What Is Topstep? The Combine Rules
Topstep is a futures proprietary trading firm whose evaluation, the Trading Combine, asks a trader to reach a profit target without touching a Maximum Loss Limit. That limit trails the end-of-day balance upward, locks at the starting balance, and sits beside a 55% consistency target on the best single day.
Topstep evaluates futures traders, and its rules live in a public help center. Every rule on this page was read there on 25 Sep 2026. The help center changes, so treat its current articles as the authority and this page as a dated reading of them.
How it works
Topstep runs three stages. The Trading Combine is the evaluation. Passing it leads to an Express Funded Account, and from there to a Live Funded Account. The program overview says the Combine requires a monthly subscription, while the two funded stages do not. The subscription price is not quoted here; it changes and the checkout page is the only reliable source.
The instrument is a futures contract. Size is capped by account: the Combine parameters allow 5 contracts or 50 micro futures on a $50K account, 10 or 100 on $100K, and 15 or 150 on $150K.
The trading day runs from 5:00 PM to 3:10 PM Central time the next calendar day, and the same article says you can pass in as few as two days. The general shape of a futures evaluation is covered on futures prop firm.
The Maximum Loss Limit
This is the rule that ends accounts. The Maximum Loss Limit article lists it as $2,000 on a 50K Combine, $3,000 on 100K and $4,500 on 150K.
It trails. In Topstep’s words it rises as your end-of-day balance grows, but never moves down.
It is monitored in real time. Realized and unrealized profit and loss both count, and if net profit and loss touches the limit at any point in the day the account is liquidated immediately. The trail is set at the close; the breach can happen at any tick.
And it locks. Once the limit reaches the starting balance, it stays there permanently. On a 50K Combine that means the limit can never rise above $50,000.
A worked example
Topstep’s own example starts a 50K Combine at $50,000 with the limit at $48,000. Day one closes up $500: the balance is $50,500 and the limit trails to $48,500. Day two gives the $500 back: the balance is $50,000 again, but the limit stays at $48,500. The account is where it started, with $1,500 of room instead of $2,000.
Continue it with three hypothetical days. Day three closes at $51,200, so the limit trails to $49,200. Day four closes at $52,000, which would put it at $50,000 — the starting balance — so it locks there. Day five closes at $51,000, and the limit does not move.
So after five days the account is $1,000 up and has $1,000 of room. Before the lock, every dollar closed above the previous best cost a dollar of room. After the lock the relationship changes: new highs add room one for one, because the floor has stopped following.
The consistency target
The Combine has one more objective: your best single day should stay at or below 55% of the profit target. Topstep’s consistency article says the line is exact, with no rounding and no buffer.
Crossing it is not a breach. The target grows instead, by the formula best day divided by 0.55. Topstep’s example uses a $50K account with a profit target of $3,000. A best day of $1,800 is more than 55% of $3,000, which is $1,650, so the new requirement becomes $1,800 divided by 0.55: $3,273.
That day cost $273 of extra required profit, and it kept the account trading longer, under a limit that had already trailed up behind the big day.
The original data
53 of the 24,971 videos in the search study behind this site put Topstep in the title, at a median of 5,889 views across 39 channels, the largest 284,617. 10 of them also say combine, at a median of 5,264, and 79% of all 53 stay under 50,000 views.
Set that beside 437 titles on prop firms generally, at a median of 11,043. The firm-specific videos get about half the audience of the general ones, which fits a subject people search once they have already chosen a firm — and at that point the help center articles cited here are the document that matters.
The median Topstep video is 10.3 minutes long. The four rules on this page take about two minutes to read at their source.
When it fails
The first failure is sizing from the starting limit. $2,000 of room on day one is not $2,000 of room on day three. The worked example ends five days later with the account $1,000 up and exactly $1,000 of room, because the limit followed every higher close until it locked.
The second is an open loss. The trail is set at the close, but the breach is measured continuously on unrealized profit and loss. A position that dips through the limit and recovers by the close still ended the account at the moment it touched.
The third is a big day. Above 55% of the target it raises the target, and the extra days it forces are spent with a limit that has already risen.
The fourth is treating the subscription as background. It recurs while the Combine is open, which turns slow progress into a cost.
And the fifth is carrying Combine habits into the funded stage unchanged. The payout rules there bring a different consistency threshold and a limit that resets after each payout; read those articles before the first request, not after.
Related
Futures prop firm covers the category and its fee model. Prop firm challenge simulates how position size changes a pass rate under limits like these. And micro futures explains the contract most small Combine accounts are sized in.
Work out where the Maximum Loss Limit will sit after a good day before you take the first trade. The limit follows your close, not your intentions, and the only safe size is one that still fits after it moves.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.