Apex Trader Funding rules, explained
Updated August 28, 2026 · 3 min read
Apex Trader Funding is the largest futures prop firm, and its rules are mostly straightforward once you know what each one is doing. The problems come from the trailing threshold and, later, the consistency rule — so those get the most space here.
Apex changes account specs, pricing, payout terms, and the consistency rule frequently, and runs near-constant promotions. Every number below is a commonly seen value as of August 2026 — confirm the current spec for your exact account on Apex's rules and help pages before you trade.
The evaluation
You pay a monthly fee for an evaluation account. To pass, you need to:
- Hit the profit target for your account size, and
- Stay above the trailing threshold the entire time, and
- Trade at least one day (Apex's eval is effectively a "hit the target without blowing up" test, not a multi-week grind).
EOD Trail vs Intraday Trail
Apex accounts come in two flavors, and you pick one when you buy:
- Intraday Trail — the threshold follows your account's highest point including unrealized profit on open positions, and there's no daily loss limit. See Trailing drawdown, explained for the mechanics and a worked example — this is the version that quietly eats your room after a trade spikes and comes back.
- EOD Trail — the threshold only trails on your closing balance each day, but the account carries a $1,000 daily loss limit instead.
Either way, the threshold stops trailing once it reaches $100 above your starting balance. On a $50,000 account with a $2,500 threshold, once your account has been up enough for the threshold to climb to $50,100, it locks there and behaves like a fixed drawdown from then on. Getting to that point is the single biggest risk-reduction step in the whole account.
Account sizes
| Account | Profit target | Trailing threshold | Max contracts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25K | $1,500 | $1,500 | ~4 (40 micro) |
| 50K | $3,000 | $2,500 | ~10 (100 micro) |
| 100K | $6,000 | $3,000 | ~14 (140 micro) |
| 150K | $9,000 | $5,000 | ~17 (170 micro) |
Typical current-lineup specs, August 2026. Apex also lists 'Legacy' 25K–300K accounts with their own terms, and both Rithmic and Tradovate versions of each. Confirm your specific account's spec sheet.
Contract scaling
Apex's own wording is that "your account may scale up in contract size as your balance grows" — you don't get the full contract allowance from a cold start on the funded (PA) account. Trading over the allowed size is a rule violation even if the trade wins, so check the current scaling schedule for your account size.
Getting funded and getting paid
Once you pass, you move to a Performance Account (PA). From there:
- There's a minimum balance / safety net you need to be above to request a payout — commonly the starting balance plus the trailing-threshold amount, i.e. the account is clearly in profit.
- Early payouts have a minimum number of qualifying trading days and a cap on the amount; later payouts loosen up. Check Apex's current payout schedule for the exact day counts and caps.
- The consistency rule applies to payouts: no single day's profit can be more than a set share of your total profit at the time you request the payout. See The consistency rule, explained.
The consistency percentage depends on your account. Apex's legacy accounts use 30%; accounts opened under the current rules use 50%. Confirm which applies to yours — it changes how much total profit you need behind your best day before a payout unlocks.
The mistakes that fail Apex accounts
- Treating the threshold as starting balance minus $2,500. On an intraday account it's trailing and follows unrealized P&L — after any trade that spiked, your real floor is higher than you think.
- Not pushing to the lock. Every dollar of realized profit past "starting balance + $100" is trading against a fixed floor instead of a moving one.
- One monster day. It feels great and then it quietly caps your payouts under the consistency rule.
- Oversizing on the PA before scaling unlocks.
Track it against your account
Save your Apex account's target, trailing threshold, contract cap, and consistency percentage (30% or 50%) as a rule set in Tradervana. Connect Tradovate — or import from either the Tradovate or Rithmic version — and it shows your live distance-to-threshold, how close you are to the profit target, and whether your best day is still inside the consistency limit, on every account at once.
Save your firm's limits as a rule set in Tradervana and it shows your live distance-to-breach, drawdown room, and profit-target progress on every account — updated as you trade.