Prop Firm Rule Decoder

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Prop firm rule decoder

Three firms can all advertise a “$2,000 drawdown” and mean three different things by it. This works out where your liquidation line actually sits today, what an hour of open profit costs you under a trailing rule, and what a consistency rule is really asking of you.

No firm names, no rankings, no referral links. We take no fee from any prop firm, which is exactly why we can't tell you which to use. Put your own firm's published numbers in — and check them against your firm's current rules, because firms change them.

Your account

Starting account size ($)

Drawdown type Your firm's rules page will say which

Max drawdown ($)

Highest equity reached ($) Intraday: your highest ever balance including open profit. End of day: your highest closing balance.

Current equity ($)

Does trailing stop at the starting balance? Many firms freeze the line once it reaches your start

Limits, targets and consistency

Daily loss limit ($) 0 if your firm has none

Loss on a realistic bad day ($) From your own log, not from hope

Profit target ($) 0 if you are already funded

Consistency rule (%) Max share of total profit any one day may be. 0 if none.

Your best single day so far ($)

Total profit so far ($)

Your liquidation line sits at Touch this and the account is done

Room before you hit it

Most you can actually lose today The smaller of your remaining room and your daily limit

Bad days of runway left

Cost of running $500 of open profit and giving it back Under a trailing rule this is permanent, not a round trip

Consistency rule

Status

Total profit your best day needs Your best day ÷ the consistency percentage

Still to earn before that day is compliant

Biggest any single day may be, at your target

Fewest profitable days the rule implies If every one of them were exactly at the cap

The three drawdown types, decoded

Static

The line is fixed at your starting balance minus the drawdown, and it never moves. $50,000 account, $2,000 drawdown, the line is $48,000 forever. This is the easiest to hold in your head and the rarest to be offered.

Trailing — end of day

The line follows your highest closing balance. Finish a day at $51,200 and the line moves to $49,200 and stays there. What happens inside the session doesn't count, so a trade that ran up and gave it back costs you nothing beyond the trade itself.

Trailing — intraday / peak equity

The line follows your highest equity at any instant, including profit you never closed. Go $800 up on an open position and hand it all back, and your liquidation line has permanently risen $800. You end the day flat on the account and materially worse off on the rule.

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in prop trading, and it is why the calculator above prices it for you. Under an intraday rule, letting a winner run and then giving it back is not a neutral event — it is a withdrawal from the only balance that decides whether you keep the account.

Most firms freeze the trailing line once it reaches your starting balance, so the damage stops at the point where you can no longer lose your deposit. Some don't. Which one yours does is worth knowing before you find out the hard way — it is the difference between a ceiling and an escalator.

What a consistency rule actually asks

A consistency rule caps how much of your total profit may come from any single day. At 30%, no one day may be more than 30% of everything you've made.

The part people miss is that this is a ratio, and you can fix it from either side. A $900 day against $1,800 of total profit is 50% and fails. You do not have to undo the $900 — you have to earn until $900 is only 30% of the total, which means a total of $3,000.

Your best day sets a floor on your total. Best day ÷ the percentage is the minimum total profit you need before that day is compliant. One outsized session can quietly add thousands to what you must earn before you can pass or withdraw.
It sets a minimum number of profitable days. At 30%, you need at least four. At 20%, at least five. There is no version of a consistency rule you can satisfy in two sessions.
It caps your good days in advance. At a $3,000 target and 30%, no day may exceed $900 — so a $1,400 day is not a great day, it is a day that moved your finish line.

Firms differ on whether the rule is measured against profit at payout, at the moment you hit the target, or across a rolling window, and some apply it only at withdrawal. The arithmetic here assumes the common version — best day against total profit to date. Check yours.

Three things this tool will not do

Recommend a firm. We take no referral fee from any of them, so we have nothing to gain by ranking them and no basis for doing it.
Tell you whether a rule is fair. It tells you what the rule costs you in dollars and days. What you do with that is yours.
Replace your firm's rules page. Firms change drawdown types, reset schedules and consistency thresholds, sometimes mid-evaluation. Your firm's current published rules beat any calculator, including this one.

The other free tools

What do your trades actually prove?Your win rate over a small sample is mostly noise. Find out how much. Position size calculatorContracts, dollar risk, and the copied-account multiplier. Drawdown runway calculatorHow many maximum-loss days your account can survive. The one-page rulebookRules specific enough that a trade either followed them or it didn't.

Where these numbers live the rest of the week

A calculator answers one question once. The Rules Desk Journal & Workbook is the same arithmetic wired into a trade log that keeps score: the range your win rate is actually consistent with, your break-even win rate, expectancy, results split by setup, and what your rule breaks have cost you in dollars. Plus an 18-page printable workbook for writing rules specific enough to be checked.

$39. One spreadsheet, one PDF, instant download. No subscription, no upsell.

See what's in it

Or wait for the software

The desk itself — you write your rules down, it tells you before each trade whether your own rules allow it, and reads your record back weekly. No market view, no signals, no trade calls. It has no opinion about the market and never will.

One email when it opens. No launch date promised, nothing else sent, unsubscribe in one click.

Educational tool only. This is arithmetic on numbers you type in — it is not investment advice, it does not predict anything, and it has no opinion on what you should trade. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and most people who try it lose money. Past results, including your own, do not predict future results. Verify contract specifications with your broker and your account rules with your firm; both change.