The shape of the deal
You pay a fee and get an account with rules: reach a profit target, do not lose more than a set amount in a day, do not lose more than a set amount overall. Pass, and you get a funded account — usually a second demo account whose results the firm mirrors, sometimes real capital — and keep most of the profit, commonly 70 to 90 percent. Fail any rule and the account ends. The fee is not refunded except where the firm offers it back on the first payout.
Where the firm’s money comes from
Two places: fees from people who do not pass, and a cut of the profits from people who do. Which of those is larger is not published, and it is the most useful question you can ask about any firm. The rules are what they are because the firm needs most challenges to fail; a challenge that almost everyone passed would not be a business.
What you are actually buying
Not training, not a job, and not, in most cases, real market access. You are buying an evaluation with a payout attached, on terms set by the party running it. That can be a perfectly reasonable purchase — leverage on your skill without risking your own capital beyond the fee — as long as you know that is what it is.
The pass rate is low, and that is not a secret
The firms that publish figures report single-digit percentages passing, and a smaller fraction still that ever collect a second payout. Treat any promise of an easy funded account as marketing. If your own trading is not yet profitable on a demo account over thirty trades, a challenge is a fee, not an opportunity.
When it is worth doing
When you already trade to a written plan, your risk per trade is small enough that the daily limit is never in play, and the fee is money you can lose without it mattering. Those three together make it a sensible bet on yourself. Missing any one of them makes it a slower way to lose the fee.
In short
| You pay | A fee for the evaluation |
|---|---|
| You must | Hit a target without breaking the loss rules |
| Profit split | Commonly 70–90% to the trader |
| Published pass rates | Single digits |
| Firm’s revenue | Fees and a share of profits |
Common questions
Is prop firm trading real trading?
The decisions are real and the discipline is real. Whether your orders reach a market varies by firm, and many mirror only the accounts they choose to. It changes nothing about how you should trade and quite a lot about what you are buying.
Are prop firms a scam?
The model is legitimate and the industry contains both careful firms and careless ones. The risk is less fraud than terms: rules that are easy to break by accident, and payout conditions people did not read.
How much can I make?
Nobody can answer that, including the firm. What can be said is that most participants do not reach a payout at all, so any calculation that begins with the account size is a fantasy about the wrong number.
Trading forex and CFDs on margin carries a high level of risk. Most retail accounts lose money. Nothing on this page is financial advice or a recommendation to trade.