Prop firm drawdown calculator

The number that decides the evaluation

At 1% risk against a 5% daily limit, five consecutive losses fail the day. A system winning 40% of its trades produces five consecutive losses regularly rather than rarely — so that configuration is not a risk of failure, it is a schedule for it.

Halving risk to 0.5% doubles the tolerance to ten, which is outside ordinary variance for most strategies. This is why the correct sequence is to derive risk per trade from the firm's tightest constraint rather than starting from a retail default.

Set your own limit below theirs

If the firm fails you at 5% and your bot stops at 5%, the trade that reaches the threshold will slip past it and the account is gone. Stopping at around 3% leaves room for that slippage and for any floating loss on positions still open.

This is the specific mechanism behind most surprise breaches — see prop firm account failed.

Two rules this calculator cannot model for you

If the firm counts floating losses toward the daily limit, an open position at an unrealised loss can breach it without any trade closing. And if the drawdown is trailing rather than static, your failure threshold follows your equity high upward and never comes back down.

Both make the real tolerance lower than the figures shown here. Read the specific firm's terms before paying the evaluation fee — prop firm rules explained covers what each rule actually measures.