According to Topstep's official 2025 data, 16.8% of Trading Combines initiated in 2025 were successfully completed, progressing the trader to the Express Funded Account stage. Looking at traders rather than accounts, 51.8% of individual participants advanced to the Funded Level at least once — meaning about half of people who ever started a Combine eventually passed at least one. From funded, 33.3% of funded traders received a payout, and only 0.71% of all traders who started reached Live Funded Account status. The funnel narrows at every stage, but the trader-level 51.8% figure is the one to remember: if you keep trying, you have roughly even odds of eventually passing.
Topstep is unusually transparent about their pass rates. Most prop firms keep their funnel statistics proprietary. Topstep publishes them openly. According to their official 2025 reporting:
| Stage | Rate | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Combines completed | 16.8% | Of all Trading Combines initiated in 2025 |
| Traders who ever passed | 51.8% | Of individual participants who started at least one Combine |
| Funded traders receiving payouts | 33.3% | Of Funded Level participants |
| Reached Live Funded Account | 0.71% | Of all traders who started |
These are two different denominators and it is important to understand which is which. The 16.8% figure counts Combines — individual evaluation accounts. If one trader buys and fails three $50K Combines, then passes on the fourth, that is 4 Combines initiated, 1 Combine completed, and one trader who passed. The 16.8% would reflect 1 of 4 = 25% for that person specifically, but aggregated across all purchasers it lands at 16.8%.
The 51.8% figure counts individual traders. Same scenario — one trader who buys and fails three Combines before passing the fourth — contributes as 1 trader who eventually passed. Look at every individual trader who ever bought a Combine in 2025, and ask "did they ever pass at least one?" That is the 51.8% metric.
Both numbers are true. They answer different questions.
If you have a well-tested strategy, a clear risk framework, and the discipline to follow your own rules, the Topstep Combine is not a 1-in-6 difficulty evaluation for you. It is a 1-in-6 pass rate across all evaluations because most people who attempt one do not have those prerequisites.
The majority of Combine failures cluster around a small number of predictable mistakes:
Topstep's 16.8% is consistent with the 10-25% range other futures prop firms report when they release data. FTMO's reported pass rate on futures-adjacent evaluations is similar. MyFundedFutures and Apex do not publish official numbers but community-sourced estimates put them in the same range.
This is the more encouraging number. Just over half of people who ever started a Topstep Combine in 2025 eventually passed at least one. That is a dramatically different signal than the 16.8% per-evaluation rate.
The 51.8% statistic captures persistence. A trader who fails three times before passing contributes as a success. A trader who buys one Combine, fails, and never tries again contributes as a failure. The difference between the two metrics — between 16.8% per account and 51.8% per trader — is effectively the multiplier that persistence provides.
Working that out: if the unconditional per-Combine pass rate is 16.8% and we observe a 51.8% trader-level eventual pass rate, the average trader who eventually passes is buying roughly three Combines to get there. (Not a precise calculation — pass probability is not independent across attempts, and the distribution is skewed — but the order of magnitude is informative.)
If your per-Combine pass probability is 20%, the probability of passing in at least one of three attempts is roughly 49%. In at least one of five attempts, roughly 67%. In at least one of ten, roughly 89%. Most traders who eventually pass do not pass on their first attempt. Most give themselves enough attempts to matter.
When you complete a Combine, you progress to an Express Funded Account (XFA). This is not a live-money account — it is still simulated, and the key structural point is that you are now being evaluated on your ability to sustain the trading that got you through the Combine.
As of February 5, 2026, Topstep offers two variants of the XFA:
Traders choose the XFA variant at activation after passing the Combine. The Combine itself is identical regardless of which XFA you plan to take. This is a change from earlier years — pre-2025, the XFA had a single structure and payout rules were uniform across all funded traders.
Activation of the XFA requires paying an activation fee — $149 on the Standard Path, or zero on the No Activation Fee Path (which has higher Combine monthly fees to compensate). The XFA has no ongoing monthly subscription.
Topstep reports that 33.3% of funded traders receive a payout. This is a per-funded-trader statistic — meaning among people who reach the XFA, one-third ever get paid.
The gap between "funded" and "getting paid" is wide for specific reasons:
The 33.3% payout rate is not a reflection of payout approval being hard — it is a reflection of reaching the payout threshold being hard. Traders who follow their process through the XFA usually do get paid. Traders who do not tend to not get there.
The most striking number in Topstep's funnel is 0.71% — the percentage of all traders who ever started a Combine that eventually reached a Live Funded Account (LFA), where real capital is deployed.
Live Funded Account transitions are invitation-based. Topstep's risk team reviews XFA traders for consistency over time, profitability, and behavioural patterns that suggest they can manage real capital. There is no published threshold you can hit to "earn" a Live call-up — it is discretionary based on multiple factors Topstep evaluates internally.
