Prop Firm Drawdown Calculator
Know your exact stop-out levels before you place a trade — daily limit, maximum drawdown, how many losses you can take, and the risk per trade that keeps you inside the rules.
Your account & rules
Presets are typical, not universal — always confirm the numbers in your own firm's rulebook.
Your limits
Most firms measure drawdown on equity, so floating losses count straight away — a position deep in the red can breach the limit before you close it.
How prop firm drawdown actually works
Almost every funded account fails for one of two reasons: a daily limit breach, or a slow bleed into the maximum drawdown. Both are avoidable arithmetic problems, which is what this calculator solves.
Daily loss limit
Measured from your balance or equity at the start of the trading day. If a 100,000 account has a 5% daily limit, dropping below 95,000 at any point — including on open positions — ends the day, and often the account. Note that the limit resets each day against the new starting balance, so after a losing day your allowance shrinks in absolute terms.
Static vs trailing maximum drawdown
A static drawdown is fixed to the initial balance: 10% on a 100,000 account means 90,000 forever, no matter how much you make. A trailing drawdown follows your highest balance, so profits raise the floor beneath you. Reach 110,000 with a 10% trail and your floor is now 99,000 — you can be up 10% and still be one bad day from failing. Many firms freeze the trail once the floor reaches the initial balance; check whether yours does.
Choosing risk per trade
Work backwards. Decide how many consecutive losses you want to survive — five is a reasonable minimum, because losing streaks of that length are ordinary — then divide your daily room by that number. On a 5% daily limit that gives 1% per trade. The lot size calculator converts that percentage into an actual position size.
Automating the limit
Discipline fails at exactly the wrong moment. The CopyConnectFX slave EA has an equity protection setting that closes every position and stops copying once equity drops past a level you set — a hard floor that does not depend on you watching the screen.
Drawdown questions
What is the difference between daily drawdown and maximum drawdown?+
Daily drawdown is how much you may lose within a single trading day, measured from the day's starting balance or equity. Maximum drawdown is the total loss allowed across the whole account life. Breaching either one usually ends the account, so the tighter of the two is your real limit on any given day.
What is daily drawdown in a prop firm?+
Daily drawdown is the most you may lose in a single trading day before the account is breached, measured from that day's starting balance or equity. It resets at the firm's daily cut-off, which is usually 5pm New York time rather than midnight where you live — mistaking that cut-off is one of the most common ways a challenge is failed by accident.
What is end-of-day drawdown and how is it different?+
An end-of-day drawdown limit is recalculated once a day from your balance at the daily close, so intraday equity swings do not breach it. An intraday limit watches your equity tick by tick, so an open position that goes far against you can breach it before it recovers. End-of-day rules are more forgiving to swing traders; intraday rules punish holding through news.
What is trailing drawdown?+
Trailing drawdown means the loss floor moves up as your account makes new highs. If the limit is 6% and your balance rises from 100,000 to 105,000, the floor moves from 94,000 to 98,700. Many firms freeze the trail once you are in profit by the target amount — check your rules.
How much should I risk per trade on a prop firm account?+
Work backwards from the daily limit. If you may lose 5% in a day and want to survive five consecutive losses, risk 1% per trade. Most funded traders use 0.25% to 1% because a single bad day can end the account permanently.
Does drawdown use balance or equity?+
Most prop firms measure drawdown on equity, which means floating losses on open trades count immediately. A position that is deeply negative can breach the limit before you ever close it.
The guide behind this tool
Three separate limits that end funded accounts in three different ways — with the maths and the clauses people misread.
Read the guide →Other free tools
Position size for the risk you want to take.
What one pip is worth on your position, in your currency.
Full performance stats from your MetaTrader report.
Your stats, calendar and hourly heatmap on the chart.
More on risk and performance in the CopyConnectFX blog, or see the full feature guide.
Let the copier do the sizing for you
CopyConnectFX copies trades between your MT4 and MT5 accounts locally, and can size every copy by risk percentage automatically — with a daily-loss limit that closes everything before a breach. Free.