Topstep traders have two valid export paths, and they produce subtly different files. TopstepX (Topstep's proprietary web platform, default since August 2024) exports raw exchange fills with no broker-side DLL adjustment. NinjaTrader 8 — still allowed by Topstep — exports through the TopstepX-issued DLL, which adjusts your visible P&L to match the official trail-DD math. The same trade can read a few hundred dollars differently between the two files. Here's the clean path on each, the post-2024 DLL split that breaks naïve reconciliation, and the cleanup steps that get your Combine and Express Funded Account (XFA) data into any journal correctly.
Topstep doesn't route through Rithmic anymore (the cutover happened in 2024 when TopstepX became the default platform). So forget any guide that tells you to export from R|Trader Pro for Topstep — that path doesn't exist on Topstep accounts in 2026. You have two real options:
TopstepX is the web-based proprietary platform Topstep launched in 2024 to replace its earlier Tradovate-based setup. The export path lives in the trade-history view of the dashboard. Menu wording shifts between TopstepX releases — what's below is the pattern; verify on your current dashboard.
If you have a Combine account, an XFA account, and any prior reset accounts, they each appear in the account-selector dropdown at the top. Pick a single account — not "all" or "combined." Each Topstep account is independently rule-tracked (separate trailing drawdown, separate consistency tracker, separate DLL) and you want one export per account ID.
TopstepX exposes a trade-history or performance view from the main navigation (the exact label varies — often Trades, History, or Performance). The view is a per-fill ledger with date, time, contract, side, qty, price, and P&L columns. This is the ledger you export — not the daily-summary view, which is aggregated.
For Combine accounts you usually want the entire evaluation window (signup date → today). For XFA accounts the meaningful window is the current payout cycle. Picking "all" works but produces larger files; explicit date ranges are easier to reconcile against your rule tracker.
The export control is usually an icon at the top of the trade-history table (download / export arrow). On some TopstepX builds it lives in an overflow menu. CSV is the right format for any journal import — pick CSV rather than PDF if you're given the choice.
Open the CSV (Excel, LibreOffice, or any text editor) and check the Account column shows a single account ID across all rows. If it shows multiple, you selected "all" in step 1 and the rule tracker downstream will mix Combine and XFA math. Re-export per account if so. Also verify row count against what the dashboard table shows for the same date range — they should match exactly.
NinjaTrader 8 remains an allowed execution platform on Topstep Combine and XFA accounts. The connection is provisioned through a Topstep-issued NinjaTrader DLL — that DLL is what makes NT8 fills score correctly against Topstep's trail-DD rules. Export from NT8 itself, not from the TopstepX dashboard, when NT8 is your execution path. The full step-by-step lives in our dedicated NT8 guide; the Topstep-specific summary:
From the Control Center main menu: New > Account Performance. The window opens with sub-tabs across the top — Trades is the round-turn grid (one row per round-turn), Orders is order-level, Executions is fill-level. For a journal, Trades is the right tab.
The Account dropdown in the Account Performance header defaults to "All Accounts" — which on NT8 silently merges your Sim101 paper account into the live Topstep account. Pick your specific Topstep account by ID (Topstep account IDs use prefixes like TPSXNNNNN or TXFNNNNN; verify against your dashboard). Date range to your evaluation window or payout cycle.
Right-clicking any row in the Trades grid opens the context menu. Pick Export → CSV (the menu wording is consistent across NT8.x releases). NT8 writes a 10-column CSV: Instrument, Account, Quantity, Entry price, Entry time, Exit price, Exit time, MAE, MFE, Profit, Cum. profit, Commission. Profit is signed in dollars and already reflects the DLL adjustment Topstep applied to your fills.
Open the CSV and scan the Account column. If you see Sim101 rows mixed in with your Topstep ID, the "All Accounts" filter slipped through and the export merged your sim trades with the live Topstep account. Re-filter and re-export. Importing that into any rule-tracking journal blows the trail-DD math instantly — sim fills count as real and the drawdown floor moves with them.
Full NT8 export reference, all 10 columns, the rollover-instrument pitfall, and the timezone defaults all live in the NinjaTrader 8 export guide — read that page if you want NT8-specific depth. The Topstep angle on NT8 is what's covered here.
This is the single fact that breaks most Topstep journal reconciliations in 2026. TopstepX (web) exports raw exchange fills. NinjaTrader 8 with the TopstepX DLL exports DLL-adjusted fills. Both are correct; they're measuring different things.
For a Combine account (intraday trail), this matters every time the trail-DD floor is touched intraday. For an XFA account (end-of-day trail, locks at starting balance once reached), it matters less day-to-day but reappears around the trail-DD lock event itself.
A Combine account and an XFA account share most of the same surface — same UI, same dashboard, similar account ID format — but they're rule-distinct in two load-bearing ways your journal needs to know:
If you have a Combine and an XFA on the same Topstep login, the trade-history view will let you switch between them — and both have to be tagged distinctly downstream or your trail-DD math runs the wrong formula on the wrong rows.
Most "my Topstep numbers don't match my journal" tickets trace to one of these.
If you opened your Topstep account before mid-2024, you may have used Tradovate as the execution platform. After the TopstepX cutover, that path is gone — current Topstep accounts (Combine and XFA opened after August 2024) don't route through Tradovate at all. Any old Tradovate-based instruction set you find still floating online is out of date. The export path is now TopstepX-web or NT8-with-Topstep-DLL.
