Prop Firm Drawdown Calculator

What each variable means:

• Account size — The balance the firm gave you at the start, such as 100,000. Both allowances are usually worked out from it.
• Maximum loss — How far the account may fall in total. Static means the floor never moves. Trailing means the floor rises with your highest balance and, at most firms that trail it, stops once it reaches the account size.
• Daily loss — How much the account may lose in one trading day, taken either from the account size or from the balance the day opened with. Check which one your firm uses; it changes the answer.
• Today's starting balance — The balance at the firm's daily reset, which is often midnight in the firm's time zone rather than yours.
• Risk per trade — The share of your current balance you lose when a trade hits its stop.

For example, on a 100,000 account with a 5% daily limit taken from the account size, the daily floor on a day that opens at 100,000 is 100,000 − 5,000 = 95,000. With a 10% static maximum loss, the overall floor is 90,000. The daily floor is higher, so it is the one that ends the account first today.

Why accounts fail on the daily limit

The maximum loss gets the attention because it is the bigger number, but on most days the daily limit is the closer one. A 5% daily limit at 1% risk per trade is five losing trades, and a run of five losses is ordinary for almost any strategy. That is why the result leads with the room left today and names the limit that binds.

The count of full losses is deliberately conservative. A loss that lands exactly on the floor breaks the rule at most firms, so a trade only counts if it leaves the balance above it.

Static and trailing limits

A static limit is the simpler rule: the floor is set on day one and never moves, so every dollar of profit is extra room. A trailing limit follows your highest balance up by the same distance, so profit does not buy room until the floor stops trailing. Until then, a trader who is up 4% on a 6% trailing limit still has only 6% of room, not 10%.

Balance, equity and open trades

This calculator works from closed balances. Most firms measure both limits against equity, which includes the loss on trades that are still open, and some count the higher of balance and equity at the daily reset. If you have trades open, subtract their current loss from your balance before you read the result, and treat the room it shows as a ceiling rather than a target.

Using the result

If the calculator shows fewer than three full losses left today, the usual choices are to cut the risk per trade or to stop for the day. Lowering the risk per trade is what the number is for: it shows directly how many more attempts each risk level buys.