Prop firms earn more from evaluation fees than from profit splits. The average buyer spends $600–800 across two or three attempts and withdraws nothing. And every payout screenshot on your feed arrives with a discount code attached — including mine. So here is the same purchase priced honestly, on real published numbers, with the parts that don’t favor me left in.
None of these are secrets. They are published industry figures. They simply never appear next to a payout screenshot.
Across 300,000+ funded accounts the average payout was about 4% of account size. And on this firm the profit target is only $2,000–$6,000 — so the realistic withdrawal is anchored there, not at $20,000.
You do not buy one eval, you buy evals until one passes. At a 35% pass rate that is 2.9 evals per funded account, and the failures are real money.
Only 45% of funded traders ever reach a single payout. The other 55% pass, get the account, and withdraw nothing. Marketing math skips this gate entirely.
Max drawdown is $1,000. Your real risk budget is $1,000, not $100,000, and you start on 5 micros. The six-figure number is a label, not capital. See §3.
Real published Traders Launch pricing, all twelve plans. Everything on this sheet recomputes when you change anything.
The only number that governs your risk is the max drawdown. Everything else is branding.
What the plan is called, and what the ad puts in the headline.
Max drawdown, locked at starting balance. — of the advertised figure. Lose this and the account is gone.
You must earn — your entire risk budget before you can withdraw, starting on —.
At the measured industry rates — 14% and 45% — that last row reads 94 out of 100. The widely cited figure is that roughly 7% of everyone who buys a challenge ever sees a payout.
Priced properly: the failed attempts are part of the cost of the pass.
| Line item | Per account | Stacked |
|---|
Same pass rate, same payout assumption, same discount — only the plan changes. Ranked by return on every dollar spent, which is the right metric when your constraint is budget rather than account slots. Your current selection is highlighted.
| # | Plan | Eval | Target | Drawdown | EV / account | Return on spend |
|---|
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Expected profit per funded account on your selected plan. Rows are your pass rate, columns are the share of funded traders who reach a payout. Green is profitable, red is not.
EV = (paid rate × your share of the withdrawal) − (eval fee ÷ pass rate) − funded-phase costs
Worked example, top-left cell at the default plan: the eval is — after your code, and your share of the withdrawal is —. At a 10% pass rate you buy 10 evals on average to get one pass, so a pass costs —. At a 20% paid rate the expected withdrawal is —. That is —.
The division is the whole point. Marketing multiplies the payout by your pass rate. The real cost of a pass divides the fee by it — which is why halving your pass rate doubles your cost per funded account instead of shaving a little off the odds.
Notice how flat the surface goes across the top rows. Past a certain pass rate you stop buying edge and start buying the payout gate — and that gate is the one you control least.
Five accounts on one copier is not diversification. It is the same single bet, written five times.
Chance you finish the cycle with nothing. One skill draw applied to every account at once. Stacking multiplied your stake, not your odds.
Chance of nothing if every account traded a truly uncorrelated strategy. Almost nobody achieves this, which is exactly why the left number is the honest one.
This is what separates the piece from every “prop firms are a scam” video: at a genuinely good pass rate the expected value here is positive. The advertising is not lying about the direction. It is lying about the magnitude and the certainty.
The gap between the advertised return and the expected return is —. Not a rounding difference — two orders of magnitude.
Expected value averages over outcomes you will never personally experience. The single most likely result is still zero. An average of $500 does not mean a typical result of $500.
Every figure here is dominated by your own pass rate, which no firm's marketing can tell you. The only honest estimate comes from your own logged results.
End on the breakeven pass rate, not on a verdict. Hand the viewer the threshold, tell them to go find out whether they clear it, and the piece becomes useful instead of merely cynical.
This page uses affiliate links. If you sign up to Traders Launch through the link below, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you — and code SALTI takes 30% off, which is the best rate I can offer.
That is what pays for this. Every tear sheet, model and tool here stays free, ad-free, and behind no paywall — no course at the end, nothing gated. Using the code costs you less than going direct and keeps the next one coming.
Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Nothing on this page is financial advice or a recommendation to buy an evaluation account. Figures are cross-industry averages and published plan terms, not a prediction of your results.
Ends Monday, September 7. Stacks on top of the 50% the firm already takes off the 55% plans, so the $100K NYC eval lands at $34.30/mo — the cheapest entry on the board, and the plan this model ranks first for return per dollar.