How to Pass the FTMO Challenge: A Step-by-Step Framework That Works

You pass the FTMO Challenge by sizing every position for the daily loss limit rather than the profit target, compounding small consistent gains to the 10% target, and never letting a single day — including its commissions, swaps, and slippage — touch that limit. Most FTMO failures come from the daily loss, not from missing the target: traders do not fail FTMO because they cannot make 10%. They fail because they lose 3% or 5% in a single day before they get there.

This guide gives you a 7-step framework: start with the free trial, size for the daily loss, pick the right challenge type, trade the target, manage the drawdown, respect the consistency rule, and plan for funded. The framework works for both the 1-Step and the 2-Step.

It is not a strategy guide. It is a rule-awareness guide. The strategy you use is your business. Staying inside the rules while you use it is what this framework solves.

Step 1: Run the Free Trial First

Before you spend €79 or €89 or €1,080, spend two weeks on the free trial. It costs nothing, it lasts 14 days, and you can take it as many times as you want.

The free trial is not a watered-down demo. It runs on the actual FTMO platform with the actual challenge rules baked in. You get Account MetriX, the daily loss counter, the drawdown tracker, and the real-time rule enforcement that will kill your paid challenge if you breach it.

Here is what the free trial tells you that no blog post can:

• Can your strategy survive the daily loss limit? If you breach the 3% (1-Step) or 5% (2-Step) daily loss on the trial, you will breach it on the paid challenge too. The rules do not change.
• How fast do you hit the profit target? If your normal trading pace clears 10% in 14 days on the trial, the paid challenge is achievable. If you are at 4% after two weeks, you need to either increase your win rate or accept a longer timeline.
• How does the drawdown feel? The trailing drawdown on the 1-Step is a different animal than a static drawdown. Watch how the floor moves as your balance grows. If it makes you uncomfortable on the trial, it will make you reckless on the paid challenge.
• Does the timezone reset catch you? The daily loss resets at midnight CE(S)T. If you trade the New York session, the reset fires at 6pm New York time for most of the year. Run the trial for a week and you will feel exactly where the boundary is.

Traders who run the free trial first pass at roughly double the rate of traders who skip it, based on community data and FTMO's own stated recommendation. This is not a coincidence.

For the full free trial walkthrough, see our FTMO Free Trial guide.

Step 2: Pick the Right Challenge Type

The 1-Step and the 2-Step are not just different in price. They are different in rule structure, and picking the wrong one is the first mistake most traders make.

Pick the 1-Step if:

• You are a consistent scalper or day trader who compounds 1-2% per day.
• You rarely have a single day that dominates your weekly P&L.
• You can live inside a 3% daily loss limit without changing your strategy.
• You want 90% from day one instead of waiting for the Scaling Plan.

Pick the 2-Step if:

• You are a swing trader who catches one or two big moves per challenge.
• You need the 5% daily loss cushion because your stops are wider.
• You want a static drawdown that does not trail up with your balance.
• You want the Swing variant for news trading and weekend holds.

The most common wrong pick: a swing trader choosing the 1-Step because the 90% split looks better on paper, then getting squeezed by the 3% daily loss and the consistency rule. The 2-Step's 80% split is worse on paper but better in practice for traders who need the room.

For a full side-by-side breakdown, see our FTMO 1-Step Challenge Rules guide and the FTMO Challenge Rules overview.

Step 3: Size for the Daily Loss, Not the Profit Target

This is the most important step in the entire framework. Most traders size their positions to reach the 10% profit target as fast as possible. That is backwards.

You should size your positions so that your maximum daily loss never comes close to the 3% or 5% limit. The profit target takes care of itself if you survive long enough.

Here is the math for the most common account sizes. If you are starting small, the FTMO 10K challenge breakdown walks through the fee and the rules at that size in full.

The "Max Risk Per Trade" column assumes you risk 1% of the account per trade. At 1% risk per trade, you can take 3 full losses in a single day and still have room before hitting the 3% daily loss limit on the 1-Step. That is the math of survival.

If you risk 1.5% per trade, two consecutive losses puts you at 3% and the challenge is done. If you risk 2% per trade, one full loss plus a partial loss on a second trade breaches the limit.

The 2-Step gives you more room at 5% daily loss. You can risk 1% per trade and survive 5 consecutive losing trades in a day. That is a meaningful difference for strategies with lower win rates.

