Calibur: Information and detailed review

Who runs Calibur and how the model works

Calibur (also branded CaliburProp) is a perpetuals prop firm built around crypto infrastructure: evaluation fees are paid through a smart contract and rewards are sent in USDC as on-chain transactions that anyone can look up on a block explorer. You can sign in with an email (passwordless, through Privy) or with a Web3 wallet.

Two companies, two contracts

The business is split in two, and that matters more than any headline number:

• Ignite Lab Ltd, a British Virgin Islands company (no. 2202726, Craigmuir Chambers, Road Town, Tortola), operates Calibur and sells the evaluation. Its Terms of Use cover the evaluation only.
• EffiMarket Ltd, a Cayman Islands company (no. 432724), runs the rewards account and pays the rewards under its own Rewards Account Agreement (RAA). Both companies state they are independent of each other.

Passing the evaluation does not give you a right to a rewards account. Calibur reviews your result and may, at its discretion, refer you to EffiMarket, which then decides on its own whether to make you an offer. If EffiMarket declines, the evaluation fee is not refunded, because Ignite Lab considers its service complete once it has determined pass or fail. Any dispute about rewards has to be raised with EffiMarket, not with Calibur. The RAA itself is not published: you only see it before accepting an offer, and if anything in Calibur's summary differs from it, the RAA prevails.

Everything is simulated

Evaluation and rewards accounts both run in a simulated environment. Prices come from external feeds ("tier-1 depth from top exchanges"), but orders never reach a market: they fill inside Calibur's own simulation, and the terms say plainly that the company controls pricing, execution and slippage, and therefore the conditions under which pass or fail is decided. They also warn that most participants fail their first attempt. The rewards are real money, paid from a reserve that the provider publishes on-chain.

The evaluations

There are two paths, each in four sizes from $5,000 to $50,000. There is no time limit, no minimum number of trading days and no consistency rule in either: you pass the moment equity reaches the target without breaking a limit, even with a single trade.

1-Step: Champion and Warrior

The 1-Step comes in two difficulties. Champion has the larger static drawdown and the lower target; Warrior is cheaper but has a tighter static drawdown and a higher target. Both use a 3% daily drawdown. The docs still describe a third difficulty, Legend, with a 3% drawdown, but it is not on sale in the checkout or in the plans data the website loads.

2-Step

The 2-Step is only sold in Champion difficulty. The target is split into two phases (the second is twice the first), with a 5% daily drawdown and an 8% maximum drawdown. It is the cheapest entry point, from $20 for the 5K account.

How the drawdown limits work

• Daily drawdown: measured from your equity at the daily reset, which happens at 00:30 UTC. The figure the terminal shows is the lowest equity allowed for the day.
• 1-Step static drawdown: a fixed floor below the starting balance. It never moves, no matter how much profit you make.
• 2-Step maximum drawdown: measured from the highest equity the account has reached (a high-water mark), so the floor rises as you make money.

Open positions count. When equity touches either limit, every position is closed automatically and the account is permanently closed and becomes read-only, with its history still visible. The terms add that any rule breach, intentional or not, can end the attempt, and that trading is monitored both in real time and after the fact, so a disqualification can arrive retroactively.

Add-ons

The checkout offers two add-ons, priced as a share of the plan price:

• 90/10 Profit Split (+10%): raises your future rewards share from 80% to 90%.
• Account Revival (+80%): if you fail the first attempt by hitting a drawdown limit, the evaluation is revived once, with margin, P&L and every statistic reset to the starting values.

The plans data also lists add-ons for a looser daily, static or maximum drawdown (+11% each), but they are switched off in the checkout. There are no resets for sale; the terms only say a reset "may" be offered.

One evaluation at a time

You can only hold one active evaluation, or one order awaiting payment, at a time. To buy another you must finish, fail or cancel the current one. A pending order can be cancelled until the payment starts processing.

Markets, leverage and trading costs

The terminal lists 77 active markets: 48 cryptocurrencies, 19 stocks (NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MSTR, COIN, SK Hynix and others), five index products (XYZ100, SP500, SPY, SOXL and KORU) and five commodities (gold, silver, WTI, Brent and copper). All of them are perpetual contracts quoted against the dollar.

