8% vs 10% Profit targets? The Prop Firm Choice Most Traders Get Backwards
Prices and challenge parameters below are Alpha Capital's Alpha Pro plans for a $100,000 account, accurate as of September 2026. Prop firms change pricing and rules often, and promotions run constantly — verify the live figures on the firm's own checkout before you buy.
You're at the checkout for a two-step challenge and the firm offers you a choice. One version asks you to hit an 8% profit target. The other asks for 10%. Same account size, same funded payout at the end.
The 8% looks like the obvious pick. Smaller number, less to earn, easier to pass. And then you look at the price and something doesn't add up — because the easier one costs more.
That's not a pricing error. It's the whole lesson.
What you're actually choosing between
Here are Alpha Capital's two standard two-step plans on a $100,000 account, side by side:
Read that carefully, because it's the opposite of what most people assume. The plan with the easier target is $80 more expensive, and it also gives you $2,000 less room to be wrong and a tighter daily limit on top.
You are not choosing a profit target. You're buying a bundle, and the firm has priced it so that the comfortable-looking option costs you twice — once at checkout, and again in breathing room.
The ratio nobody checks
Here's the part that reframes the whole decision.
On the 8% plan you must earn $8,000 while being allowed to lose $8,000. On the 10% plan you must earn $10,000 while being allowed to lose $10,000. In both cases the ratio is exactly 1:1 — a dollar of profit required for every dollar of loss permitted.
So the extra $80 doesn't buy you better odds in any structural sense. The proportions are identical. What it buys is a shorter absolute distance to the finish line, paid for with a tighter daily limit and a smaller cushion.
That's a real thing to want — but it's a much narrower benefit than "the easier plan," which is how it looks on the checkout page.
Now price the room
If you flip the question and ask what you're getting per dollar spent, the picture inverts hard.
The 8% plan gives you $8,000 of drawdown room for $527 — about $15.18 of room per dollar spent. The 10% plan gives you $10,000 for $447 — about $22.37 per dollar. That's roughly 47% more breathing room for every dollar you pay.
On this measure the cheaper plan isn't just cheaper, it's better value by a wide margin. Which is the strongest argument in the whole comparison, and it points the opposite way from most traders' instincts.
The only question that decides it
There are two ways to fail a challenge. You either don't reach the target, or you breach the drawdown. Every dead account died one of those two deaths.
So don't ask which plan is easier. Ask which death kills your accounts.
If you usually breach the drawdown — you take heat before trades work, your equity swings, you need space for a setup to breathe — then the 10% plan is better for you on every single axis. More room, a looser daily limit, and $80 cheaper. There is no trade-off to weigh here. Buying the tighter 8% plan to get an easier target would mean paying more for the specific constraint that keeps ending your accounts.
If you usually fall short of the target — you're disciplined, you rarely draw down much, but you're slow or cautious and struggle to reach a big number — then the 8% plan earns its premium. You'll never use the extra $2,000 of room, so paying $80 to shorten the distance is a rational trade. Just go in knowing that's precisely what you're buying: distance, not ease.
Most traders who fail challenges fail on drawdown, not on target. Which means most traders reaching for the "easier" 8% plan are paying extra for the plan that suits them less.
One more trap: the same number isn't always the same number
A drawdown percentage tells you nothing until you know whether it's static or trailing.
Alpha's plans above are static — the floor is fixed from your starting balance and never moves, so every dollar of profit widens your cushion. A trailing drawdown does the opposite: it follows your equity high upward, so your usable room shrinks the moment you're in profit.
FTMO's two-step runs a trailing 10%. FundedNext, The 5%ers and FundingPips generally run static 10% on their standard two-step plans. Same headline number, meaningfully different amount of usable space in practice.
When you compare accounts across firms, read the drawdown mechanic, not just the percentage. The number on the button is the headline; the mechanic is what actually decides whether you pass.
So which should you buy?
There's no easier tier in the abstract. There's only the tier that fits how you actually fail — and the trader picking by the smallest-looking target, or by the price alone, is picking blind in both directions.
Alpha isn't the only firm offering this choice, either. The 5%ers and FundingPips both let you pick between target tiers on their two-step plans, and the underlying trade is the same one every time: a lower target bundled with tighter constraints, or a higher target with more room. The numbers differ from firm to firm. The question doesn't.
Work out your failure mode. Match the bundle to it. Check whether the drawdown is static or trailing. Do that, and 8% versus 10% stops being a guess and becomes what it always was: a straightforward decision, once you know what you're really being asked to choose.
We buy these challenges across all the major firms every week, so we see how each structure actually behaves. More breakdowns like this inside Prop Firm PH.
Mark Mangulabnan is the founder of Xuan Capital. He has traded for 11 years, rose to Country Manager at a CFD brokerage, and had a $20,000 payout featured by The Funded Trader.
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