Short answer: the real cost is fee × attempts. With pass rates between 5% and 14%, the average buyer needs several attempts — so a $200 challenge realistically costs closer to $1,400. That multiplication is the number nobody selling challenges prints.
What percentage of traders actually pass?
Two independent figures, both worth citing precisely:
- FPFX Tech, a technology supplier to prop firms, analysed more than 300,000 accounts and found roughly 14% passed a challenge.
- The Funded Trader reported its own pass rate at 5-10%, which it acknowledged was below industry average.
But passing is not being paid, and the gap between the two is where the money is. In the same FPFX dataset, only 7% of accounts ever reached a payout. So of 100 people who buy a challenge: about 14 pass, and about 7 are ever paid.
The multiplication nobody finishes
Every prop firm publishes its price. Very few publish what that price becomes once you account for the attempts a typical trader needs.
At a 14% pass rate, the average number of attempts to pass once is about 7:
- A $58 evaluation → realistically around $400
- A $200 challenge → realistically around $1,400
- A $500 challenge → realistically around $3,500
And at the lower end of the observed range — a 5% pass rate — those figures roughly treble again.
This sum is not hidden. It is simply never completed on the pages where it matters, because it is written by the people selling the attempts. Finishing it produces a negative expected value for their own product. We can print it because we sell nothing.
What about the payout at the end?
Worth setting against the cost. FPFX found that payouts averaged about 4% of account size — roughly $400 on a $10,000 account.
Hold that next to the headline numbers this industry advertises. The realistic outcome of a successful funded account is a payout in the hundreds, not a changed life. Anyone planning around the nominal account size rather than the observed payout size is working from the wrong figure — and that mistake is what makes a $500 challenge feel like a reasonable bet.
Is a "refundable" fee actually free?
No. A refundable fee comes back only on success, usually with your first payout. Which means it is refunded to the minority who make it and kept from everyone else.
With roughly 7 in 100 buyers ever reaching a payout, a refundable fee is, in practice, a fee for about 93 of them. It is a real feature and it is not a trick — but it changes the accounting, not the expected cost.
And the reset fee
Most firms offer a discounted reset instead of a full repurchase after a failed phase. It is cheaper than starting over, and it is still a second payment.
Check the reset price before you buy, not after you fail. It is the number that decides what your funded account will have cost by the time you actually hold one, and it is usually further down the page than the headline price.
What the same path costs through a free competition
The arithmetic collapses, because the first term is zero. Fee × attempts = 0, however many attempts you need.
- Entry: free — MT5 demo, no deposit, no card.
- The prize: a €5,000 Crypto Fund Trader evaluation, bought for the winner. It costs the platform $58; it costs you nothing.
- Failing it: no reset fee, no repurchase, nothing owed.
- Trying again: a new contest opens every Monday.
Be clear about what does not change. The pass rates above still apply to the evaluation itself — winning a contest does not make CFT's two phases any easier, and most traders across this industry do not pass one. What disappears is the invoice attached to each attempt, not the difficulty. If you are looking for an easier evaluation, this is not it. If you are looking to stop paying for the ones you fail, it is exactly it.
Sources: FPFX Tech dataset and The Funded Trader figures as reported by Finance Magnates, checked 17 August 2026. Our own prize cost is the amount we are invoiced — see who pays for the prize.
Related: what happens after you win · the full FAQ