Prop-firm guides & tutorials
Complete methods for firm rules, risk, plan cost, payouts and the daily close — formulas, worked examples and the exact tool that applies each one to a real desk.
- Guides
- 27
- Topics
- 4
- Last updated
- 26 Aug 2026
The true cost of getting funded: resets, fees and activation included
A $145 evaluation costs $489 by the time the account is funded in the worked ledger below, two resets, one firm fee and one activation sit between the checkout page and the day the firm issues the account. If you cannot list those middle charges for your own attempt, you do not know what it cost.
Every method here is public — no email wall and no hidden formula. Account-only references cost nothing; applying a method to your own private desk is Pro.
Costs
7 more guidesReset, repurchase or walk away: price the next dollar and the drag behind it
Reset or buy a new prop firm evaluation? Price the retry against a fresh entry, total reset drag vs the entry price, and read the walk-away thresholds.
Your bank balance is not your net profit
Prop firm payout vs profit: the two formulas, net profit and bank cash position, and where top-ups, withdrawals and a linked bank feed each belong.
Are prop firm sales worth it? Price the full path first
Are prop firm sales worth it? Compare the sale price with the total path cost (renewals, resets, activation) and learn to read a firm's real promo history.
Reconcile prop-firm bank charges without double-counting
Reconcile prop firm bank charges with your cost log: why identified spend is a floor, how to resolve each difference, and how refunds are handled.
How much should you spend on evals? Set the limit before the first checkout
How much should you spend on prop firm evals? Price the full path (entry, resets, activation) then write a spend ceiling and stopping rule before checkout.
Activation fees: the cost between passing and your first funded trade
What a futures prop-firm activation fee buys, when it is charged, and how to price it into cost to funded, with each firm's own published cell.
Monthly-subscription evals: the billing cycle is the multiplier
How auto-renewing evaluation subscriptions price cycles instead of attempts, the crossover math against a one-time entry, and the renewal-date trap.
Risk
7 guidesTrailing drawdown explained: end-of-day vs intraday, by plan and phase
Trailing drawdown explained: how end-of-day, intraday and static rules compute the loss line, when a breach is tested, and which plans switch at funding.
How many contracts? Price the stop in dollars first
How many contracts to trade: futures position sizing from stop distance and risk budget, with MES, ES, MNQ, NQ, MYM, YM and metals tick math.
The same copied stop lands on four different drawdown floors
Copy trading across prop firm accounts: sum gross stop risk per seat and check each trailing drawdown's remaining room before one stop ends a funded seat.
Every open stop across your funded accounts draws on one risk budget
How to budget risk across multiple funded accounts: sum every open stop's dollar risk into one desk total and count unknown drawdown room as zero.
When does a trailing drawdown stop trailing? The floor-lock rules, firm by firm
Does trailing drawdown ever stop? The three published floor-lock behaviors (trails forever, locks at start, locks $100 above) firm by firm, with worked math.
Can an intraday dip breach an end-of-day drawdown? On most desks, yes
An end-of-day drawdown floor can still be breached hours before the close. Why floor movement and floor enforcement are two different published facts.
Soft pause, hard cap or none: read what your daily loss limit does
Soft pause, hard breach or none: what each published daily-loss-limit shape does to the same losing session, and why a checkout choice can decide it.
Rules
8 guidesProp firms for scalpers: the three tests behind “scalping allowed”
Minimum-hold, profit-share and simulated-fill rules for futures scalpers: published windows from 5 seconds to 2 minutes, and what to check before you pay.
Consistency rules: evaluation gate or payout gate?
Prop firms with no consistency rule: why it is a per-phase question, the biggest-day profit floor formula, and worked evaluation and payout math.
What actually happens when you cross a consistency percentage
A consistency breach usually defers a payout rather than failing the account. The deferral arithmetic, the denominators plans divide by, and the ladders.
Payout minimums, caps and buffers: why the withdrawal button is greyed out
Minimum request, per-request cap and the balance floor: the three published numbers that decide whether a funded account can withdraw, worked in dollars.
Can you pass a futures eval in one day? The two floors that decide
What minimum-trading-day rules gate, what counts as a trading day, and the consistency math that turns a day-one target hit into a bigger target.
Account caps: read the scope before you read the number
How prop-firm account caps count: per-trader versus per-household scope, separate evaluation and funded caps, and the published wording by firm.
News trading rules: a two-minute window, and a different answer per plan
How futures prop-firm news clauses compute (flat windows, listed events, plan splits and phase asymmetry) with each firm's own published cell.
Passing swaps the rule set: what changes the day you get funded
Which published rules differ between the evaluation and the funded account, drawdown model, consistency, daily loss limit and the fee in between.
Desk discipline
4 guidesProp firms for steady income: how consistent payouts actually work
How prop-firm payout eligibility, buffers, minimum requests, cadence and splits compute, and how to measure the cash you actually received.
How to pass a prop firm evaluation: a five-day plan without a trade quota
How to pass a prop firm evaluation in five days without a trade quota: sourced minimum trading days run 0, 3, plan a daily loss budget and valid no-trade days.
The daily close recomputes your account. The closeout writes it down
Prop firm daily closeout: recompute the end-of-day drawdown floor, check the consistency ratio, and log P&L, payouts and process notes in separate lanes.
Your year is three lists, and the dates decide which year
How to keep a funded trader's money record: payouts by received date, every firm charge beyond the entry fee, and what a year-end export refuses to guess.
