Alpha Futures account sizes & per-size rules

The full Alpha Futures 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 end-of-day 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 150k account is taking the same dollar risk as one risking 6× that percentage on the smallest.

• 25k — $55, 6% target = $1.5k, 4% buffer = $1k of loss room
• 50k — $80, 6% target = $3k, 4% buffer = $2k of loss room
• 100k — $110, 6% target = $6k, 4% buffer = $4k of loss room
• 150k — $135, 6% target = $9k, 4% buffer = $6k of loss room

Which Alpha Futures size is actually the best value

Cost per dollar of loss buffer is the honest comparison. 25k costs 0.055 per dollar of buffer; 50k costs 0.040 per dollar of buffer; 100k costs 0.028 per dollar of buffer; 150k costs 0.022 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 futures account, one ES contract moves roughly $50 per point — on a 25k account with a few thousand dollars of buffer, a 20-point adverse move on two contracts is most of your room. Micros exist precisely for this tier.

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.

• Daily balance-based trailing drawdown: The core feature. Your floor recalculates once per day against closing balance — never against intraday equity peaks. Standard and Zero run a 4% trailing buffer, Advanced 3.5% alongside its higher 8% profit target.
• No daily loss limit, no time limit: There is no separate daily cap and no countdown on the evaluation. The upside is freedom; the downside is that the trailing floor is your only guardrail, so a single bad session can end the account outright.
• Tick-scalping restriction: Trades held under about two minutes for under ten ticks get flagged. Legitimate short-duration scalping can trip this, so it is the wrong firm for a pure tape-reading scalper.
• Post-pass KYC interview: After you clear the evaluation you sit an interview covering experience and risk management before the funded account is issued. Traders have been rejected here for inexperience — a subjective gate applied after you have already paid.

Rules that stay the same at every size

Firms rarely vary the rulebook by account size — they vary the dollar limits. On Alpha Futures the constants are the end-of-day trailing drawdown, the 90% profit split, the weekly on advanced/zero, bi-weekly on standard payout window and the consistency position (no single day > 40% of net profit (standard & zero)).

• News trading: allowed — No news blackout.
• EAs: conditionally allowed — Assisted automation allowed; unattended algos are not.
• Weekend holding: not permitted — Flat before the weekend.
• Time limit: none — No deadline on the evaluation.

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