How does ThinkCapital’s daily drawdown work?

The daily limit equals your equity at the 5pm ET reset minus 4% of the initial account: a fixed $4,000 allowance re-anchored each day and breached the moment live equity touches it, open positions included. It does not scale with your balance. At $1,000 risk per trade, four consecutive losers is the line itself; that arithmetic produced 84.8% of the marginal profile’s simulated failures.

Is ThinkCapital harder than FTMO?

For the same marginal trader, yes, and measurably: 30.5% versus 45.8% per attempt in our matched simulations (seed 42, 10,000 paths), driven almost entirely by 4%/8% limits versus 5%/10%. ThinkCapital’s lower 8% first target does not compensate. For a 0.5%-risk trader the difference nearly vanishes: 99.9% versus 100.0%. Rule geometry only bites relative to position size.

When can I get my first payout from ThinkCapital?

As encoded (verified 2026-01-15): payouts run every 14 days on the funded account at an 80% base split, and the challenge fee is refunded in full with the first withdrawal. In our 90-trading-day funded simulations, 47.3% of developing-profile accounts and 92.0% of consistent-profile accounts collected at least one payout before breaching or reaching the horizon. Verify current terms on the firm’s site.

Is ThinkCapital worth it for a 1%-risk trader?

The simulation says the expected value is still positive (+$4,750 for the developing profile) because the refundable fee caps the downside, but the shape is poor: 3.27 expected attempts, a 30.5% pass rate, 99.8% of funded accounts eventually breaching, and 54.6% of all paths ending net-negative. The same trader at 0.75% risk multiplies EV roughly eightfold. Cut size first; this box rewards it more than any other program here.

Does the funded ThinkCapital account have the same drawdown rules?

Yes. As encoded, the funded stage keeps the 4% daily and 8% overall limits, and that is where the box shows its teeth: even the consistent 0.75%-risk profile breached 50.0% of simulated funded accounts within 90 trading days under maximum withdrawals. Plan funded risk sizing as carefully as evaluation risk sizing.

All simulated pass rates

CFD · open dataset · verified 2026-01-15

ThinkCapital Dual Step 100K (Intraday model) pass rate: simulated odds

10,000 Monte Carlo paths per profile at seed 42, on the challenge’s exact published rules. Distributions under stated assumptions, never promises.

Developing trader

45% win rate, 1.4R average winner, 4 trades/day, risking 1% per trade

30.5%

pass per attempt · 95% CI 30.0%–31.0%

Expected attempts3.27

Expected cost$1,135

EV, all-in+$4,750

Payout probability47.3%

Consistent trader

48% win rate, 1.6R average winner, 4 trades/day, risking 0.75% per trade

85.9%

pass per attempt · 95% CI 85.2%–86.5%

Expected attempts1.16

Expected cost$82

EV, all-in+$40,024

Payout probability92.0%

Proven edge

52% win rate, 1.8R average winner, 3 trades/day, risking 0.5% per trade

99.9%

pass per attempt · 95% CI 99.8%–100.0%

Expected attempts1.00

Expected cost$0

EV, all-in+$49,211

Payout probability99.9%

Seed 42 · 10,000 paths per profile · engine v1.1.2. EV is net of every fee across a full journey (attempts, resets, activation, then 90 funded trading days of gated payouts); payout probability is the chance a funded account collects at least once. Assumptions and unsimulated rules: profit-split-scaling, trades-resolve-same-day, intra-trade-excursions-not-modeled, daily-basis-equity-equals-balance, post-target-min-days-risk-free, attempts-iid, funded-withdrawal-model, calendar-days-approximated, trading-constraints-not-simulated. Details reproduce in the simulator run.

Precomputed odds

Not a ranking: simulated odds for three reference profiles.

Developing trader

45% win rate, 1.4R average winner, 4 trades/day, risking 1% per trade

Consistent trader

48% win rate, 1.6R average winner, 4 trades/day, risking 0.75% per trade

Proven edge

52% win rate, 1.8R average winner, 3 trades/day, risking 0.5% per trade

Challenge	Developing trader			Consistent trader			Proven edge
Challenge	Pass %	EV	Payout	Pass %	EV	Payout	Pass %	EV	Payout
ThinkCapital · Dual Step 100K (Intraday model) CFD	30.5%	+$4,750	47.3%	85.9%	+$40,024	92.0%	99.9%	+$49,211	99.9%

Seed 42 · 10,000 paths per cell · engine v1.1.2. Deterministic Monte Carlo: same seed, same numbers. Pass % is per attempt, with its 95% CI on hover; EV is net of every fee. Assumptions and unsimulated rules are listed in each challenge’s simulator view.

