Prop Firm Scaling Plans Explained
Last updated: July 2026. Passing the evaluation is the part everyone focuses on — the scaling plan is what actually determines your long-term earning ceiling with a firm.
How FTMO's scaling plan works
FTMO increases your funded capital by 25% every four months if you're trading profitably, with no additional evaluation required. To qualify each cycle, you need at least 10% cumulative profit over the last 4 months, with at least 2 of those 4 months profitable — roughly 2.5%/month is enough to clear the bar comfortably. A trader starting at $100K can reach roughly $244K by month 16 purely through scaling, capped at $2M for standard accounts (or up to $400K via FTMO's Premium Programme tiers for certain account types).
How The5ers' scaling plan works
The5ers takes a more aggressive approach: accounts can scale up to $4M over time, with profit splits reported to rise from around 50% at lower tiers toward 100% at the highest tier (see our The5ers review). This is a meaningfully higher ceiling than FTMO's standard cap, which is why The5ers gets recommended specifically for traders planning to stay with one firm long-term rather than just clearing a single evaluation.
The key difference: automatic vs. structured milestones
FTMO's scaling is rule-based and automatic — hit the 4-month profit and consistency bar and the increase applies without you doing anything else. This rewards steady, moderate profitability over big swings. Firms with less clearly documented scaling criteria can leave you guessing whether a given month's performance actually moved you toward the next tier — always check whether a firm's scaling plan has explicit, published qualification criteria before assuming it works like FTMO's.
Why scaling plans matter more than the initial evaluation
The evaluation determines whether you get funded at all; the scaling plan determines how much capital you're eventually trading with — and capital size is what turns a modest percentage return into meaningful income. Two firms with similar evaluation difficulty can produce very different long-term outcomes depending on how aggressively (and how automatically) they scale a consistently profitable trader.
Bottom line
Don't evaluate a prop firm only on how hard the challenge is — check the scaling plan's ceiling and qualification criteria too, since that's what determines your earning potential in year two and beyond, not just whether you pass the first evaluation.
Check current FTMO pricing → Check current The5ers pricing (code GHZHCY) →