TradeDay account sizes & per-size rules

The full TradeDay 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 — $45 ($23 with the public code), 6% target = $1.5k, 4% buffer = $1k of loss room
• 50k — $65 ($33 with the public code), 6% target = $3k, 4% buffer = $2k of loss room
• 100k — $90 ($45 with the public code), 6% target = $6k, 4% buffer = $4k of loss room
• 150k — $110 ($55 with the public code), 6% target = $9k, 4% buffer = $6k of loss room

Which TradeDay size is actually the best value

Cost per dollar of loss buffer is the honest comparison. 25k costs 0.045 per dollar of buffer; 50k costs 0.033 per dollar of buffer; 100k costs 0.022 per dollar of buffer; 150k costs 0.018 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.

• Drawdown choice at signup: You select intraday or end-of-day trailing drawdown before you buy. The EOD option only recalculates the floor at the daily close, which is materially more forgiving than an equity-high trail that moves tick by tick.
• No daily loss limit: Unlike Topstep or Apex, TradeDay does not enforce a separate per-day loss ceiling — your only hard boundary is the overall trailing or static maximum loss for the account you chose.
• No consistency rule on funded accounts: A single strong session will not be capped or deferred at payout time, which removes a common source of withdrawal disputes at other futures firms.

Rules that stay the same at every size

Firms rarely vary the rulebook by account size — they vary the dollar limits. On TradeDay the constants are the end-of-day trailing drawdown, the 90% profit split, the on demand, sub-24-hour processing claimed payout window and the consistency position (none on funded accounts).

• News trading: allowed — No news blackout on evaluation or funded accounts.
• EAs: conditionally allowed — Assisted automation allowed; fully unattended high-frequency systems are not.
• Weekend holding: not permitted — Flat before the weekend close on all plans.
• Time limit: none — No calendar deadline on the evaluation.

FAQ