Topstep rules explained

The drawdown mechanic — read this twice

Topstep uses an end-of-day trailing drawdown. The limit trails your closing balance, not intraday spikes, so an unrealised runner that gives back profit does not permanently raise your stop-out level. It is meaningfully more forgiving than intraday trailing, but it still ratchets: every profitable close moves the floor up and never back down.

Whatever the model, size your risk against the buffer rather than the account size. The practical rule we use: never let a single campaign risk more than a third of the distance between current equity and the breach level.

Consistency and payout-eligibility rules

Consistency rules are where traders lose money they have already made. On Topstep the stated position is: No single day > 50% of total profit. A single day cannot exceed 50% of total profit at payout time. Generous by futures standards but still a rule to plan around.

The mechanic to watch is the single-best-day percentage. Where a firm caps one day at a share of total profit, a single outsized win can push a payout out by weeks because you must grind additional smaller days to bring the ratio back inside the cap. If you scalp news or trade one high-conviction setup a week, that mechanic will hurt you far more than a slightly lower profit split.

Full rule matrix

Each flag below is read off Topstep's public rulebook and paired with the actual mechanic, because "allowed" means very different things from firm to firm.

• News trading: allowed — No news blackout. Futures firms police risk with position limits instead, and Topstep's are published per contract.
• Expert advisors / algos: conditionally allowed — Semi-automated and ATM strategies are fine. Fully unattended algos are not permitted — you must be at the desk.
• Weekend holding: not permitted — Flat before the weekend close; positions are auto-liquidated.
• Overnight holding: not permitted — Intraday only. You must be flat by the daily close, which is exactly why the end-of-day trailing drawdown is survivable.
• Copy trading: conditionally allowed — Copying across your own Topstep accounts is allowed within the account limit.
• No time limit: allowed — The Trading Combine has no deadline; you pay monthly until you pass.
• Crypto pairs: conditionally allowed — Only CME-listed crypto futures (MBT, MET) — no spot crypto.
• No consistency rule: not permitted — A single day cannot exceed 50% of total profit at payout time. Generous by futures standards but still a rule to plan around.

Rules that end accounts in practice

Beyond the headline limits, these are the clauses Topstep actually enforces.

• End-of-day trailing drawdown: The drawdown line moves up with your closed balance at the end of each session, not tick by tick during the day. In practice this is the single most trader-friendly mechanic in futures: an intraday spike into profit that you give back does not permanently raise your stop-out level.
• Daily loss limit: A hard per-day loss ceiling scaled to account size. It is enforced on the platform and will flatten positions — treat it as your real risk budget, not the maximum drawdown.
• Consistency target on funded accounts: Topstep applies a consistency expectation before the first withdrawal so that no single day accounts for an outsized share of profit. Plan for several moderate winning days rather than one heroic session.

Rule stability

Topstep appears 1 time in our rule-change register. None of those changes were applied retroactively to open accounts. A rulebook that moves is a rulebook you have to re-read before every payout cycle.

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