. Five ask more — putting the harder half after the fee, the minimum days and the first target are already spent, and four of the five double it.

Three firms publish a minimum holding time and three different things happen to a shorter trade: it does not count toward the target, it is not allowed, or it may be flagged. Erased, forbidden or looked at — all three call it a minimum holding time.

A discount on your next attempt is a rebate on failing: the same 15% is worth six times more on the programme that fails 95% than on the one that fails 73%, and it is excluded at the size where a failed attempt costs the most.

The question is not whether you may trade the news but whether you may close during it. Three programmes bar both, so for two or five minutes either side of a release you cannot exit a position you already hold — and the loss limit does not pause with you.

Eleven programmes close a funded account if no trade completes for 30 or 60 days — the only rule here that punishes absence rather than an action. One firm halves the clock the moment the account becomes worth something, and takes the fee refund with it.

Whether a position may stay open from Friday to Sunday is decided per product, not per firm: 99 of 112 programmes never say, and where it is answered the answer belongs to the product, and on one programme it is not a breach at all — the account terminates.

The largest caveat on this site: at eleven firms the funded account carries rules the evaluation did not. Every probability here is the chance of passing an evaluation, and none of it is about the account you go on to trade.

Most prop firm rules punish you after the fact. Guardian Shield closes the trade: when a single idea’s floating loss reaches 1% of the funded account, the position goes. Of eleven rules of that kind across seven firms here it is the only one that acts on the position rather than issuing a strike, cutting the split or closing the account — and it sits at half the threshold Blue Guardian applies elsewhere. It was read from the firm’s help centre in August; today the term appears on none of its pages we can reach.

Beyond the daily and overall caps, ten programmes publish a third limit on how much you may have losing at once on one idea — and breaching it does five different things, from closing the account without warning to halving your profit split for ever.

Reading these rulebooks turned up 24 places where a firm publishes two different answers to the same question, across 10 of the 27 firms here. Fourteen of them are about a rule that ends an account.

A daily loss limit is a percentage of something, and the something differs. Of the programmes that say, four different answers — and on two of them a floating profit raises the floor, so one firm publishes a case where an account ends the day level and is out.

Every profit target here is net of commission and swap, and one firm of the 27 publishes what those are. At no leverage at all, 37 break-even round trips would end their tightest plan on costs alone.

Forty-three programmes sell a drawdown that follows you up, and thirty-five never say whether it stops. Where it is published it always locks at your starting balance — after which it behaves like a static cap. Two firms answer what happens if you withdraw the profit above that floor, and they answer it opposite ways.

Every pricing page prints two loss caps and on 94 of 95 challenges only the daily one can end the attempt. The overall drawdown sits at a median of exactly twice it — 3/6, 5/10, 4/8 cover most of the field — so the larger, more advertised number is never reached first. The single exception is the firm whose daily limit pauses instead of failing.

The one rule on a pricing page that does not scale: Moneta’s minimum payout of $500 is 10% of their smallest account and 0.5% of their largest, so the same sentence is twenty different demands. On that smallest account it is the figure their own evaluation asks for, to be made again before any money moves.

Thirteen programmes cap how much of your profit one day may account for, and every one publishes the percentage. Five never say what happens to the money above it — and the firms that do say name four incompatible answers, from removed off the account to trimmed from one payout.

Nine programmes advertise a 100% profit split and not one publishes that you get it on the first payout. Four record no rule about the split at all; the rest attach a payout cadence, a ladder across payouts, a paid upgrade, or a lower rate you start on. Funding Pips pay 60% weekly and 100% monthly on the same account.

Half the field is not original. Group the evaluations by every field that decides the odds and 49 of 90 land beside a twin at another firm — seven firms sell one identical rulebook, and it costs $491 at one of them and $950 at another. Inside a group the odds are not similar, they are the same number.

Twenty-eight challenges require at least as many days at the table as the run of consecutive losses that ends the attempt — FXIFY’s Three Phase asks for fifteen days on a budget of five. Every mandatory day needs a trade, and nobody publishes the two figures beside each other.

Two firms sell the same evaluation in both drawdown kinds, and disagree about what the difference is worth: FXIFY charge the same for either, For Traders charge 28% more for the static one. Nothing on this site can price it — every figure here applies a cap at its starting level, which is exactly the rule that varies.

The number every firm prints largest: across all 60 evaluations with a published profit split, its correlation with the chance of reaching it is 0.05. Seven programmes advertise 100% and range from 43% to 86% on the odds of a losing run ending the attempt first.

Deadlines have almost gone: 83 of the 90 evaluations read here carry none. The seven that keep one demand between 0.4 and 6.7 trades a day to reach the target inside it — and no failure figure on this site models the clock at all, so every one of them is harder than the number beside it.

Eleven evaluations at six firms publish no daily loss limit at all — and they run from 2% to 95%. The absence hands the decision to the overall drawdown, which across them is 3% to 10%: three losing trades against ten. At two of those firms, the version that keeps the daily cap is the safer one.

The size that makes any of them survivable: 1% risk per trade works on none of the challenges we have read.