Prop-firm simulator

After a backtest, open the Prop-firm panel and press Simulate beside a firm, or ask in the chat (for example “could this pass an FTMO challenge?”). The simulator groups the strategy’s trades into trading days, then replays thousands of resampled sequences of those days through the evaluation’s rules. Days are drawn in blocks averaging 5 trading days, so winning and losing streaks survive the resampling. Each phase of each sequence runs for up to 252 trading days, or for the firm’s own time limit when it publishes one, and either passes, breaches a rule, or, on a firm with no time limit, is left inconclusive. The inconclusive share is reported beside the pass rate.

Where the backtest has bar-level equity, the account is marked to market while a position is open, so an open trade can breach the daily loss or drawdown limit the way it would at the firm. The result says what the account was marked against.

A firm’s time limit is counted in calendar days, and so is the simulator’s: a weekday on which the strategy does not trade still uses one up, and weekends are skipped, so a 30-day limit is 21 weekday sessions. Each firm’s trading day ends at the time that firm publishes, not at midnight; the table under Where the rules come from lists each one. Where we have not recorded a firm’s day (the table marks it “Midnight UTC (not recorded)”), the simulator cuts the day at midnight UTC and the result says so. That is a gap in our records, not a statement that the firm publishes none.

Compare firms in the Prop-firm panel, or Compare other firms under a result, simulates every firm in the catalogue that offers the strategy’s market or a close substitute, one evaluation each, and ranks them side by side. The top row is badged “Highest simulated value”: the highest simulated expected value among firms whose every rule is enforced and verified — a simulation result, not a recommendation. A firm whose rules include one the simulator cannot enforce for this strategy is shown, and never carries that badge.

Profit target

Profit you must reach to pass the challenge phase.

Daily loss limit

Most you can lose in a single day before the account is failed — usually the easiest rule to trip.

Max drawdown limit

Total loss-from-peak the account allows. Trailing versions move the floor up as you profit, so they're stricter.

Static max drawdown

The loss limit is a fixed line below your starting balance. It stays where it is however much you make: a 10% static limit on a 100,000 account puts the floor at 90,000. Firms differ on whether they test your balance or your equity (balance plus open profit and loss); this simulation tests equity through the day, at each mark taken from the backtest’s bar-level equity, and at trade closes on days without it.

Trailing max drawdown (end of day)

The loss limit follows your best end-of-day balance upward. As you profit, the floor rises with you, so giving back gains can breach it. It is checked on each day’s closing balance, not on every price move, and in this simulation it stops rising once it reaches your starting balance.

Trailing max drawdown (intraday)

Like the end-of-day version, but the floor follows the highest balance reached at any moment of the day, open profit included, so a spike you never closed can raise it.

Minimum trading days

Fewest days you must trade before you're allowed to pass — it stops one lucky day from clearing the challenge.

Consistency rule

Caps how much of your profit can come from a single day, forcing steady gains instead of one spike.

Phases

Number of evaluation stages (e.g. 1-step vs 2-step) before the account becomes funded.

Profit split

Your share of profits once funded. An 80% split means you keep $80 of every $100 earned.

Evaluation fee

Upfront cost to start the challenge. Often refunded with your first payout — but only if you pass.

Per-trade risk

How big each trade is when your strategy’s trades are replayed against the firm’s rules. 1× is the size the backtest used; 2× doubles every gain and every loss, 0.5× halves them. A bigger size reaches the profit target sooner and breaches the loss limits sooner.

Drawdown is modelled the three ways firms define it: a fixed floor, a floor that trails the end-of-day high and locks once it reaches the starting balance, and a floor that trails the intraday high. A firm that publishes no daily loss limit is simulated without one, and a consistency rule that applies only to the funded account is not applied to the evaluation. Fees are charged the way the firm charges them: once, or monthly, plus any activation fee on passing.

Pass probability

Share of the simulated attempts of this strategy that clear the challenge and reach a funded account.

Median days to pass

Typical number of trading days to clear the challenge — half pass faster, half slower.

Expected attempts

In the simulation, the average number of paid attempts before one passes. Fees add up across retries.

Expected fees

In the simulation, the average total of challenge fees paid across attempts up to the first pass, retries included.

