Trader's Second Brain
Would You Pass a Prop Firm Challenge?
Enter your average trading stats below. We'll simulate 30 trading days and show you if you'd pass FTMO, TopStep, The5%ers, and FundedNext.
Real results depend on position sizing, market conditions, and emotional discipline.
Stop guessing your win rate.
This simulator uses averages you typed in. TSB imports your actual trades from MT4, MT5, Binance or Bybit — then calculates your real win rate, R:R, max drawdown, and worst-day loss. Run this calculator again with real numbers and the result changes.
How Prop Firm Challenges Work
Prop firms give traders access to funded accounts — $10k to $200k or more — in exchange for passing a two-phase evaluation. In Phase 1 (the Challenge), you must hit a profit target without breaching daily or total drawdown limits. Pass that, and Phase 2 (Verification) repeats the process with a lower profit target. Pass both, and you trade the firm's capital and keep 70–90% of profits.
The challenge is designed to filter out traders who get lucky once. The combination of a profit target, daily loss limit, and max drawdown requirement means you must be consistently profitable — not just occasionally right.
What the simulator models
This calculator runs a Monte Carlo simulation: 500 independent 30-day sequences, each generated randomly from your average win rate, average win size, and average loss size. It then checks the median outcome (and the pessimistic 25th percentile) against each firm's actual rules. A "LIKELY PASS" means both scenarios pass. "BORDERLINE" means your median passes but your bad runs don't.
Prop Firm Rules Compared (2026)
| Rule | FTMO | TopStep | The5%ers | FundedNext |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily loss limit | 5% | Varies by plan | 4% | 5% |
| Max drawdown | 10% (static) | Trailing EOD | 5% (static) | 10% (static) |
| Profit target (Phase 1) | 10% | 6–10% | 6% | 8% |
| Min trading days | 4 days | None | None | 5 days |
| Consistency rule | None | None | Best day ≤ 50% total | Best day ≤ 40% total |
| Profit split | 80–90% | Up to 90% | Up to 100% | 80–90% |
Note: TopStep focuses on futures, while FTMO, The5%ers, and FundedNext primarily evaluate forex and CFD traders. Rules are for standard challenge plans as of early 2026 — always verify current rules on the firm's website before purchasing a challenge.
What Win Rate and R:R Do You Need?
The most common question traders ask before attempting a prop firm challenge is "what win rate do I need?" The answer depends entirely on your average reward-to-risk ratio.
Your trade expectancy — the average dollar amount you make per trade — determines whether your edge is real. The formula is:
Expectancy = (Win Rate × Avg Win) − (Loss Rate × Avg Loss)
For a positive expectancy, you need: Win Rate × Avg Win > (1 − Win Rate) × Avg Loss.
- At 1:1 R:R (win = loss): you need above 50% win rate
- At 1:2 R:R (win 2× loss): you only need 33% win rate to break even
- At 1:3 R:R: you break even at 25% win rate
Most prop firms require 8–10% profit in 30 days, which on a $100k account is $8,000–$10,000. With 3 trades/day × 30 days = 90 trades, you need roughly $89–$111 average expectancy per trade just to reach target before drawdown limits kick in. Use the calculator above to see how your specific numbers stack up.
What to Do if You Keep Failing the Challenge
If the simulator consistently shows "LIKELY FAIL" for all firms, that's not a data problem — it's a trading problem. The most common reasons traders fail prop challenges:
Risk per trade is too high
The biggest cause of daily loss limit violations. If you're risking 2% per trade and hit three losses in a row, you've hit FTMO's 5% daily limit in one bad morning. Most funded traders risk 0.5–1% per trade maximum, and often less during challenge phases.
R:R is lower than you think
Most traders overestimate their average win. They remember the big wins and forget the early exits and breakeven trades that drag the average down. Pull your actual trade history from your broker and calculate the real numbers — then re-run this simulation.
Sample size is too small
If you have 20 trades of real data, your win rate estimate has a huge margin of error. A 60% win rate from 20 trades could easily be 40% over 200 trades. Only trust statistics from at least 50–100 trades in similar market conditions.
The fastest way to get accurate data is to import your actual trades into a trading journal, calculate your real win rate, R:R, and worst-day drawdown, then come back and plug those numbers into this calculator.