Prop Firm Challenges: What They Cost and How Many Traders Get Paid (2026)

The ads are everywhere. Pay €540, trade a $100,000 account, and keep 80% of the profit. No savings needed.

That's a prop firm challenge. You pay a fee, trade a practice account under strict rules, and if you hit the profit target without breaking a rule, the firm starts paying you a share of what you make.

We priced the two biggest names: FTMO, which charges once per challenge, and Topstep, which charges by the month. Then we looked at what the industry's own data says about how many people get paid.

What a prop firm challenge actually is

Prop is short for proprietary. A proprietary trading firm used to mean a company that traded its own money with its own staff. The firms selling challenges today work differently.

You never trade the firm's money in the challenge. You trade a demo account with pretend money. FTMO says so plainly: every account it gives clients is a demo account, and all the trading is simulated. That includes the funded account you get after passing.

When you make a simulated profit on the funded account, the firm pays you a share of it from its own pocket. Topstep says it may later move a trader to a live account with the firm's real capital, but only after a track record.

What FTMO charges

FTMO's standard 2-Step Challenge is a one-time fee in euros. The accounts are priced in dollars. These are the full prices, before any promotion.

On the $100,000 account, you first need a $10,000 profit (10%). Then a second phase asks for another $5,000 (5%). You need at least 4 trading days in each phase.

The whole time, the account can never be down more than $10,000 from the start, counting open trades. And you can't lose more than $5,000 in one day. Break either rule once and the challenge is over. The fee is gone.

Pass both phases and you trade the funded account. FTMO pays 80% of your simulated profit, rising to 90% for strong traders. Your 2-Step fee is refunded with your first payout.

Read the average reward carefully

FTMO shows an average reward of $5,957 next to its €540 challenge. That looks like a great trade. But it's the average among traders who got a reward. Everyone who failed the challenge got nothing and isn't in that number.

What Topstep charges

Topstep sells futures challenges, called the Trading Combine, as a monthly subscription. You keep paying until you pass or cancel. There are two price plans, and you can't switch after you buy.

Time is what makes this expensive. Say you take 3 months and 1 reset to pass the 50K. That's $345 on the Standard plan or $380 on the other. Pass in the first month and it's $198 or $95.

Live market depth data costs another $38 a month if you want it. Once funded, you keep 90% of your profit. You need 5 winning days of at least $150 before you can ask for a payout. Each request can take half your profit, up to $2,000 on the 50K.

How many people actually get paid

Most firms don't publish pass rates. The best public data comes from FPFX Tech, which sells software to prop firms. It covered 300,000 accounts held by 100,000 traders at 10 firms.

So 93 out of every 100 buyers never see a payout. Even after passing, only 45% of funded traders were ever paid. The rest lost the funded account or never reached a payout.

The payouts were small, too. The average was 4% of the account size. On a $100,000 account, that's $4,000.

Other firms report worse. The Funded Trader said in March 2025 that 5% to 10% of its clients passed, and only 1% to 2% were ever paid.

Why the rules are so hard to survive

The trick is the ratio. On FTMO's $100,000 account, you need to make $15,000 before you lose $10,000. And no single day can cost $5,000.

That pushes people to trade big to hit the target quickly. Big positions mean big swings, and one bad day ends the challenge. When it does, the fee is small enough that many people just buy another one. In the data, the average trader bought three.

A losing streak is normal for any trader, even a good one. Whether it ends the challenge depends on how much you risk per trade. With a 5% daily limit, risking 1% a trade takes 5 losses in a row to hit it. Risking 5%, one loss does it.

Can the firm pay you?

Prop firms aren't brokers, and they usually aren't licensed by a financial regulator. If a firm runs out of money or closes, there's usually no compensation scheme for you.

It has happened. The Funded Trader stopped paying many of its traders in March 2024. A year later, 1,272 people were still waiting for money they were owed.

• Look for a long track record. FTMO started in 2015, and Topstep has been around since 2012.
• Read the full rules before you pay, especially what counts as a loss and which trading styles are banned. Firms can refuse a payout for breaking a rule you didn't notice.
• Search for recent complaints about late or refused payouts.
• Never pay for a second challenge to recover a first. Decide your total budget before you start.

Who a challenge might suit

A challenge can make sense if you already trade a profitable, tested plan with small, fixed risk, and you'd lose the fee without missing it. It caps your loss at the fee instead of your savings.

It's a bad idea if you're still learning. A free demo account teaches you the same things without the deadline or the fee. Practise there until your results are steady, then decide.