I Have $500 to Start a Prop Firm. What Can I Build?

You have $500. You want a prop firm. The first question is what to buy first and what can wait. Here is a plain way to split it.

The short answer: platform first, and it costs $129

The platform is the one thing your firm cannot launch without. Traders need a terminal, prices, rules and accounts. That is the Starter plan at $129, paid once. It covers 50 trading accounts, which works out to $2.58 per account.

There is no setup fee, no monthly platform fee and no revenue share. So the $129 is the whole platform bill. It does not come back every month.

That leaves $371 of your $500 for everything else you decide to build.

What the $129 gives you on day one

Many founders assume a $129 platform must be a stripped-down demo. It is a complete trading setup for a small firm. Here is what you get:

• A branded web trading terminal. Traders log in with Account Number, Password and Server.
• A watchlist, a price chart, an order ticket, positions, history and a live view of how much room each account has before a rule trips.
• Live prices for 50+ instruments: forex majors, crosses and exotics, gold, silver, palladium, oil, natural gas, 12 stock indices, Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• Chart history back to 2000 for FX and metals.
• An admin panel where you create up to 100 accounts at once, assign and reassign traders, rotate passwords, manually breach accounts and view analytics.
• API access, so your own systems can talk to the platform later.

Orders are simulated against live market prices. Nothing is routed to a broker, exchange or liquidity provider. PropExecutor is a simulator, and that is why a firm can start with so little.

Your rules are included

A prop firm is its rules. The rule engine judges every account on every price tick, not on a timer. You can set a daily loss limit, maximum loss limit, profit target, trailing drawdown, minimum trading days, max open positions, max lot size, hedging, orders per day and inactivity. Each rule can breach the account, reject the order, or flag it.

Rule sets are versioned. An account keeps the exact rule version it was created with. If you edit a rule set later, your existing accounts do not change. That means you can adjust your challenge as you learn without upsetting traders already in it.

On Starter you get 3 rule sets with 6 rules each, using core rules. For a first firm with one or two challenge types, that is plenty. You can read more on the prop firm rule engine page.

How to spend the other $371

This is where your own judgment matters. The platform is settled. The rest of your budget goes into getting your firm in front of people. A sensible order:

1. Your own website. This is how traders find you and learn your challenge. Spend here first.
2. Your branding. Starter lets you set your firm name, dark logo and accent colour on the terminal, so the terminal already looks like yours.
3. A small reserve. Keep part of the $371 back for your first top-up of credits once accounts start going out.

The split is yours to set. The point is that the platform no longer eats the budget.

Why credits stretch a small budget

Each trading account you create uses one credit, permanently. Credits never expire. Breaching or archiving an account does not refund the credit, so you can plan your costs simply: one account, one credit.

The simulated starting balance does not change the cost. A $5K account and a $100K account both use one credit. So you can offer different challenge sizes without paying more per account.

When the first 50 are used, you can buy a top-up pack of 100, 500 or 1,000 accounts at your plan's per-account rate. Or you can upgrade. An upgrade costs the price difference between plans and adds the account difference. Unused credits carry over.

Basic at $499 would use your whole $500, so for a first launch Starter is the plan that leaves room for the rest of your firm. You can move up later and nothing you bought is wasted. See the full pricing page for details.

Why not spend more on the platform now?

Because 50 accounts is enough to learn. You will find out how traders respond to your challenge, what size they pick and how your rules feel in practice. Basic adds full branding, 15 rule sets and advanced rules. Those matter once you have traders and a reason to need them. Until then, cash is better spent on getting people to your door.

A simple launch plan on $500

1. Try the live demo account from the website to see the terminal as a trader will.
2. Buy Starter for $129.
3. Set your firm name, dark logo and accent colour.
4. Create a first batch of accounts in the admin panel.
5. Build your site and start marketing with the remaining $371.
6. Assign accounts to traders as they join. A trader record is only a name and an email, so there is nothing for them to sign up for with PropExecutor.

When you are ready to grow, you can use the API to assign accounts from your own backend. Accounts are created in the admin panel, then your backend assigns them to buyers over the API. There is more in the API docs and in our guide to how to start a prop firm.

Later: your own domain and your own badge

As you grow, the terminal can run on your own domain, which makes the firm look established. The Growth plan also hides the PropExecutor badge. You do not need either on day one. Read about white label options when you are ready.

Your next step

For $500, the platform is the easy part. Start with Starter at $129, then put the rest into your site and your first traders. Check the pricing page, try the live demo, or book a consultation if you want help planning your launch.