Prop firm challenge cost calculator
What one funded account costs in fees, on average: enter the challenge fee, your chance of passing one attempt, whether the firm refunds the fee, and how many attempts you are ready to buy. The pass probability is yours to set. No firm publishes a pass rate for your strategy, and this page does not assume one. If you have no number, the baseline below derives one from the rules, the same way the real math behind prop firm challenges does.
Max loss divided by target plus max loss, per phase, multiplied across phases. Set phase 2 to 0 for a one-step. This is the shape of the challenge before costs, rules and your edge, not a measured pass rate
How the numbers are worked out
Expected attempts
If each attempt passes with probability p and attempts are independent, the number of attempts until the first pass follows a geometric distribution. Its average is 1 divided by p. At 25% that is 4 attempts: 3 failed fees and the one that passes.
Expected spend
Every attempt costs the fee, so the expected spend to one pass is the fee divided by p. If the firm refunds the fee after a pass, one fee comes back and the expected spend drops by one fee. At most firms the refund arrives with the first or a later reward on the funded account, not on the day you pass: treat it as a later credit.
The attempts budget
Nobody buys forever. With a budget of n attempts, the chance of at least one pass is 1 minus (1 minus p) to the power n, and the expected spend is the fee times (1 minus (1 minus p) to the power n) divided by p. The worst case is the whole budget spent with no pass.
What it leaves out
Passing is not the end. The funded phase has its own floor, and data feeds, platforms and time are not in these figures. The true cost of prop firm trading adds them up, and how many attempts it takes to pass looks at what traders report.
What the failed fees can do instead
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 calculator above counts each fail as a fee gone. Every fail ends the same way, at the max drawdown line, and that is the event a hedge on your personal broker is sized for. How the fee is designed to come back at that line is in get the challenge fee back. Where the line sits on your account is in the drawdown calculator.
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.