Search "prop firm personal account" and most pages offer a fork: trade a funded evaluation, or trade your own money. That is the wrong frame. You keep both. The prop account is the evaluation. The personal account is the paying leg.
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 rest of this page is the capital picture: what each account owns, why two prop accounts is the banned version of this idea, and how much cash has to sit on the broker before the hedge is a real position.
Prop firm account vs personal account
A prop firm account is conditional access. You pay a fee, you trade a notional you do not own, you follow drawdown rules, you split a payout if you get there. A personal account is ownership. You deposit cash at a broker in your name, you keep 100% of the P&L, and you eat 100% of the loss.
| Prop firm account | Personal account | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose capital | The firm's book (often simulated) | Yours |
| What you risk in cash | The evaluation fee | The deposit, plus any loss the hedge books |
| Rules | Daily loss, max drawdown, consistency, news windows | Broker margin only |
| At max drawdown | Account closes. Fee stays with the firm. | Nothing happens unless you placed a position there |
| Job in ARMOUR | The evaluation you trade | The opposite hedge, sized to the fee |
Pages that ask "which is actually better" stop at that table. The product question is what the personal account is for once you already bought a challenge.
Why "or" is the expensive answer
If you only run the prop account, a 10% floor on a $50,000 evaluation is a $5,000 virtual loss and a $300 cash loss (the fee on the 2-step $50k profile we use on the homepage). The firm does not refund. You buy the next attempt out of pocket. That is the default industry math. See what happens when you hit max drawdown.
If you only run a personal account, you never pay a challenge fee, and you also never get $50,000 of notional for $300. Fine, if you already have the cash. Most people searching this query do not.
If you run both, and the personal account holds the opposite position, the probable ending of the evaluation (the floor) is designed to book on the broker as the fee coming back, or as surplus in Margin. The firm still keeps the fee. Your broker is the other side of the cash result.
A personal account is not a second prop account
This is the collision that wrecks AI overviews. "Hedging a prop firm with a personal account" is not "long on FTMO account A, short on FTMO account B." Firms ban the second sentence. It games their book. The first sentence is an ordinary short or long on a broker you already have, with your capital, in a process that runs locally on Windows. No cloud relay. No shared infrastructure. Read the terms of the firm you choose anyway. The longer distinction lives in prop firm hedging explained.
A copier that repeats the same side onto a second prop account is also not this. ARMOUR sizes the opposite lot to the challenge cost, not to the virtual $50,000. Details: prop firm hedge bot.
How much cash sits on the personal account
The personal account has to hold the hedge through the move. Under-funding it is how the "designed" number on /start turns into a margin call. Two product facts, then the calculator:
- Scaling is designed so the fee returns (or a thin surplus) on the breach. It needs less broker capital. Surplus is meant to sit at payout.
- Margin is designed so surplus lands on the breach, the probable scenario. On average it needs about double the broker deposit of Scaling.
There is no poster number for a $100k. Floor type (static vs trailing), fee, and mode all move the deposit. /start prices your contract. Margin vs Scaling is the technical source. Erosion is why the booked result drifts from the projection: spread, swap, slippage, commission, failed copies.
What you actually open
- A CFD prop evaluation on MT4 or MT5 (futures-prop and non-MT platforms are not supported).
- A personal MT4 or MT5 account at a broker you choose, funded to the deposit /start prints for that cycle.
- Both terminals on the same Windows machine. Prop Firm Armour runs locally between them.
You trade the evaluation. The personal account receives the opposite, fee-sized position. That is the whole job of the personal account in this system. It is not a second strategy, and it is not a place to "swing for the fences because it is not the firm's money." It is the book that prices the floor.