The stop-loss buffer: your stop is not your limit

Here is the detail that catches careful traders. FTMO's daily loss calculation does not stop at your stop-loss. It counts your open position's floating loss plus commissions, swaps, and slippage. A stop placed exactly at the daily budget is not safe: FTMO's own documentation uses a worked example where a trader sets a $500 stop on a $500 daily budget, and the commission pushes the realized daily loss to $515 — a breach on a "correctly" placed stop (per FTMO's official guidance on the daily loss limit).

The buffer math (illustrative): set your hard stop at roughly 80% of your remaining daily budget, and stop trading manually at around 80% of the limit — on a 5% daily loss, treat ~4% of loss as your done-for-the-day line. That leaves room for the costs and slippage that a stop alone does not capture. On a $100K 2-Step ($5,000 daily budget), that means no single stop larger than about $4,000 of theoretical loss while the day is fresh, and no new trades once you are down roughly $4,000 cumulative.

Position sizing, worked

The formula: position size = (account × risk %) ÷ stop distance. Worked example (illustrative): a $100,000 account at 1% risk is $1,000 per trade. If your EURUSD setup puts the stop 20 pips away and each pip on a standard lot is $10, your position is $1,000 ÷ (20 × $10) = 0.5 lots. If the same strategy trades XAUUSD with a $4 stop and $1 per $0.01 move per lot, the math gives a different size — which is exactly why the calculation happens per setup, not once per challenge.

Run your own numbers before every trade with the risk-per-trade calculator, and check the day's remaining budget with the daily loss limit calculator.

For a detailed breakdown of daily loss math across all account sizes, see our FTMO Drawdown Rules Explained guide and the daily loss limit calculator.

Step 4: Set a Realistic Profit Target Pace

The profit target on both challenge types is 10% for Phase 1 (the 2-Step also requires 5% in Phase 2). The target is fixed. The pace is not.

Most traders try to hit 10% in 3-5 days. That requires 2-3% per day, which means oversized positions, which means the daily loss limit is always one bad session away from ending the challenge.

A better pace: 1% per day. At 1% per day, you clear 10% in 10 trading days (two calendar weeks). That is slow enough to keep your position sizes well inside the daily loss limit, and fast enough to finish the challenge before fatigue sets in.

Even better: 0.5-1.5% per day, letting the compounding do the work. Here is what that looks like on a $100K account:

10 trading days at 1% per day clears the 10% target with compounding. No single day needs to be above 1.1%. The daily loss at 1% risk per trade is well inside the 3% limit even if every trade is a loser.

The point: you do not need to be aggressive to pass. You need to be consistent. The traders who pass are the ones who grind 0.5-1.5% per day for 7-14 days and never come close to the daily loss limit. The traders who fail are the ones who try to clear the target in 3 days and breach on day 2.

Trades to target: the expected-value view

Another way to plan the target is to count trades instead of days. Illustrative math: at 0.5-1% risk per trade with roughly a 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio, the 10% target takes around 25-35 trades — a mix of winners and losers at whatever your real win rate is, as long as expectancy stays positive. That is the deeper point of the 1:1 target-to-drawdown ratio: with only 10% of room to make the target and a matching drawdown limit, aggression cannot rescue a negative-expectancy strategy. The challenge rewards positive expectancy executed at small size, not conviction executed at large size.

Session discipline belongs to the same math. Trade only the sessions where your strategy actually has its edge, and treat the urge to add sessions — usually justified as "speeding up" the challenge — as what it is: extra trades outside your edge, which inflate the loser count against a fixed daily budget.

Phase 1 vs Verification: Go Smaller, Not Bigger

The 2-Step's Phase 2 (Verification) runs on the same rules with half the target: 5% instead of 10%. That halved target is exactly why traders break it. After grinding Phase 1, the instinct is that Verification should go faster — bigger size, compressed timeline. It is the classic Phase-2 kill.

The right adaptation is the opposite. You have already proven the strategy; Verification only needs it repeated at half the target. Cut your risk per trade in half (say 0.5% instead of 1%), keep the same session discipline, and let the same compounding clear 5% in roughly 5-7 trading days. Passing Phase 2 slowly still passes. Breaching it while "getting it done fast" re-enters the whole process at full price.

Step 5: Track the Drawdown in Real Time

FTMO's Account MetriX dashboard shows your drawdown in real time. Use it. Every morning, before your first trade, check two numbers: your current daily loss and your current max drawdown.

On the 1-Step, the max drawdown is trailing. This means your floor rises as your balance grows. Here is the math:

On the 2-Step, the max drawdown is static. The floor is fixed at $90,000 for a $100K account regardless of how high the balance goes. A trader who grows to $120,000 still has $30,000 of room before breaching the static floor. This is why swing traders prefer the 2-Step: the room does not shrink as you get closer to the target.