• Leverage: 5x on BTC, ETH, XYZ100, SP500, SPY, gold, silver, oil and copper; 2x on every other crypto, on the stocks and on SOXL and KORU. An order above the maximum is rejected.
• Trading fee: 0.045% of the trade on most markets, 0.035% on XYZ100 and SP500, and 0.09% on gold.
• Borrowing: every market charges a 12% annual financing rate while the position is open. Fees and borrowing are deducted from your result, and the terminal tracks them in a "Commission & Borrowing" line.
• Size limits and hours: each market has a minimum and maximum order size. Trading hours are not published, although the terminal has a "market not open" message.
• Orders: market, limit and stop-market orders, with take profit and stop loss. Positions can also be liquidated if margin runs out: the terminal shows a margin ratio (maintenance margin over equity), but the liquidation level is not documented.

The docs also publish a trading API (wallet or email login, REST and websocket). Note that this sits awkwardly with the rules on automation below.

Trading rules and prohibited strategies

The rule set is short. There is no consistency rule, no profit cap and no time limit. What is forbidden, both in evaluation and in the rewards account:

• high-frequency trading and latency arbitrage, plus statistical or correlation arbitrage between related instruments;
• tick scalping and any strategy that holds positions for less than one minute on average;
• grid, martingale and averaging strategies meant to exploit the drawdown limits;
• trading exclusively or mostly around major news to profit from spread widening;
• exploiting pricing errors, feed anomalies or platform glitches;
• trade copying, signal mirroring and social trading services, and coordinated group trading across accounts;
• bots, algorithms or automation tools not pre-approved by Calibur in writing;
• manipulation, wash trading, front-running and anything Calibur judges would not be replicable in a live market.

The terms also forbid letting someone else trade your account, selling it, and using a VPN or proxy to hide your location. If you are unsure about a strategy, Calibur asks you to email support@caliburprop.com before using it.

Passing: from evaluation to rewards account

When the account hits the target, it enters a "verifying evaluation result" state while the Calibur team reviews the trading. Only after that can you complete identity verification. No KYC is needed to buy or trade an evaluation, but before the rewards account opens the provider checks your identity (through Sumsub, with ID and a selfie) and confirms you are not in a restricted country. You also need to register a wallet before your first claim. Sharing your data with EffiMarket requires your explicit consent; without it, the referral does not go ahead. Passing also unlocks a downloadable certificate.

The rewards account

Same limits, static floor

The rewards account keeps the daily and maximum drawdown percentages of the plan you passed. The daily limit resets at 00:30 UTC on your balance; the maximum drawdown is static on the starting balance and is never recalculated, which means the 2-Step's trailing floor becomes fixed once you reach this stage.

How rewards are calculated and claimed

Your reward is your share of the net result: realised gains after simulated trading fees and funding, minus any earlier losses. Open positions do not count until closed. The split is 80%, or 90% if you passed with the add-on. It is fixed when the account opens, but the provider can change it for future periods with 14 days' notice.

• When: there is no payout cycle. From 14 days after your first trade on the rewards account, you can claim whenever you like.
• How much: at least $30 per claim, so network fees stay proportionate. There is no published cap.
• Conditions: all positions must be closed before you claim, and only one claim can be active at a time.
• Checks and speed: each claim is checked against the trading rules, mostly automatically. When the reserve is ready, the USDC is sent within minutes (Calibur advertises an average under five minutes); if a claim is held for review, you are given a time estimate.
• Destination: rewards go to the wallet linked to the rewards account. On-chain transfers cannot be reversed, so the address has to be yours and correct.

After a payout your balance drops by the amount claimed, but the drawdown floor stays where it was: withdrawing everything puts you back at the starting balance with the original cushion.

Breaches, limits and inactivity

Hitting a drawdown limit closes the positions and the rewards account for good. Rewards already paid stay yours, and a claim submitted before the breach is still processed, but any profit you had not claimed is lost. Prohibited conduct is treated more harshly: it can close the account, forfeit unclaimed rewards and lead to the recovery of rewards already paid.

You can hold up to five rewards accounts at once, each of up to $50,000, so the ceiling is $250,000. There is no automatic scaling: to trade more you pass more evaluations. Thirty consecutive days without a trade suspend a rewards account; your balance and history stay untouched, and support can reactivate it. Rule changes come with 14 days' notice and never apply to a period already in progress.

