# What a year of evaluation fees really costs

The arithmetic of evaluations, resets and activations, and how to tell a funding cost from a subscription you keep renewing.

Last updated: 4 September 2026

Evaluation fees are small individually and large in aggregate, which is exactly the shape of spending people fail to track. A 150 fee does not feel like a decision. Thirty of them across a year is 4,500, which for many traders is more than they took in payouts.

The number that matters is not what you spent. It is your cost per funded account, and whether the accounts you fund earn more than the attempts that failed.

## The four costs

- Evaluation fee. The cost of an attempt.
- Reset fee. The cost of a second chance at the same attempt, usually cheaper, which is what makes it easy to keep buying.
- Activation fee. Charged by some firms when you pass, before you can trade funded.
- Ongoing costs. Data feeds, platform charges, and any monthly fee attached to the account.

Only the first is usually budgeted for. Resets are where the spending quietly compounds, because each one feels like protecting an investment already made rather than a new purchase.

## Cost per funded account

Take everything spent in the period and divide by the number of accounts that actually reached funded status. Not by the number of attempts, and not by the number you passed, since an account you passed but never traded profitably has still cost you money.

*Illustrative year for a trader working 50k evaluations at 150, resets at 100.*

| Item | Count | Unit | Total |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Evaluations bought | 18 | 150 | 2,700 |
| Resets bought | 11 | 100 | 1,100 |
| Activation fees | 4 | 125 | 500 |
| Data and platform | 12 | 60 | 720 |
| Total spend |  |  | 5,020 |
| Accounts funded | 4 |  |  |
| Cost per funded account |  |  | 1,255 |

1,255 per funded account is the real number. It means an account has to clear 1,255 in payouts, after tax, before it has repaid the cost of getting it, and that ignores every account still in evaluation.

Run against a 33.5% tax rate, that is roughly 1,890 of gross payout per account just to break even on fees. If your typical payout is 500, you need almost four payouts from an account before it has paid for itself.

## The reset spiral

> **Resets are the most expensive habit in this business** A reset is cheaper than a new evaluation, which is precisely what makes it dangerous. It converts a failed attempt into an ongoing subscription. Eleven resets at 100 in the example above is 1,100, more than a fifth of the year's spend, and none of it bought a new opportunity. It bought the same opportunity again.

A useful rule is to cap resets per account before you buy the first one. If an account has failed twice, the third attempt is usually paying to repeat a mistake you have not yet diagnosed. The money is better spent on a smaller account where the risk model is one you can actually hold to.

## Which firms are actually paying you

Track spending per firm and payouts per firm side by side. The results are frequently uncomfortable. It is common to find one firm that has funded you reliably and another that has taken a year of evaluation fees and produced nothing but resets.

The distinction is not about which firm is better in the abstract. It is about which firm's rules, drawdown model and instruments suit how you actually trade. A trailing drawdown will destroy some traders and be irrelevant to others.

1. Log every fee against the firm and the account it was for.
2. Log every payout against the same account.
3. At the end of each quarter, sort firms by net position.
4. Stop buying evaluations from any firm that is net negative over a meaningful sample, unless you can name what you have changed.

## Fees are usually deductible

If your payouts are taxed as business income, the costs of earning it are generally deductible: evaluation fees, resets, activations, data, platform, and often a share of your hardware and internet. That materially changes the arithmetic, because a 5,020 spend at a 33.5% marginal rate is closer to 3,338 in real terms.

This requires that you actually keep the records. A receipt you cannot produce is not a deduction. Log fees as you pay them rather than reconstructing the year from card statements in April.

> **Deductibility is jurisdictional** Whether a given cost is deductible, and against what, depends on your country and on how your trading income is classified. The rates used above are illustrative. Confirm what you can actually deduct with an accountant who knows your jurisdiction. This is general information, not tax advice.

## Key takeaways

- Cost per funded account, not total spend, is the number that tells you anything.
- Resets compound quietly and are usually the largest avoidable line.
- Decide a reset limit before you buy the first evaluation on an account.
- Compare spend against payouts per firm, quarterly, and act on it.
- Fees are usually deductible, but only if you logged them.

Propel Audit is trading analytics and planning software. All calculations, simulations and insights are based on the data you provide and are for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, tax, or investment advice.