Prop Firm Challenge Simulator
Free prop firm challenge simulator: enter your win rate, R:R, risk and the firm's targets to get the real probability you pass — and how often the drawdown limit fails you first.
Prop firms sell the dream of a funded account, but the challenge is a statistics test with a fee attached. Enter your edge and the firm's rules to see the honest probability you pass — and how often the daily or total loss limit stops you before the target.
QuantDojo · Free tool
Prop Firm Challenge Simulator
Before you pay the fee: run your strategy through thousands of simulated challenge attempts and see the honest probability it actually passes — and how often the drawdown limit fails you first.
How it works: each attempt trades your edge day by day. A win moves equity +avg win × risk%, a loss − avg loss × risk%. The attempt fails the moment equity breaches the max total loss (from the starting balance) or the daily loss limit (from that day's open), and passes the moment it reaches the profit target. Across 3,000 attempts, the share that pass is your real probability.
Educational tool — not financial advice, and not affiliated with any prop firm. Assumes independent trades with fixed win/loss sizes; real trading has streaks, fat tails, slippage and emotion, so treat this pass probability as an optimistic ceiling. Uses a static max-loss from the starting balance — firms with a trailing drawdown are stricter still. Minimum-trading-day rules are not modelled.
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How to use the prop firm challenge calculator
Enter the firm's rules — profit target, max total loss, and max daily loss (the presets fill in common one- and two-step layouts) — then your own edge: win rate, average win and loss in R, risk per trade, and how many trades per day you take. Add the time limit and, optionally, the challenge fee. Hit Run.
The simulator plays out 3,000 independent challenge attempts. Each one trades your edge day by day and stops the instant it either reaches the profit target (a pass) or breaches a loss limit (a fail). The share that pass is your realistic probability — and the coloured bar splits the failures into the two ways they happen: blowing a drawdown limit versus running out of time.
The uncomfortable lesson it makes visible: for most people the challenge isn't lost at the profit target, it's lost at the drawdown limit. Over-risking a genuinely good edge can cut your pass rate in half, because a normal losing streak trips the daily or total loss rule long before the target is in reach. Lowering risk per trade usually moves the number more than chasing a higher win rate — the same lesson behind risk of ruin and position sizing.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good pass rate for a prop firm challenge?
There's no official number, but industry estimates put the share of buyers who ever pass in the low single digits to low double digits. That's not because the targets are impossible — it's because most challenge-takers combine a marginal edge with too much risk per trade, so a routine losing streak trips a drawdown limit. Enter honest inputs and this calculator shows you your own number rather than the marketing one.
Why do most traders fail the challenge?
Not at the profit target — at the loss limits. A max daily loss and a max total loss act as a gauntlet: even a positive-expectancy strategy has a meaningful chance of hitting a bad run early and breaching a limit before the edge compounds to the target. The two biggest levers are your real expectancy and your risk per trade. Halving risk per trade often does more for your pass rate than a higher win rate.
What win rate do I need to pass a prop firm challenge?
It depends entirely on your reward-to-risk, not win rate alone. A 40% win rate at 2:1 has a real edge; a 60% win rate at 0.5:1 does not. What matters for the challenge is expectancy per trade combined with risk size relative to the drawdown limits. Enter your numbers and watch how the pass probability and the "blew a loss limit" share move as you change risk per trade.
Is the challenge fee worth it?
Enter your realistic edge and the fee, and the calculator estimates how many attempts you'd expect to buy before clearing one, and the total fee spend that implies. If your honest pass probability is, say, 15%, you should expect to pay for roughly seven attempts on average — which reframes the fee as the real cost of the "opportunity." If the math only works with inputs you can't actually trade, that's your answer.
Does passing the challenge mean my strategy is profitable?
No — and this is the trap. A challenge can be passed by an overfit or lucky strategy, and that same strategy then blows the funded account, where the payout (and your reputation) are on the line. Passing proves you cleared a threshold once; it doesn't prove the edge is real. Before you trust it with a funded account, test whether the edge survives out-of-sample. Check it free with quantcheck.
Does this model trailing drawdown and minimum trading days?
This version uses a static max-loss measured from your starting balance and does not model minimum-trading-day rules. Firms that use a trailing drawdown (the limit follows your equity high) are stricter, so treat the pass probability here as an optimistic ceiling. Minimum-day and consistency rules only make passing harder, never easier.