Skip to content

Prop firm accounts · Passing a challenge

How to pass a prop firm challenge: what the evaluation measures

Passing a challenge means staying inside a set of limits the firm defines and calculates itself: an evaluation does not measure whether you are right, it measures whether you step outside them. The whole mechanism can be read before you pay. No method guarantees getting through it, and anyone selling you one is selling a result they do not control.

FTMO's published objectives show all of it: what is measured, how each limit is calculated, and which ones get breached without anyone noticing until the account is already closed. There is not a single trading recommendation here, because that would be advice and this site does not provide it.

Sources read at origin on 08/09/2026 · linked at the end

This page explains how an evaluation works. It gives no trading advice

The five objectives that get measured

Profit target
a percentage
of initial capital
Daily loss
on equity
recalculated daily
Overall loss
trailing or static
depending on programme
Spread across days
a cap
on your best day
Trading days
a minimum
of days with an opening

That is the complete list of FTMO's published objectives. Not one of the five measures accuracy

What an evaluation actually measures

A profit target, two loss limits, a cap on how much your best day can weigh, and a minimum number of trading days.

FTMO's published objectives contain no win rate, no reward-to-risk ratio, no minimum number of trades and no measure of the quality of a decision. What gets measured is where the account sits relative to a few lines, and those lines check themselves.

The numbers change with the programme you buy, so a figure picked up in a forum about "the 5% daily" can be perfectly accurate and still not apply to you. These are the ones FTMO published on 08/09/2026, with the programme beside each.

The programmeWhat its rulebook publishes
FTMO Challenge: 1-StepOne phase
Profit target
10% of initial capital
Daily loss
3%, recalculated daily
Overall loss
10%, end-of-day trailing
Best day
max. 50% of positive days’ profit
Minimum days
not part of this programme

The overall limit rises with your best midnight balance and never comes back down. It is the row that quietly removes the most room of the five.

FTMO Challenge: 2-StepTwo phases
Profit target
10% in phase one, 5% in phase two
Daily loss
5%, recalculated daily
Overall loss
10%, static on initial capital
Best day
not part of this programme
Minimum days
4 days with at least one opening

Here the floor stays where it started, and in exchange you have to prove the same thing twice and across a minimum number of days.

Every percentage is calculated on the initial simulated capital, never on the balance of the day. And one difference the table does not show: on the account that follows the evaluation the profit target disappears, while both loss limits stay in force, because what is required there is continuous compliance.

If some of these words read like a foreign language, the whole vocabulary — what a challenge is, a drawdown, a profit split, a consistency rule — is explained from scratch in what a prop firm is and how one works. And if what is missing is not the word but the concept — why two limits with the same percentage do not leave the same room — it is in prop firm drawdown explained, before the figures.

Why nearly every rule is a loss limit

Because a loss can be measured in real time and can close an account on its own, and accuracy cannot: the rulebook bounds the exposure of whoever wrote it.

A loss rule is evaluated on every tick, with nobody involved, and its consequence executes itself. A rule about the quality of a trade would need somebody making a judgement, and a firm evaluating a great many people at once has no such somebody and does not want one.

FTMO puts it at the head of its objectives: all applicable objectives must be satisfiedconcurrently, and on the account that follows the evaluation what is required is "continuous compliance" at all times, so the condition keeps being checked for as long as the account exists. Which other rules change once you reach that account, and which ones only appear there, is in what changes between a challenge account and a funded one.

That is where the one rule on the list that is neither a loss limit nor a measure of accuracy fits: the Best Day Rule, which requires that your best day does not represent more than 50% of the sum of your positive days. It does not measure whether you were right, it measures whether the result rests on a single day.

The result being measured, on top of that, does not happen in the market. FTMO carries a notice in the footer of its pages saying that all the accounts it provides to clients are demo accounts with fictitious funds and that all trading takes place in a simulated environment only. What each firm writes about its own environment, one by one, is in whether prop firms use real money.

The six rules that catch people out

None of the six gives any warning. Five sit in the objectives rulebook and the sixth in the forbidden practices page, and all of them can be read without paying anything.

  1. The daily limit is measured on equity but calculated from balance

    Two different quantities inside one rule. The limit is recalculated each day at 00:00 CE(S)T by subtracting the daily percentage from the balance recorded at that hour, and it is then considered violated if equity — balance plus the profit and loss of open positions, plus or minus swaps and less commissions — drops below it. The effect is asymmetric: a profit that is still floating does not lift the floor for the day, while a loss that is still floating can reach it.

  2. On the one-phase programme the overall floor rises with you and never falls

    The rulebook calls it an end-of-day trailing limit: it is recalculated at midnight by subtracting 10% of the initial capital from the highest balance reached at that hour on any preceding trading day, and it states plainly that the limit can only increase and never decrease. The document's own example makes it concrete: if the midnight balance drops from one day to the next, the limit stays where the higher day put it.

  3. The best day rule does not disqualify, but it can strand you in profit

    The rulebook says that going over the best day limit is not treated as a breach; what it says next is that you have to keep trading until that day represents 50% or less of the profit of your positive days. The account is not closed: it is left unpassed, with profit inside it and no date attached. And on the account that follows the evaluation, that same rule is a condition of being eligible for a reward at all.

