Prop Firm Startup Cost Calculator
Model what it actually costs to run a prop firm at your size, down to the cost of a single account and the number of challenges that puts you in profit.
What you sell
Holding 25 accounts at a 3-month lifetime means selling 8.3 challenges a month, of which 0.8 reach funded.
What it costs to run
Usage is the Fxward bill, priced on accounts in use. Software covers supporting and maintaining the trader portal. Broker starts at zero because Fxward connects to the brokers you already have, and there is no setup fee.
Account usage is the Fxward bill, priced on accounts in use rather than as a flat plan fee. Overwrite any line to model a different quote.
Cost per account
ProfitableTo run 25 accounts, every month
$25
$625 per month in total, $7,497 across year one.
Account usage is 20% of your monthly running cost.
What Fxward charges at this size
Every other plan in this category starts at 500 accounts.
A firm running 25 accounts either pays for 500 it will never use, or builds its own. Fxward is the only plan sized for the firm you are actually opening.
Growth
$4.99 per account per month. 3 brokers, MT5 and MT4.
$125/mo
$1,497 yr 1
25 × $4.99 = $125
On annual billing that rate is $3.99 per account, so $100/mo and $1,197 across year one.
You pay for accounts in use, so the $499 headline price for this plan is the most you could pay, at its full 100 accounts.
You pay for accounts in use, never for idle capacity.
No setup fee.
No revenue share, ever.
The monthly fee is the whole bill. What you model above is what you pay.
Monthly picture
Breakeven challenges / mo
6
Your book sells 8.3.
Setup payback
None
Nothing to pay back. Fxward charges no setup fee.
The formula
Challenges per month = live accounts ÷ average account lifetime
Cost per account = (software + broker + everything else) ÷ live accounts
An account base only holds its size if it is refilled as accounts close out, so the number of accounts you run and how long they last is the same thing as your sales volume. That is why the account count drives revenue here rather than sitting beside it.
On the cost side: a firm paying $1,000 per month for a 500-account plan while running 25 accounts pays $40 per account. The same plan at 500 accounts costs $2. The sticker price did not change. The firm is just subscale for the plan it bought.
How to use this calculator
Start with your account count. It drives both sides of the model: what any vendor will quote you, and how many challenges a book that size has to sell to stay that size. Set the average account lifetime and the calculator derives your monthly challenge volume from those two numbers, so there is no sales figure to enter separately.
Then fill in what you spend. Replace the software line with any quote you are weighing, or snap it to the Fxward plan for your size in one click.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere.
The 500-account floor
Most of this category does not publish pricing at all. Of the plans that are published, every one of them starts at 500 accounts. That is the real reason new operators conclude prop firm software is unaffordable: they are quoted a plan sized for a firm twenty times larger than the one they are opening.
The damage shows up as cost per account. A 500-account plan at $1,000 per month is $2 per account at the size it was built for. Run 25 accounts on it and the same plan costs $40 per account. Nothing about the software changed. The packaging did.
Fxward avoids the problem by not selling capacity at all. Billing is per account in use: $6.90 per account up to 10 accounts, $4.99 from 11 to 100, and $3.40 from 101 to 500. A 25-account firm pays about $125 a month and a 256-account firm about $870, because the bill is the rate times the accounts, not a plan you grow into.
The $69, $499, and $1,699 figures on the pricing page are each rate at its band ceiling, so they are the most a firm in that band can pay rather than an entry price. Above 500 accounts the rate is agreed directly, and the wider market becomes genuinely competitive, so get quotes and compare on the all-in first-year number rather than the monthly one.
Why three cost lines start at zero
Account usage is the Fxward bill, priced per account in use. Software covers supporting and maintaining a trader portal. The other three lines start at zero, because on Fxward they genuinely are.
Broker and liquidity
Fxward connects to the brokers you already use rather than requiring its own. Keep your broker, keep your terms, add no new line to the budget.
Setup
No setup fee, no onboarding fee, no implementation charge. You are live in under a week without a five-figure invoice first.
Overage and revenue share
Neither exists. There is no capacity allowance to exceed, because the bill is the per-account rate times the accounts you run. Growing from 10 accounts to 100 raises it in proportion rather than tripping a penalty, and no percentage of your challenge sales is taken at any point.
Add your own broker fees, staff, and launch spend on top to model your full picture. What the calculator will not do is add costs that exist only because of the software you chose.
Where the hidden costs sit
A monthly sticker price is rarely the whole bill in this category. The three charges that move a budget most are a one-time setup or onboarding fee, an overage charge for every account above your plan limit, and a revenue share that takes a percentage of every challenge you sell for as long as you are a customer.
Separate that overage charge from usage billing before you compare anything. They look the same on a price list and behave nothing alike. Usage billing means the per-account rate is the entire price, so a quiet month costs less. An overage charge means paying a flat fee for capacity and then paying again for exceeding it, so it only ever adds.
A revenue share is the one worth modelling most carefully, because it is the only cost on the list that grows exactly as fast as your success does. Ask any vendor for the all-in first-year figure at your expected volume, not the headline monthly rate.
Fxward has no setup fee and no revenue share, and bills on accounts in use rather than selling capacity, so there is no overage to trip over either. The number you model above is the number you pay.
Why pass rate breaks more models than cost does
Operators tend to model costs carefully and pass rate carelessly. That is backwards. Every challenge you sell is one-time revenue. Every challenge that passes becomes an ongoing payout liability. Move pass rate from 8 percent to 15 percent in the calculator above and watch the net line, which usually moves further than any cost input you can control.
This is also why rule enforcement has to be consistent and automatic. A rule that is enforced late, or judged differently on two similar accounts, does not just cost you a dispute. It moves the one input your entire model is most sensitive to.
Costs new operators forget
Payment processing fees, which take a percentage of every challenge sold.
Chargebacks and refunds on challenges, which arrive after you have paid the platform fee.
Broker fees that scale with account count, not with a flat plan.
Extra platform integrations, which are often billed per platform rather than included.
Support time, which is a real staffing cost long before it is a hiring decision.
The cost of manual evaluation: hours per day, and the disputes that follow inconsistent calls.
Planning the rest of the launch
Cost is one input. Legal structure, broker selection, challenge rule design, and finding your first traders all sit around it. Our guide to how to start a prop firm walks through the full sequence, including the rule decisions that drive the pass rate this calculator is most sensitive to.