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Which platform works with which prop firm?
Connection tutorials and a firm compatibility table for Tradovate, NinjaTrader, Project X, Rithmic and more.
The words
What the words mean
Every term the desk uses, two lines each. Tap any dotted word in the app for the same note, inline.
Accounts & phases
- Evaluation (eval)
- The tryout account you buy first — trade it by the firm’s rules to a profit target, and passing earns you a funded account. Everything before funded is a paid tryout; an eval never pays you money itself.
- Funded account
- The account a firm gives you after you pass — the only kind that pays you real money. Log yours the moment you get it: payouts only count as income on a funded account.
- Instant funding
- A funded-style account you buy directly, skipping the tryout — usually at a much higher price. No eval to pass, but the price and rules still decide if it’s worth it.
- Reset
- Paying to restart the same eval after breaking one of its rules, instead of buying a whole new one. Resets are the quiet money-eater — the desk counts them per account so you can see which seat is feeding on them.
- Activation fee
- A one-time fee some firms charge to switch on your funded account after you pass. It’s part of what getting funded really costs, so All-in cost includes it.
Your money
- Bank
- The pot of money you set aside for prop trading — your own war chest, not a trading account’s balance. Everything you log flows through it: eval costs out, payouts in.
- Free to spend
- The slice of your bank that isn’t set aside: your total cash minus your reserve. Every “does this fit my bank?” check runs on what you are free to spend, not your total cash.
- Reserve
- A share of your received payouts you choose to hold back — for tax, or as a buffer. You pick the rate (we never suggest one); the desk then plans around what’s left.
- Runway
- How far your money stretches at your current spending pace — like fuel in a tank. “Covered through October” means at this pace, that’s when the cash you are free to spend runs out unless payouts land first.
- Modeled cost to funded
- An estimated range from sourced eval, retry and activation fees plus a labeled likelihood basis. Use it as comparison context alongside current firm terms; it is an estimate, not a quote or promised outcome.
- Profit so far
- Received funded payouts minus the prop-firm costs you logged. Your real cash result from prop firms. It is never a broker statement or trading P&L; missing costs keep it blank.
- Return on logged spend
- Profit so far divided by the non-zero prop-firm cost recorded in the same currency. It describes only the logged cash ledger, not a trading return, tax result or future-income forecast.
- Break-even
- The point where your payouts have paid back everything you’ve spent. Before it, the desk is costing you money; after it, it’s paying you.
- Street price
- What members here actually paid for an eval — real logged purchases, not the list price. Shown only once 5+ traders logged that size, so a promo-week price can’t fool the average.
Rules firms use
- Drawdown
- The firm’s maximum-loss line — if your account dips below it, the account fails. HOW a firm measures it (see intraday vs end-of-day) decides how hard its challenge really is.
- Intraday (trailing) drawdown
- A loss line that follows your account’s live peak during the day — it can fail you even on a day you finish green. The strictest kind; our simulator models it exactly because it breaks runs the gentler kinds never would.
- End-of-day drawdown
- A loss line that moves only at the day’s close. At most firms it is still enforced live — an intraday dip through it can end the account. Check the firm’s own wording. The kinder kind; two firms with the “same” drawdown number can play completely differently because of this.
- Consistency rule
- A cap on how much of your total profit is allowed to come from one single day. It forces steady trading — one lucky monster day can block a payout instead of earning one.
- Payout window
- The trading days a firm requires before you’re allowed to ask for money. Being allowed to ask isn’t being paid — the desk tracks both separately.
How the desk speaks
- Odds band
- A qualitative model result under selected inputs — Favorable, Moderate, Long odds, or Very long odds. It describes simulated paths, not a real pass rate or a forecast of your outcome.
- Funded readiness
- One score for how ready your desk looks for funded income — built only from what you’ve logged: progress, pace and record. A read-out of your own data, not a prediction — log more and it sharpens.
- Verified / 5+ traders
- A number we publish only after 5 or more traders logged it — below that we say “gathering” instead of guessing. When you see a count next to a stat, that’s how many real traders are behind it.
- Fit %
- A model-based comparison score between your selected inputs and a firm’s published rules. A higher score means closer alignment inside this model; it is not an endorsement or an outcome forecast.
- Gathering
- Our way of saying “not enough evidence yet.” You’ll see it wherever we’d rather show nothing than invent a number.
- Desk Chat
- The chat that can see your own desk and prepare typed drafts for your review. It never writes to your records by itself — you approve every draft, and it never gives trade advice.
- Desk analysis
- A plain-words write-up that NANO renders from evidence-bound claim options over your own record. The provider request is schema-constrained to exact allowlisted claim IDs; NANO revalidates those IDs, writes the text itself and shows the frozen evidence beside every saved analysis.
- Credit
- The unit NANO prices AI work in. An active plan includes credits, and Account shows your balance. A failed or blocked analysis triggers a return attempt. If it is delayed, the saved artifact says so and retries when opened.
How the NANO desk uses these words
- You log what really happened — accounts you bought, payouts you received, fees you paid.
- The desk does the math — what funded really costs you, how long your money lasts, where it leaks.
- You get moves, not lectures — one ranked list of what's worth doing, with the reasoning one tap away.
- The decision stays yours — we show reads on your own numbers, never instructions.
Missing a word that confused you? Tell us — if one trader asks, ten wondered.