Prop Firm Daily Drawdown Calculation: The Same Account, Five Different Breach Floors

We took one account, on one morning, and applied the published daily loss rule of five forex prop firms to it. The breach floors came out $3,940 apart. The firm advertising the smallest percentage produced the highest floor — the least room to lose. The percentage on the marketing page does not rank the risk.

The percentage is the smaller half of the rule

A daily loss rule needs four things before it can be calculated: the percentage, the basis it is applied to, what the loss is measured on, and when it resets. Most comparison tables publish the first and drop the other three. The basis is where the divergence lives, and across the five firms we have verified, no two are the same.

Sources: FundingPips source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04 · Hola Prime source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04 · FTMO source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04 · FundedNext source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04 · The 5%ers source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04, source article dated 2025-03-25.

Five firms, five bases. Reading down the percentage column alone tells you almost nothing about which account breaches first.

One account, five floors

The scenario, stated in full so it can be checked:

• Account initial balance: $100,000
• The account is up $2,000 in closed profit and holds one open position showing +$1,000 unrealised
• At the daily reset snapshot: balance $102,000, equity $103,000
• The previous day's close is the same snapshot: closing balance $102,000, closing equity $103,000

Now apply each rule as written.

The spread between the highest floor and the lowest is $3,940 on a $100,000 account.

Two rows are worth sitting with. Hola Prime's 3% and FundedNext's Stellar 1-Step 3% are the same headline number, and they land $1,940 apart, because one is 3% of a balance that rises with the account and the other is 3% of a number that never moves. And FTMO's own two products, quoting 3% and 5%, sit at opposite ends of the range — see our separate piece on FTMO running both drawdown types.

Rising bases tighten as you win; fixed bases loosen

The ranking above is not fixed. It is a function of where the account sits relative to its starting balance.

On day one, before any profit, every basis collapses to the same number: balance $100,000, equity $100,000, initial balance $100,000. The floors become $97,000 for both 3% plans that use a moving basis, $97,000 for FundedNext's 3% plan, and $95,000 for every 5% plan. On day one, the percentage is the ranking.

The divergence only appears once the account moves, and it moves in two directions:

• A basis that tracks the account — previous day's closing balance, day-start balance, higher of balance or equity — climbs as the account grows. The dollar allowance grows with it, but so does the floor. A trader who is up $10,000 is protecting a higher number than a trader who is flat.
• A basis fixed at initial balance — FundedNext's — does not move at all. At $100,000 the floor is $95,000. At $130,000 the floor is still $95,000, and the trader now has $35,000 of daily room. The rule loosens continuously as the account grows.

This is why a single snapshot cannot settle the question. It also means a comparison table that prints "5%" for both FundingPips and FundedNext is describing two rules that behave in opposite directions over the life of an account.

Measured on equity means the floor can be hit by a trade you have not closed

Three of the five firms measure the daily loss on equity including floating P/L. Under that wording, an open position that moves against you counts immediately. You do not have to close anything to breach.

Two firms — Hola Prime and The 5%ers — publish the measurement as balance or equity. We are recording that as published rather than resolving it, because the pages we read do not state which one governs when the two differ. That distinction decides whether an unrealised loss can end an account, so it is not a detail.

There is a second-order effect in the example above worth naming. For FundingPips, the +$1,000 floating profit raised the basis to $103,000, because the rule takes the higher of opening balance or opening equity. The unrealised gain bought $50 of extra daily allowance. Under FTMO's day-start balance basis, the same floating profit changed nothing, because balance ignores it.

Reset times are part of the rule

A daily loss limit resets on a clock, and the clocks are not aligned:

• FundingPips: resets 00:00 Platform Time (UTC+3) source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04
• FTMO: resets 00:00 CE(S)T source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04
• FundedNext: resets 00:00 server time source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04
• The 5%ers: resets 00:00 server time source · Tier B, verified 2026-09-04
• Hola Prime: not disclosed on the trading rules page

For a trader holding through a session boundary, the reset time decides which side of the line a loss falls on. Two firms with an identical rule and a two-hour clock difference will not breach the same account on the same trade.

How to calculate your own floor

Four questions, in order. Answer all four before comparing anything:

1. What number is the percentage applied to? Initial balance, previous day's closing balance, day-start balance, or the higher of balance and equity.
2. What is that number right now? Not at signup — today.
3. Is the loss measured on equity including floating P/L, or on closed trades only?
4. When does the counter reset, in which timezone?

Multiply, subtract, and you have a dollar figure. The dollar figure is comparable across firms. The percentage is not.

What we could not verify

• No Tier A source. Every figure above comes from a firm's public rules or help centre page. We have not yet read the terms and conditions of any of the five firms. Where a contract and a marketing page disagree, we cannot currently tell you.
• Hola Prime's daily reset time. Not stated on the trading rules page we read. Without it, the Hola Prime row in the reset comparison is incomplete.
• How "balance or equity" resolves for Hola Prime and The 5%ers. Both publish the measurement that way. Neither page we read states which value governs when they differ.
• The 5%ers is working from a stale source. The help article we used is dated 25 March 2025 — seventeen months before this was written. Prop firm rules change frequently. Treat that row as unconfirmed until we re-read it.
• Only one plan per firm, in most cases. Hola Prime alone lists 2-Step Prime, Prime X, Pro and Direct, none of which we have captured. Daily loss rules vary by plan within the same firm, as FTMO demonstrates.
• The worked example assumes the previous day's close and the day-start snapshot are the same values. In live trading they can differ, particularly across a weekend gap. The relative ordering holds; the exact dollar figures would shift.

This section is the point of the site, not an apology for it. A comparison that never says "we do not know" is not telling you when it is guessing.

Sources

All figures in the worked example are our own arithmetic applied to the rules as published. Nothing here is a recommendation to trade with any firm.