Topstep Review

Topstep is one of the longest-running futures prop firms, based in Chicago with roots going back to 2010. You trade CME futures (equity indexes, energy, metals, currencies, agricultural and interest-rate contracts) on its own platform, TopstepX. The main product is the Trading Combine, a one-step evaluation sold as a monthly subscription from $49 a month for a $50,000 account. Pass, and you trade an Express Funded Account with a 90% split and payouts of up to $12,000 per request.

The structure is simple: one profit target, one trailing loss limit, no time limit. The catch is in the details. The subscription rebills every month until you pass or cancel, the cheaper path adds a $149 fee when you pass, every position must be flat by 3:10 PM Central, and payouts are capped per request. This review walks through each path with dollar examples so you know what you'll pay and how much room you have.

The short version

• Best for: US and international futures day traders who want an established firm, a 90% split and a clear rulebook, and who are happy on one platform.
• Not for: swing traders (nothing can be held past 3:10 PM CT), traders who need NinjaTrader or Rithmic, and anyone who wants to run bots on a funded live account.
• Biggest strength: track record and transparency. Prices, fees, payout caps and processing times are all published, and the firm has been around for over 15 years.
• Biggest risk: the end-of-day trailing loss limit, plus a subscription that keeps billing while you're still trying to pass.
• Our score: 4.5 out of 5. Top marks on value, payouts and track record; rules lose points for the flat-by-close requirement, the news restriction and the consistency targets.

Who runs Topstep

Topstep's About page traces the company to Patak Trading Partners in 2010, with Topstep Trader launching in 2012 and the rebrand to Topstep in 2020. Finance Magnates names Michael Patak as founder and CEO. The group has offices in Chicago and now includes several companies: TopstepTrader, LLC runs the simulated Combine and Express accounts, TopstepFunded LLC runs the Live Funded program, ProjectX Trading LLC owns the TopstepX platform, and Topstep Brokerage LLC, launched in 2026, is an introducing broker.

The terms of use are with Topstep LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, and are governed by Delaware law. Disputes go to individual arbitration in Wilmington, Delaware, administered by JAMS. The terms, last updated 21 September 2026, state that "all fees are final, non-cancelable, and non-refundable."

The Combine and Express Funded Accounts are simulated. The terms say trades in a simulated account "are not made in live markets." The Live Funded Account is run by the separate TopstepFunded company with its own rules.

The rulebook lives in Topstep's help center plus separate rules pages for Express and Live accounts. It's detailed and mostly current, though a couple of pages lag behind the others, which we point out below.

Programs and prices

Prices are list prices from Topstep's pricing help article and product page, checked on 28 October 2026, before any coupon. Both are monthly subscriptions except the Static Combine.

Trading Combine, Standard path

The Standard path has the lowest monthly price and adds a one-time $149 activation fee for each Express Funded Account you earn.

• One profit target, worth 6% of the account.
• End-of-day trailing Maximum Loss Limit (MLL).
• 55% consistency target: your best day can't be more than 55% of your total profit.
• Optional Daily Loss Limit through the "Responsible Trading Advantage."
• No time limit. You can pass in as few as 2 days.
• Rebills monthly until you pass or cancel. Each rebill includes one free reset credit.

Worked example, $100,000 Combine. You start at $100,000 with your MLL at $97,000. Close day 1 at $100,500 and the MLL moves up to $97,500. It keeps following your best closing balance until it reaches $100,000, which happens once you close a day at $103,000, then it stops. You pass at $106,000, as long as no single day made more than 55% of your profit. That means a best day of no more than $3,300 if you finish exactly on target. Make $4,000 in one day and your target rises to about $7,273 ($4,000 ÷ 0.55).

Trading Combine, No Activation Fee path

Same rules and sizes, a higher monthly price, and no activation fee when you pass. You choose the path at purchase and can't switch.

Adding the optional Daily Loss Limit at checkout takes $10, $20 or $30 a month off this path. Under a limited-time offer that started on 2 June 2026, adding it at Combine purchase also doubles your per-request payout caps once you're funded, on either path.

Worked example, $50,000 No Activation Fee. Your MLL starts at $48,000 and trails your end-of-day balance until it locks at $50,000. Target is $53,000. With the daily limit added, you pay $85 a month and can't lose more than $1,000 in a day. Max size is 5 minis or 50 micros.

Static Trading Combine (Topstep Labs)

Topstep Labs releases experimental products in limited "drops." Several can now be bought any time, including two Static Combines with a fixed floor.

• Profit target 8%, static max loss of 4% and a mandatory 2% daily limit.
• One-time fee, no subscription, no resets. Expires after 90 days, and closes after 30 days with no trades.
• 55% consistency target. Activation is free. Purchases are limited to 5 per trader.

