Daily Loss Limits: What the Number Is Measured From

Most firms set a daily loss limit of 3% to 5%. The percentage is close to standard; the base it is measured from is not. Published bases include the initial balance, the balance at a fixed daily anchor, the greater of opening balance or opening equity, and the greater of the previous day’s closing equity or balance. Reset times span 00:00 CE(S)T to 17:00 EST.

Two accounts of the same size, at two firms advertising the same “5% daily loss”, can be stopped out at figures several hundred dollars apart on the same trading day — and a loss taken at 20:00 UTC can belong to yesterday at one firm and to today at another. The daily loss limit is the rule where the headline number tells you the least about the constraint.

It is one of the rule categories assembled in our overview of everything that can close a prop account. The two variables that decide it are the base and the reset clock.

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Why the percentage is the least informative part of the rule

Across the thirteen firms in our research, the stated daily loss limit falls in a narrow band. Three per cent and five per cent account for most products; four per cent appears at FundedNext Lite, Blueberry Funded’s 1-Step and Prime, Funding Pips’ 2 Step Flex and ThinkCapital’s Dual Step; two per cent appears at E8 Markets Signature and Blueberry’s Instant Lite. No product in our record publishes 8%, and none publishes 1%.

The variation sits one level down.

What is the percentage taken of? A fixed 5% of the initial account size behaves nothing like 5% of whatever the account is worth when the day begins. The first is constant for the life of the account; the second grows with profit and shrinks with drawdown.

From what point is the day’s loss counted? Balance excludes open positions; equity includes them. A firm can anchor the day to the balance at a fixed clock time and still evaluate the breach against equity — FTMO’s published objectives do exactly that.

When does the day begin? The reset time decides whether two losses are one day’s loss or two days’ losses. That is a larger effect than any of the percentage differences above.

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What each firm measures from, and when its day starts

All values as of 31 July 2026.

Where these were published: FTMO’s on its trading-objectives page (last modified 13 May 2026); The5ers’ and Blueberry Funded’s in their help centres, with Blueberry’s daily wording repeated in the fees and terms PDF; Funding Pips’ in its help centre with the prohibited-conduct set in the terms and conditions; Topstep’s, Apex’s and MyFundedFutures’ on help-centre and plan pages. For FundedNext, Breakout Prop, Fintokei, Alpha Capital and ThinkCapital our research records the parameter from the firms’ own published programme material but does not carry a stable URL, and those cells say so rather than pointing at a link we cannot stand behind. Cells marked “not recorded” mean the firm may well publish the value; our research did not capture it.

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Worked example: the same 5%, two bases, two floors

A $100,000 account that has traded up to a $112,000 balance, flat at the start of the day, at two firms both advertising a 5% daily loss limit.

Firm measuring from the initial balance (FundedNext’s published basis for its 2-Step). The allowance is 5% of $100,000 = $5,000, unchanged from day one. The day’s floor is $112,000 − $5,000 = $107,000.

Firm measuring from the greater of opening balance or opening equity (Funding Pips’ published basis). The allowance is 5% of $112,000 = $5,600. The day’s floor is $112,000 − $5,600 = $106,400.

Same headline percentage, same account, floors $600 apart. The gap is proportional to accumulated profit: at $150,000 the two allowances are $5,000 and $7,500.

The arithmetic reverses in drawdown. Take the same account after a losing run, opening the day at $94,000:

• Initial-balance basis: allowance still $5,000, floor $89,000.
• Opening-value basis: allowance 5% of $94,000 = $4,700, floor $89,300.

A base tied to the current account value gives more room after a good run and less room after a bad one. A base tied to the initial balance does neither. Neither design is more generous in the abstract; they are generous at different times.

One further wrinkle applies only to bases that look at equity. Funding Pips takes the higher of opening balance and opening equity, so an unrealised gain carried overnight raises the base and enlarges the allowance. FTMO anchors to the 00:00 balance, which by definition excludes open positions, so the same carried winner changes nothing about the allowance. Whether unrealised profit and loss counts at all is a separate question with its own answers per firm — see does unrealised P&L count against loss limits.

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Worked example: how a reset boundary splits a session

Two firms, both with a 5% daily loss limit on a $100,000 account. One resets at 00:00 UTC+3 (Funding Pips and The5ers both use a UTC+3 platform day). The other resets at 00:00 UTC (Fintokei’s snapshot).

