Topstep Review

Topstep is a US futures prop firm operated by Topstep LLC. It trades futures only: CME equity index contracts such as the E-mini S&P 500, E-mini Nasdaq 100 and E-mini Russell 2000, Micro Bitcoin, currency futures such as Euro FX, British Pound and Japanese Yen, plus metals and energies. Traders who want forex or CFD accounts need a different firm.

Its main draws are a low Combine price, an end-of-day trailing loss limit in evaluation, a 90/10 split and a Live stage with uncapped standard payouts. The main trade-offs are a separate and much larger XFA activation fee, a loss limit that drops to $0 after the first XFA payout, and Live accounts that start with only 20% of capital tradable.

How the Topstep program is structured

Topstep’s path has three levels:

1. Trading Combine: the evaluation. One step, simulated, with a profit target and a maximum loss limit.
2. Express Funded Account (XFA): a simulated funded account the same size as the Combine you passed. Payouts start here.
3. Live Funded Account (LFA): an optional live stage that Topstep offers to qualifying XFA traders.

Your XFA size is fixed by the Combine you passed and cannot change before or after activation. Residents of some countries, including Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Kuwait, Monaco, Serbia, Vietnam and about twenty others, can reach the XFA only, with no Live Funded Account.

Trading Combine rules

The standard Combine comes in $50K, $100K and $150K sizes. Profit targets run from $3,000 on the $50K to $9,000 on the $150K. Maximum loss limits run from $2,000 on the $50K to $4,500 on the $150K. The maximum loss limit trails on an end-of-day basis. It moves up with your closing balance, not with intraday highs, so open profit that you give back before the close does not raise the floor.

Position limits scale with size:

• $50K: up to 5 minis or 50 micros
• $100K: up to 10 minis or 100 micros
• $150K: up to 15 minis or 150 micros

The Combine also has a consistency rule. Your single best day of profit must stay at or below 55% of the profit target, so the target cannot be reached in one session. In practice, passing takes at least two trading days.

Resets are capped at two per account per calendar day. Regular Combine purchases have no limit.

Costs and commissions

The Combine is the low-cost entry point: the $50K costs $49 and the $150K costs $199, both one-time fees. The Express Funded Account Standard is priced separately, at $599 for the $50K up to $829 for the $150K. Count both when you estimate the cost of reaching a payout-eligible account.

Commissions apply on every level: Combine, XFA and Live. They are charged per round turn (entry plus exit), not per side:

• NFA fee: $0.02
• Exchange fee: varies by product
• Commission: $1.00 on minis, $0.50 on micros

Hypothetical example: a trader who completes 20 round turns a day in a mini contract with an assumed $1.30 exchange fee pays 20 × ($1.00 + $0.02 + $1.30) = $46.40 for that day. On a $50K account with a $2,000 loss limit, that is over 2% of the loss allowance each day.

Express Funded Account rules

The XFA starts at a $0 balance. Under the Scaling Plan, maximum position size grows with your current balance, and a higher limit takes effect at the next session, not mid-session. The Scaling Plan applies to the XFA only; the Live account uses Dynamic Live Risk Expansion.

The XFA must record at least one trade every 30 days or it closes.

Standard vs. Consistency payout path

At XFA activation you choose one of two payout paths, and the choice is permanent:

• Standard: payout eligibility after 5 winning days of $150 or more in net P&L. The days do not need to be consecutive.
• Consistency: eligibility after as few as 3 trading days, provided no single day exceeds 40% of total profit.

The Standard path suits traders who produce many modest green days. The Consistency path is faster but penalizes a single outsized winner: a trader with $1,000 in total profit cannot have one day contribute more than $400.

Payouts and the $0 loss limit

The split on XFA payouts is 90/10 in the trader’s favor. A request can be up to 50% of the account balance, with per-request caps set by payout path and by whether you added a voluntary Daily Loss Limit (DLL) when buying the Combine. The DLL adds a hard daily stop, so it fits only if that suits how you trade. Caps are up to $12,000 with the DLL and roughly double without it; confirm the current caps with Topstep before deciding on the DLL. Each request after the first requires profit above $0 since the last payout. Payouts go by Aeropay for eligible U.S. traders, and Topstep says additional payout options are available for international traders.

