What getting funded actually costs
Every firm advertises the price of one evaluation. Almost nobody buys exactly one. This page adds up the rest, shows the arithmetic, and lists what it leaves out.
Why the headline price is not the cost
Every figure on this page was read from the firm's own site on . Every firm advertises the price of one evaluation. Nobody passes evaluations at a rate that makes one evaluation the expected purchase. The only firm on this site that publishes a pass rate, Take Profit Trader, puts it at 36.22% for calendar 2025, and adds that it recommends the test mainly to experienced traders.
At that rate the average trader buys about 2.76 evaluations to pass one. That single number moves the ranking more than any discount code does, because it multiplies a monthly subscription differently from a one-time fee.
Cost to an activated funded account, $50K
| Firm | If you pass first time | At 2.76 attempts | At 3 attempts | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apex Trader Funding | $24.90 | $68.75 | $74.70 | one-time, 30-day access |
| MyFundedFutures | $75.00 | $207.07 | $225.00 | one-time payment |
| Topstep | $198.00 | $284.28 | $296.00 | monthly subscription |
| Earn2Trade | $190.00 | $524.57 | $570.00 | monthly subscription |
| Take Profit Trader | not published | not published | not published | monthly subscription |
Sorted by the middle column.
The method, and what it deliberately ignores
The arithmetic is intentionally simple so you can redo it with your own assumptions:
- Take the evaluation price actually charged on September 21, 2026, which means the promotional price where one was running.
- Multiply by the number of attempts. One month of subscription per attempt for the monthly firms, one purchase per attempt for the one-time firms.
- Add the activation fee once, where the firm publishes one.
What it ignores, all of which push the real number up rather than down:
- Time. A monthly firm bills again every month you have not passed. The model charges one month per attempt, which flatters monthly firms against anyone who takes two or three months.
- Market data and platform fees. Some firms include a platform, some pass exchange data fees through. None of that is in the table.
- Resets. A reset is usually cheaper than a new evaluation, so a trader who resets rather than rebuys pays less than shown.
- Your own pass rate. One firm's published rate is applied to all five because no other firm publishes one. It is an illustration of magnitude, not a prediction about any firm or any person.
What the shape of the answer tells you
Two things fall out of the table that no single firm's pricing page can show you.
Billing model matters more than price at low attempt counts and less at high ones. A one-time fee scales linearly with attempts. A monthly subscription scales with attempts and with how long each attempt takes, so the cheap monthly option gets expensive precisely for the traders most likely to need several tries.
Activation fees compress the spread. A fixed activation fee is paid once regardless of how many evaluations you bought, so it weighs heaviest on the firms with the cheapest evaluations. It is the reason the ranking by headline price is not the ranking by all-in cost.
FAQ
- What does a futures prop firm evaluation really cost?
- More than the headline price, because most people do not pass first time. Applying the only published pass rate in the industry, 36.22%, gives about 2.76 evaluations per pass, plus any activation fee. The table on this page works that through for each firm.
- Is the cheapest evaluation the cheapest firm?
- Not reliably. A fixed activation fee is paid once no matter how many evaluations you buy, so it weighs heaviest on firms with the cheapest evaluations, and a monthly subscription costs more the longer you take. Both effects reorder the table.
- Are prop firm discount codes real discounts?
- The promotional price is effectively the standing price at several firms. On the day this page was checked, four of the five firms had a discount running, one of them behind a countdown timer of about a day and a half. Treat list price as an anchor.
More prop firm pages
This page compares published terms. It is not advice, not a ranking, and not a recommendation. Prop firm evaluations are a paid product with a low published pass rate. Some links on this page are affiliate links, marked as sponsored. They never change which firms appear, what the tables say, or the order of anything. No firm has paid for placement or reviewed this page. Figures verified September 21, 2026; prop firm pricing is promotional and moves constantly, so treat any price older than a few weeks as stale and check the firm before buying. Methodology.