Prop firm risk calculator

Prop firm risk calculator that turns your stop distance into the contract count surviving both walls: the daily loss limit and the drawdown floor. Load your firm's preset, or enter your own rules, stop and risk per trade.

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Your account

Firm

Account size

Your trade

Contract

Stop distance

ticks

Risk / trade

Reads the firm’s real drawdown and daily loss limit.

Position size

See this risk size play out across 5,000 accountsProp firm challenge calculator →

contracts at your stop distance.

That is this much of your drawdown

--%

Risk per trade: --
Of the account: --
Losses to daily limit: --
Losses to the floor: --

What each risk level does to your odds

The same challenge, re-run across a ladder of risk-per-trade levels. Risk moves the pass rate in both directions — too little and the clock ends the account before the target does, too much and the drawdown does.

Prop firm risk is measured against your drawdown allowance, not your balance

The 1% rule comes from retail broking, where the money at risk is your balance. At a prop firm it is not.

A $50,000 evaluation usually allows $2,000 to $2,500 of total loss before the account is dead, so 1% of the balance ($500) is a quarter of everything you have.

Four losing trades in a row is an ordinary week for a profitable trader. That is why the calculator reports your risk as a share of the drawdown allowance rather than of the account.

Prop firm position size works backwards
from the daily loss limit

Most evaluations end on the daily loss limit, not the drawdown floor, because the daily limit can be reached in one session while the account is otherwise healthy.

Decide how many losing trades a bad day is allowed to contain (three is a reasonable floor) and divide the daily limit by that number. That is your maximum risk per trade, and everything else follows from it.

Which makes the limit itself worth shopping. On a $50,000 account Topstep allows $1,000 a day, while The5ers and FTMO's 2-Step both allow $2,500. Split three ways that is $333 of risk per trade against $833 — the same strategy sized two and a half times larger, at the same nominal account size.

Firms without a daily loss limit are not safer. Apex Trader Funding has none, which means nothing stops a bad session from reaching the drawdown floor in a single afternoon.

Position size comes from your stop distance,
not your account size

Position size is your dollar risk divided by what one contract loses at your stop: the stop in ticks multiplied by that contract's tick value.

A 40-tick stop on NQ costs $200 per contract, while the same budget on MNQ, at fifty cents a tick, buys ten.

When the calculator returns zero contracts, one contract already risks more than you allowed. Widen the risk, tighten the stop, or trade the micro.

Related calculators

Risk per trade is the single input that moves a challenge most in both directions — too much and the drawdown ends it, too little and the clock does. See it play out across 5,000 accounts in the prop firm challenge calculator, and how wide the run-to-run spread gets in the variance calculator. On futures the size comes from the futures tick value calculator, and the edge behind it from the trading expectancy calculator.

Prop Firm Challenge Calculator

Monte Carlo simulation of your real odds of passing, respecting drawdown, daily loss and the time limit. Not just profit factor.

Prop Firm Variance Calculator

Same edge, 1,000 accounts. See how many pass, how many breach on a bad streak first, and how deep the drawdown gets in between.

Trading Expectancy Calculator

Do you have an edge? Turns your win rate and average win/loss into expected value per trade, in R and dollars.

Common prop firm risk questions

How much should I risk per trade at a prop firm?

Size so that a normal losing streak cannot end the account. Six to ten full-stop losses inside the drawdown allowance, and at least three inside the daily loss limit, is the range that survives ordinary variance. On most evaluation accounts that lands between 0.25% and 0.5% of the account — well under the 1% retail advice, because the drawdown allowance is far smaller than the balance suggests.

Is the 1% rule wrong for prop firm accounts?

It is measured against the wrong number. One percent of a $50,000 account is $500, and a $50,000 evaluation typically allows $2,000 to $2,500 of total drawdown, so 1% is a fifth to a quarter of everything you are allowed to lose. Four or five losses in a row is a normal week and it would end that account.

How many contracts can I trade on a $50,000 prop account?

It depends on your stop distance, not on the account size. The calculator divides your dollar risk by the stop distance in ticks multiplied by the tick value of the contract, then rounds down to a whole contract. A 40-tick stop on NQ risks $200 per contract, so a $200 risk budget is exactly one contract — and a $200 budget on MNQ, at $0.50 a tick, is ten.

Does the daily loss limit or the drawdown floor matter more?

The daily loss limit ends more evaluations, because it can be hit in one bad session while the account is otherwise healthy. The drawdown floor ends the account permanently. Size against the daily limit first — if three losses fit inside it, the floor usually takes care of itself.