Reading a Prop Firm Rulebook: 7 Clauses to Check Before Buying an Evaluation

The pricing page of a prop firm shows an account size, a profit target and a fee. None of those three decides whether the evaluation is worth buying. The clauses that do are in the help center, spread over a dozen articles, and they are the same seven at every firm. Read them in this order, write down the answer to each, and the fee becomes the last line of the comparison rather than the first.

The examples below are from the help centers of Lucid, Topstep and Apex at the time of writing. They will change; the questions won't.

1. How the drawdown moves, and where it stops

Every account has a maximum loss limit, the balance at which the account is closed. The clause to find is not the amount but the mechanism: does the limit trail your end-of-day balance, your intraday peak including open profit, or does it stay static? The three behave differently enough that the same $2,000 is a comfortable cushion under one and a hair trigger under another. Then the second half of the clause: where does the trail lock? Lucid's LucidFlex trails end-of-day and locks once the balance clears the starting balance by a small margin; Topstep's Maximum Loss Limit trails end-of-day, is monitored in real time including open positions, and locks at the starting balance. And the part people miss: what happens to the limit after a payout. On a Topstep Express Funded Account the limit is set to $0 after the first payout, so the remaining balance is the whole cushion.

Four things for the page: trail type, amount, lock point, post-payout behavior.

2. Whether a bad day pauses you or ends you

A daily loss limit is a second, smaller limit that applies to one session. Three versions exist. A soft limit flattens you and blocks trading for the rest of the day, and you are back tomorrow; Topstep's optional Daily Loss Limit works this way, $1,000 on a 50K Combine. A hard limit breaches the account. And none: LucidFlex offers the daily limit as an optional toggle at checkout, and without it the only line that matters is the end-of-day drawdown. The clause also says what counts: open losses, closed losses, or both.

For the page: does it exist, soft or hard, optional, what it counts.

3. Who checks consistency, and when

A consistency rule caps the share of profit that may come from one day. The clause has three parts: the percentage, the phase it applies to, and the consequence. LucidFlex applies 50% during the evaluation and nothing on the funded account. Topstep applies it as an objective in the Trading Combine (the best day may not exceed 50% of the profit target, or the target rises) and offers it as an alternative payout path on the funded account (40%, three traded days). Firms that check consistency at payout time rather than at pass time move the problem to the moment you ask for money, which is the more expensive moment to discover it.

Write down: percentage, phase, what happens when it's tripped.

4. How big you may trade, and when that changes

The contract cap is per account and often per phase. LucidFlex allows 2 minis or 20 micros on the 25K evaluation, with the funded account starting lower and scaling up with profit. Topstep's 50K Combine allows 5 minis or 50 micros and moves the funded account through a scaling plan tied to balance. Apex caps a new Performance Account at half its maximum until the trailing threshold is cleared. The number to compare is not the maximum but the size you would actually trade against clause 1: one MNQ on a 25K account with a $1,000 limit is a different risk from one NQ, and the cap is only the ceiling.

On the page: cap per phase, the micro-to-mini ratio, the scaling trigger.

5. When you must be flat, and what you may not do

Session rules are short and unforgiving. Lucid's simulated accounts may not hold overnight because of the daily maintenance window; Apex requires every position closed and every order cancelled by 4:59 PM ET (22:59 CEST) and will close what you leave, though it says not to rely on that. Holiday sessions with early closes have their own flat-by times. The same articles list the prohibited practices: hedging across accounts, high-frequency trading, at Lucid a "microscalping" flag when more than half of profits come from trades held five seconds or less, and the copier and multi-account rules. News trading is allowed at all three firms at the time of writing; that is worth a line in the notes because it has not always been.

Write down: flat-by time, overnight, news, the prohibited list.

6. What the clock costs

Fees come in more shapes than the sticker. A one-time fee with no time limit (LucidFlex: take as long as you need) is a different product from a monthly subscription that must stay active until you pass (Topstep's Trading Combine), or from an evaluation with a fixed access window. Then the fees that appear after you pass: an activation fee for the funded account (Topstep charges one per Express Funded Account unless you chose the no-activation-fee Combine; Lucid charges none), reset prices, data fees, and inactivity rules, such as funded accounts being closed after 30 days without a trade. An evaluation that costs half as much but bills monthly and charges activation can cost twice as much by the first payout.

Five lines: fee model, time limit, activation, reset, inactivity.

7. What a payout takes

The last clause is the one the whole exercise is for. It has five numbers: the qualifying condition, the minimum, the cap, the split, and the count. LucidFlex requires profit above a size-based minimum on five separate days and positive net profit for the cycle, pays 50% of the balance up to a cap that depends on size, splits 90/10, and allows five payouts per account before moving the trader live. Topstep's Express Funded Account requires five winning days of $150 or more (or the consistency path), pays 50% of the balance up to $5,000 per request, and splits 90/10. Apex adds a safety net, a balance buffer the account must hold above the drawdown floor before a request, and a $500 minimum. The interaction with clause 1 matters more than any single number: a payout that resets the drawdown to zero, or a buffer that must be rebuilt after each request, sets how much of every winning streak you can actually take out.

And the last lines: qualifying days, minimum, cap, split, buffer, number of payouts.

Seven answers fit on one page, and the timeline from evaluation to first payout falls out of them almost mechanically. I keep that page in the journal for every account I trade and reread it before the first session on a new one, because the rule that ends an account is never the one on the pricing page.