This is the NT8-generic pitfall (also covered in our NT8 export guide) and it bites Topstep traders especially hard. NT8's Sim101 paper-trading account is enabled by default, and "All Accounts" exports merge its rows into the file alongside your real Topstep account. Importing that into a rule-tracking journal counts paper trades against your real trail-DD floor — which can either falsely fail the rule (sim losses pulling the trailing high-water mark down) or falsely pass it (sim profits cushioning the math). Both are wrong.
Sim101 rows. If you actively want to track sim performance, import it as a separate book in your journal, not merged into the funded account.
TopstepX dashboards (and many third-party trackers) show your trail-DD floor as if it were end-of-day for everything — they update the floor at session close based on the day's high realized equity. That's correct for XFA accounts. It is not correct for Combine accounts: the Combine trail moves intraday with your unrealized equity high-water mark, which means your "real" floor at any instant during the trading day can be tighter than what the daily summary shows.
Whether the file came from TopstepX or NT8, the cleanup steps are similar — the difference is in which fields are pre-computed and which you derive downstream.
2026-06-02T13:30:00-05:00. Self-healing across DST boundaries.root column derived from the symbol (ESM26 → ES, MNQU26 → MNQ). All cross-quarter analysis groups by root.Aurafy's Topstep importer reads both the TopstepX trade-history CSV and the NinjaTrader 8 Account Performance export. It splits by Account ID, tags each as Combine or XFA, pairs fills into round-turns (for TopstepX) or accepts NT8's pre-paired rows, normalizes the timezone, maps symbols to roots, and applies the correct Topstep trail-DD math per account (intraday for Combine, EOD with starting-balance lock for XFA). The 50% consistency tracker, the DLL floor, and the trail-DD headroom all compute independently per account. Free tier — 1 account, 30 days of history, no card required.
Start importing free More on Aurafy + TopstepOnce your Topstep trades are in a journal, a few free Aurafy tools layer prop-firm rule math on top of any trade history — no signup required:
No. Topstep moved off Tradovate and Rithmic when TopstepX launched as the default platform in 2024. Current Topstep Combine and XFA accounts route through TopstepX (web) or NinjaTrader 8 (with the Topstep DLL). Any guide that says "export your Topstep trades from R|Trader Pro" is referring to a pre-2024 setup that no longer exists. Our Rithmic R|Trader Pro export guide explicitly covers Apex / MFFU / TPT / Tradeify / Bulenox / Earn2Trade — Topstep is no longer on that list.
The trade-history CSV is the raw fill ledger (gross-or-net depending on the build). The daily-summary view applies the trail-DD scoring on top — so on any day where the trail-DD floor was touched intraday, the dashboard's scored daily P&L will read lower than the sum of the per-trade P&L in the CSV. Both numbers are correct; they're measuring different things. The scored number is what counts for your evaluation / payout calculation.
Topstep uses several account-ID prefixes depending on phase. Current Combine and XFA accounts use prefixes like TPSX or TXF followed by a numeric suffix; older Tradovate-routed accounts had different prefixes (now legacy). The exact format on your account is visible at the top of the TopstepX dashboard and in the NT8 Account dropdown — match the one in the dashboard to the one in your CSV's Account column to make sure they reference the same account.
One journal, two accounts. Aurafy (and most prop-firm-aware journals) handles multi-route accounts by tagging each with its execution platform. Import the TopstepX micros CSV and the NT8 ES/NQ CSV as separate accounts under the same Topstep firm preset, and the trail-DD / DLL / consistency rule trackers apply per account. Don't try to merge them — the DLL split means the two files measure P&L differently and merging silently corrupts the rule math.
TopstepX exposes some API surface (mostly for partner integrations — third-party charting front-ends like Quantower / MotiveWave use it). For one-off journal exports the dashboard CSV is the right path — no API key, no credentials shared, takes a minute. For programmatic nightly exports the API is the right answer but it's overkill for any individual trader. Aurafy imports the standard CSV, not API-pulled data — so the two flows don't compete.
The NinjaTrader 8 export guide covers NT8 as a generic platform — applies to any firm that allows NT8 (Apex, MFFU, TPT, Bulenox, Earn2Trade, Topstep with the TopstepX DLL). This page covers the Topstep-specific angle: which export path applies to your account type (TopstepX vs NT8), the DLL split between the two, and the Combine-vs-XFA tagging that decides which trail-DD formula runs. Read both for full coverage if you're NT8-on-Topstep specifically.
If your front-end charting platform routes through TopstepX's web API, the cleanest export is from TopstepX itself — your front-end's CSV may not carry the same fields. If it routes through NinjaTrader 8 (and Topstep's DLL on top of that), NT8's Account Performance export is the authoritative file. Treat the front-end's own CSV as a fallback for when you need front-end-side tags (chart timeframe, indicator markers) the broker side doesn't carry.
Reset Combines get a new account ID. Trades from the prior (reset) Combine stay attached to the prior account ID — they don't transfer to the new account. The TopstepX dashboard exposes the prior account in the account-selector dropdown for archival purposes; you can export it the same way as the active account. For journal purposes, import each Combine attempt as its own account so the rule math + result trace separately.
Aurafy imports the standard TopstepX trade-history CSV and the NinjaTrader 8 Account Performance export. It tags each account as Combine or XFA, applies the correct trail-DD formula (intraday vs EOD-with-starting-balance-lock), tracks the 50% consistency rule on Combine, watches the DLL floor on both, and pairs fills into round-turns automatically. Multi-account, multi-platform Topstep traders import each route as a separate book under one Topstep firm preset. Free tier — 1 account, 30 days history, no card.
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