  4. The minimum days rule counts openings, not days with a position alive

    A trading day is, in the published definition, any day from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59 CE(S)T on which at least one position is opened. Holding does not count. The rulebook's example finishes the thought: four positions spread across the calendar add up to only three trading days, and so the minimum is not met. It is a rule with nothing to do with risk that fails people who had already reached the profit target.

  5. Some prohibitions are not in the objectives at all, but in another document

    The objectives are one page and the forbidden practices another. In the second, FTMO bans gap trading — opening when major news, macro events or earnings are scheduled, and also two hours or less before a relevant market closes for at least two hours — along with simulated trades entered for manipulative purposes and strategies that artificially spread profit across several days to get around the best day rule. The consequences it lists escalate as far as disqualification, forfeiture of any potential rewards and termination of every agreement you hold with them.

  6. An automated program can breach a rule you never touched

    The same list bans a robot or EA leaving the account hyperactive above 2,000 server requests in a day, counting positions and pending orders being opened, modified or closed. It is a rule about a program's behaviour, and it gets broken while the account holder is looking at something else. The full breakdown of what FTMO allows and bans for an expert advisor, source by source, is in the page on FTMO and expert advisors.

Why there is no strategy, pass rate or deadline

Because a strategy would be advice, no pass rate exists in any verifiable source, and the rulebook read sets no deadline.

  1. No strategy, and not a single parameter

    Telling you how to trade is investment advice and this site does not provide it: it sells software and gives technical support for that software. Any page telling you how much to risk without knowing your situation is handing you precisely what it claims not to be handing you.

  2. No pass rate

    It was looked for, and it does not exist in any verifiable public source. The numbers doing the rounds come from third-party estimates or from the firms themselves, unaudited and without saying what population they were calculated on. Publishing one with a vague attribution would be inventing the source.

  3. No timeframe, and no promise of a result

    No configuration guarantees that an evaluation stage will be passed, and no page on this site claims otherwise. Nor is any duration declared: the objectives read for this page include no deadline among the rules, but that is a statement about one document on one date, not about the sector. Which protections reach you and which do not when something goes wrong is set out in whether prop firm accounts are legitimate.

What you can check with the rulebook open and without paying is what each limit is calculated on, at what hour it is recalculated, whether the overall one is static or trailing, whether there is a minimum number of days, whether there is a cap on the best day, and which separate document holds the forbidden practices.

If the evaluation is passed, what has to happen for the money to arrive is in whether prop firms actually pay.

Sources · read on 08/09/2026

Frequently asked questions

Can you fail a challenge without losing any money?
Yes. Among the objectives FTMO publishes there is a minimum number of trading days and a Best Day Rule requiring that your best day does not represent more than 50% of the sum of your positive days, and neither of them is about losses. Going over the best day limit is not treated as a breach — the rulebook says so — but until that proportion comes down the evaluation is not complete, so an account in profit can sit there indefinitely. The minimum days rule works the same way: without them there is no pass, however good the result.
Is the daily loss limit measured on balance or on open positions too?
On open positions too. FTMO sets the limit against equity, which it describes as balance plus the profit and loss of open positions, plus or minus swaps and less commissions, and says the rule is considered violated if equity drops below it. The limit is recalculated each day at 00:00 CE(S)T from the balance at that moment rather than from equity: a profit that is still floating does not lift the floor for the day, while a loss that is still floating can reach it. Two different quantities inside one rule.
When is the overall loss limit recalculated?
On FTMO's one-step programme, once a day and only upwards. The rulebook describes it as an end-of-day trailing limit: it is recalculated at 00:00 CE(S)T by subtracting 10% of the initial simulated capital from the highest account balance reached at that hour on any preceding trading day, and it adds that the limit can only increase and never decrease. In practice every good run raises the floor and leaves you less room underneath exactly when it looks like you have plenty. On the two-step programme that limit is static and always measured against the initial capital.
How many trading days are required, and what counts as one?
On FTMO's two-step evaluation it is at least four trading days, and the definition matters more than the number: a trading day is any day, measured from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59 CE(S)T, on which at least one position is opened. Opening is not holding, so a position opened on a Monday and closed on a Thursday counts as one day, not four. The rulebook's own example shows four positions adding up to only three trading days. On the funded account that follows there is no minimum.
Is there a deadline for passing a challenge?
In the objectives FTMO published on 8 September 2026, the day they were read for this page, no deadline appears among the rules of the evaluation. That is a statement about one document on one date, not about the sector: other firms do set deadlines, and any firm can change its conditions whenever it likes. What you can check before paying is what the current rulebook of the firm you are signing up with says, rather than what somebody remembers from an earlier version.
Does a bot make an evaluation easier to pass?
No configuration guarantees that an evaluation stage will be passed, and no page on this site claims otherwise. A program is held to exactly the same rules as a person: the loss limits, the minimum days and the best day rule apply to it identically, and the account holder is the one answerable for meeting them. It also adds risks a manual trader does not carry: FTMO lists among its forbidden practices an EA leaving the account hyperactive above 2,000 server requests in a day, and warns that an EA bought from a third party may be running the same strategy across many accounts at once.

Before you automate, compatibility

No configuration guarantees that an evaluation stage will be passed, and a program is held to exactly the same rules as a person. What can be set out step by step is how one is installed on top of an account without breaking its rulebook, and compatibility is confirmed before anything is charged.

See how the installation works

Continue reading

Three more guides on this, or on what sits next to it.