How to Get Your Prop Firm Challenge Fee Back
Traders search "get my challenge fee back" after the account is already dead. The firm has the money. The next attempt wants another $150 to $1,000 in cash. That is the loop.
If the prop account hits maximum drawdown, the hedge on your own broker is sized so the challenge fee is designed to come back. In Margin mode that scenario is also where the surplus is designed to land. This is not a refund from the firm, and it is not a guarantee: it depends on configuration, capital, and friction (erosion).
The inversion is the point of this page: the fee is designed to return when you touch the floor, not when you pass. Passing is a different ledger. The floor is the event the hedge is sized for.
The firm does not refund. The floor is where the cash can come back.
An evaluation fee is the firm's product. Hit maximum drawdown and they keep it. "Refund after fail" pages on firm sites, when they exist, are goodwill windows, not a model. Budget as if the fee is gone the moment you pay it, unless you have a paying leg somewhere else.
That paying leg is not another challenge. It is your own broker. The hedge is the opposite position, sized to the fee (Scaling) or to a surplus on the same event (Margin). See what happens when you hit max drawdown for the event itself.
What a failed run costs without a hedge
Typical public fee cards, before discounts. Tries-before-pass is a planning range, not a forecast of you.
| Challenge size | Fee per try | Five tries |
|---|---|---|
| $25K | $150 | $750 |
| $50K | $300 | $1,500 |
| $100K | $500 | $2,500 |
| $200K | $1,000 | $5,000 |
Without a broker hedge, that cash is dead. It does not sit in a position. It does not come back from the firm. A good trader still pays it: one news spike, one unfilled stop, one trailing floor that climbed with a win.
With a configured hedge, each breach is designed to return the fee (Scaling) or land surplus (Margin). Designed is doing work in that sentence. Erosion, capital, and a broker that can hold the lot all have a vote. Five breaches are not five free rolls. You still wire the next fee. You still keep margin on the broker the whole time.
Worked path: $50,000, $300, then another $300
You buy a $50,000 two-step. Fee $300. Max drawdown 10%. You trade your plan. On day 12 the account tags the floor.
- Firm: account failed. They keep $300.
- Scaling hedge, homepage profile: broker leg designed around +$360. Net vs the fee: a thin surplus, before erosion.
- You buy the same challenge again. Another $300 leaves your card. The hedge does not prepay the firm. It books on the broker as the first account died.
If you instead pass, the hedge took the other side of a winning evaluation. In Scaling, surplus is meant to sit at payout. In Margin, payout often nets the broker loss. That is the trade-off, not "either way you win."
Why this is software, and why it is not a copier
Doing the opposite trade by hand means copying every fill, in reverse, at a lot that matches the fee rather than the account size, without blowing the broker. One late click breaks the math. A copier would repeat the same side, which is a different machine and a different objection ("those have existed for twenty years").
ARMOUR sizes the opposite lot to the challenge cost and runs locally on Windows between your prop terminal and your MT4 or MT5 broker. Details: prop firm hedging explained.
Risk warning (UK and everywhere else). Prop Firm Armour is hedging software for informational and risk-management purposes. It is not a refund from the firm, not income advice, and not a guarantee. Trading leveraged products can lose some or all of the capital you put on the broker. Configuration, capital, and friction (erosion) decide the cash result. Read the terms of the firm you trade.
See the number on your challenge
Open /start and price the projected broker profit on a breach for your size, fee, and mode. That screen is the claim running as math, not a slogan.