Pipcy Presents the First Pip-Based Challenge to Traders Globally in the Prop Industry

For as long as proprietary trading evaluations have existed, they have followed a single formula: hit a percentage profit target, stay under a percentage drawdown, get funded. Pipcy, a prop trading firm with traders in 47 countries, has broken from that template with the Pips Mastery Challenge, which it describes as the industry’s first evaluation measuring traders in pips rather than dollars.

The shift sounds technical. The question behind it is not. Instead of asking how much money a trader made, the program asks a harder one: how well does this person actually trade?

Where the Standard Formula Falls Short

Consider how a typical prop evaluation works. A trader pays a fee, receives a simulated account of, say, $10,000 or $100,000, and must grow it by a set percentage, usually 8 to 10 percent, without breaching a maximum drawdown. On paper, a fair test. In practice, it often measures something else entirely: how much risk a trader is willing to take under time pressure.

Two traders can run the same strategy on the same pairs with the same entries and exits, and finish with completely different results, because one sized positions more aggressively. A careful trader who banks 300 pips in a month on small positions can fail a dollar-based challenge. A reckless trader who gets lucky on two oversized positions can pass it. The test grades the outcome, not the skill behind it.

That flaw shows up in the industry’s most uncomfortable statistic. Most participants fail prop firm challenges, and over-leveraging sits near the top of almost every analysis of why.

This is the problem Pipcy set out to solve. The firm was founded by Omer Ben Matityahu, a fintech entrepreneur with years of hands-on experience in the proprietary trading world, who built the company around a blunt position: account size has distorted how the industry measures talent, and stripping the evaluation down to pips leaves nowhere to hide. A trader cannot over-leverage their way to a passing grade or blow up on one oversized position. What remains is execution, which is what the firm says it set out to reward.

How the Pips Mastery Challenge Works

The rulebook is short. Every account carries a fixed lot size tied to its balance, from 0.05 lots on a $2,500 account up to 2 lots on a $100,000 account. With position size locked, every trader’s result comes down to the same yardstick: net pips gained or lost.

Two variants are offered. Mastery X2 sets a target of 500 net pips. Mastery X3 raises the target to 750 pips in exchange for a lower entry fee. In both, the maximum loss is 250 pips, a minimum of three trading days applies, and there is no daily drawdown limit. That last rule deserves attention. Many traders consider the daily limit the harshest feature of standard evaluations, since one volatile session can end a challenge even when the account as a whole is healthy.

The challenge runs exclusively on forex pairs through MetaTrader 5, with charting across 21 timeframes and depth of market on desktop and mobile. Confining the test to one asset class keeps the scoring clean: a pip is a pip, and results compare on equal footing across every account size.

News trading, which many established firms restrict or ban outright, is allowed. Pipcy’s reasoning is that a trader who can execute through high-impact events has a skill worth rewarding, not punishing.

Entry fees start at $18 for the X3 variant. Competing entry-level challenges commonly cost between $32 and $165, which positions Pips Mastery among the cheapest routes into the funded trading space.

What Successful Traders Earn

Passing the challenge is step one of the model, not its end. Funded Pips Mastery traders scale into lot sizes of up to 16 lots as they progress through funded levels, and can earn up to $400 per pip at the highest tiers. Profit splits reach 95 percent, among the highest available anywhere, and payout requests are processed within 48 hours.

The staged structure is deliberate. Rather than handing a trader maximum size on day one, the program unlocks larger fixed lots as consistency is proven, mirroring how professional trading desks allocate risk. The trader who proves reliable at 0.20 lots earns the right to trade 1.60, then more.

There is a psychological mechanism built into that design. When a trader cannot increase size to chase back a loss, revenge trading loses its power, and attention shifts from the next hundred dollars to the next hundred pips. That thinking reflects the background of Vladimir Rybakov, Head of Pipcy Academy, a CFTe-certified financial technician with 19 years of market experience who began as a dealer at a brokerage, later traded proprietary funds, and has spent much of his career teaching traders why discipline outlasts bravado. The challenge writes that lesson into the rules themselves.

Education Built Around the Model

Pipcy pairs the challenge with free trading education through Pipcy Academy, led by Vladimir Rybakov, an award-winning educator who speaks regularly at trading events worldwide. The curriculum covers price action, risk management and market behavior, the exact skills a pip-based evaluation tests.

For newer traders still learning how prop firms operate, the firm also maintains an educational blog on proprietary trading, trading psychology and market analysis, alongside a video hub with weekly forecasts and an active community on Discord, Telegram and YouTube.

A Growing Global Footprint

The numbers suggest the model has found an audience. Pipcy counts more than 1,264 active traders across 47 countries and has paid out over $5.3 million in rewards, with live support running around the clock. The firm has been featured in Finance Magnates, FXEmpire, Benzinga and StreetInsider.

One operational detail separates it from most challenge providers. Pipcy built its technology in-house, including its platform, CRM and trader dashboard, rather than licensing third-party systems. The company, founded by traders and fintech entrepreneurs with over 15 years across forex, stocks and options, says owning the full stack is what allows it to process payouts within 48 hours and ship changes based on trader feedback without waiting on vendors.

Alongside Pips Mastery, Pipcy offers its Classic Challenge, a percentage-based program in one-step and two-step formats with a 12 percent maximum loss, one of the highest drawdown allowances in the industry, no daily limit, and account scaling up to $3,000,000. Between the two programs, traders choose their own yardstick: percentages or pips.

A New Category, Not a New Feature

Pipcy is direct about where it believes this leads. The company frames Pips Mastery as the start of a new category in trader evaluation rather than a product variation, and expects competitors to follow. Its argument: every serious competitive field eventually finds a way to separate skill from bankroll, the way poker did with tournament structures and chess did with ratings. Prop trading had not, until now. Whether or not rivals adopt the format, the record will show the industry’s first pip-based evaluation was built at Pipcy.

Traders can explore both variants of the Pips Mastery Challenge at pipcy.com/challenges/pips-mastery.

About Pipcy

Pipcy is a proprietary trading challenge platform built by traders and industry professionals. The firm offers performance-based evaluations, including the industry-first pip-based Pips Mastery Challenge and the flexible Pipcy Classic, free education through Pipcy Academy, and in-house technology, giving disciplined traders a clear path to rewards of up to a 95 percent performance split. Learn more at https://pipcy.com.