The most consequential XFA rule: once a payout is processed, the maximum loss limit is set to $0, and the balance can never reach or fall below zero again.

Hypothetical example: an XFA builds a $4,000 balance and the trader withdraws 50%, or $2,000. The remaining $2,000 becomes the entire loss allowance. A losing stretch of $2,000 ends the account, whatever the original loss limit for that size was.

Live Funded Account

Sizing. The LFA tier is based on the average account size of all your active, eligible XFAs with at least one payout. It uses the funded tier, not current balance, and rounds up to the nearest of $50K, $100K or $150K.

Reserve structure. Only 20% of the account is tradable at the start, with a minimum of $10,000. The other 80% sits in reserve. The reserve unlocks in four 25% increments as you hit profit thresholds of $3,000 on the $50K tier, $6,000 on the $100K tier and $9,000 on the $150K tier. Reserve unlocks are reviewed every Monday, and funds are deposited within one to two business days.

Daily loss limits are set by tier: $2,000, $3,000 and $4,500 for the $50K, $100K and $150K. They tighten if the tradable balance falls:

• At $10,000 or below: DLL drops to $2,000 and maximum position to 5 contracts
• At $5,000 or below: DLL drops to $1,000 and maximum position to 3 contracts

These adjustments are applied on Fridays and reverse once the balance rises back above the threshold.

Payouts. The standard cycle requires 5 non-consecutive winning days of $150 or more. You can then request up to 50% of the balance with no dollar cap, and the day count restarts after each payout. After 30 such winning days, daily payouts unlock: one request per day of any amount of unlocked balance, with a $125 minimum. Requesting 100% closes the Live account.

Topstep can also call a trader down from Live into a simulated funded account. The route back to Live exists, but callback is at Topstep’s discretion and depends on trading behavior.

Topstep Labs and other plans

Alongside the standard Combines, Topstep sells four alternative plans, some of which use static rather than trailing loss limits. All four share these terms:

• one-time purchase fee
• no resets
• free activation
• 90-day expiry from purchase
• closure after 30 days with no trades
• a cap of 5 purchases of each plan per trader per month

The Powered Up plan is self-contained: you pass a Challenge Round, then trade a Payout Round in a new account starting at $0, with no consistency target or minimum trading days. Reaching $1,500 in the Payout Round pays a fixed $1,500 and closes the account.

These plans also carry tighter ceilings on specific products. On the $50K Static, for example, silver, copper and platinum minis are capped at zero contracts, and MCL and MGC at 25 lots.

Trading rules: news, weekends, copying and automation

News trading is allowed, with restrictions around Tier 1 releases: CPI, the FOMC rate decision, the FOMC press conference, NFP/unemployment and PPI. From 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after each release:

• New opening transactions are blocked in the affected minis: ES, RTY, YM, NQ, NKD, GC, SI, HG and PL.
• Opening transactions in the affected micros (MES, M2K, MYM, MNQ, MGC, SIL, MHG) are limited by account tier.

Existing positions can still be managed, and orders that reduce take-profit or stop-loss brackets are accepted. For CPI the window falls at roughly 7:25 to 7:35 a.m. CT.

Price limits. No trading is allowed in a product trading within 2% of its price limit, at any level of the program.

Weekend holding is not allowed.

Copy trading works only between accounts in the same trading environment. You can copy from a Combine to an XFA and from an XFA to a Combine. Live Funded Accounts cannot use the trade copier.

Hedging across accounts is prohibited, whether between your own accounts or with other users.

Automation is allowed, but you are responsible for the setup and its results, and bots must follow every trading rule. On TopstepX, the firm’s own futures platform, automation runs only through API access.

Prohibited conduct

Breaking these rules can lead to rejected profits or account closure:

• Account stacking
• Excessive purchases of Trading Combines or Resets
• Trading on behalf of others
• Single- and multi-user hedging
• Intentional account depletion
• Circumventing geographic restrictions, including VPNs, proxies, TOR or other identity-masking tools
• Manipulative tools, whether AI or automated
• Exploiting the simulated environment: scalping algorithms, rapid-fire trades, fills that would be impossible in a live market, or unrealistic stop-loss execution
• Trading outside the market range, abnormal market behavior and news event exploitation
• Trades that conflict with the Terms of Use

Topstep frames the simulation-abuse rule as aimed at intentional exploitation, not normal trading. The firm decides what counts as excessive purchasing or exploitation, so heavy Combine buying and strategies that depend on fills a live market would not give both carry real risk.

