Apex Trader Funding Review

Apex Trader Funding is a futures prop firm run by Apex Trader Funding Inc. Traders pay a one-time evaluation fee and trade a simulated account under drawdown rules. If they reach the profit target without breaching those rules, they move to a Performance Account (PA), where payouts are requested under a separate set of conditions. The profit split is 100%, and payouts go by ACH transfer. Overall, Apex suits manual futures traders who trade with defined stops and build steady winning days. Its trade-offs sit in the rules: an Intraday drawdown that counts unrealized profit, six capped payouts per PA, a safety net that holds back early profit, and a full ban on automation.

Who operates Apex and what you can trade

The firm was founded in 2015 and works only in futures: equity, currency, agricultural, energy and metal futures, plus micro futures and some additional instruments.

Apex names four platforms on its site: Tradovate, Rithmic, WealthCharts and NinjaTrader. The choice matters beyond charting: the evaluation drawdown behaves differently on Tradovate than on the other two, and Apex publishes separate per-contract commission schedules for each connection, so round-trip costs depend on the platform and the instrument.

Cost and the evaluation account

The Intraday Trail $25K account has these terms:

The program is a 1-step evaluation. The evaluation requires only one trading day, so an account can pass in a single session if it reaches the target without touching the drawdown threshold. It runs 30 calendar days with no extensions. After passing, the trader has 7 calendar days to activate the Performance Account.

The $1,500 target is one and a half times the $1,000 maximum loss, and with an intraday trailing threshold that room can shrink during the session.

EOD vs Intraday: how the drawdown works

Both models use a trailing drawdown threshold that moves up with new highs and never moves down. The difference is when the threshold is measured and what counts toward it.

EOD accounts. The threshold is recalculated once a day at 4:59:59 PM ET from the closing balance. It is then enforced in real time during the next session. Gains you open and then give back within one session do not raise the threshold. Only the closing balance does.

Intraday accounts. The threshold trails the peak balance in real time, and the peak includes unrealized profit. If a trade runs $400 into profit and then reverses, the threshold has already moved up by that amount, even though the profit was never banked. Touching the threshold at any moment, including on an open loss, liquidates positions. In an evaluation that is a fail. In a PA it closes the account immediately.

A hypothetical example: a $25,000 Intraday account with a $1,000 trailing drawdown starts with its threshold at $24,000. A position reaches $25,600 in unrealized value, lifting the threshold to $24,600, then reverses and closes flat at $25,000. The balance is unchanged, but the cushion has fallen from $1,000 to $400. Under the EOD model, the unchanged close would have left the threshold where it was.

Daily loss limit

• EOD evaluation: a fixed Daily Loss Limit (DLL) applies. Hitting it pauses trading for the rest of that session. The account stays active and resets at the next open. Only touching the EOD drawdown threshold fails or closes the account.
• Intraday evaluation: there is no DLL. Risk is controlled only by the trailing threshold.
• Performance Accounts (both models): the DLL is tier-based. In Intraday PAs it is enforced intraday.

When the threshold stops trailing

Where the threshold locks depends on stage and platform:

• Performance Accounts: it stops at the starting balance + $100 and stays fixed from then on.
• Evaluations on Rithmic and WealthCharts: it stops once it reaches an amount equal to the target profit balance.
• Evaluations on Tradovate: it trails indefinitely with the peak balance (Intraday) or EOD balance (EOD).

For a $25K PA, the threshold locks at $25,100. Once it locks, every further dollar of profit adds to the trader’s cushion instead of dragging the threshold up behind it.

Contract limits and scaling

During evaluation, the maximum position is fixed by account size: 4 contracts on $25K, 6 on $50K, 8 on $100K and 12 on $150K. Micros generally count at ten to one against minis in Apex’s published limits.

In the Performance Account, scaling is tier-based. The rules also describe a half-size restriction: traders can use only half of their maximum contracts until the end-of-day balance exceeds the trailing threshold, defined as initial balance + trailing drawdown + $100. Once a close clears that level, the full contract limit applies from the next full session.

