Prop Firm Payouts: How the Rules Work
A prop firm payout is a withdrawal of your share of profit from a funded account, released only when the firm's payout rules are met. Those rules set qualifying days, a consistency test, the share you keep and a cap on each request, and some reset the loss limit afterwards.
Passing an evaluation does not put money in your account. It puts you in a program whose payout rules decide when, how much and on what conditions a withdrawal is released. This page covers those rules only. It makes no claim about how often any firm pays, because that is not something a rules page can show.
How it works
Every payout policy answers the same five questions. How many qualifying days first. What counts as a qualifying day. What share of profit is yours. How much one request may take. And what happens to the account after money leaves it.
The answers below were read on 25 Sep 2026 from the firms’ own pages. They change; the live pages are the authority.
Topstep’s payout policy
The split is 90/10. Topstep’s payout policy says the trader keeps 90%, applied to each request. Traders on its new dashboard keep 100% of their first $10,000 in lifetime profits before the 90/10 split starts.
Qualifying days come in two paths. The standard path asks for 5 winning days of $150 or more in net profit and loss. The consistency path asks for 3 trading days with at least one trade each, with your largest single day at or below 40% of total net profit.
Each request may take up to 50% of the account balance, with a dollar cap that depends on account size — the policy lists caps from $2,000 to $6,000 on Express Funded Accounts and no cap on a Live Funded Account. The minimum request is $125.
And after the request, the Maximum Loss Limit resets to $0 permanently. That line matters more than any other on the page, and the worked example shows why.
FTMO’s reward terms
FTMO calls payouts rewards. Its how it works page says a trader can earn up to 90% of simulated profits, that all its accounts are demo accounts with fictitious funds, and that the initial fee is refunded 100% with the first reward withdrawal.
Rewards also gate scaling. The scaling plan requires at least 2 processed rewards within a 4-month period, alongside at least 10% net simulated profit over those months and a positive balance.
A worked example
Take a hypothetical Topstep Express Funded Account. It starts at a $0 balance, with the loss limit below zero; per Topstep’s Maximum Loss Limit article, that limit locks at $0 once the account climbs far enough.
Five days close +$400, +$600, +$300, +$500 and +$600. Every one clears $150, so the standard path’s 5 winning days are met. The balance is $2,400, and the loss limit has locked at $0.
The consistency path would also be met. The largest day is $600, and $600 / $2,400 is 25%, under the 40% line.
The request may be up to 50% of the balance: $1,200. That is above the $125 minimum and below every cap the policy lists. At the 90/10 split, $1,080 of it is the trader’s share: the policy’s own example takes the 10% off the request ($500 minus $50). One exception it lists: traders on its new dashboard keep 100% of their first $10,000 in lifetime profits, so for them the whole $1,200 would be theirs.
Now the part people miss. The balance after the request is $1,200, and the loss limit sits at $0. Before the request the account had $2,400 of room above the floor. After it, $1,200. The payout halved the distance to closure.
What the rules change about trading
Size has to follow the room, and the room just shrank. A position sized for $2,400 of room is twice as large, relative to what is left, the day after the request. Recompute risk per trade from the new balance before trading again.
A request is a decision about the account, not only about the money. Taking the full 50% maximizes what leaves and minimizes what protects the account. Taking less leaves more room. Neither is right in general; what matters is choosing it deliberately.
Qualifying days reward ordinary days. Five days of $150 or more, or a best day under 40%, both favor a steady record over a single large session, which is the same logic as a consistency rule on the evaluation.
The original data
110 of the 24,971 videos in the search study behind this site put payout in the title, at a median of 16,448.5 views across 70 channels, the largest 406,334. That is a higher median than the 437 prop firm titles overall, at 11,043.
4 of the 110 also say proof, at a median of 49,754.5 views. Payout proof draws roughly three times the audience of the payout topic as a whole — and it is the one thing a rules page cannot supply, because one person’s withdrawal says nothing about the rules you will face or the odds of meeting them. The rules, at least, are published and checkable.
When it fails
The first failure is requesting the maximum and trading the next day at the old size. In the worked example the room fell from $2,400 to $1,200. A position sized for the first number is twice as exposed against the second, and the loss limit does not care that the money went to a withdrawal rather than a loss.
The second is misreading the qualifying day. A day counts on the standard path only if net profit and loss reaches $150; a day of many trades that nets $140 does not count.
The third is a large day under the consistency path. One session above 40% of total net profit blocks that path until the total grows.
The fourth is assuming the split applies before costs. Commissions and fees come out of net profit and loss first.
And the fifth is treating a refunded fee or a split as income. They describe what happens if the rules are met; the rules still decide whether they are.
Related
Funded account covers the stage where these rules apply and why the first payout is the real test. Prop firms explains what the evaluation fee buys. And futures prop firm covers the category where most of these policies were written.
Plan the account you will have after the payout, not just the payout. Taking money out shrinks the room above the floor, so the size that was fine before the request can be too large the day after it.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.