The Real Prop Firm Pass Rates: The Latest 2026 Data, Calculated From Our Database

⚠️ ATFunded announced a pause of operations on June 8, 2026 (new challenge purchases are unavailable). Any mention of ATFunded in this article is a record of its rules before the pause. For the background and how refunds/payouts were handled, see the summary article.

📢 Advertising / affiliate disclosure: This article contains prop-memo.com affiliate links (marked 🎁: Fintokei / Funded7). Anyone who purchases a challenge through one of these links receives unlimited access to Hosono P's semi-discretionary EA, "ELDRA," as a gift. See Hosono P's note article for details.

Note: Prop firm rules change frequently. Always verify the latest accurate rules on each firm's official site. (Last updated: April 23, 2026)

Is "FTMO's 5% pass rate" actually true?

You'll often see figures like "FTMO is under 5%," "Fintokei is 5-7% too" quoted online for prop firm pass rates. These come from FTMO's own statements and user reports, but the number means something completely different depending on whether it's the Phase 1 pass rate alone, the rate of reaching a funded account, or the actual rate of reaching a payout.

A 2026 industry survey of 360 users produced the following results:

In other words, talking about a "pass rate" is meaningless unless you break it into four stages: "first attempt," "cumulative," "reaching funded status," and "reaching a payout."

Real pass rates from the prop-memo.com database

This site anonymously aggregates the challenge progress and outcomes real users have logged (partially published at /stats). Pulling pass rates by phase for the major firms out of the database shows the following pattern:

*Note: Because the exact percentages' reliability shifts with how many entries are logged, always check the latest figures at /stats. The relative ranking is generally as shown above.

Breaking down the drop-off rate by phase

To understand pass rates correctly, it helps to break the challenge into 5 stages:

Purchase → Pass Phase 1 → Pass Phase 2 → Reach funded → First payout → Ongoing payouts

A typical 2-phase plan's "drop-off rate" looks like this:

Multiplying these together, the overall pass rate from purchase to ongoing payouts comes to 5-15%, which lines up closely with the industry survey's 10.6%.

Characteristics by number of steps

• 1-phase (including Instant): only one gate to clear, and the profit target tends to be lower (e.g., Fintokei's SwiftTrader at +6%). The pass rate is higher (30-50%), but funded-account rules tend to be strict. Note that Fintokei's SwiftTrader was tightened in a 2026 revision — total max loss is now -3% with a 60-day time limit — so even with a lower target, the real-world pass rate gets offset by the tighter DD
• 2-phase: the most common model. Total pass rate 20-35%
• 3-phase: Fintokei's entry-level plan and the StartTrader family. Each step's target is lower (2%/3%/6%), so each individual step is easier to clear, but there are more points where you can drop off

The trick behind firms that "look like they have a high pass rate"

Be careful of firms that get called "high pass rate" online.

Trick 1: Instant-type accounts don't have a challenge to begin with

Instant Funding (immediately funded) accounts have "no evaluation," so the concept of a pass rate doesn't even apply. In exchange, they're normally priced higher, with a lower profit cap and a tighter DD. These should be excluded from any apples-to-apples pass-rate comparison.

Trick 2: Publishing only the Phase 1 pass rate

Some firms advertise "70% Phase 1 pass rate!" — but that's the Phase 1 pass rate alone, not the rate of reaching a payout. The metric that actually matters is "the share of users who reached their first payout."

Trick 3: Inflating the "cumulative pass rate" with reset discounts

Firms claiming "80% of users pass eventually!" sometimes assume repeated purchases at a reset discount. Fail on attempt 1 → buy attempt 2 at a discount → succeed and count it as a "pass." You should judge this by the cumulative cost per user, not just the final result.

5 practical techniques to raise your first-attempt pass rate

Drawing on industry surveys plus prop-memo.com user trends, here are concrete tactics that can double your first-attempt pass rate.

1. Cut your usual lot sizing in half

Most beginners breach the DD by taking too much risk. The trap is that the more experience someone has trading FX with their own money, the more likely they are to get careless and blow it. Stick to half the lot size you'd normally use trading your own capital — in other words, 0.5-1% risk per trade.

2. Treat the first week as a "practice period" and don't push

Chasing the Phase 1 target on day one is the worst move you can make. Treat the first 5 trading days as a period to get a feel for your entries as if it were a demo account. Passing a week later at your own pace beats rushing and losing — it's better overall.

3. Turn the time limit to your advantage

On firms with a time limit (like FTMO), the classic drop-off pattern is "panicking near the deadline and taking a big loss." Pacing yourself to hit 70% of the target in the first 50% of the time leaves you room to breathe in the second half.

4. Stay flat on NFP and FOMC days

At firms with news-trading restrictions — FTMO, ATFunded, E8 Markets — even having a scalp limit order get filled can trigger a breach. Staying completely flat on major-indicator days is almost always the right call. See the scalping/news rules comparison for detail.

5. Understand the DD type before you buy

Confusing trailing DD vs. static DD can be fatal. For example, some plans (like FTMO Standard) start out static but behave differently once you're in profit. See drawdown explained completely for detail.

Choosing the right firm for you, by the numbers

Obsessing over the pass rate alone won't help if you end up choosing a firm whose rules don't suit you. Here's the template order to work through:

1. Check whether your style fits the rules: use the MT5-supported, martingale-OK, news-OK, and scalping-OK filters at /compare
2. Sanity-check account size vs. price: some firms charge 2x for the same account size
3. Verify the payout track record: check real user payout data at /stats
4. Rank by pass-rate data: refer to this article's database figures

Related prop-memo.com tools

• 🔍 Compare plans — filter 18 firms by difficulty and value
• 📊 Stats and payout track record — pass rates and payout data by firm, calculated from the real user database
• 🤖 EA Tracker (MT4/MT5) — automatically logs phase progress
• 💰 P&L dashboard — visualize progress across your challenge accounts

Pass rates are something to compare in numbers, but in the end, the only traders who actually pass are the ones with the patience to follow the rules. Don't rush — treat every single trade with care.