Payments, fees and refunds

Calibur only accepts crypto. You pay a stablecoin into its payment contract on Ethereum (ERC-20), Arbitrum One or BNB Smart Chain, and the evaluation unlocks about 60 seconds after the payment confirms. Paying by card means buying crypto through an independent on-ramp (MoonPay), which charges its own fees and is entirely outside Calibur's responsibility. Network gas fees can be passed on to you, and prices are quoted without taxes. The terms also warn that blockchain outages, gas spikes or a security pause of the contract can delay payments, and that Calibur is not liable for those delays.

The fee is non-refundable once the evaluation starts, including any add-ons, whether you pass, fail or are disqualified. The exceptions are a technical failure that prevents activation and mandatory consumer law in your country. The chargeback policy is strict: you must contact support before disputing a payment, and an unjustified chargeback can lead to account termination, legal action and reporting to credit bureaus.

Eligibility, KYC and legal terms

• Who can join: adults (18 or older, or the local age of majority). Residents and nationals of, and anyone physically in, the United States, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Belarus, Venezuela, Myanmar, Sudan and Afghanistan are excluded, as is anyone in a sanctioned jurisdiction. Chinese nationals are excluded wherever they live. Traders in Canada, Australia and the EU are told to check their local rules first, and the portal blocks restricted IPs.
• One account per person: multiple accounts, including through relatives, mean termination of all of them without refund.
• KYC at any time: the company can ask for ID, proof of address or source of funds whenever it wants, and failing to complete it in time can suspend the account. An evaluation account left 30 days without logins or open positions can also be closed.
• Your data: KYC and trading records are kept for at least five years after closure, on-chain payments are permanent and public, and ban information can be shared with EffiMarket and other evaluation providers.
• Liability and disputes: Calibur's total liability is capped at the fees you paid in the previous three months; fees are not held in segregated accounts, so in an insolvency you would be an unsecured creditor. The terms are governed by BVI law, with a mandatory 30-day informal resolution step and then individual arbitration in Singapore (SIAC), a class action waiver and a two-year deadline for claims.
• Rule changes: material changes to the terms or trading rules come with 14 days' notice and never apply to evaluations already purchased.

Free training mode and other extras

Training mode is free, needs no card and never expires. It runs on the same terminal and markets as a paid evaluation, so you can test your process before paying. Calibur sometimes rewards training users with a promotion that adds the 90/10 split and Account Revival free to their first evaluation, and the checkout accepts promo codes. There is also a monthly leaderboard that ranks evaluation accounts by trading volume and profit, with optional public profiles.

Contradictions between sources

• Prices and difficulties: the Evaluations page in the docs lists higher prices ($60 to $495 for 1-Step Champion, $50 to $450 for 2-Step) and a Legend difficulty; the llms.txt file even describes old Standard, Pro and Turbo tiers. The checkout and the plans data sell Champion and Warrior at lower prices, which are the ones that apply today. The portal's landing pages still say evaluations start "from $24" (the 2-Step costs $20) and call the paths "Fast Track" and "Standard".
• Minimum payout: $30 in the rewards rules and on the homepage; $50 on the training mode page.
• Markets: "75+" on the homepage, "100+" in the portal and "70+ across forex, indices, stocks and crypto" on the training page; the terminal lists 77 and none of them is forex. The docs FAQ still speaks of crypto only.
• When the first payout opens: "14 days after your first rewards account trade" in the rules, "account must be at least 14 days old" in the claim error.
• Automation: the terms forbid unapproved bots and algorithms, while the docs publish an API to trade the evaluation by code.
• Manual approvals: the marketing promises "no manual approvals", but passing triggers a manual verification, referral to EffiMarket is discretionary, and claims can be held for review.
• Time limits and minimum days: the generic terms mention phase time limits, minimum trading days and restricted hours "as published on the platform"; the platform publishes none.
• Smart contract audit: the terms promise to publish an independent audit of the payment contract, but the website and docs do not link to one.

Summary: who it suits

Calibur suits a perpetuals trader who wants a low-cost entry (from $20 on the 2-Step), very few rules, no consistency requirement and payouts in USDC that can be verified on-chain, and who is comfortable paying in crypto. The 1-Step's static drawdown is easy to read, and free training mode lets you rehearse on the real terminal first. The trade-offs are structural: the rewards account belongs to a separate company that decides whether to take you on, its agreement is not public, fees are non-refundable, borrowing costs 12% a year on every open position, and leverage is only 2x on most markets. It is a better fit for intraday traders who close positions quickly than for those who hold trades for days.