When a Prop Firm Changes Its Rules: Grandfathering, Retroactive Changes and How to Track Updates

In mid-December 2025, traders at the futures prop firm FundingTicks found a set of new rules on their accounts: a minimum hold time of one minute per trade where there had been none, a profit split cut from up to 90% to 80%, a higher minimum daily profit, and six profitable days instead of five for a payout. According to Finance Magnates, traders said the rules were applied to accounts already open, including to trades placed before the announcement, and one reported that the account's profit dropped from about $3,200 to $751.62. Later that month, according to a later trade-press report, the firm restored the profits from short trades placed before the change. In January 2026 it announced it was winding down.

That is the extreme end of a prop firm rule change. Most changes are milder, and most firms announce them in advance, but every rulebook in this industry can change after you've paid, and the question that decides what a change costs you is which accounts it reaches. How the evaluation and funded stages fit together is covered in prop firm evaluations explained; this post is about what happens to them when the rules move.

Three ways a change lands

New accounts only. The old rules stay with every account bought before a cutoff date, which is what "grandfathering" means here. When Apex Trader Funding replaced its account types on March 1, 2026, its help center said accounts bought before that date wouldn't be affected and that no rule changes would be applied to them retroactively. Those legacy accounts also can't be converted to the new types, and Apex has since put Legacy evaluations back on sale for a limited time. Topstep did something similar per trader rather than per account in January 2026: traders who joined its current dashboard before January 12 keep 100% of their first $10,000 in profits, while newer traders start on the 90/10 split. Topstep ties the cutoff to when a trader joined its new dashboard rather than to when an account was opened, so anyone unsure which side they're on should confirm with support.

Existing accounts, from a date forward. The account keeps its history, but new trades follow new rules. Apex's October 2024 changes worked this way: a reworked 30% consistency rule applied going forward and didn't reach back past payouts already approved. Product restrictions land the same way: in February 2026 MyFundedFutures stopped trading in gold, silver, copper, platinum and natural gas contracts across its accounts, calling the restriction temporary (gold has since come off the list), and third-party trackers reported similar restrictions at Apex and Topstep. A partial version sits in between: when Topstep made TopstepX the only platform for new Combines in July 2025, active accounts kept their platform, but resets on the old platforms stopped on August 1.

Retroactive. The change reaches trades already made and counts them against the new rule. That's the FundingTicks case, and it's rare enough to have made the trade press.

The middle category is the common one and the hardest to plan for. A payout rule tightened on the day you were one winning day short changes the value of the account you hold, even though nothing was done to your past trades.

What the terms allow

The terms of service decide whether any of this is a breach, and at the firms checked for this post they leave the firm wide room. Topstep's terms make its trading rules subject to change at its "sole and absolute discretion" and put the job of keeping up with them on the trader. Apex's terms of use say changes to them take effect when posted unless stated otherwise, and promise notice by email, on the site or on the dashboard for material changes. Neither says whether a change reaches accounts already open. Grandfathering, where it happens, is a decision the firm makes for each change and announces at the time, not a right written into the contract.

One consequence is easy to miss. A reset or a repurchase can move an account onto the current rules. When Lucid changed its live program at the end of February 2026, its help center drew the line at accounts bought or reset on or before February 27: those stayed on the legacy structure, and a reset after that date put the account on the new one. Before resetting an account that sits on older, friendlier rules, ask support in writing which rulebook the reset account will follow. When to reset a prop evaluation covers the rest of that decision.

Keeping track

None of the firms checked here publishes a dated public changelog of its rules. Help-center articles get edited in place, sometimes with only a relative "updated this week" label, and announcements go out by email, on the dashboard or on social media. That leaves the tracking to the trader:

1. Save the rule pages as PDFs on the day you buy, with the date in the file name. This is the same evidence habit as in the prop firm red flags checklist, and it's the only record of the rules you bought.
2. Compare the live pages against an archived copy now and then. The Wayback Machine at web.archive.org keeps old versions of most help-center pages.
3. Follow the firm's own channels: the email address on your account, the dashboard notices and its main social account.
4. Check a third-party rule-change tracker once a month. Several prop firm comparison sites keep dated lists of changes across firms; treat them as a lead and confirm on the firm's site.
5. When a change is announced, ask support in writing whether it applies to your open accounts, and keep the answer with your PDFs.

The clauses most worth re-reading after any announcement are the ones in the seven-clause rulebook checklist: drawdown, daily limit, consistency, contract limits, session rules, fees and payouts. A change to one of those is a change to what the account is worth.