Prop firm evaluation or your own account?

Your own futures account puts your capital on the line, with no rules beyond margin and no ceiling on what you keep. A prop firm evaluation costs a one-time fee, runs on a simulated account with a trailing drawdown and other rules, and pays 90% of profit once funded. Neither is better in general. This article lays out what each one costs, what each one imposes, and the situations where one fits and the other does not.

What does trading your own account cost?

Three things: capital, margin and losses.

Capital. A futures broker needs a deposit large enough to cover the exchange margin of every contract you hold. CME publishes maintenance margins per contract and revises them with volatility; for a full-size index contract the figure is measured in thousands of dollars, and it must be in the account before the position is opened. Brokers offer lower day-trading margins for positions closed the same session, sometimes a small fraction of the exchange figure, which lets a small deposit control a large contract. That is leverage, and it cuts both ways.

Margin calls. If a position moves against you far enough, the broker liquidates it or asks for more money, at its discretion and on its timeline. There is no soft limit and no next-session reset.

Losses. They are yours, in full, and they can exceed the deposit. The CFTC and the NFA both say this plainly in their investor material: futures are not suitable for everyone, and the amount lost can be greater than the amount invested.

On the other side, everything you make is yours, minus commissions, exchange fees and data. Nobody caps your best day, nobody tells you to be flat at 4:15 pm ET, and nobody reviews your trades.

What does an evaluation cost?

A fee. A Cycle 50K lists at $172 and a reset, if the account is failed, at $120. A Cycle 100K lists at $272. There is no monthly charge, no time limit and no deposit: the account is simulated, so the $50,000 balance is not money and the $2,000 Max Loss Limit is not a loss you can incur. What you can lose is the fee, and a reset each time you want to try again on a failed account.

Direct accounts skip the evaluation and cost more, $515 for a 50K, because the trader is funded from the first trade and the 20% consistency rule replaces the evaluation as proof of skill.

What rules does each impose?

	Own account	StarTrading evaluation and funded account
Capital at risk	your deposit, and possibly more	the fee, plus any reset
Loss limit	margin call, at the broker’s discretion	Max Loss Limit, trailing, fails the account
Daily limit	none	soft Daily Loss Limit on most sizes, pauses the day
Position size	whatever margin allows	4 minis on a 50K, 6 on a 100K, micros at one tenth
Overnight	allowed, at full margin	never; flat at 4:15 pm ET (Rithmic) or 4:45 pm ET (Tradovate)
Consistency	none	40% on funded Cycle, 50% on Clear and Stream evaluations, 20% on Direct
Profit kept	100% minus costs	90% of each payout, $500 minimum per request
Payout timing	withdraw any time	when the rules of the account type are met, wire in two business days
Prohibited	nothing beyond the law and the broker’s terms	HFT, hedging across accounts, micro-scalping

The rules are the product. A firm that pays 90% of simulated profit has to filter for traders whose results repeat, and the trailing drawdown, the daily limit and the consistency rule are that filter. A trader who finds them arbitrary will be happier on their own account. A trader who was going to impose something similar on themselves anyway loses little.

What do you actually keep?

On your own account: your profit, and your loss. On a funded simulated account: 90% of each payout, from a minimum of $500, with the payout rules of the account type; a first-cycle goal of $500 and a first-payout cap of $2,000 on a Cycle 50K, for instance. After five simulated payouts the account moves to the Live stage, where the trading is real, the starting drawdown of $2,000 on a 50K is StarTrading’s capital, and payouts are daily. The payout policy has every figure.

The arithmetic that matters is the ratio of what you can lose to what you can make. On your own account the two are symmetrical. On an evaluation they are not: the downside is the fee, the upside is 90% of a simulated account’s profit, and the price of that asymmetry is the rulebook.

When does your own account make sense?

• You can fund the margin without it changing your life, and a full loss of the deposit would not either.
• Your method needs overnight positions, spreads, or size beyond 10 minis.
• You want no consistency check, no daily pause and no review of your trades.
• You already have a track record and the account is a business, not an experiment.

When does an evaluation make sense?

• You want the loss on a bad month to be a known number, the fee, rather than an open-ended one.
• You want to trade a $50,000 or $100,000 line without depositing it.
• Your method is intraday, in ES, NQ, CL or GC, at a size the limits already allow.
• You are still finding out whether you have an edge, and the rules are a structure you would have needed anyway.

Evaluation and funded accounts are simulated until the Live stage, and futures trading, on any account, carries a substantial risk of loss. If the second list describes you, the pricing page has the fee for each size and type, and the one-phase evaluation article has the plan for the first weeks.

Sources

• CME Group, E-mini S&P 500 margins: exchange maintenance margins per contract, revised with volatility.
• U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Learn and Protect: investor material on the risks of leveraged futures trading.
• National Futures Association, Investor resources: what to know before opening a futures account.