Am I profitable with prop firms?
Most prop traders cannot answer this. Not because the math is hard, but because they never add it up. Here is how to actually know, with a free calculator to find your real number.
Why you probably do not know
You do not buy a prop firm account once. You buy an evaluation. Then a reset after a bad day. Then another firm because someone said it pays faster. Then a few more resets. Each one is $50 to $200, small enough to forget by the weekend. Spread that across a few firms and a year or two, and the spending becomes invisible. The payouts, on the other hand, you remember vividly, because a payout is a good day and the steady drip of evals is not.
So when someone asks if you are up or down, you answer from memory, and memory is biased toward the wins. The only way to know is to total it.
The only math that matters
Your real net is one subtraction. Everything every firm has paid you, minus everything you have paid every firm. That is it. Break the costs into three buckets so you do not miss any:
- Evaluations. Every challenge or combine you have bought, on every firm.
- Resets. Every reset and retry you have paid for after a fail.
- Fees. Activation fees, data fees, platform fees, monthly subscriptions.
Then one income bucket: payouts. Every withdrawal and profit split a firm has actually sent you. Do this per firm, then add the firms together. The combined number is the truth.
Find your number now
Put your totals in below. It updates as you type, and nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
Enter what each firm has cost you and paid you. The total updates as you type.
This runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere or saved.
What your number is telling you
If your return per dollar is under 1.0, the firms have taken more than they have given you so far. That is not a verdict on you as a trader. It is a fact about your account history, and it is fixable. Watch for one firm hiding behind another, a green account that makes you feel fine while a red one quietly drains the total. The worst firm is the one to question before you buy your next eval there.
What to do with it
The point of knowing is not to feel bad. It is to make the next decision with real information.
- Know your number before you buy the next evaluation, not after.
- Cut the firm that only drains. If a firm has taken hundreds and paid nothing across many tries, that is data.
- Do not quit on one red month. Quit a firm on a red year. The month is noise, the year is the signal.
Tracking it once is useful. Tracking it as you go is better, because the number stays honest and you never have to reconstruct it from memory again.
Keep the number, do not just check it once.
Tradacy logs every eval, reset, fee, and payout in about ten seconds each and keeps your real net updated across every firm. Free for one firm.
Do most prop traders actually lose money? +
Plenty of traders are net negative once you count every eval and reset, because the small fees add up faster than the payouts. But the only number that matters is yours. Total it and you will know, instead of guessing.
Should I count monthly subscription fees? +
Yes. If a firm charges a monthly fee for the evaluation or the data, that is money out, so it belongs in the spent column. Leaving it out is the most common way people flatter their own number.
What counts as a payout? +
Only money a firm has actually sent you. A profit balance you have not withdrawn is not a payout yet. Count what hit your account.