What the numbers say

Simulated at seed 42, 10,000 paths per archetype: reproduce every figure in the on-page simulator. The spread between profiles here is the widest of the CFD programs in this dataset, because the 4%/8% box converts risk size directly into survival: the developing trader (45% win rate, 1.4R winners, four trades a day at 1% risk) passes 30.5% of attempts (CI 30.0–31.0%) and averages 3.27 attempts to fund; the consistent trader (48%, 1.6R, 0.75% risk) passes 85.9%; the proven-edge trader (52%, 1.8R, three trades at 0.5% risk) passes 99.9%. Expected value follows the same gradient: +$4,750, +$40,024, and +$49,211 respectively, over the full journey including a 90-trading-day funded horizon at the 80% split. The refundable fee keeps even the marginal profile’s EV positive, but 54.6% of its paths still ended net-negative.

Interpretation: ThinkCapital is not a harder program in general. It is a harder program per unit of risk. The same developing trader who passes 45.8% of FTMO attempts passes 30.5% here purely because $4,000 of daily room absorbs one less losing trade than $5,000. If your risk per trade is 0.5% or lower this box is statistically almost invisible; if it is 1% the daily line is your evaluation. Distributions under stated assumptions, seed shown, no promises.

The rules, worked through

The 4% daily line: why one percentage point moves everything

The daily drawdown is a fixed 4% of the initial account ($4,000), anchored to your equity at the daily reset (5pm ET) and checked against live equity, floating positions included. Do the arithmetic for a four-trades-a-day profile risking 1% ($1,000 per trade): four straight losers lands exactly on the line, and touching it fails the account. A rule that a 5%-daily firm leaves one trade of headroom against, ThinkCapital leaves none, which is why the daily line accounts for 84.8% of the developing profile’s simulated failures, the highest share of any program here. Halve the risk to 0.5% and the same day needs eight straight losers; the simulated failure rate collapses accordingly.

The 8% maximum loss: static, but snug

The overall floor is static at $92,000: profits still bank as cushion, the mechanics are the friendly kind. There is simply less of it: $8,000 of total room where comparable programs give $10,000, against the same 8% Phase 1 target. In simulation the static floor only claims 15.2% of the developing profile’s failures, because the 4% daily line almost always gets there first. Note the encoded variant: this is the Intraday model, which disallows news trading and weekend holding (constraints the engine flags rather than simulates); the Swing model and the drawdown add-on change both the limits and the daily-check basis.

Funded stage: the box does not loosen after you pass

The funded account keeps the 4% daily and 8% overall limits, so passing does not end the tightrope. Simulated over 90 funded trading days with maximum withdrawals each biweekly cycle (a flagged modeling policy): the developing profile’s funded accounts breached 99.8% of the time and only 47.3% ever collected a payout; the consistent profile (48% win rate, 0.75% risk) still breached 50.0% of the time, where the same profile breaches under 20% of the time at the 5%/10% static programs in this dataset. The 0.5%-risk profile breached 0.5% of the time. The pattern is unambiguous: this box punishes position size after funding exactly as it does before.

Fee refund, pricing, and verification status

The recorded price is about $499, refunded in full with the first withdrawal, so expected cost concentrates on those who never fund: $1,135 for the developing profile across its average 3.27 attempts, $82 for the consistent profile, roughly zero for the strongest. The 80% split (upgradable per the firm’s add-ons, not simulated) and 14-day payout cycle are encoded as verified on 2026-01-15. Rules, prices, and add-ons change; ThinkCapital’s program pages are authoritative, and every number above is a seeded Monte Carlo result you can reproduce, not a quote from the firm.

Where these rules come from

Simulated from the open-source rules dataset entry thinkcapital/100k-dual-step (last verified 2026-01-15, against the firm’s published terms and cited sources), simulated with the open-source engine at github.com/LuxAlgo/prop-firm-sim. Rules change; ThinkCapital’s own page is authoritative. Every number above is a seeded Monte Carlo estimate: re-run the same inputs and you get the same digits.

These are reference profiles. You are not one.

Open this exact challenge in the simulator (it restores the encoded rules at seed 42 and runs), then swap in your own win rate, R-multiples, and risk.

Simulate your own odds More about ThinkCapital

Frequent questions.

It depends on your risk size more than anything else. Our Monte Carlo runs (seed 42, 10,000 paths) put a 45% win-rate 1.4R trader risking 1% at 30.5% per attempt, a 48% win-rate 1.6R trader risking 0.75% at 85.9%, and a 52% win-rate 1.8R trader risking 0.5% at 99.9%. That spread is the 4% daily line at work; test your own numbers in the on-page simulator.