What Changes the Day You Get Funded

Passing an evaluation switches the account to a different rulebook. The funded stage typically adds a consistency test at payout, a waiting period before the first payout, a cadence and minimum, a split that steps up over months, and a drawdown floor that locks or resets. Apex caps lifetime payouts on a $100,000 account at $18,000, after which the account closes.

The evaluation and the funded account are two products with different parameters, sold as one purchase. Some rules come into force only at funding. Some change value. A few disappear.

The categories that move are narrow and repeatable: the consistency test applied at payout, the trading or profitable days required before a first payout, cadence and minimums, splits that step up over months, scaling plans with conditions of their own, drawdown floors that lock or reset at the first payout, per-trade risk caps, news and weekend permissions, leverage, and the identity check. Every parameter below was read on the firm’s own published pages on 31 July 2026.

For the full map of what can end an account at either stage, see the cluster hub on everything that can close a prop account.

Why are the two stages separate rulebooks?

An evaluation is priced and marketed on four headline numbers: profit target, daily loss limit, maximum loss, minimum days. Those are what comparison content uses, and for the evaluation they are usually accurate.

The funded stage runs on a second set of parameters that mostly does not appear in the same table. It lives on payout-policy pages, in help-centre articles and in scaling-plan documents. FTMO’s Best Day rule sits in the help centre rather than on the main trading-objectives page. All of it is published. A buyer comparing evaluations is simply not, by default, comparing funded accounts.

A consistency rule is the clearest case. At several firms it does not exist during the evaluation at all, and appears only when a payout is requested.

Which rules tighten, and which loosen?

Firm / product	Tightens at funding	Loosens at funding	Before the first payout	Verification step	Source
FTMO 2-Step	News execution prohibited within ±2 minutes of a release on Standard funded accounts; no such restriction during the evaluation	Minimum trading days fall from 4 per phase to none	Day 14 after the first trade, then on demand	Review of 1–2 business days before dispatch	ftmo.com/en/trading-objectives · news FAQ
FTMO 1-Step	Trailing max-loss floor resets to 90% of initial capital each time a reward is withdrawn and a new account is issued	90% split applies immediately rather than after scaling	Day 14 after the first trade	As above	ftmo.com/en/reward-growth-and-scaling-plan
Funding Pips (Master)	Weekend holding “Temporarily Not Allowed” since 29 January 2026; 10-minute news window; risk per trade idea 3% below $50k and 2% at $50k+; dynamic leverage on metals, indices and energy from 16 March 2026; crypto leverage 1:2 → 1:1	Split can reach 100%, but only on monthly cadence	Minimum reward request = 1% of account size (2% on the on-demand cycle)	IP activity logged and analysed	fundingpips.com/terms-and-conditions
Topstep	Consistency moves from 50% on the Combine to 40% on the funded account; payout requests capped at 50% of balance, with per-size caps	Maximum Loss Limit goes to $0 permanently after the first payout	XFA Standard path: 5 winning days of $150+; consistency path: 3 days. Minimum $125	None published in our sources	Topstep payout policy
Apex	50% consistency assessed on the funded account at the payout request, not on the evaluation; lifetime cap of six payments — $18,000 on a $100,000 account, after which the account closes	Minimum trading days removed entirely in the 4.0 product	5 qualifying days between payouts; a qualifying day is ≥$250 profit on $100,000	None published; payouts processed automatically via Deel	apextraderfunding.com
MyFundedFutures Rapid	Drawdown changes type: end-of-day on the evaluation, intraday trailing once sim-funded; tier-1 news prohibited	50% consistency applies on the evaluation only, not on the funded Rapid account	Daily cadence, minimum $500	None published; payment via Rise, $15 fee	myfundedfutures.com/plans/rapid
The5ers Bootcamp	Maximum drawdown 5% static on the evaluation becomes 4% on the funded account; a 3% daily pause appears where the evaluation has no daily limit	—	14 days after funding, plus KYC; minimum $150 net; approval usually within 72 hours	Mandatory video / KYC interview	The5ers help centre · terms
ThinkCapital Dual Step	News prohibited on funded accounts (4-minute window on Lightning); weekend holding prohibited	Maximum loss widens from 7% on the challenge to 8% on the funded account	Every 14 days; 7-day cadence is a paid add-on	Not published in our sources	thinkcapital.com/terms-of-services

Parameters read on the firms’ own published pages on 31 July 2026. Rules in this category change often, so every figure above is dated to that check.

Two firms sit outside the table, because each moves a variable the columns do not have.

FundedNext publishes no restriction on news trading, but on funded accounts profit made within five minutes of a high-impact release is credited at 40% while losses in the same window count at 100%. Its Scale-Up programme raises the balance by 25% and the split to 90%. Payout cadence differs by product: 1-Step every five business days; 2-Step and Lite first at day 21, then every 14 days.

Alpha Capital applies a 40% best-day consistency requirement only on the on-demand payout path and only at the funded stage. The bi-weekly path carries none, but requires a $100 minimum and five trading days. The two paths are mutually exclusive and chosen at registration, before the account has traded.

What happens to the drawdown floor at the first payout?

No parameter is more likely to change value at funding, and the direction it moves in is not consistent between firms. How trailing and static floors work in general is set out in trailing vs static drawdown.

