What a funded account really costs

A "$50K funded account" describes the balance you trade. It says nothing about what you paid to be allowed to trade it. The number that does is cost per funded account, and almost no dashboard shows it, because the receipts that make it up are spread across months and cards.

The formula

(evaluations bought × price) + (resets × price) + activation fees + data and platform fees paid, divided by the number of accounts that reached funded.

Every term is a receipt you already have. Nothing is estimated. The only judgment call is the last one: an account counts as funded once it reaches the funded or live stage, not when it passes the evaluation and not when it is first paid.

A worked example

Sample numbers, not any firm's prices:

• 5 evaluations at $50 = $250
• 2 resets at $80 = $160
• 1 activation fee = $150
• 1 account reached funded

Cost per funded account: $560. Evaluations per funded account: 5. The first payout from that account has to clear $560 before the account has paid for itself, and that is before any fee that keeps billing on the four evaluations that failed.

What people leave out

• Failed evaluations. They are the largest term for most traders and the one memory discards first.
• Resets bought instead of waiting for the next cycle. Cheaper than a new evaluation, and still spend.
• Recurring fees on accounts that are already gone. A blown account on a monthly plan keeps billing until it is cancelled. Count every charge, not just the ones for accounts you are still trading.
• Data and platform fees. Small each month, not small per funded account.

Track it per firm

Two firms with the same evaluation price can have very different costs per funded account once resets and activation fees are counted. That gap is a fact about your operation with that firm: how often you reset, how many attempts it takes you under its rules, what its activation costs. Compare it against what the firm has actually paid you back, and the question "which firm is worth my next evaluation" answers itself from your own numbers.

The two numbers to keep next to every account

1. Cost per funded account, for the firm the account belongs to.
2. Recorded payouts minus recorded costs for that firm. Count requested-but-unpaid payouts separately; they are not cash received.

Run your own receipts through the free cost per funded account calculator. Firmtrack computes the same number continuously from recorded purchases and account stages, per firm, and flags the accounts still billing after they stopped producing.