Two of the biggest futures prop firms, very different rulebooks. Here's the actual mechanics — drawdown, trail type, lock points, consistency, payouts — without the affiliate spin.
Numbers below come from each firm's public 2026 rulebook. The structural differences (trail type, lock point, consistency %) matter more than the dollar amounts.
| Apex 4.0 | Topstep | |
|---|---|---|
| Evaluation style | 1-step eval, no minimum days | Combine (1-step, no minimum days as of 2024) |
| Account sizes | 25K / 50K / 100K / 150K | 50K / 100K / 150K |
| Profit target (100K) | $6,000 | $6,000 |
| Trailing drawdown (100K) | $3,000 | $3,000 |
| Trail type | Your choice: EOD or Intraday (set at purchase) | Intraday (Combine) → EOD (XFA funded) |
| Lock point | Starting balance + $100 | Starting balance ($0 net P&L) |
| Consistency rule | 30% of total profit | 50% of total profit |
| Daily loss limit | EOD accounts only (separate from trail) | Yes — scales with account ($1k / $2k / $3k) |
| Funded payout style | Profit split, with first-payout minimum + frequency caps | Profit split via XFA, with frequency caps |
Numbers verified June 2026. Account sizes & targets are simplified to the headline tiers each firm offers most prominently.
This is where Apex and Topstep diverge most. Both use a trailing drawdown that follows your high-water mark up but never back down — until it locks. The differences are when it tracks and where it locks.
See your exact lock threshold, current DD line, and the worst trade you can survive on either firm. Both intraday and EOD modeled.
Open calculator →ES / NQ / CL / GC and 25+ contracts. Get exact $ per tick, gross + net P&L, $ risk, R-multiple — in the units your firm reports.
Open calculator →Both firms restrict how much of your total profit can come from a single big day. The thresholds are different and the math matters — one monster day can lock you out of a payout you'd otherwise be eligible for.
Practically, Topstep gives you more headroom for a hero day. Apex forces flatter equity curves, which actually helps long-term consistency — but it can sting when one great trade pushes you over the threshold and you have to grind out extra "balancing" profit before requesting.
threshold × total / (1 − threshold). On Apex (30%): if you have $4,000 total profit, your best day can't exceed $1,714.29. On Topstep (50%): same $4k total → best day cap is $4,000 — literally the whole stack.
Deep dive → Consistency rule explained — thresholds across the cluster — where Apex's 30% and Topstep's 50% sit on the 30/35/40/50 tier axis, plus why eval-only vs lifetime scope changes how the rule actually bites.
Paste your daily P&L. Topstep 50% / Apex 30% / MFFU 40% presets. See if you're eligible and how much extra profit you need to balance the curve.
Open calculator →Account sizes, lock thresholds, trail type comparison, $100 safety net mechanic, payout cycle — the full Apex 4.0 reference.
Read the guide →| Account | Apex 4.0 target | Apex 4.0 DD | Topstep target | Topstep DD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25K | $1,500 | $1,000 | — | — |
| 50K | $3,000 | $2,000 | $3,000 | $2,000 |
| 100K | $6,000 | $3,000 | $6,000 | $2,000 |
| 100K | Topstep 100K uses $3k DD on the standard Combine | |||
| 150K | $9,000 | $4,000 | $9,000 | $3,000 |
Topstep's 150K Combine runs a tighter $3k drawdown vs Apex's $4k on the 150K — Apex gives you more cushion on the largest account.
This is one of the cleanest reasons to prefer Apex if you're a position-sizer who occasionally takes a deep heat in a single direction: no second guillotine.
Deep dive → Daily loss limit explained — presence-by-stage archetypes — Apex 4.0's firmwide deletion is the cluster's most dramatic DLL move; the explainer walks the 4-archetype taxonomy (none / eval-only / funded-only / both) and where Topstep sits.
Plan it first → Position-size calculator — given Apex's drawdown cushion vs Topstep's tighter DLL, see how many contracts you can risk per trade before either firm's floor binds.
Account: 100K, both firms. You're up $1,800 by Wednesday. Thursday you push +$2,400 unrealized on a winning NQ runner, then give back to +$900 closed for the day.
Key takeaway: on intraday accounts, your high-water mark is the print — not the close. The difference is real money.