The floor is removed. Topstep’s Maximum Loss Limit goes to $0 permanently after the first payout. Before that it trails on end-of-day balance and locks on reaching the starting balance. The payout is the event that ends the mechanic.

The floor resets downward. FTMO’s 1-Step trailing maximum loss resets to 90% of initial capital each time a reward is withdrawn and a new account is issued. Accumulated cushion does not carry across a payout on that product.

The floor locks and stays locked. Funding Pips’ Zero product trails 5% from peak equity and fixes permanently at the starting balance once the account is 5% in profit; the firm’s published terms state that it does not reset after a reward. On the PRIME scaling track, the maximum-loss floor fixes at +3% profit. MyFundedFutures Rapid locks its limit at +$100.

The floor changes type. MyFundedFutures Rapid uses end-of-day drawdown on the evaluation and intraday trailing once sim-funded. The number does not change. What the number is measured against does.

The floor widens. E8 Markets runs no balance scaling. Instead it adds one percentage point to the drawdown allowance per payout, up to 14%.

Which requirements exist only on the funded account?

Consistency assessed at payout. Apex applies 50%, calculated on the funded account when a payout is requested rather than during the evaluation. Alpha Capital applies 40% on the on-demand path only. Funding Pips applies 35% on the on-demand cycle and 15% on Zero, on every payout. E8 Markets applies 40% on E8 One and 35% on Signature. MyFundedFutures runs the mirror image: 50% on the Rapid evaluation, none on the funded Rapid account. The stage at which each firm applies the test is set out in consistency rules and where they apply.

Profitable-day requirements before a payout. These are separate from the evaluation’s minimum trading days. E8 Signature requires three profitable days before the first payout and five before subsequent ones, a profitable day being at least 0.3%. Blueberry requires three active days of at least 0.5% closed profit plus $100 realised. Apex requires five qualifying days of at least $250 on a $100,000 account between payouts. Funding Pips’ Profit Concentration Policy, applied to evaluation accounts of $25,000 and above created from 27 June 2026, requires four profitable days of at least 0.5% each before every reward request for the life of the resulting account, where a single trade idea produced more than 60% of the phase profit target.

Per-trade risk caps. Funding Pips applies 3% per trade idea below $50k and 2% at $50k and above on Master accounts. Blueberry applies 1.5% on funded accounts from 12 March 2026. Both are second floors underneath the daily limit. Neither applies during the evaluation.

Split conditions. The advertised percentage is frequently a funded-stage variable rather than a fixed term. FTMO’s 90% on the 2-Step requires four months as an FTMO Trader, at least 10% cumulative net profit, at least two processed rewards and a positive balance. Funding Pips makes the split a function of payout cadence: 60% weekly, 80% bi-weekly, 90% on demand, 100% monthly. Fintokei recalculates the split at every payout on four metrics, sliding between 50% and 100%. The full picture is in what “up to 100% profit split” means.

What verification is required before a payout?

Identity checks generally sit at the payout stage rather than at purchase, so you meet them after the account has been traded.

The5ers publishes the most specific requirement in our review. A payout requires completion of a mandatory video and KYC interview, and the published position is that failure to attend within five business days results in pending payouts being declined and accounts invalidated. The terms and conditions state that on termination for cause “any accrued balance of profits or rewards shall be canceled and forfeited”. Those terms are governed by Israeli law with exclusive jurisdiction in Israeli courts.

Elsewhere it is process rather than an interview. FTMO states a review of one to two business days plus one to two days for dispatch. Apex processes payouts automatically through Deel. MyFundedFutures pays through Rise with a $15 fee. Funding Pips settles on Tuesdays in one to three business days, verifiable on the Rise chain, and its terms state that IP activity is logged and analysed.

One pattern is reported but not verified: a third-party analysis published by PropFirmGeeks in May 2026 describes risk interviews at the first payout on Alpha Capital accounts. We could not check that against primary documents and present it as a reported claim, not a fact.

What can be checked before you pay?

Every parameter in this article came off a published page. They are distributed rather than collected: our source review found them spread across trading-objectives pages, FAQs, help-centre articles and PDFs, with FTMO’s Best Day rule the documented case of a rule living in the help centre rather than in the main rules.

Answerable from published documents before purchase:

Does the drawdown type or base change at funding, and what does the first payout do to the floor?
Is there a consistency requirement on the funded account, at what percentage, and is it assessed at every payout?
How many trading or profitable days are required before a first payout, and how is a qualifying day defined?
What is the payout cadence, the minimum request, and is the split a function of that cadence?
Is there a lifetime payout cap or a fixed number of payment cycles?
Which conditions unlock the advertised split, and how many months do they take?
What identity or interview step is required, and what happens if it is not completed in time?

What no published document answers is whether a given payout request will be approved. No firm in the industry publishes how many payout requests it declines, or under which clause. The parameters are published; the rate at which the discretionary provisions are applied is not.

Nor can a published document tell you that today’s parameters will be tomorrow’s. Several figures above carry 2026 effective dates because they replaced earlier values — the subject of whether the rules can change after you buy.

Written by the upme.com research desk. Every parameter above was read on the firm’s own published rules, payout or help-centre page on 31 July 2026 and is linked in the front matter. Funded-stage terms move more often than evaluation terms, so all figures are dated. 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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