How much does it cost to start a prop firm? A real budget breakdown

It helps to sort costs by how they behave, not by vendor.

• One-time setup costs. Company formation, legal drafting and platform setup fees. You pay these before you sell a single challenge.
• Fixed monthly costs. Platform license, hosting and CRM. You pay these whether you sell ten challenges or ten thousand.
• Per trader costs. Futures data fees per active account and KYC per verification. These grow with your trader count.
• Payment costs. Processing fees and the rolling reserve. These are taken out of your revenue, and the reserve holds some of your cash back for months.
• Marketing. Brand, website, content, community and paid ads. This is the line founders most often leave out of the spreadsheet.

Keep these five groups separate in your plan. A firm can afford a high fixed cost if its per trader costs are low, and the other way around.

Before any vendor will sign with you, you need a company, a bank account and a set of terms.

The company

Many founders who sell to the GCC and to international traders set up in the UAE. A UAE free zone company costs $3,513 to $6,807 in its first year. A DMCC company, which sits in a larger and better known free zone, costs $9,530 to $13,615 in its first year. We compare the two in our guide to starting a prop firm in the UAE.

Other founders use a company in their home market. That can cost more or less, but the questions are the same everywhere: can you open a business bank account, will payment providers accept a prop firm from that jurisdiction, and what tax will you owe.

Terms and policies

You need terms of service, a risk disclosure, a refund policy, a privacy policy, a KYC and anti money laundering policy and a list of restricted countries. Having a lawyer draft these costs $3,000 to $10,000, as a one-time fee. Budget for a review each year too, because your rules and your markets will change.

The platform is the product your traders use every day. It is also where the widest price ranges sit, so it deserves the most attention. Our tech stack guides cover each option in more depth.

CFD platforms

For a CFD firm, these are the main routes and their current prices.

• Match-Trader. The white label Basic plan costs $2,500 a month. The Turnkey plan, which includes a CRM, costs $4,000 a month. See our Match-Trader guide.
• TradeLocker. The Prop Starter plan costs $3,000 a month. See our TradeLocker guide.
• cTrader. We found no public price list. An estimated $3,000 to $31,000 to set up, and an estimated $2,000 to $5,000 a month. See our cTrader guide.
• DXtrade. An estimated $10,000 to set up, then $5,000 a month. See our DXtrade guide.
• A platform bundled with hosting. Some providers sell the trading platform and its hosting as one package, for $2,500 to $5,000 a month.

MetaTrader 5

MT5 is the platform many traders know, but it is the hardest to budget for. MetaQuotes stopped approving new MT4 and MT5 white labels in October 2022. In February 2024, it made brokers that grey-labeled MT5 to prop firms cut those firms off, starting with Blackbull Markets and Funding Pips, with US clients a particular focus. MT5 now generally needs a firm's own direct license, and US clients are restricted.

If you still want MT5, there are two estimated routes. A full server license costs an estimated $10,000 to $20,000 a month. Access through a license holder costs an estimated $5,000 to $15,000 to set up and an estimated $1,000 to $5,000 a month. Ask any provider in writing how your access is licensed and what happens to your traders if it ends. Our MT5 guide covers the questions.

All-in-one white labels

Some providers sell the platform, CRM, dashboard and risk engine as one white label package. Setup costs $2,749 to $3,000, and instead of a large monthly fee, the provider keeps 50% to 70% of challenge revenue, depending on the model. Published terms differ: some providers take half of net revenue, others pay the firm a smaller share of gross sales and carry the rewards themselves.

This is often the fastest and cheapest way to open. The trade-off shows up later. A revenue share grows with every challenge you sell, so a fixed monthly fee can cost less once sales are steady. Model both at the sales level you expect in your second year, not just your first month.

Futures platforms

Futures firms pay differently. Most of the cost is charged per active account, each month, so it grows with your trader count instead of sitting as one flat fee.

• Market data and exchange fees: an estimated $4.65 to $41 per active account a month.
• Rithmic: an estimated $10 to $25 per active account a month.
• Tradovate: an estimated $5 to $25 per active account a month.
• NinjaTrader: an estimated $5 to $25 per active account a month.
• ProjectX: an estimated $5 to $25 per active account a month. ProjectX never published its pricing, and industry reporting says its distribution moved to a single firm under an exclusivity deal with Topstep in November 2025. Confirm that it is available to you before you plan on it.

The per account model is friendly at launch, because you pay little when you have few traders. It needs watching at scale. Our futures platforms guide explains how the data and platform fees stack.

The CRM sells challenges, tracks each trader through each phase, and triggers certificates and rewards. A standalone prop firm CRM, not bundled with a platform, costs $840 to $3,000 a month, depending on how much it includes.

If your platform plan already includes a CRM, as the Match-Trader Turnkey plan does, you may not need a second one. Check what the bundled CRM can and cannot do before you drop the line from your budget. Our CRM guide lists what to ask.

You need to know who you are paying before you send rewards. KYC providers charge per verification. Sumsub's Basic plan costs $1.35 per verification. Veriff's Essential plan costs $0.80 per verification. Check each plan for a monthly minimum too, so read the plan terms, not just the per check price.

