How to Pass a Pay After Pass Challenge (Step-by-Step)

Quick answer

To pass a Pay After Pass challenge, size your risk from the funded-stage limits rather than the evaluation limits, take your 4% target in small increments, and stop the moment you hit it. The evaluation gives you 15% of static drawdown to find 4% of profit — that ratio means no competent strategy needs to size up. New here? Start with the Pay After You Pass guide.

The numbers you are actually trading against

ForRealFunding's Pay After Pass evaluation:

On a $100,000 account: make $4,000 before losing $15,000, with no deadline and no obligation to trade a minimum number of days. The floor sits at $85,000 and stays at $85,000 even if your balance climbs to $104,000 — static drawdown does not follow you up.

That is a genuinely forgiving structure, and it changes the correct approach. This is not a challenge you pass by being aggressive. It is one you pass by being slow enough that the 15% never becomes relevant.

Step 1 — Size from the funded rules, not the evaluation rules

This is the step that decides whether you keep the account after you pass.

If you size to the 8% evaluation limit, everything works — until the day you pay the remaining balance and the limit becomes 3%. The position that was a normal loser on Tuesday is now over half your daily budget.

So pick one risk number that is safe under both, and never change it:

• 0.5% per trade on a $100,000 account is $500
• Evaluation: 30 consecutive losses of room before breach
• Funded: 6 losses in a single day before the daily limit, 12 before max drawdown
• Nothing changes at the transition, which is the entire point

Traders who want to move faster sometimes run 1%. That still leaves 15 losers of evaluation room and 3 losers of funded daily room — workable, but it makes a bad day on the funded account genuinely dangerous. Use the position size calculator to convert your percentage into lots for the symbol you actually trade, and the drawdown calculator to see where the floor sits at your account size.

Step 2 — Do the arithmetic before you take a trade

At 0.5% risk and a 1:1 reward-to-risk ratio, 4% is a net eight winning trades. Not eight wins — eight net wins. At a 50% win rate you need roughly 16 winners against 8 losers, which is a few weeks of ordinary trading for most people.

Write that number down before you start, because it reframes the whole evaluation. You are not trying to have a great month. You are trying to be net +8R, with 30R of room to do it in and no deadline.

At 2:1 reward-to-risk the requirement drops to four net winners, and the win rate you need drops with it. That is why setup quality beats setup frequency here — every increase in your average payoff removes trades you need to find.

Step 3 — Trade one playbook

With no time limit and no minimum days, there is zero incentive to trade setups you do not have an edge in. Pick one or two symbols and one pattern:

• A major pair plus gold is the common pairing; gold moves enough to reach 4% quickly but needs wider stops and smaller lots to keep the same risk in dollars
• Trading the London–New York overlap concentrates your screen time into the hours the setup actually appears
• Skip high-impact news releases during the evaluation — the spread widening alone can turn a normal stop into an abnormal loss

Step 4 — Set a personal daily stop well inside the firm's

The firm's daily limit is 8%. Yours should be 2%, or four losing trades at 0.5%.

Two consecutive losses is where most people start sizing up to make it back, and revenge trading is what turns a 1% day into a breached account. A hard personal stop at 2% means your worst possible day costs you four trades and a walk, not the challenge. There is no deadline pressuring you to make it back today — recovering from a bad day is only expensive if you insist on doing it immediately.

Step 5 — Stop the moment you hit 4%

There is no minimum trading day requirement. When the target prints, you are finished. Close positions, stop trading, and let the pass register.

Traders lose passed evaluations by continuing to trade an account that has already done its job. The account has one purpose and it is complete.

Step 6 — The day you pass

1. 1Pay the remaining balance — on a $100,000 1-Step that is $692 after the $9.99 entry. The funded account activates once it settles
2. 2Complete KYC — see the KYC requirements guide so nothing stalls
3. 3Re-read the funded rules — 3% daily, 6% max (both static), 5 minimum trading days
4. 4Keep the same risk number — if you sized from the funded rules in step 1, nothing changes here. That was the plan
5. 5Plan the first payout cycle — the split is 90%, or 100% with the add-on. Getting your first payout covers the timing

The mindset the model actually buys you

A full-price challenge creates a quiet pressure to justify the spend — you paid $539.99, so you take the marginal setup. At $9.99 that pressure is gone. A failed attempt costs less than lunch and a second one starts whenever you want.

Use that. The traders who get the most out of Pay After Pass are the ones who trade it as though the fee were irrelevant, because it nearly is. The expensive part only arrives after you have already proven the strategy works.

Bottom line

Pick a risk number that survives the funded rules, need eight net winners, stop at 4%, and take as long as you need. The structure — 4% against 15% static with no clock — is built to be passed by patience rather than aggression.

Start a Pay After Pass challenge from $9.99 on the account size you actually want; the entry fee is flat across every size from $5K to $500K, so a $100K attempt costs the same to start as a $5K one.

Related: Pay After Pass explained · Every size priced · Pass tricks that actually work

Educational content. Program parameters change — verify live terms at checkout. Evaluations run in simulated environments. Not a guarantee of passing. Not financial advice.