Trading rules and prohibited conduct

• Stop losses are mandatory. Every trade needs a pending or mental stop and a defined risk plan.
• The threshold is not a stop. Using the full drawdown threshold as your stop to absorb large losses is prohibited.
• Disproportionate risk-to-reward is banned. The firm’s own example of a prohibited high-risk setup is a 5-tick target with a 150-tick stop.
• One direction only. You can be long or short at any time, not both. Hedging the same or correlated instruments is prohibited, and so is holding orders on both sides of the market as a non-directional strategy.
• News. Trading through news with your normal strategy is allowed. Chasing the market on releases or bracketing both sides to gamble on the outcome is not.
• No automation. EAs, bots, scripts, macros and anything that automates order placement, modification or cancellation are prohibited. Signal or alert tools, charting software that does not submit orders, and native stop-loss and take-profit orders set manually at entry are permitted.
• Copy trading is allowed across evaluation and Performance Accounts only if all of them sit under the same Apex user ID and email. Third-party copier software is used at the trader’s own risk.
• No holding through market close. Holding positions through the close is prohibited.

Apex also prohibits account or credential sharing, multiple accounts created through household or associated parties, VPNs or proxies used to evade rules, third-party payments, bad-faith chargebacks, false identity information, high-frequency trading, exploiting erroneous fills, and stockpiling discounted evaluations to blow them up deliberately. A broad standard also bans strategies a trader would not use on a personally funded broker account. Violations can lead to Trader Probation, account closure, forfeited funds, and additional verification or audits.

Several of these standards (“unsustainable strategies”, “professional standards”) are judgment calls rather than numeric limits. They give the firm discretion in reviewing an account before a payout.

Keeping a Performance Account active

Evaluations have no activity requirement beyond the 30-day window. Performance Accounts do. A PA must record at least 2 trading days with $50 or more of new profit in every rolling 30-day period. After 15 days without meeting this, the account enters a dormant phase. After 30 consecutive days, it is closed permanently, with all payout eligibility forfeited and no reinstatement.

Payouts

Payouts are processed by ACH transfer, with a frequency and processing time of 5 trading days each. Apex reports $828M+ in total compensation since 2022, a figure that has not been independently audited.

Eligibility: winning days and consistency

Before each request, a PA needs five winning days, each above a minimum that depends on the model and account size:

The 50% consistency rule also applies. No single trading day can make up more than 50% of the profit accumulated at the time of the request. The count covers profit since the last approved payout, or since the account opened if there has been none. Hypothetically, if a PA has made $2,000 since its last payout and one day contributed $1,200, that day is 60% of the total. The trader would need more profitable days to bring it under half before requesting.

Safety net and minimum request balance

The safety net equals the drawdown limit plus $100, measured on top of the starting balance. It applies for the life of the PA and is the same for EOD and Intraday:

• 25K: $26,100
• 50K: $52,100
• 100K: $103,100
• 150K: $154,100

The minimum balance to request a payout is the safety net plus the $500 minimum payout: $26,600 on 25K, $52,600 on 50K, $103,600 on 100K and $154,600 on 150K. Only the balance above the safety net is withdrawable. On a 25K PA, the account has to be up $1,600 before the first $500 can come out.

Payout caps and the six-payout limit

Each PA is limited to six payouts, and each has a cap:

• 25K (EOD and Intraday): $1,000 for each of payouts 1 to 6.
• 50K EOD: $1,500, $1,500, $2,000, $2,500, $2,500, $3,000.
• 50K Intraday: $1,500, $2,000, $2,500, $2,500, $3,000, $3,000.
• 100K EOD: $2,000, $2,500, $2,500, $3,000, $4,000, $4,000.
• 100K Intraday: $2,000, $2,500, $3,000, $3,000, $4,000, $4,000.
• 150K EOD: $2,500, $3,000, $3,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000.
• 150K Intraday: $2,500, $3,000, $3,000, $4,000, $4,000, $5,000.

On a 25K PA, the six capped payouts allow at most 6 × $1,000 = $6,000. Whatever the balance, the caps set how fast and how much a single PA pays out.

Legacy accounts

Older accounts can sit under legacy parameters. These include an 8-trading-day payout cycle with at least 5 days of $50+ profit, a 30% consistency rule instead of 50%, and a profit split of 100% on the first $25,000 followed by 90%. Legacy accounts also carried two extra risk rules:

• 30% negative P&L (MAE) rule: open, unrealized losses on any trade could not exceed 30% of the account’s profit balance at the start of the day.
• 5:1 risk-reward rule: a stop loss could not exceed five times the profit target. A 10-tick target allowed at most a 50-tick stop.

