The industry benchmark. Longest documented payout history.
Structural note: Absolute max loss (not trailing). Weekend hold + news trading allowed on standard program.
What % of your trades close in profit.
If a losing trade risks 1R, how many R does an average winner make?
% of account you lose on a losing trade. Aggressive traders use 1-2%; conservative 0.25-0.5%.
Average setups you take per session. Affects speed to target + daily-loss variance.
Compound success rate across all 2 phases based on 5,000 Monte Carlo simulations of your trading edge running through the actual rule set. Median time-to-funded when you do pass: 13 trading days.
Phase 1: Challenge
Median days to pass when successful: 9
Phase 2: Verification
Median days to pass when successful: 4
How to read this
- Daily-loss out = you would have blown the daily-loss ceiling on a bad session before hitting either target or max drawdown.
- Max-loss out = your equity slid below the challenge floor after multiple losing days.
- Timed out = you didn't hit the profit target within the phase deadline (only applies to phases with maxDays).
- Lowering risk per trade is the single strongest lever for boosting survival rate at the same win rate. Move the slider down and re- run.
How the simulator works
Each simulation run models one trader attempting one prop-firm evaluation. On every simulated trade, the outcome is drawn against your win rate: a winner gains risk % × R of the account, a loser loses risk %. The simulator advances trade by trade, day by day, checking the firm's ceilings after each fill: daily loss, absolute max drawdown, and end-of-day profit target. The run terminates the moment one condition triggers.
5,000 runs per parameter set is enough to give a stable pass-rate estimate to within roughly ±1 percentage point. Re-running the simulation on the same inputs will move the number by at most that much; if you see larger swings between runs, your edge is genuinely marginal and the outcome is highly sensitive to variance.
Why the probability is usually lower than you think
Most traders overestimate their pass probability because they think in expected value terms rather than path-dependent terms. A positive-expectancy edge doesn't help you if a daily-loss rule cuts you off before variance has time to smooth out. The single biggest destroyer of pass probability is risk per trade: at 1% risk per trade with a modest edge you might have a 30% pass rate; at 2% risk on the same edge, you might have a 12% pass rate. The arithmetic is fine but the daily-loss variance kills you before you get to realize the arithmetic.
Consistency-rule firms (The 5%ers, some FTMO variants) add a second failure mode the simulator doesn't model: a great day can retroactively fail you if it's disproportionately large versus the rest of your P&L. When a firm has this rule, treat the pass rate here as an upper bound.
Firms covered
- FTMO Challenge (2-step) — The industry benchmark. Longest documented payout history. Read the full guide.
- FundedNext Stellar (2-step) — No time limit on either phase. Same target ladder as FTMO but with a lower phase-1 target. Read the full guide.
- FundedNext Express (1-step) — Single-phase evaluation. Higher target than 2-step Verification, but faster path to funded. Read the full guide.
- Topstep Trading Combine — Futures-only. Trailing max drawdown makes this a fundamentally different survival problem. Read the full guide.
- The 5%ers HyperGrowth (2-step) — Low daily loss + low max loss. Rewards conservative sizing over aggressive equity growth.
- Apex Trader Funding — Futures-only. Trailing drawdown + one-step, but easiest to buy at a discount.
Related editorial on trading-tournaments.com
- How to pass a prop firm challenge — the mechanical playbook alongside this calculator.
- One-step vs two-step evaluations — which format suits which edge profile.
- Cheapest prop firm challenges (2026)
- Drawdown rules explained — the daily vs max vs trailing distinction that this simulator can only approximate.
- Prop firm matcher quiz — 7 questions, matches you to a firm without a probability calculation.
Caveats
- Trades assumed independent. Real trader outcomes have both losing-streak and winning-streak serial correlation. The simulator under-estimates both.
- Trailing max drawdown approximated only. Topstep and Apex use trailing drawdowns that ratchet up with account equity. The simulator uses the firm's absolute max-loss percentage. Real trailing-drawdown survival is meaningfully lower than the shown number.
- Firm rules change quarterly. The rule set in this tool reflects each firm's advertised program as of 2026 Q3. Always verify against the firm's own current T&C before purchasing an evaluation.
- Your inputs are the ceiling, not the floor. Backtest win rate is usually 3-8 percentage points higher than live win rate for the same setup. Enter the number you actually achieved on live-traded results, not the number from an optimized backtest.
Educational tool. Not investment advice. Prop firm challenges have real financial costs; verify current firm terms before committing capital.