Many firms verify identity before a funded account is issued, rather than at purchase. That keeps checkout short and means you only pay to verify traders who passed. It also means your KYC bill follows your pass rate, not your sales. See our KYC guide.

Payment costs are easy to underestimate, because they do not show up as an invoice. They come out of your revenue before it reaches you.

Cards

Card processors often class prop firms as high risk. High risk card processing costs 3% to 8% per transaction. Processors also hold a rolling reserve of 5% to 20% of card revenue, for 90 to 180 days.

The reserve is still your money, but you cannot spend it. In your first months, part of every card sale is locked away while your fixed costs keep running. This is the line that catches most first-time founders.

Chargebacks

A trader who fails a challenge may dispute the charge with their bank. Each chargeback costs you the sale and a dispute fee, and card networks watch each merchant's dispute levels. Visa, for example, combined its fraud and dispute programs into a single Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program from 1 April 2025. A processor can close an account that crosses its limits, which is far more expensive than any fee.

Show your rules before purchase, record that the trader accepted your terms, use a billing descriptor traders recognize and answer every dispute with evidence.

Crypto

Crypto processing costs 0.4% to 2% per transaction. A crypto transfer cannot be reversed by a bank, which removes chargeback risk on those sales. Not every trader will pay in crypto, so most firms offer both. Our payments guide covers how firms combine them.

A firm with a working platform and no buyers is still losing money. Marketing covers brand identity, the website, launch campaign, social media, community, email and paid ads.

Ad spend

Ad spend is paid by the firm directly to the ad platforms, and it is the most flexible line in the budget. Plan for the fact that financial ads face extra rules. Google, for example, only allows ads for CFDs and rolling spot forex in select locations, from licensed providers approved to run them, and Meta lists contract for difference trading as a prohibited financial product. A prop firm has to write its ads with care. Read how prop firms market when Google and Meta restrict their ads before you set a budget.

Running the marketing

You can hire a team, hire an agency or split the work. If you work with us, our Launch plan is $2,750 to $4,200 a month, our Growth plan is $7,500 to $11,450 a month, and our Full Scale plan, where we launch the whole firm from account models to payments, KYC and infrastructure plus all marketing, is $19,900 a month. Third party costs such as platform licenses, CRM, payment processing, KYC, hosting and ad spend are paid by the firm directly. Our pricing page explains what each plan covers, and hire us vs in-house compares the options.

Here is how the lines add up for one common setup: a CFD firm with a UAE free zone company, the Match-Trader Turnkey plan, Sumsub for KYC, and both card and crypto payments. Because every price is live, we show the arithmetic in words. Our calculator does the sums for you.

Before launch

Add $3,513 to $6,807 for the company and $3,000 to $10,000 for terms and policies. Then check when each vendor starts billing. If your platform bills from setup rather than from your first sale, count every month of setup and testing as a month of the platform fee.

Every month

Add $4,000 a month for the platform and CRM. No separate CRM line is needed in this example, because the Turnkey plan includes one. If you choose Match-Trader Basic instead, add $2,500 a month and $840 to $3,000 a month.

Per trader

Multiply $1.35 per verification by the number of traders you expect to verify each month, if the plan has a monthly minimum, use whichever is higher.

Out of revenue

Take 3% to 8% of your card sales as fees, and 0.4% to 2% of your crypto sales. Then set aside 5% to 20% of card sales as a reserve you will not see for 90 to 180 days.

Marketing

Add your marketing cost and your planned ad spend.

The futures version

For a futures firm, swap the CFD platform line for the per account lines. Add $4.65 to $41 per active account a month to the platform fee you choose, such as $5 to $25 per active account a month or $10 to $25 per active account a month, then multiply by the number of active accounts you expect each month.

The total you get is not the amount you need in the bank. Add a buffer that covers your fixed costs and marketing for the months before revenue arrives, plus the cash held in reserve.

In our experience, launch budgets rarely fail because a price was wrong. They fail because of time and cash flow.

• Payment underwriting takes longer than planned. Every week without a processor is a week of fixed costs with no sales. Apply early, and to more than one provider.
• The reserve is left out of cash flow. The fees get modelled. The cash held back for months often does not.
• The platform changes after launch. Moving traders to a new platform means new setup fees, a new integration and lost trust. The MT5 events of 2024 showed how fast access can go.
• Rules are written before the software is checked. If your platform cannot enforce a rule exactly as written, you pay for custom work or rewrite your terms, and a gap between the two causes disputes.
• Ads are rejected. Creative that breaks financial ad policy can be rejected and accounts restricted, and the launch campaign loses weeks.
• Rewards are not modelled. The rewards you pay funded traders come out of revenue. Model your profit split and expected pass rate before you set challenge prices.
• Per account costs are not tracked. On a futures setup, a busy month can double a line nobody was watching.

None of these show up in a vendor quote. All of them belong in the plan. Our 90 day launch plan shows which steps to start first so the slow ones do not hold up the rest.

Prices move, and every setup is different. Our launch cost calculator uses the same live prices as this guide. Pick CFD or futures, your platform, CRM, KYC and payment setup, and it shows your one-time, monthly and per trader costs in one place.

If you want a second opinion on your budget, request an audit. We look at your offer, your stack and your launch plan, and tell you where we think the money will go and what we would build first.