Published by BrokeAndFunded
If you've ever bought a prop firm evaluation and told yourself “I'll just get this one right, then I'm done” — this post is for you. Because I said that too. Nine times. Across nine different firms. Over nineteen months.
I finally sat down and pulled every credit card statement, line by line, to find out exactly what this journey has actually cost me. Not an estimate. Not a guess. Every charge, from every firm, added up.
The total: €15,835.49.
Here's the full breakdown, and what I learned from actually doing the math.
The Firms I've Paid
Over 19 months (January 2025–July 2026), evaluation and reset charges hit my card from:
- Apex Trader Funding
- Lucid Trading
- TakeProfitTrader
- TradeNation
- Whop (Funded VIP)
- FundedNext
- GrowthNext
- TradeDay
- TopStep
Nine firms. Not because one was bad and I found a better one — because I kept resetting, kept switching, kept telling myself the next firm or the next account would be the one that stuck.
The Monthly Pattern
- January 2025: €0 — hadn't started
- February–June 2025: Ramp-up, approximately €100–200/month
- July–October 2025: Approximately €200–600/month
- November 2025–January 2026: €6,500 across three months
- February–July 2026: Still elevated, €530–1,990/month
The peak — three months, €6,500 — is the part that should give any trader pause. That's not one bad week. That's a sustained pattern of buying new evaluations faster than any single account could actually prove itself.
What This Actually Buys You
Here's the uncomfortable part: zero of these evaluations have resulted in a completed payout. Two Lucid accounts did get funded — real progress, and worth being honest about — but the broader pattern across nine firms is resets, not results.
Evaluation fees range from roughly $15 to $200+ depending on account size and firm, and they're designed to be affordable enough that “just buy another one” never feels like a big decision in the moment. That's exactly the problem. Death by a thousand cuts is still death.
Why This Happens (It's Not About Strategy)
If you're in this pattern, I'd bet your actual trading strategy isn't the core issue. Mine wasn't. The seven-level liquidity sweep framework I trade with is sound. What broke, over and over, was execution under pressure:
- Overtrading after a loss
- Removing stops “just this once”
- Resetting impulsively instead of waiting for the next clean setup
- Buying a new evaluation the same day an old one failed, instead of taking a real break
None of that shows up in a backtest. All of it shows up on a credit card statement.
What Actually Changed Things
Two things, in order:
-
I did the math. Seeing €15,835.49 as one number, not thirty scattered charges, was the wake-up call that a running mental tally never was.
-
I built enforcement, not just tracking. A journal that records what happened doesn't stop the next impulsive reset. What stops it is a hard rule that locks the account the moment a daily loss (or profit) cap is hit — no negotiating with yourself in the moment, because the platform makes the decision for you before you can make a worse one.
That second part is why I built PropCoach — a tool that doesn't just log your trades, it enforces the daily caps, tracks per-firm consistency rules, and flags when a loss on one account is bleeding into how you're trading another. It exists because I needed it, not because I thought it'd be a good idea for a product.
If You're in This Pattern Right Now
Before you buy the next evaluation, actually total up what the last several have cost you. Not from memory — pull the real statements. The number is almost always higher than you think, and seeing it in one place is the single most effective thing that's worked for me.
If it turns out you're already deep in this pattern: you're not the only one, and the fix isn't a better strategy. It's a rule you can't talk yourself out of in the moment.
Follow the real numbers, wins and losses included, on YouTube or try PropCoach free.