The formula
→ Skip the reading and run your own numbers in the payout calculator.
One line: gross needed = (total fees − already withdrawn) ÷ (split ÷ 100).
Fees leave your pocket in full. Payouts do not arrive in full — they arrive multiplied by your split. That asymmetry is the whole story. At an 80% split, every dollar of funded profit is worth $0.80 to you, so recovering $1 of fees takes $1.25 of gross profit. Recovering $300 takes $375. Recovering $600 takes $750. The spreadsheet feeling that “I just need to make my fees back” undercounts your target by exactly 25% at an 80% split — and by 100% at a 50% split.
The real cost of a funded account
The sticker price of a challenge is what marketing shows. The real cost of a funded account is what accounting shows: total fees ÷ challenges passed. A $60 ticket is the cost of a funded account only for the trader who passes first try, every time. Nobody does that forever.
Two live examples with public numbers. Propr’s Classic 1-Step 5K costs $60, with a 10% profit target, 3% daily loss, 6% static drawdown and an 80% split (rulebook v1.0.5). Hypernova’s Conservative 5K costs $60 with the same headline shape — 10% target, 3% daily, 6% drawdown, 80% split (in-app, 17 August 2026). Same ticket, same split, same math:
- Pass first try → funded account cost $60 → break-even payout $75 gross.
- Pass 1 in 3 → funded account cost $180 → break-even payout $225 gross.
- Pass 1 in 5 → funded account cost $300 → break-even payout $375 gross — 7.5% of the 5K account.
Why published pass rates matter here
Hypernova publishes measured pass rates per risk tier — roughly 19.8% to 28.5% depending on the tier at our in-app read of 17 August 2026. Read those numbers as a price tag, not a curiosity: at a 20% pass rate, the average buyer needs five tickets per conversion, so the “real” funded account costs five times the sticker and the break-even payout scales with it. Your own pass rate is the only one that matters, but if you do not have a track record yet, the published one is the honest prior.
One important nuance: this article prices the funded accounts you already have. Whether the next ticket is worth buying is a different question — that one belongs to the challenge EV calculator, which weighs fee against pass rate before you pay. The two tools bracket the trade: EV before you buy, payout math after you pass.
What this means in practice
Three habits fall out of the math. First, count your fees honestly — all of them, failed attempts included, minus any cashback already received. Second, translate break-even into a percentage of your funded capital: $375 on a 5K account is 7.5%, which at a 10% evaluation target is most of a full challenge’s worth of trading — plan for it. Third, stop treating the first payout as profit. It is amortisation. Profit starts after the calculator says zero.