Worked example, $50,000 Static. Your floor is $48,000 and never moves. Topstep's own example: grow to $52,000, drop back to $51,000, and you still have $3,000 of room, against $2,000 under end-of-day trailing. Target is $54,000, and you have 90 days to get there. Some products are restricted on this account: CL, GC and a few others are capped at 2 lots, and platinum, copper and silver can't be traded.

Which Topstep plan should you pick?

The choice between the two Combine paths comes down to how long you expect to take.

The break-even comes from the monthly gap. On the $50,000, Standard costs $46 a month less, so it takes a little over 3 months for that saving to cover the $149 activation fee. If you're confident, take No Activation Fee with the daily limit added. If you're still learning and expect resets, Standard keeps the monthly bill lower.

On size, the $50,000 gives you the most room relative to its target: a $2,000 loss limit against a $3,000 target, compared with $3,000 against $6,000 on the $100,000 and $4,500 against $9,000 on the $150,000. Start there unless you already trade more than 5 minis.

Pick the Static Combine if trailing drawdown is what fails you. The fixed floor and one-time price are attractive, but the 90-day expiry and mandatory daily limit make it a different test.

By cost per $1K for one month, the cheapest option is the $50,000 Standard at $0.98 per $1,000, but that ignores the $149 activation fee. Counting everything due to get funded in one month, the $100,000 No Activation Fee is the best value: $149 ($1.49 per $1,000), or $129 ($1.29) with the daily limit added.

Trading rules in practice

Drawdown and the trading day

The Combine and Express accounts use an end-of-day drawdown. The MLL only moves at the close, based on your highest end-of-day balance, but it's monitored in real time. An open loss that touches it liquidates the account immediately.

Topstep's trading day runs from 5:00 PM CT to 3:10 PM CT the next day. Trades after 5:00 PM count toward the next day's activity. All positions must be closed by 3:10 PM CT or the product's own close, whichever comes first. On Live accounts, Topstep flattens positions automatically about ten seconds before 3:10 PM. No overnight or weekend holding is possible.

Daily loss limits

The standard Combine has no mandatory daily limit. You can add one (the Responsible Trading Advantage) for $1,000, $2,000 or $3,000 depending on size, and if you do you must stay within it. The Static Combines require one. On Live accounts, the daily limit is set by account size, and hitting it flattens your positions and pauses trading until the next session without counting as a rule violation.

Commissions and fees

Commissions and exchange fees come off your balance per filled trade. From Topstep's TopstepX fee article:

Ten round trips of 2 ES contracts cost 20 × $3.78 = $75.60 in a day. On a $50,000 Combine, that's almost 4% of your $2,000 loss limit gone to fees. Level 1 data is included. Level 2 (depth of market) costs $38 a month, and Live accounts pay professional data fees.

News trading

News trading is allowed. The one restriction: Topstep prohibits "purposefully trading your full Maximum Position Size directly into a scheduled major news event." On a $50,000 account, holding 5 minis into a Fed decision is the thing to avoid.

Hedging, copy trading and automation

Cross-account hedging is prohibited, including correlated pairs like ES against MES or NQ against MNQ. A first attempt gets a warning and a short window to unwind before liquidation. Repeats lead to trading bans for the day and eventually permanent closure with no payout.

Copy trading is allowed on Combine and Express accounts, but you're responsible if your copier creates opposite positions across accounts.

Automation runs through the TopstepX API at $29 a month. Orders must come from your own device. VPS, VPN and remote servers can't place trades, high-frequency trading is banned, and the API doesn't work on Live accounts.

Topstep also bans exploiting simulator fills: hundreds of rapid trades to game queue position, scalping algorithms built around unrealistic fills, and trading outside the best bid or offer.

Consistency and activity

The Combine uses the 55% best-day target described above. On the Express Funded Account, the Consistency payout path uses 40%. The Combine has no minimum days beyond what the 55% rule implies (2 days), and no time limit. Express accounts with no trading for more than 30 days may be closed, and you can hold up to 5 Express accounts at once.

How payouts work

Once funded, you choose between two payout paths on each Express account.

You keep 90%. The minimum payout is $125. After your first payout, the MLL resets to $0 permanently, so the balance left in the account is your only cushion.

Worked example, $100,000 Express on the Standard path. The account starts at a $0 balance with the MLL at -$3,000, trailing up to $0. After five winning days you're at $4,000. You request 50%, or $2,000. At 90%, that's $1,800, minus the $30 ACH fee, so $1,770 arrives. Your balance drops to $2,000 and the MLL sits at $0, leaving $2,000 of room.

