Short answer: free demo account → free weekly contest → the evaluation is bought for you if you finish top 3 → pass its two phases → real payouts. No step in that chain costs you anything, and you can restart the first three every Monday.
The whole path, with what each step costs
| Step | What happens | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Open a free Axi MT5 demo account — virtual money, no deposit, no card | €0 |
| 2 | Link it to TradeWars with its read-only investor password | €0 |
| 3 | Trade the contest week, Monday to Sunday. Ranked on return %, so account size gives no edge | €0 |
| 4 | Finish top 3 → we buy you a €5,000 CFT evaluation (it costs us $58) | €0 |
| 5 | Pass phase 1: 8% profit target, no time limit | €0 |
| 6 | Pass phase 2: 5% target on a fresh account, no time limit | €0 |
| 7 | Funded. Payouts are real; you keep 75% of each one | you are paid |
That column is the whole point of this page. Every other guide with this title reaches step 4 and puts a price there — usually a few hundred dollars, and again after each failure. Ours is an invoice we pay, not one we send.
"Free" and "no evaluation" are not the same thing
Most of the disappointment in this market comes from conflating two different words. It is worth four boxes:
- Paid, with evaluation — the standard prop firm challenge. You pay, you prove yourself, you pay again if you fail.
- Paid, no evaluation — "instant funding". Skips the test, keeps the bill, usually with tighter drawdown limits or a worse split.
- Free, no evaluation — essentially does not exist. Anyone offering it is selling something else.
- Free, with evaluation — where this contest sits. You pay nothing and you still have to pass.
We would rather occupy the last box than pretend to the third. The evaluation is a feature, not a catch: it is what makes the funded stage mean anything, and it is why a firm is willing to pay you at the end of it. What we remove is the bill, not the test.
What you need instead of money
Time first. A contest week runs Monday to Sunday and you can join at any moment — your starting point is your equity when you connect. The evaluation that follows has no time limit at all. Nothing expires, so nothing forces you to trade.
Then risk discipline, which matters more than strategy here. On a €5,000 CFT evaluation the daily loss limit is €250 — and the phase 2 profit target is also €250. One bad day costs precisely what you need to make in total. Traders lose these accounts to a single oversized session far more often than to a bad method.
The honest odds at each step
We would rather you knew these before your first week than after your first loss.
- Winning a contest week — you need to finish in the top 3 of the field. It is a genuine competition, not a formality. It is also repeatable every Monday at no cost.
- Passing the evaluation — industry pass rates run between 5% and 14%.
- Reaching a payout — rarer still: about 7% of prop accounts ever do, and payouts average around 4% of account size.
The sourced numbers are here. They are not encouraging, and they are the same numbers whether you paid for your attempt or won it. The difference is what a failure costs you: on the paid route, another few hundred dollars. Here, nothing — a new contest opens on Monday.
Can a complete beginner do this?
Not quickly, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. But a beginner can do something on this route that is impossible on the paid one: practise indefinitely on a free demo, and fail without paying for it.
The sensible order is to trade the weekly contest for a while with no expectation of winning, using it as a deadline-driven way to build the habits an evaluation will test — position sizing, surviving a bad day, not chasing. The prize takes care of itself once those are in place.
Start with this week's contest →
Related: the real cost of getting funded · what happens after you win · is this legit?