Prop Firm Profit Split Calculator
See your real take-home after challenge fees, resets, consistency rule and tax. Most 80% splits become 50-65% once every cost lands.
Your Inputs
If above the cap, half your payout is blocked until you trade more days.
Federal income + SE tax 15.3% + state average.
Real Take-Home Breakdown
Monthly real take-home
+$859
Effective split: 28.6% of your gross profit (advertised: 80%)
Erosion visual (% of gross profit)
| Gross monthly profit | $3,000 |
| Profit split (80% of gross) | $2,400 |
| − Challenge fee amortized ($99 / 2 mo) | −$50 |
| − Reset cost amortized (10% × $49) | −$5 |
| − Consistency penalty (best day 35% > cap 30%) | −$1,200 |
| Before tax | $1,146 |
| − Tax estimate (25%) | −$286 |
| → Real take-home | $859 |
Consistency rule triggered. Your best day represents 35% of monthly profit, above the 30% cap. Half your payout is held until you add more trading days within the cap.
Read it like this: the firm advertises 80% split, but after fees and tax you keep 28.6% of every dollar you make. That gap is what nobody puts on their landing page.
Same target, 6 firms compared
Identical monthly target ($3,000 on a $50,000 account), reset %, tax bracket and best-day. Only the firm-specific split, challenge fee and consistency rule change. Sorted by best real take-home.
| Firm | Split | Fee (50K) | Consistency | Effective | Real take-home | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BestBulenox90% OFF | 90% | $17.5 | No consistency rule | 67.2% | $2,015 | Details |
| Lucid40% OFF | 90% | $111 | No consistency rule | 66.0% | $1,980 | Details |
| TPT | 90% | $170 | No consistency rule | 65.3% | $1,958 | Details |
| Tradeify35% OFF | 90% | $250 | 40% rule (Advanced) | 64.3% | $1,928 | Details |
| Elite TF20% OFF | 80% | $165 | No consistency rule | 57.8% | $1,734 | Details |
| Apex90% OFF | 90% | $19.7 | 30% rule on payoutsTriggered | 33.4% | $1,001 | Details |
Fees use the closest 50K tier discounted price from our promo database. Real take-home assumes the same reset probability, best-day estimate and tax bracket for all firms. Switch any input above to re-rank instantly.
How to read your real take-home
- 1.Pick your account size and realistic monthly profit. Be honest — your last 3-month average, not your best month.
- 2.Enter what you actually paid for the challenge. Used a promo code? Plug the discounted price (our deals page has live codes).
- 3.Estimate reset probability from your history. If you've been resetting once every 2 months, that's ~50%/month not 10%.
- 4.Set the consistency cap if your firm enforces one. Apex uses 30%, some futures firms 40%. Set 0 to ignore.
- Tip:Toggle country presets to see how tax jurisdiction destroys or preserves your edge. A 0% tax-haven can mean +30% effective split vs the US.
Why the 80% split is a lie (and how to read the real number)
The four costs hiding behind your headline split
Every prop firm landing page advertises a profit split percentage — 80%, 90%, even 100% on the first thousand. What they never put next to that number is the four-line subtraction that actually decides what hits your bank account. A trader on an 80% split rarely keeps 80% of anything.
1. Challenge fee amortization. The $99 you paid (or the $250 for FTMO) is not free money. Spread it across the months you actually trade that account and you lose 10-50% of your first payouts to recovering that entry ticket.
2. Reset cost reality. Most futures props let you reset cheap ($65 at Apex, $49 elsewhere). If you reset once every two months, that's a ~50% probability monthly multiplied by the cost. Real traders reset more often than they admit on Discord.
3. Consistency rule penalty. Apex and several futures firms enforce a 30% cap — your best day cannot exceed 30% of total profit. Blow past it and your payout is held until you trade more days. We model this as a 50% haircut on the affected payout because that's roughly the average delay impact.
4. Tax. The line that wipes 25-35% off everything else. US Schedule C means income tax plus the brutal 15.3% self-employment tax. UAE residents pay zero. The same trading edge yields radically different effective splits depending on where you sleep.
The fee-to-payout ratio that nobody calculates
The interesting question is not "which firm has the highest split?" — it's "at what monthly profit does each firm stop costing me more than it pays?" A $250 FTMO challenge needs roughly $1,500/month in gross profit just to amortize the entry over two months at 80% split. Below that, the fee eats your edge.
A $11.50 Bulenox eval or $18.70 Apex eval (with current 90% promo codes) is profitable from $300 gross/month. That's the structural advantage of cheap futures evals — they let you stay long enough to learn before the math forces you out.
Run the comparison table above with your real numbers. Most traders are surprised how the rank changes once you plug a realistic $1,500-3,000 monthly target instead of the $10,000 fantasy everyone uses on TikTok.
Want to lower the tax line legally?
The tax bracket is the single biggest lever on real take-home — and the only one you can't change by switching firms. The Tax-haven preset in this calculator is not a joke: traders relocating to UAE, Puerto Rico (Act 60), Monaco or Cyprus regularly add 25-35 effective split points overnight.
For US-based traders staying put: trader tax status (TTS), mark-to-market election, and proper Schedule C structuring can cut the effective rate by 5-10 points. We cover this in our US prop firm tax guide.
For everyone else: this calculator's tax presets are deliberately conservative. Your accountant will likely find ways to trim the estimate, but the structural costs (fees, resets, consistency) won't move — those are baked into the firm contract.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does this calculator actually compute?
Your REAL monthly take-home after profit split, challenge fee amortization (spread across months active), reset costs based on probability, consistency rule penalty if your best day exceeds cap, and tax estimate by country. Unlike basic profit calculators, it accounts for every hidden cost that erodes your headline 80-90% split.
Why is "real take-home" lower than 80% profit split?
Because 80% split is GROSS — before challenge fees you paid to enter, reset fees if you bust, and tax. Real effective split is usually 50-65% after everything. A trader paying $250 for an FTMO challenge that takes 2 months to pass amortizes $125/month before they touch a single payout dollar.
How accurate is the tax estimate?
Country presets use average effective rates (US ~25% Schedule C, UK ~33% HMRC basic+higher, Canada ~35% federal+provincial, Australia ~32.5% marginal, Tax-haven 0%). Your real rate depends on income bracket — for precise figures, consult our country tax guides or a CPA. Use the Custom slider if your situation differs.
Which prop firm gives the best real take-home?
Depends on YOUR trading style. Use the comparison table below — generally low-fee firms (Bulenox $11.50, Apex $18.70) beat high-fee firms for low-profit traders, but high-fee firms catch up if you generate $5K+/month consistently. The fee-to-payout ratio matters more than headline split percentages.