The Live account has stricter structural rules than the XFA. As of February 2026, traders called to Live receive 20% of their Live Funded Account size immediately to trade, with the remaining 80% in Reserve. Reserve balance unlocks in milestones tied to profit targets (the same profit targets as the Combine). So if you are called up to a $100K Live account with $80K in combined XFA profits, you start with $20K immediately tradeable ($60K in Reserve), and you unlock Reserve in chunks as you hit $6K profit milestones.
0.71% is a sobering number. But it reflects the reality that Live funding is the apex of the funnel, not the baseline expectation. Most funded traders make a solid income on XFAs without ever needing Live. Express Funded Account payouts are the realistic goal for the vast majority of successful Topstep traders.
If you are planning a Topstep Combine attempt in 2026, the 2025 numbers tell you a few specific things to internalise:
The 16.8% base rate is the rate across everyone who attempts, including people with no strategy, no risk framework, and no discipline. You can do better than the base rate by being better prepared than the average attempter.
Run your intended Combine strategy on a sim account for at least 20 trading days before paying the $49 Combine fee. If you cannot profit on sim under the exact same rules, you will not profit on the Combine. Sim is free. Combines are not.
The $50K has the most forgiving percentage drawdown (4% vs 3% on $100K and $150K). The lowest monthly cost gives you the most attempts per dollar of budget. Our account size guide covers the math.
Traders who pass their first attempt are usually traders who journal. Every trade, every mistake, every emotional signal. An AI trading journal that captures this automatically is worth the subscription — it catches patterns (revenge trading, FOMO entries, abandoning setups) that manual journals miss.
Your real intraday stop should be well inside the Daily Loss Limit, never the Max Loss Limit. On a $50K, stop at -$400 (not -$1,000) and end the day. Preserve the MLL buffer across sessions. Most MLL busts are several DLL hits stacked together.
One strategy that raises the trader-level pass rate beyond the per-Combine base rate is running multiple simultaneous Combines. If your per-account probability of passing is 20%, running five Combines gives you a probability of passing at least one of roughly 67%.
The mechanical problem with multiple Combines is managing all of them. Five $50K Combines means five separate sessions, five tracking spreadsheets, five risk dashboards. The attention tax is high enough that traders often sabotage multiple Combines simultaneously by neglecting one to focus on another.
A NinjaTrader trade copier collapses this operational complexity. You execute trades on a single lead Combine account. The copier mirrors those trades to follower Combines on other $50K accounts. Same strategy across five accounts, same entry/exit prices, same sizing ratios, zero additional attention cost.
The economics work out cleanly. Five $50K Combines at $49/mo each = $245/mo in subscriptions. If your per-Combine pass rate is 20%, expected pass number is 1. After paying one $149 activation fee, you have one XFA with the others still alive (or re-used as further attempts). The cost to meaningfully raise your eventual pass probability from 20% to ~67% is roughly the cost of one $50K Combine per month — and a trade copier.
This same mathematical logic applies across all major futures prop firms. Our copy trades across Apex accounts guide covers the identical strategy for Apex Trader Funding.
Topstep's 2025 data is simultaneously encouraging and sobering. 51.8% of traders who persist eventually pass — that is better than a coin flip. But 0.71% reach Live, 33.3% of funded traders ever get paid, and 16.8% per-Combine pass rate tells you the average attempt ends in failure.
The honest reading: Topstep is hard, but it is not rigged. The rules reward disciplined, consistent, well-sized trading and punish revenge sizing, ignoring consistency targets, and failing to respect the trailing MLL. Traders who treat Combine attempts as a process to improve rather than a lottery to win tend to land on the 51.8% side. Traders who treat Combines as a fast path to funded capital tend to land on the 83.2% side.
For the rules context behind these numbers, see our Topstep Combine rules 2026 reference. For the specific step-by-step process of getting through, our how to pass a Topstep Combine guide covers the daily execution habits that separate the 51.8% from the rest.
16.8% — per-Combine pass rate in 2025. Plan for this on any single attempt.
51.8% — trader-level eventual pass rate. Plan for this if you commit to passing.
33.3% — percentage of funded traders who received a payout. The XFA is a second evaluation.
0.71% — percentage of all starters who reached Live Funded Account. Live is rare and exceptional.
86% higher — reported pass rate advantage of TopstepX over third-party platforms.
$49/mo — promotional cost of a $50K Combine, the most forgiving entry size.
2 days — minimum number of trading days required to pass (in Combines where the day minimum applies).
5 Combines — approximate number of concurrent evaluations at which the trader-level pass probability crosses 70% for a disciplined trader.