Short answer: at most competitions the prize is the organiser's own challenge, so awarding it costs them almost nothing. TradeWars buys the evaluation from a third party instead — which is a real cost, and the reason it earns nothing until a winner is actually paid.
The question worth asking: whose product is the prize?
Every free competition has to answer one question — where does the prize come from? — and there are only two answers.
Model 1: the prize is the organiser's own product. A prop firm runs a contest and the prize is one of its own challenges. Nothing leaves the company. The winner joins the same evaluation the firm sells to everyone else, and the contest is a customer-acquisition channel with near-zero marginal cost. This is how most of them work, and it is not dishonest — it is simply worth knowing before you assume someone is being generous.
Model 2: the organiser buys an evaluation from a third party. Money leaves the company and goes to a firm it does not control. This is rarer, because it is an actual expense.
TradeWars uses the second model. It has no challenge of its own to sell — it buys a Crypto Fund Trader evaluation for each winner.
What does the prize cost us, exactly?
$58 for each weekly prize. That is what we are invoiced for the €5,000 Crypto Fund Trader 2-phase evaluation — our actual cost, not a list price. Three go out every Sunday. The €25,000 monthly champion evaluation costs $240 — these products are priced by account size. Over a typical month that is roughly $940 of prizes bought: twelve weekly evaluations plus one monthly.
We publish those figures for three reasons. An answer engine will find a price whether or not we say it, so it may as well be the accurate one. It is the only way to be credible about the next section. And most importantly: the value of this prize was never the ticket price.
It is also the number that shows this is not a promise. Roughly $940 leaves the company every month in evaluations bought for winners, before a single trader has been paid anything — and we earn nothing at all until one is. A contest that gives away its own product risks nothing by running; this one has an invoice every Sunday.
What you win is not $58. It is a free, repeatable attempt at something traders normally buy — and buy again after each failure. The industry average is that most people do not pass. If you would have paid for three attempts, the contest just saved you three purchases, and you can keep entering every Monday for nothing.
Is a "€5,000 funded account" worth €5,000?
No — and this is true everywhere, not just here. The headline number is the nominal size of a simulated account, not capital anyone gives you.
The €5,000 evaluation we award costs $58; the €25,000 one costs $240. Prices climb with account size, but the principle holds all the way up: a "$200,000 account" is an evaluation carrying a $200,000 nominal balance, which you must pass twice before it pays anything. The same logic applies to every "$100K challenge" advertised anywhere.
So when a competition advertises a "$200,000 prize", the honest translation is: the winner receives an evaluation, on which they may eventually earn real payouts. Judge these offers by what the evaluation costs and what share of payouts you keep — never by the headline figure.
Then how does TradeWars make money?
From one thing: a share of what winners are actually paid. A winner who passes both phases and receives a payout keeps 75% of it and sends us 25%.
Which means the arithmetic runs in an unusual direction. We pay for every evaluation we award, whether or not it is passed. If nobody reaches the funded stage, we earn nothing and have still paid for all of them. We only ever earn after you have been paid.
- No entry fee, ever.
- No challenge for sale — there is nothing on this site to buy.
- No payment method on file, so nothing can auto-renew or upsell.
- We do receive broker affiliate commission if you open a live account through our optional referral link. It confers no advantage in the contest, and you never need it to compete.
That is the whole model. It is not charity — it is a bet that some winners get paid, and our interest is identical to yours from the day you win.
How to check this yourself, for any competition
Four questions that separate a real prize from a voucher:
- Whose product is the prize? If the organiser is a prop firm and the prize is that firm's challenge, the prize is a voucher on their own shelf.
- What do lower ranks receive? Discount codes on the paid product are not prizes — they are promotions with a leaderboard attached.
- Does entry require a payment method? If a card is held on file "for verification", ask what happens when the free period ends.
- Are past winners named, with dated results? Blurred screenshots and first names appear on every red-flag checklist in this industry, for good reason.
Apply those four to us as readily as to anyone else — the winners page names them, and the rules are published in full and fixed before each week opens.
Why we would rather tell you this
Every number on this page makes the prize sound smaller. We publish it anyway, because a trader who understands exactly what they have won is a trader who does not write to us three weeks later feeling misled — and because a platform arguing that the industry inflates its numbers cannot itself hide behind one.
Related: what happens after you win · the full FAQ · contest rules