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

• Low Combine price relative to account size, with an end-of-day trailing loss limit
• A 90/10 split and a choice of payout paths
• A Live stage with uncapped standard payouts and daily payouts after 30 qualifying days
• Static-drawdown alternatives for traders who prefer a fixed floor

Trade-offs

• XFA activation costs far more than the Combine
• The loss limit drops to $0 after the first XFA payout, and the payout path is locked at activation
• Live accounts start with 20% of capital tradable, and call-down to simulation is discretionary
• Round-turn commissions at every level, news-window blocks and no weekend holding
• XFA-only status in some countries; payouts only via Aeropay and ACH

How we checked Topstep

We visited topstep.com on 13 November 2026, connecting from Estonia, and ran our register lookups the same day from Tallinn, Estonia. The home page opened normally. Its footer says introducing brokerage services are offered through Topstep Brokerage LLC, described as a registered introducing broker and a member of the National Futures Association under NFA ID# 0567079. The same footer calls the affiliated firms wholly owned subsidiaries of Topstep LLC. From there we clicked through to About Us, Our Team and Disclosures & Notices. The disclosures page repeats NFA ID 0567079 and adds that Topstep Brokerage is registered with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as an introducing broker.

Prices were harder to reach. Clicking “Start trading” sent us to dashboard.topstep.com, which requires an account sign-up or login before any price or payment step appears, so we never saw a checkout. The rule pages were open. The Live Funded Account Rules page says all positions must be closed prior to 3:10 PM CT or the product’s market close, whichever is sooner. It also states “Currently, your Maximum Loss Limit is $1,000.” On the payouts page, Standard Path payouts come after every 5 winning days of $150+, and Aeropay is available to eligible U.S. traders only, with other options for international traders. The terms of use say you are not entitled to a refund of the fee.

Our search of NFA BASIC by NFA ID 0567079 returned TOPSTEP BROKERAGE LLC with the status NFA Member Approved. The same record shows Introducing Broker registered, both entries dated 09/08/2025, and 0 regulatory actions. That matches the site’s claim. Keep in mind the record covers the brokerage affiliate. The terms of use name Topstep LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, as the operator of the sites and services.

On Trustpilot, which we read on 13 November 2026, Topstep scored 3.7/5 from 15,097 reviews, with 70% five-star and 19% one-star. The Wayback Machine’s first capture of the domain dates to 1999-11-11, which may predate the current brand. We did not buy a Combine or request a payout, so the 9 seconds average payout time and the $1.4B+ paid out figure remain Topstep’s own numbers, not something we tested.

Who Topstep may suit

Topstep fits futures traders who trade intraday, close before the weekend, and can make a series of $150+ winning days without leaning on one big session. It suits traders comfortable with an end-of-day trailing limit in evaluation who plan to leave profit in the XFA rather than withdraw the maximum. Traders who need forex or CFD accounts, hold over weekends, trade around CPI or FOMC in index minis, or live in an XFA-only country should weigh these limits first.

Alternatives

Provider	Score	Fee	Split	Payouts
Goat Funded Trader	5.1/10	$239	80%	Bi-weekly	Review
My Funded Futures (MFFU)	7.5/10	$92	80/20	Every 48 hrs	Review
Apex Trader Funding	7.9/10	$17	100%	5 Trading Days	Review

Sources

1. help.topstep.com/en/articles/8284215-express-funded-account-parameters
2. topstep.com/express-funded-account-rules
3. help.topstep.com/en/articles/14289835-topstep-pricing-and-payment-ques
4. help.topstep.com/en/articles/8284197-trading-combine-parameters
5. help.topstep.com/en/articles/8284233-topstep-payout-policy
6. help.topstep.com/en/articles/8284099-topstep-program-overview