The daily habit: open Account MetriX. Check your current daily loss percentage. Check your current distance to the max drawdown floor. Write both numbers down. If your daily loss is above 1.5% on the 1-Step, stop trading for the day. If your max drawdown distance is under 3%, reduce position sizes until you have more room.

This is boring. It is also the difference between passing and failing.

Step 6: Respect the Consistency Rule (1-Step)

If you are on the 2-Step, skip this section. The 2-Step has no consistency rule. This step is only for 1-Step traders.

For orders from 12 October 2026, the 1-Step consistency rule says your best day cannot exceed 50% of your total profit. It is not a breach: if your best day is $600, the pass waits until total profit reaches $1,200.

This rule catches swing traders who catch one big move and then grind out the rest. Here are the scenarios:

The practical approach: plan for 7-10 positive days at 1-1.5% each. That clears the 10% target and keeps the best day under 20% of total positive profit. The rule becomes irrelevant.

If you catch a big move and your daily profit exceeds 2%, stop trading for the day. Do not add to the position. The extra profit does not help you if it pushes the ratio over 50%. For the full breakdown, see our FTMO 1-Step Challenge Rules guide.

Step 7: Plan for the Funded Phase

Most FTMO guides stop at "how to pass the challenge." The funded phase has different risks that you should plan for before you start the challenge.

What changes after you pass:

• The profit target goes away. You do not need to hit 10% anymore. You just need to stay inside the daily loss and max drawdown while generating enough profit to justify the payout.
• The fee refund arrives. Your first payout includes the 100% challenge fee refund. The net cost of the challenge is now zero.
• The risk limits carry over. After your first payout, the daily loss limit and max drawdown still apply; there is no published 1% per-trade rule. If you sized up after passing, catches traders who were sizing aggressively during the challenge.
• Payouts open from day 14. Plan your trading around the payout cycle. You do not need to generate 10% between payouts. 2-3% per payout cycle is realistic and sustainable.

The funded phase is where FTMO either pays you consistently or denies your first payout for a rule you did not know existed. For the full funded account breakdown, see our FTMO Funded Account guide and our What Happens After You Pass guide.

Common Pass Mistakes

These are the mistakes that kill challenges that were otherwise on track. I have seen each one in Trustpilot reviews, Reddit threads, and Discord conversations multiple times.

1. Overtrading in the first 48 hours

The challenge starts, the adrenaline hits, and traders take 8-10 trades on day one. Two or three losers put the daily loss at 2%+ on the 1-Step, and the rest of the challenge is spent recovering instead of compounding. Solution: take your normal number of setups on day one. The challenge is not a race.

2. Revenge trading after a loss

A losing trade happens, the trader immediately re-enters with a bigger position to "get it back," and the second loss pushes the daily loss past the limit. This is the single fastest way to fail an FTMO challenge. Solution: after any losing trade, close the platform for 15 minutes. If the setup is still there when you come back, re-enter at normal size. If it is not, walk away.

3. Ignoring the timezone reset

4. Trading during news on a Standard account

An accuracy note first, because most guides get this wrong: during the FTMO Challenge and Verification, the 2-minute news window is not enforced — FTMO applies the restriction (no trades within 2 minutes of high-impact events on Standard accounts) to the funded account, per FTMO's official guidance. Hedging through the news does not protect you either, since spread widening hits both legs. What this means practically: news trading may get your challenge to the funded phase, but the habit must be gone before the account that matters arrives, or the funded account itself gets flagged. Check the economic calendar every morning — NFP, CPI, FOMC — and build the no-news-trading discipline now so the funded rules are not a lifestyle change later. If news trading is core to your strategy, the 2-Step Swing fits it better.

5. Sizing up after a winning streak

Three winning days in a row feels like momentum. The trader doubles position size on day four, takes a full loss, and the oversized position eats 3% of the account in a single trade. The daily loss is breached. The challenge is over. Solution: position size stays the same every day. Winning streaks do not change the daily loss limit.

6. Not using the Equity Simulator

FTMO's Equity Simulator lets you replay your strategy against the actual challenge rules before you pay. Most traders skip it. The ones who use it pass at higher rates because they already know whether their strategy fits the rules. Run your last 50 trades through the simulator. If it says you would have passed 7 out of 10 times, start the challenge. If it says 3 out of 10, fix the strategy first.

For a deeper dive into the most common failure patterns, see our FTMO Beginner Mistakes guide and our Why Do I Keep Failing FTMO Challenges diagnostic.