Legacy payouts also had their own safety net (for example, $1,600 on 25K, kept for the first three payouts), minimum payouts from $1,500 on 25K up to $3,500 on 300K, and caps that lifted to 100% withdrawals from the sixth payout.

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths supported by the terms:

• A low one-time fee for the discounted $25K Intraday evaluation.
• Only 1 minimum trading day in evaluation.
• A 100% profit split on approved payouts under current rules.
• Three platform connections and two drawdown models.
• A PA threshold that locks at starting balance + $100.

Trade-offs:

• The Intraday model counts unrealized peaks, so a reversal can shrink the cushion with no change in balance.
• On Tradovate, the evaluation threshold never stops trailing.
• Six capped payouts per PA limit total withdrawals, most tightly on smaller accounts.
• The safety net ties up the first part of PA profit for the life of the account.
• An idle PA can be closed permanently.
• Several conduct rules are discretionary, and automation is fully banned.
• ACH, a US bank transfer network, is the only payout method, so traders banking outside the US should confirm how they would receive funds. Holders of older accounts should also confirm whether legacy rules apply before planning a withdrawal.

How we checked Apex Trader Funding

On 13 November 2026 our team opened apextraderfunding.com from Tallinn, Estonia. The home page loaded normally on desktop and on a phone. In the footer, the operator is named as Apex Trader Funding Inc., at 2028 E. Ben White Blvd Ste 240-9873, Austin, TX 78741, which the site marks as a mailing address only. A second name, SIM Accounts Limited, appeared near the product menu. Not every page opened. On our first walk, the About Us and Risk Disclosure pages were blocked for our connection. Later that day the Terms of Use, the help center and the payouts page did load.

On the home page we clicked through the Standard plans for 25k, 50k and 100k. The Intraday Trail Standard evaluation for a 25,000 account was listed at $167.00, or $16.70 with a coupon code. The 50,000 account was $249.00. The rules panel showed a $1,500 profit target, a $1,000 maximum drawdown on an intraday trail, a minimum of 1 day to pass, and an evaluation that expires after 30 days with no resets. The same page lists a 50% consistency rule and payouts every 5 trading days. Clicking “Get Started” kept us on apextraderfunding.com with prices still visible. We stopped there. We cannot say whether a purchase requires an account first.

Apex shows no licence or registration number and no regulator statement. We also saw no risk warning. Because the site claims no licence in a register we can query, we had no register record to look up. Its restricted countries page lists dozens of places where it does not open new accounts, including Latvia and Ukraine.

We read Trustpilot on 13 November 2026. Apex held 4.2/5 from 21,729 reviews, with 81% five-star and 10% one-star ratings. The company has claimed the profile, but it had not replied to any of the 8 newest reviews. The earliest Wayback Machine capture of the domain is from 2021-09-16, and the domain was registered on 2021-07-20. Apex reports $828M+ in total compensation since 2022. That is the firm’s own figure. We could not verify it, and we could not check how payouts work in practice, because we did not buy an evaluation or request a withdrawal.

Who Apex may suit

Apex fits a discretionary, manual futures trader on Tradovate, Rithmic or WealthCharts who trades with defined stops, closes positions before the market close, and builds several modest winning days rather than relying on one large day. Traders who want losses measured on closing balances, and a daily loss limit that pauses trading instead of ending the account, will find EOD more forgiving than Intraday. It suits automated strategies, hedged positions or large single-day wins poorly, because those run into the automation ban, the one-direction rule and the consistency rule.

Alternatives

Provider	Score	Fee	Split	Payouts
Blueberry Funded	5.3/10	$343	85%	Bi-Weekly	Review
Blue Guardian	6.7/10	$231	90/10	every 3 days	Review
FundedSquad	5.2/10	$40	Up to 100%	Weekly Available	Review

Sources

1. apextraderfunding.com/help-center/billing/evaluation-plan-fees-and-acc
2. apextraderfunding.com/
3. apextraderfunding.com/resources/funded-trading/what-is-funded-trading/
4. apextraderfunding.com/help-center/eod-trailing-drawdown-accounts/eod-p
5. apextraderfunding.com/learn/
6. apextraderfunding.com/help-center/