Methods and fees:

Internal approval can take 1 to 3 business days. The "under 9 seconds" payout speed on the homepage applies only to auto-approved US requests through Aeropay real-time payments. You submit a W-9 or W-8BEN with your request, and payouts must go to a bank account in your own name.

Live Funded Accounts. Strong Express traders can be moved to Live. You start with 20% of your combined Express balance available, and the rest is released in 25% steps as you hit profit milestones. Payouts need 5 days of $150+ profit, are limited to 50% of your share until you reach 30 such days, then 100%, and after 30 winning days you can request daily. Live payouts aren't capped per request. Live traders are also entered in the Topstep Octagon, a monthly ranking that pays bonuses into Live accounts.

Fee refunds and reactivation. Fees aren't refunded. If you lose an Express account before your first payout, Back2Funded lets you reactivate it for $599 ($50K), $699 ($100K) or $829 ($150K). The pages disagree on the deadline:

Topstep extended the window to 30 days on 29 May 2026, so the rules page looks out of date. Act within 7 days to be safe.

Who can sign up

US traders are welcome, and so are most other countries. Citizens or residents of these countries can't trade, earn funding or receive payouts: Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Crimea and the occupied regions of Ukraine, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen.

A second list of 25 countries can trade Express accounts but can't move to Live, and payouts there are capped at $200,000 in total. It includes Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Kuwait, Serbia and Vietnam, among others. If you live in one of them, that lifetime cap matters.

You must be 18 or older. Topstep's eligibility page doesn't spell out when ID checks happen, but a recent Trustpilot review describes an account being locked for citizenship verification after a payout request, so have your documents ready.

Reputation

On Trustpilot, Topstep scores 3.7 out of 5 from 15,002 reviews, checked on 28 October 2026, with 3,603 reviews in the last 12 months. 70% give five stars and 19% give one star. The profile has been claimed since December 2020, Topstep pays for a Trustpilot subscription and invites customers to review, and it had replied to 5% of negative reviews, typically within two weeks. Trustpilot also shows a notice that the company "may be associated with high-risk investments." See the Trustpilot page.

Positive reviews mostly praise quick, named support agents, clear rules and payouts that arrive without trouble; one reviewer reports 11 payouts. Negative reviews mostly describe accounts locked during verification while a payout was pending, platform problems that traders say cost them resets, the trailing drawdown, and fees.

Three news items from Finance Magnates are worth knowing. On 23 December 2025 it reported repeated TopstepX outages that left traders unable to open or close positions, and the CEO's promise to be "making things right" in January. On 5 January 2026 it reported a letter telling some users their personal data may have been accessed between 8 September and 16 October 2025; Topstep said its systems weren't breached and blamed reused passwords. On 1 April 2026 it reported Topstep's purchase of The Futures Desk, a trading education firm.

On payout proof, Topstep's product page claims more than $1.5 billion paid to traders and a 99.26% payout approval rate. Its About page says 33.3% of individual participants at the funded level received a payout in 2025.

Mistakes to avoid at Topstep

1. Forgetting the subscription. The Combine rebills every month until you pass or cancel. If you take a break, cancel.
2. Holding past 3:10 PM CT. Every position has to be flat by then, including on the Combine. Set an alarm.
3. Treating open losses as safe. The MLL only moves at the close, but an open loss that touches it ends the account on the spot.
4. One huge day in the Combine. A best day over 55% of your profit raises your target. Steady days pass faster.
5. Buying on the Standard path when you expect to pass fast. If you pass in month one, Standard costs $103 more on a $50,000 than No Activation Fee.
6. Taking a big first payout. After the first payout your MLL is $0, so whatever balance you leave is your whole cushion.

Before you buy: checklist

• Decide Standard or No Activation Fee. You can't switch later.
• Decide on the optional daily loss limit at checkout; it's the only way to get doubled payout caps under the current offer.
• Check your country isn't on the ineligible or Express-only lists.
• Budget for commissions and, if you want it, $38 a month for Level 2 data.
• Read our Topstep rules summary and make sure you're happy trading on TopstepX only.
• Use code SCOUT at checkout. See our Topstep coupon page for how to apply it.

Our verdict

Topstep is a solid futures prop firm with a long record, a published fee schedule and a 90% split. The Combine is cheap to start, the rules fit on one page, and the payout policy tells you exactly what you can take and when. For intraday futures traders happy on TopstepX, it's a strong choice.

The trade-offs are the end-of-day trailing loss limit, the monthly billing, a single platform and the 3:10 PM flat rule. Pick the No Activation Fee path if you expect to pass quickly, keep your daily sizing steady for the 55% target, and keep an eye on your subscription while you work toward funding.