EV of one attempt

Expected value of attempting the challenge once: average payout minus fees. Positive means the simulated payouts exceed the fees; negative means the fees exceed them.

Expected payout if funded

Average payout of one funded cycle, projected on its own funded paths: what a funded account would pay. It does not depend on how many simulated attempts passed, so it is never a payout an attempt earned — the EV of one attempt is that.

Funded survival

In the simulation, the share of funded paths that get past the first payout cycle without breaching the account's rules.

Payout — 5th percentile

A pessimistic outcome: only 5% of funded cycles pay less than this.

Payout — median

The middle funded payout — half of cycles pay more, half pay less.

Payout — 95th percentile

An optimistic outcome: only 5% of funded cycles pay more than this.

Percent with no payout

In the simulation, the share of funded cycles that end with $0 paid because a rule was breached before a payout was earned.

Why paths failed

The rule that ended the most simulated attempts.

Challenge equity paths

Each line is one simulated attempt at the challenge, tinted by whether it passed or breached.

The catalogue holds 42 evaluations at 12 firms. Each one’s rules were read from the firm’s own published pages on the date shown. A firm whose rules could not be confirmed, or which no longer sells the evaluation, is refused rather than simulated: rules looser than the real ones would make a challenge look easier to pass than it is.

Rules checked is when we last read the firm’s published rules (targets, loss limits, fees). The Markets checked date further down is a separate check of which instruments the firm lets you trade, so the two dates differ.

Before simulating, the product checks what the firm lets you trade against the strategy’s market:

Offered

The firm lists this instrument. It is simulated.

Stand-in

The firm lists a close substitute, not this instrument: the US500 index CFD for an S&P 500 ETF, a micro contract for a full-size one, a currency future for a spot pair. It is simulated, and the result says plainly that it is a stand-in whose prices, costs and hours differ.

Not offered

The firm offers neither the instrument nor anything close, or blocks it for now. Nothing is simulated, and the reply names the firms in the catalogue that do offer it.

Unknown

The firm’s own pages do not say. It is simulated, with a note to confirm with the firm before buying.

While CME futures are paused, every strategy here trades stocks, ETFs, crypto or FX. A stock or ETF strategy can go only to a CFD firm that lists a matching CFD, and runs against it as a stand-in. A crypto or FX strategy can also go to a futures firm that lists the matching CME contract, again as a stand-in.

Where a firm does not allow automated trading in its evaluation, the result says so: taking the strategy there means placing every trade by hand.

If your firm or plan is not in the catalogue, give its rules yourself: in the Prop-firm panel, press Define a firm under Your own firm, fill in its rules and press Simulate, or state them in the chat. An account size, a profit target and a maximum drawdown are required; the rest is optional. The rules are yours, so the result is always labelled Custom and never presented as a firm we checked.

Prop-firm pass check in the Tools menu takes them too: write custom, then each rule as key=value, with these keys: name, base, size, target, daily, maxdd, dd, fundeddd, mindays, profitabledays, consistency, fee, monthlyfee, feemodel, activation, split, phase2, timelimit, weekend, buffer, payoutcap, cadence, refundable.

• The price path inside a bar, and the firm’s own fills, slippage and latency.
• Days without bar-level data are evaluated at trade closes only, so an open losing position on those days cannot breach a limit. The result says what share of days that was.
• A firm’s news-window, position-limit and close-by rules are applied where its own pages state the rule and what breaking it costs: where the firm fails the account, a simulated path that draws such a day fails; where it voids the profit, the profit is removed; where its platform refuses the order, the trade is dropped. Where the firm closes the position itself, or states no consequence, the result counts the trades that break the rule and lists it as not simulated. News windows are checked against the official FOMC, CPI and payrolls release dates (federalreserve.gov, bls.gov); other releases on a firm’s list are not checked, and daily bars, which carry no time of day, cannot be placed against a minute window.
• A rule against holding positions over the weekend with no recorded consequence is flagged, not enforced. When the strategy holds over a weekend, the result says the pass probability is optimistic.
• With fewer than 10 real trading days in the backtest, no pass probability is given: there is too little to resample.
• Firms change their rules. The dates above are when each firm’s rules, and separately its markets, were last checked.

A model of the firm’s published rules, not a prediction or a guarantee. QuantWright is not affiliated with any firm; check its current rules before you buy an evaluation.