You've made $5,500 total profit on the funded account. Your best day was $2,800.
Same trader, same days — Topstep lets you request payout almost immediately, Apex blocks it for weeks of grind. This is the case for Topstep if you swing for big days. It's also the case against Topstep if you want a discipline mechanism baked in.
Drawdown lines, consistency thresholds, payout windows — one number wrong and the account is gone. Aurafy auto-logs every futures trade from Tradovate / NinjaTrader / Sierra / Rithmic and shows you your real DD headroom, consistency ratio, and per-firm rule state in one dashboard. Free tier covers 30 days & 1 account, no card.
Try Aurafy free See the $19 founder offerYes — many traders do. Both allow it, with their own scaling rules on number of contracts per account. Just make sure you can mentally separate the DD math; the worst mistake is bringing one firm's lock point to the other firm's trade.
It depends on size and active promo cycle, and both run frequent discounts. Don't pick on monthly fee alone — pick on whether the rule set matches your trading style. A $50 difference in eval fee is rounding error vs blowing a $100K account on a rule you didn't model.
Apex's EOD-trail option is friendlier for scalpers who take a lot of small unrealized swings — your high-water mark doesn't move on every intraday spike. On Topstep Combine, every spike up matters. Once you're on a Topstep XFA, EOD trailing applies and the disadvantage disappears.
Drawdown, by a wide margin. Consistency blocks payouts but doesn't end accounts — you can keep trading. Trailing drawdown ends the account permanently. Spend 80% of your attention on the trail, 20% on consistency.
As of June 2026, yes. Apex 4.0 launched March 2026 with the choose-your-trail change and the $100 safety net lock. Topstep's Combine + XFA structure has been stable since the 2024 simplification. Always verify on the firm's own rulebook before purchase — both firms update terms periodically.
No. Aurafy is independent. We don't take affiliate revenue from either firm, and we don't have a horse in this race. We make a trading journal that supports both because that's what futures traders pay for.
Side-by-side breakdowns of the other prop-firm pairs futures traders actually weigh against Apex and Topstep.
Same SB + $100 safety-net lock family — different consistency thresholds (30% vs 40%) and different payout philosophy.
Read →Two different lock points (SB vs SB+$100) and two different consistency policies (50% eval-only vs 40% eval+funded).
Read →Both lock at starting balance, but Topstep is 2-phase intraday→EOD; TPT is 3-phase EOD→intraday→EOD.
Read →Topstep's 2-phase XFA real-capital vs Earn2Trade's LiveSim with activation-fee-from-first-withdrawal — opposite payment philosophies.
Read →Different lock families (SB vs SB+$100), different lifecycle trail shifts. Useful if you're sizing the SB-lock vs safety-net trade-off.
Read →Both Rithmic-cleared, both SB + $100 family. Differences are payout cadence, scaling, and program variant flexibility.
Read →The other Apex-on-one-side comparison — same SB+$100 lock floor, identical $3,000 drawdown on the 100K plan, but opposite eval ladders (Apex 1-step vs Bulenox 3-step) and opposite choice rigidity (per-account vs lifetime-binary).
Read →Both enforce a 30% consistency threshold with identical max-safe-day math — but Apex applies it on the funded PA forever while Earn2Trade drops it the moment you pass eval. Plus opposite sign-up economics (Apex upfront PA fee vs Earn2Trade fee-from-first-withdrawal) and the LiveSim funded-state fork.
Read →Deep dive on the Apex 4.0 rule set — trail mechanic, $100 safety net lock, 30% consistency, payouts.
Read →Combine vs XFA, lock at starting balance, 50% consistency, the daily loss limit — the complete Topstep reference.
Read →The full head-to-head across all 7 firms researched — rule-driven shortlist, not affiliate-ranked.
Read →Why most "trade replay" only replays the chart and misses what actually decided the trade — the screen-recording wedge.
Read →The mechanic at the heart of every Apex-vs-X comparison — how the 4.0 evaluation trails intraday, then locks at SB+$100 once you're PA, and where the EOD shift kicks in.
Read →Same SB+$100 lock family, but opposite lifecycle wedges — Apex shifts trail-type at purchase (intraday eval → EOD PA), Tradeify shifts consistency-archetype at signup (Advanced vs Straight). Mirror landmines on opposite axes.
Read →