Prop firm drawdown calculator
Pick your firm and account. See the exact dollar level that fails you, and how much cushion is left.
- Cushion left
- --
- Buffer used
- --
The three drawdown rules, and why they fail traders differently
Every prop firm caps your losses with a drawdown rule, but the mechanics differ enough to change how you should trade. The same $2,000 allowance is a very different constraint when it trails your open profit in real time.
Static
A fixed floor below your starting balance. It never moves, no matter how much profit you build. The most forgiving rule; FTMO and most CFD firms use it.
Trailing, end of day
The floor rises with each new end-of-day high, then locks at your starting balance. Intraday spikes that give back do not hurt you. Topstep works this way.
Trailing, real time
The floor follows your highest balance tick by tick, open trades included. Taking partial profits too late can drag the floor up behind you. Apex works this way.
How to use this calculator
Pick your firm
The dropdown loads that firm’s real rules, so you do not have to know whether it trails your balance daily, in real time, or not at all. Choose Custom rules if your firm is not listed yet.
Choose your account size
Each size carries its own loss allowance. A $50,000 Topstep Combine gets $2,000 of room; a $150,000 gets $4,500. Picking the wrong size is the most common way people get a wrong answer here.
Enter your current balance
What the account is worth right now, counting closed trades. This is the number the firm compares against your breach level.
Enter your highest balance
On a trailing account this is what moves your floor. Use your highest end-of-day close for a firm like Topstep, or your highest balance ever touched for a real-time firm like Apex. On a static account the field disappears, because your peak does not matter.
Press Calculate
Nothing recalculates while you type, so you can set up a full scenario before you look. The result dims when your inputs no longer match the number on screen.
Understanding your results
- Breach level
- The exact dollar balance that fails the account. Touch it and the firm closes you out, in an evaluation and in most funded accounts. This is the only number on the page you should have memorised before your next session.
- Cushion left
- Current balance minus the breach level: how much you can lose before it ends. Divide it by the dollar risk of your normal trade and you have the honest answer to “how many losers in a row can I take right now?”
- Buffer used
- How much of the total allowance you have already spent, as a percent. At 0% you have the full allowance; at 100% you are at the breach level. It rises when you lose, and on a trailing account it also rises when you give back profit after a new high.
- Floor locked
- Appears once a trailing floor has climbed as far as the firm lets it and stopped moving. From that point the account behaves like a static one and new highs no longer pull the fail level up behind you.
A worked example
Say you trade a $50,000 Topstep account with a $2,000 Maximum Loss Limit. On day one your floor is $48,000. You finish the day at $50,800, a new end-of-day high, so the floor ratchets up to $48,800.
A week later your best close is $51,900 and the floor sits at $49,900. One more good day takes the highest close past $52,000, and the floor reaches $50,000, your starting balance, where it locks for good. From then on breakeven is the line that matters, and every dollar above it is real cushion.
Run your own numbers in the calculator above. Enter your highest end-of-day balance and your current balance, and it returns the exact breach level plus how much of your buffer is already spent.
How each firm applies drawdown
| Firm | Rule | Floor stops rising at | Daily loss limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topstep | Trailing (end of day) | Starting balance | Yes |
| Apex Trader Funding | Trailing (real time) | Start + $100 | No |
| FTMO | Static (fixed floor) | Never moves | Yes |
Rules last checked July 2026. Always confirm against the firm's official documentation before trading.
Frequently asked questions
What is trailing drawdown in prop trading?
A trailing drawdown is a loss limit that follows your account upward. If your allowance is $2,000 and your balance climbs from $50,000 to $51,500, the level that fails you rises from $48,000 to $49,500. Profits raise the floor under you until the firm locks it.
What is the difference between end-of-day and real-time trailing drawdown?
End-of-day trailing only ratchets up when a trading day closes at a new high, so an intraday spike that fades does not move your floor. Real-time trailing follows your highest balance tick by tick, including open trade profit, which is far less forgiving.
Does the drawdown stop trailing once I am in profit?
At most futures firms, yes. Topstep locks the floor once it reaches your starting balance; Apex locks it at your starting balance plus $100. From that point on the account behaves like a static-drawdown account.
What happens if my balance touches the breach level?
The account fails immediately, in an evaluation and in most funded accounts alike. Firms enforce it automatically, so you want to know the exact dollar level before you take the next trade. That is what this calculator gives you.
Where this calculator stops
It reports the breach level implied by the rules you selected. It does not know about open positions, so if you are holding a trade at a real-time trailing firm your true floor may already be higher than what you see here. It does not model the gap between your platform's balance and the firm's own end-of-day reconciliation, which can differ by a session. It also assumes the firm's published rules are current: firms change loss limits and lock levels without much notice, so the numbers in the table below were last checked in July 2026 and should be confirmed against the firm before you rely on them.
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Djosa
Founder, QuantPropTraderI've been trading CFDs for about 18 months, and most of that was losing. What turned it around wasn't a better setup — it was measuring one simple strategy until the numbers stopped being an opinion: 20,000+ trades back-tested by script, ~2,000 by hand, and 500-1,000 forward-tested live. That's what makes a calculator like this useful instead of decorative, because it only works if the win rate and R:R you type in are numbers you've actually measured. I built these tools because the odds of passing a challenge are the one number nobody hands you before you pay for it.