The cheapest honest way to start a challenge
The lowest sticker price is rarely the lowest cost. Read the account size, the activation fee and the reset policy together, or the cheap challenge becomes the expensive habit.
Updated 20 September 2026
Small account first, not cheap account first
Fees scale with account size, so the cheapest route into any firm is its smallest account. Plans from 5,000 to 10,000 dollars start around 50 dollars at several firms here, against a median of $522 for a 100,000 dollar account.
A small account is also the honest test. The rules you will be judged on later — daily limit, drawdown type, minimum days — are the same at 5,000 dollars, and finding out how you behave under them costs a tenth as much.
Watch the sticker against the total
Prices under about 100 dollars for a large account usually belong to pay-later plans: a small amount upfront and an activation fee when the account is funded. The plan cards on each firm page here show both, and the total, so the comparison is like for like.
The most expensive 100,000 dollar plan recorded here is $4,249. Between that and the median of $522 sits a wide range that has more to do with the rules attached than with the size of the account.
The reset is where the money actually goes
The second fee is the one that hurts. A trader who fails three evaluations has paid three times, and at that point the cost of the attempt has passed the cost of a larger single account with a more forgiving rule set.
Before buying the cheapest thing available, check the reset price and whether a failed evaluation can be restarted at a discount. That number, multiplied by a realistic number of attempts, is the real budget.