What actually decides whether a prop firm challenge is passable?

The relationship between the profit target and the drawdown allowance, measured against the risk you take per trade. A 10% target with 10% total drawdown gives you as much rope as road. The same target against 5% drawdown is not a harder version of the same challenge — it is a different one, and the fee page will not tell you that.

How many losing trades can I take in a prop firm challenge?

Divide the cap by your risk per trade. At 1% risk, a 5% daily loss limit ends the day after five consecutive losers and a 10% overall limit ends the attempt after ten. Raise risk to 2% and both halve. This is the calculation most people do after they fail rather than before they buy.

What is a realistic pass rate for prop firm challenges?

No firm publishes one, so this site states none. Figures that circulate come either from firms marketing their challenges or from affiliates earning on sign-ups, and neither has an incentive to be accurate. Model your own expectancy instead: it is the only input you can actually verify.

Is the funded account real money?

Usually not. FTMO’s own trading objectives page refers throughout to "Initial Simulated Capital". Most firms operate the same way: you trade a simulated account and are paid a share of the notional profit under a contract. That is not a criticism — it is simply what the product is, and it changes how you should price the fee.

Challenge calculator

Prop firms compete on fees and profit splits. Neither decides anything. What decides it is how many losing trades the drawdown allows at the risk you actually take — a number every firm publishes and none advertises.

Programme

Only programmes whose rules we have read and cited.

Risk per trade

% of the account

What you actually risk, not what you intend to.

Reward to risk

R per winner

Win rate

What the attempt costs

Account size

FTMO’s published fee, read 2026-08-02. Shown discounted from EUR 540.

Attempts you expect

Your estimate. Nobody publishes an honest pass rate, so we do not invent one.

Profit split up to 90% · fee refunded on passing

FTMO 2-Step — losing trades before you are out

5 in a row

5 consecutive losers breach the daily cap. 10 breach the overall cap. At 1% risk per trade.

Difficulty ratio

1.50

total profit target ÷ total drawdown allowed

Net R to pass

15R

across 2 phases

Expectancy

+0.20R

per trade, at your inputs

Phase	Target	Net R	Trades needed
Challenge	10%	10R	50
Verification	5%	5R	25

What the attempts actually cost

2 attempts at €439 is €878, less the €439 refunded on the one that passes — €439 net. That is the figure to weigh against the payout, not the sticker price. The recovery figure is left out here because the fee is in EUR and the account size in USD — converting them would invent an exchange rate.

What this is and is not

It is arithmetic over the firm’s published rules and the risk you say you take. It is not a prediction: your consecutive-loss run is a property of your strategy, not of the drawdown limit, and the limit only decides whether that run ends the attempt.

It contains no pass rate, because no firm publishes one and the figures in circulation come from parties selling challenges. What FTMO publishes, with the source and the date it was read.

The ratio nobody puts on the pricing page

Divide the total profit target by the total drawdown allowance. FTMO’s 2-Step asks for 10% then 5% against 10% of drawdown: a ratio of 1.5, meaning you must make half again as much as you are allowed to lose. Programmes with tighter drawdown push that ratio up fast, and the fee usually moves the other way.

It is the one number that makes two challenges comparable, and it takes ten seconds to compute from figures the firms already publish.

The odds you can compute

What the drawdown allows is only half the question. The other half is how likely a streak that long is at your win rate, over the trades the target needs — and that is arithmetic. Every programme ranked by that probability, which at 1% risk per trade is uncomfortable reading.

Why there is no pass rate here

Because nobody publishes one. The percentages that circulate come from firms selling challenges or affiliates earning on sign-ups — parties with an interest in the number, and no obligation to support it. Inventing one would make this page look more authoritative and be worth less.

What you can model is your own expectancy and your own risk. Those you know.

The fee is not the price

A $500 challenge taken three times costs $1,500. On a $100,000 account at an 80% split, recovering that means generating $1,875 of profit before you are level with where you started. Price the attempt, not the sticker.

Questions

What actually decides whether a prop firm challenge is passable?: The relationship between the profit target and the drawdown allowance, measured against the risk you take per trade. A 10% target with 10% total drawdown gives you as much rope as road. The same target against 5% drawdown is not a harder version of the same challenge — it is a different one, and the fee page will not tell you that.
How many losing trades can I take in a prop firm challenge?: Divide the cap by your risk per trade. At 1% risk, a 5% daily loss limit ends the day after five consecutive losers and a 10% overall limit ends the attempt after ten. Raise risk to 2% and both halve. This is the calculation most people do after they fail rather than before they buy.
What is a realistic pass rate for prop firm challenges?: No firm publishes one, so this site states none. Figures that circulate come either from firms marketing their challenges or from affiliates earning on sign-ups, and neither has an incentive to be accurate. Model your own expectancy instead: it is the only input you can actually verify.
Is the funded account real money?: Usually not. FTMO’s own trading objectives page refers throughout to "Initial Simulated Capital". Most firms operate the same way: you trade a simulated account and are paid a share of the notional profit under a contract. That is not a criticism — it is simply what the product is, and it changes how you should price the fee.