What the calculator answers
Not "what does this evaluation cost" — the pricing page answers that. It answers "what should I budget to end up with one funded account at this firm", which is a different and much larger number.
Open it here: true cost calculator.
Firm and challenge fee
Selecting a documented firm fills the fee from its cheapest entry price. Override it if you are pricing a specific account size — the fee field is what the calculation uses, not the firm selection.
Attempts
The most important input and the only subjective one. Published pass rates in this industry sit in single digits to low double digits, so one attempt is an optimistic assumption for a first-time buyer.
A reasonable approach: three if this is your first evaluation at any firm, two if you have passed elsewhere and know your equity path, one only if you have already passed at this firm under these exact rules.
Run it at your assumption and then at one higher. If the higher number is unaffordable, that is worth knowing before you start rather than after two failures.
Discount
Enter the percentage you can actually get today from our tested codes. Do not enter a seasonal figure you are hoping for — see are discount codes worth waiting for.
Activation fee
Tick this if the firm charges one when the account goes live, and enter the amount. It is a one-off, applied once regardless of attempts, because you only activate the account you passed with.
Platform and data fees
Two fields: the monthly amount and the number of months you expect to hold the account. Be realistic about the second — if you plan to trade this account for a year, enter twelve.
This is the input that reverses the ranking between cheap futures evaluations and more expensive forex ones. See hidden fees.
Reading the output
The headline figure is total expected cost. The breakdown below shows where it comes from, which is usually more informative — most people are surprised by which line dominates.
The comparison panel applies your assumptions to other documented firms. That is the output that should change a decision, because it holds the assumptions constant and varies only the firm.
What it deliberately does not model
It does not assume you fail on the funded account, and it does not subtract any profit. It is the money that leaves your account before anything comes back — which is the number you need to be able to afford, independent of how the trading goes.