Free tool
Challenge ROI Calculator
Treat a challenge purchase like the bet it is. Enter the price, the account size, and your honest assumptions to see the expected value and the pass rate you need to break even.
Result
How challenge ROI works
A prop firm challenge is a paid audition: you risk the fee for a chance at trading the firm’s capital. Whether that trade-off makes sense comes down to three numbers: the price, your realistic probability of passing, and what the funded account actually pays you per month (account size × average monthly return × your profit split).
The expected value multiplies your pass rate by the payout you’d collect over your assumed funded horizon, then subtracts the fee. The break-even pass rate flips the equation around: it’s the probability of passing at which the attempt exactly pays for itself. If that number is far above realistic industry pass rates (often well under 20%), the challenge is priced against you. This model deliberately keeps things simple: it ignores fee refunds, reset discounts, and the risk of blowing the funded account early, so treat the result as an upper bound on how attractive an attempt really is.
Frequently asked questions
What is a realistic pass rate to assume?
Published and leaked figures across the industry generally put pass rates below 20%, and first-attempt rates lower still. If you have no track record on the firm’s exact rules, assuming 10–15% is more honest than assuming you’re the exception.
Why is cost per $1K of buying power useful?
It normalizes prices across account sizes and firms. A $499 fee on a $100K account is $4.99 per $1K; a $199 fee on a $25K account is $7.96 per $1K, so the “cheaper” challenge is actually the more expensive capital.
Does the calculator account for fee refunds?
No, deliberately. Refunds usually arrive only with your first payout, which already requires passing and trading profitably. Leaving them out keeps the expected value conservative; if your firm refunds fees, your true EV is slightly better than shown.