Oanda Prop Trader account sizes & per-size rules

The full Oanda Prop Trader size ladder

Prop pricing scales sub-linearly with account size — roughly the square root of the size ratio — so the biggest account is almost never the best value per dollar of usable buffer. Each line below shows the modelled list price, the first-phase profit target and the loss buffer expressed as a percentage of the account.

Read the buffer column first. On a trailing drawdown, the dollar buffer is the only number that limits your position size; the account label is marketing. A trader risking 1% per trade on the 200k account is taking the same dollar risk as one risking 20× that percentage on the smallest.

• 10k — $35, 10% target = $1k, 10% buffer = $1k of loss room
• 25k — $55, 10% target = $2.5k, 10% buffer = $2.5k of loss room
• 50k — $80, 10% target = $5k, 10% buffer = $5k of loss room
• 100k — $110, 10% target = $10k, 10% buffer = $10k of loss room
• 200k — $155, 10% target = $20k, 10% buffer = $20k of loss room

Which Oanda Prop Trader size is actually the best value

Cost per dollar of loss buffer is the honest comparison. 10k costs 0.035 per dollar of buffer; 25k costs 0.022 per dollar of buffer; 50k costs 0.016 per dollar of buffer; 100k costs 0.011 per dollar of buffer; 200k costs 0.008 per dollar of buffer. The cheapest ratio is where the firm is subsidising you the most, and it is usually a mid tier rather than the flagship.

The second filter is your own stop distance. Work out the worst-case dollar loss of a normal trade at your usual size, multiply by five consecutive losers, and buy the smallest account whose buffer absorbs that without breaching. Buying above that point is paying for headroom you will never trade into; buying below it guarantees a reset fee.

What the 25k and 50k tiers mean in practice

The small tiers are where most traders start and where most resets happen, because the dollar buffer is small enough that a single mis-sized position ends the account. On a forex account, one standard lot on EURUSD moves about $10 per pip — on a 25k account, a 40-pip stop on two lots is already a meaningful share of your buffer.

The larger tiers change the psychology more than the maths. Same rules, same percentage targets, bigger dollar swings — which is why traders who pass consistently on a small account often breach the first week on a large one. Scale the account only after you have taken at least two payouts at the size below.

• Two-phase evaluation, no time limit: Both phases carry profit targets and loss limits but no calendar deadline, so you can space out trading days without racing a clock — a structure closer to FTMO's than to the one-step discount firms.
• Trailing drawdown: The maximum loss trails your equity high rather than staying fixed to the starting balance, so banking early gains does not immediately widen your safety margin the way a static model would.
• No consistency rule on the standard model: The core two-step product does not gate withdrawals on how your profit was distributed across trading days, simplifying the path to a full payout.

Rules that stay the same at every size

Firms rarely vary the rulebook by account size — they vary the dollar limits. On Oanda Prop Trader the constants are the intraday trailing drawdown, the 90% profit split, the bi-weekly payout window and the consistency position (none on the standard two-step).

• News trading: allowed — No news restriction documented on the standard two-step.
• EAs: allowed — EAs permitted on MT5.
• Weekend holding: conditionally allowed — Verify current weekend-holding terms for the specific plan; not uniformly advertised.
• Time limit: none — No time limit on either evaluation phase.

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