Most prop firm accounts don't fail from bad analysis. They fail from one oversized trade that breaches the daily loss limit. Pick your firm, plug in your trade, and see instantly whether you're sized safely.
Pick a prop firm above and fill in your trade
to see your lot size and drawdown headroom.
The daily drawdown limit is the maximum amount you're allowed to lose in a single trading day before your challenge or funded account is terminated. It's usually expressed as a percentage of your starting balance — most firms set it at 5% across their standard 2-step challenges, with some specialised programs (instant funding, scaling programs) running tighter rules. For a $100,000 account at 5%, that's $5,000 — and crucially, that's per day, not per trade.
The overall drawdown limit is the cumulative loss cap across the entire account lifetime. If your account drops more than this percentage below either your starting balance or your peak equity (depending on the firm), you're done. Most firms use 6–12%. This is the limit that catches traders who chip away at their account over weeks rather than blowing it in one trade.
The honest answer: less than you'd risk on a personal account. A common rule is to risk no more than 1/5th of your daily limit per trade — so on a 5% daily limit, that's 1% per trade. This gives you room for 4 losing trades in a row before the daily limit is in play. Risk 2% per trade and you can only afford 2 losses before you're against the limit.
Yes, almost always. Your drawdown is calculated on equity, which includes realised losses, unrealised losses on open positions, commissions, and overnight swap fees. Holding losing positions overnight is especially dangerous because the swap can quietly push you over the daily limit while you sleep.
Most major firms have converged on 5% daily / 10% overall as the standard 2-step challenge. The differentiation between firms now happens more on profit split, account sizing, payout cadence, and program structure than on drawdown rules. The5%ers' Hyper-Growth program is an exception that runs a tighter 6% overall to encourage disciplined scaling on smaller starter accounts. Always check the specific challenge tier you've bought — rules vary firm-to-firm AND program-to-program within the same firm.
You can, but the firms set a profit target too (usually 8–10% in Phase 1). Risking 0.5% per trade means you need around 16–20 net winning trades to hit a 10% profit target. That's mathematically possible but takes weeks and most firms also impose minimum trading-day requirements. Most successful challenges sit around 0.75–1.5% risk per trade with a positive expectancy strategy.
Yes — we publish a free open-source TradingView position size indicator that lets you drag entry and stop lines directly on the chart and read off the lot size live. Works for any account currency. Linked at the top of the homepage.