Prop Firm Reviews
A side-by-side look at two currently operating futures-only prop firms — evaluation structure, drawdown mechanics, daily loss limits, profit splits, and payout terms, pulled from each firm's published rules and independent rules-tracking coverage.
Topstep and Take Profit Trader (TPT) are both futures-only prop trading firms that fund traders through a paid evaluation. Both are frequently recommended alongside each other because they share a similar shape — pass an evaluation, trade a funded account, get paid a share of the profits — but the mechanics underneath differ in ways that matter more than either firm's marketing headline. This page lays out what each firm's current published rules say, plus what's publicly documented about trader complaints. It is not a recommendation to use either firm.
| Category | Topstep | Take Profit Trader |
|---|---|---|
| Market | Futures only | Futures only |
| Evaluation structure | 1-step Trading Combine | 1-step Test, no time limit |
| Account sizes | $50K, $100K, $150K | $25K, $50K, $75K, $100K, $150K |
| Profit target (evaluation) | $3,000 / $6,000 / $9,000 (6% of size) | $1,500–$9,000 (6% of size, all sizes) |
| Evaluation drawdown type | End-of-day trailing Maximum Loss Limit | End-of-day trailing drawdown |
| Evaluation daily loss limit | $1,000 / $2,000 / $3,000, tied to account size — pauses the day, does not end the evaluation | None (removed firm-wide in January 2025) |
| Evaluation consistency rule | Best single day under 50% of the profit target | Best single day at or under 50% of total net profit, minimum 5 trading days |
| Funded-account drawdown type | End-of-day trailing (same Maximum Loss Limit carries over from the Combine) | Intraday trailing on PRO — switches from end-of-day, which this firm's own rules documentation flags as the most common reason funded accounts get liquidated in the first week |
| Funded profit split | 90/10 for traders who started on or after January 12, 2026; traders who started earlier keep 100% of their first $10,000 in lifetime profits, then 90/10 | 80/20 on the PRO (funded) account; 90/10 after graduating to PRO+ (live-market) status |
| Payout qualification | Standard path: 5 winning days of $150+, capped at $5,000 or 50% of balance. Consistency path: 3 trading days with best day under 40% of net profit, capped at $6,000 or 50% of balance. Payouts after the first also require staying profitable since the last payout (added December 30, 2025) | No minimum winning days on PRO — withdraw any time once a profit buffer equal to the account's max drawdown is built; unlimited withdrawal frequency |
| Evaluation pricing (mid-size account) | $50K Combine: $49/month, $149 activation fee after passing (Standard Path); a higher-monthly No-Activation-Fee path is also offered | $50K Test: $180/month recurring until passed, plus a $130 one-time PRO activation fee |
Sources: tradecovex.com/guides/topstep-combine-rules-2026 and tradecovex.com/guides/take-profit-trader-rules-2026 (independently maintained rules-tracking guides, both dated "Updated April 2026," fetched directly in full); Topstep's and Take Profit Trader's own rules pages (topstep.com, takeprofittrader.com) did not return readable content through this run's automated fetch (both are JavaScript-rendered), so account-size and rule figures here are drawn from the independent rules guide rather than the firms' raw HTML. Confirm exact current terms directly on topstep.com and takeprofittrader.com before paying for an evaluation, since both firms have changed rules multiple times within the past year.
Topstep has funded futures traders since 2012, making it one of the longest-operating firms in the space. As of this writing it appears to still be actively accepting new Trading Combines. Topstep made more rule changes between November 2025 and April 2026 than in any prior comparable stretch of its history — four separate changes, detailed below.
Four rule changes landed inside a five-month window: a second, higher-monthly pricing path that skips the $149 activation fee (November 25, 2025); a two-condition payout requirement for every payout after the first (December 30, 2025); the 90/10 profit split applied to new traders from day one (January 12, 2026); and a split of the funded account into a Standard payout path and a faster, stricter-consistency Consistency path (February 5, 2026). Anyone evaluating Topstep off an older review should treat the rules as changed. On the complaint side, Topstep's Trustpilot rating dropped from 4.5 to 3.4 during 2025 amid TopstepX platform outages and a public CEO apology in December 2025, then recovered to 3.6 out of 5 across roughly 14,500 reviews as of early August 2026. Independent tracking describes payout-denial and account-termination complaints as a consistent but minority share of the negative review pool, including a specific documented case of a hedging-rule violation enforced off a 4-second resolution window in April 2026.
Take Profit Trader is a U.S. futures prop firm founded in 2021 in Orlando, Florida. As of this writing it appears to still be actively accepting new Test evaluations, with a four-year operating track record cited by independent reviewers as a point in its favor.
TPT's standout feature is payout speed and flexibility: no minimum winning-days requirement and no cap on withdrawal frequency once the profit buffer is built, with withdrawals typically reaching a trader's wallet in about 24 hours. The trade-off documented across independent rules guides is the drawdown switch between stages — the evaluation's forgiving end-of-day trailing drawdown becomes an intraday trailing drawdown the moment an account goes live on PRO, and independent sources describe this as the most common reason a funded TPT account gets liquidated in its first week. On the complaint side, TPT's Trustpilot rating sits at 4.4 out of 5 across roughly 9,300 reviews, but with about 1,100 one-star reviews (roughly 1 in 9). Documented complaint themes include the intraday drawdown catching PRO traders off guard, a January 28, 2026 Tradovate data-feed outage, and at least one reported case of an account terminated after about a year of trading over an unproven "bot trading" allegation.