A trader takes two losses in the same New York afternoon: $3,000 closed at 20:00 UTC, and another $3,000 closed at 22:00 UTC.

Under the UTC+3 reset, the day boundary falls at 21:00 UTC, between the two losses. The first belongs to one trading day, the second to the next. Each day records a $3,000 loss against a $5,000 allowance. No breach.

Under the 00:00 UTC reset, both losses fall inside the same trading day: $6,000 against a $5,000 allowance. Breach.

Identical trades, identical percentages, opposite outcomes. The same logic runs the other way for Blueberry Funded’s 17:00 EST reset, which places the boundary at the conventional forex rollover: an Asian session and the London session that follows it fall inside one Blueberry trading day and share a single allowance, whereas Breakout Prop’s 00:30 UTC boundary falls inside the Asian session itself.

FTMO’s anchor is expressed in CE(S)T, which shifts with European daylight saving, so the reset moves by an hour twice a year relative to UTC. And where a firm states only “server time”, as FundedNext does, the offset has to be established before the number means anything.

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Which floor binds first, the daily limit or the maximum loss?

The daily loss limit is a second floor beneath the maximum loss. Only the higher of the two is ever operative.

Take FTMO’s 2-Step: 5% daily against a 10% static maximum loss on a $100,000 account, so a permanent floor at $90,000.

• Day starts at $100,000. Daily floor $95,000, maximum-loss floor $90,000. The daily limit binds — it is the first thing you can hit.
• Day starts at $112,000. Daily floor $107,000, maximum-loss floor still $90,000. The daily limit binds, with $22,000 of headroom underneath it.
• Day starts at $93,000. Daily floor $88,000 — but the account fails at $90,000. The maximum loss binds, and the real allowance for the day is $3,000, not $5,000.

The general form: with a static maximum loss, the daily limit is the operative floor only while the day’s starting value sits more than one daily allowance above the maximum-loss floor. Below that, the maximum loss takes over. On a 10%/5% product the crossover is at 95% of the initial balance.

Where the maximum loss trails, the crossover moves every day, because the floor underneath moves. The mechanics of those trailing floors, and where each firm locks them, are set out in trailing vs static drawdown.

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Breach, or pause?

The same percentage can carry two entirely different consequences, and the consequence is not visible in the number.

• Termination. The5ers’ High Stakes 5% and Pro Growth 3% end the account.
• Pause. The5ers’ Hyper Growth 3% and the Bootcamp funded stage suspend trading for the day rather than closing the account — the clearest case in our record of a daily rule where a bad day costs a day.
• Soft pause. E8 Markets’ Signature 2% is published as a pause rather than a breach; MyFundedFutures applies a $1,000 soft pause on the Builder $50k plan, and the account survives it.

A 3% limit that pauses is a materially different product from a 3% limit that terminates. Both are published as “3%”.

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Which firms have no daily loss limit at all?

MyFundedFutures publishes no daily loss limit on any plan, other than the Builder $50k soft pause. Its maximum loss limit is the only floor. Apex Trader Funding has none either, except that the end-of-day drawdown product type carries one. Topstep makes it optional and prices it: traders who volunteer a daily loss limit receive a $10, $20 or $30 monthly reduction in the subscription fee.

Then the product-level exceptions inside firms that do apply one — FundedNext Instant, Fintokei’s SwiftTrader, The5ers’ Bootcamp at the evaluation stage and Blueberry Funded’s Instant Elite each carry no daily limit while the same firm applies one on its other products.

The absence is not automatically favourable. Every one of these products still has a maximum loss, and in most of them it trails. Nor is the daily limit the last of these numbers to move: several firms publish different rule sets for the evaluation and the funded stage, and a consistency condition can attach at the payout stage that never applied before — see consistency rules and where they apply.

Of the two variables on this page, the reset hour is the one we most often could not capture. Where the table says a reset time is not recorded, the firm may well publish it; our research did not find it. It is also the variable that decides whether two losses are one day’s loss or two.

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Written by the upme.com research desk. Every rule parameter above was read from the firm’s own published objectives page, help centre or terms on 31 July 2026, and cells we could not source are marked as such. Corrections to the address on our sourcing page. Nothing here is investment advice.

Sources

Every factual claim above is drawn from one of the documents below. Where a document has been superseded since the date given, tell us and the piece is corrected with a dated line.

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