The 2026 Topstep Combine has one hard rule (do not hit the trailing Maximum Loss Limit) and several objectives (profit target, daily loss limit, scaling plan, consistency rule, max position size). Account sizes are $50K, $100K, and $150K with profit targets of $3,000, $6,000, and $9,000 and trailing Maximum Loss Limits of $2,000, $3,000, and $4,500. Topstep made four significant changes between November 2025 and February 2026 — the 90/10 profit split for new traders, the split of the Express Funded Account into Standard and Consistency paths, the introduction of the No Activation Fee Combine, and the two-rule payout structure where subsequent payouts require both winning days and remaining profitable since the last payout. This page is the complete rule-by-rule reference, updated through April 2026.
Before we get into the rule list, you should know that Topstep has made more rule changes in the last five months than in any comparable period in its thirteen-year history. If you are reading a review or a strategy article written before November 2025, at least one piece of the information in it is now out of date. Here are the four changes that matter, in chronological order.
November 25, 2025 — No Activation Fee Combines released. Topstep introduced a second pricing path where the trader pays a higher monthly subscription during the Combine but skips the $149 activation fee after passing. The Standard Path pricing did not change. Both paths now run in parallel, and the choice between them is purely a cost optimization based on how many attempts you expect to take before passing.
December 30, 2025 — Two-rule payout structure. The Express Funded Account moved from a single-rule payout model (five winning days of $150+) to a two-rule model for all payouts after the first. Repeat payouts now require both the original winning days requirement and a Minimum Payout Balance that demonstrates remaining profitable since the last withdrawal.
January 12, 2026 — 90/10 profit split. New traders on the platform now receive 90 percent of approved payouts from day one. Existing traders retain the old policy (100 percent of the first $10,000 in lifetime profits, then 90/10). The split applies per trader, not per account, which closed a loophole where traders were opening additional accounts to reset the threshold.
February 5, 2026 — Standard Path and Consistency Path. The Express Funded Account split into two payout variants. Standard retains the original policy. Consistency is new — payout eligible in as few as 3 trading days, but the largest single-day win cannot exceed 40 percent of total net profit during the payout window. Traders choose one path per Express Funded Account at activation.
Topstep offers three Trading Combine account sizes in 2026. The account size determines the profit target, the trailing Maximum Loss Limit, the Daily Loss Limit, and the Maximum Position Size.
| Account size | Profit target | Trailing MLL | Daily Loss Limit | Max position size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50K Combine | $3,000 | $2,000 | $1,000 | 5 contracts (50 micros) |
| $100K Combine | $6,000 | $3,000 | $2,000 | 10 contracts (100 micros) |
| $150K Combine | $9,000 | $4,500 | $3,000 | 15 contracts (150 micros) |
Pricing runs on two parallel paths in 2026.
| Account size | Standard Path (monthly) | Standard activation fee | No Activation Fee (monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $50K | $49/month | $149 after passing | Higher monthly, no activation |
| $100K | $99/month | $149 after passing | Higher monthly, no activation |
| $150K | $149/month | $149 after passing | $209/month, no activation |
The break-even between the two paths depends on how many months you expect to take. If you pass in one month on Standard, you pay $49 + $149 = $198 on the $50K. If you take two months, $49 × 2 + $149 = $247. On No Activation Fee at a hypothetical $69/month, one month is $69 and two months is $138. Do the math for your expected attempt count before picking a path. A trader who is confident of passing quickly saves on No Activation Fee; a trader who expects to grind saves on Standard.
Every other item on this page is an objective or a guardrail. The trailing Maximum Loss Limit is the only hard rule in the Combine. Hit it and the account closes permanently with no appeal.
Topstep's MLL is end-of-day trailing, not intraday trailing. This is worth emphasising because it is more forgiving than the intraday trailing drawdowns used by Apex and MyFundedFutures Rapid. Your MLL only updates based on your closing balance at the end of the trading day. Intraday unrealised profits do not lock in a new floor. You can be up $1,500 at 11 AM and give it all back before the close without the MLL ratcheting upward.
Here is how the trailing mechanic works in practice. Take a $50K Combine, which starts with an MLL of $48,000 ($50K minus the $2,000 drawdown allowance). End the first day at $50,500. The MLL ratchets upward by $500 overnight to $48,500. End day two at $51,200. The MLL moves to $49,200. End day three at $50,900 (you gave back some profit). The MLL stays at $49,200 — the floor never moves down. Your buffer between current balance and the floor is now $1,700, not the original $2,000.
Once your end-of-day balance reaches $52,000 on a $50K Combine, the MLL freezes at $50,000 and stops trailing. From that point forward your drawdown is fixed at the account starting balance. This is the "safety net" mechanism. The deeper mechanics of trailing drawdown math, including the prop account buffer traps, are covered in the trailing drawdown guide.
Each account has a Daily Loss Limit that matches the account size: $1,000 on $50K, $2,000 on $100K, $3,000 on $150K. Hitting the Daily Loss Limit deactivates the account for the day, but it does not end the Combine. You come back the next trading day at your current balance.
This is why Topstep describes itself as having "one hard rule" — the DLL does not close the account, it just pauses it. Many traders get tripped up here because they assume blowing through the DLL is fatal. It is not fatal, but it resets your consistency math and wastes a day. The practical effect is that the DLL is most dangerous when it interacts with the trailing MLL. If you lose $1,000 on a day where the floor was close behind you, you could close the day with your balance below the floor, which does end the Combine.
On TopstepX accounts, the Daily Loss Limit has become user-configurable as a Personal Daily Loss Limit. You can set it tighter than the default (not looser). On NinjaTrader and TradingView accounts, the default DLL still applies without user override.
The Consistency Rule in the Trading Combine phase (not the Express Funded Account — that is different, see below) requires that your best single trading day cannot exceed 50 percent of your profit target.
The math is straightforward. On a $50K Combine with a $3,000 profit target, your best day must generate less than $1,500 in profit. If you have one day with a $2,000 profit, you have violated the consistency rule, and Topstep will require you to continue trading until your best day is below 50 percent of your cumulative profit. Effectively, you need to add enough smaller profitable days that your best day falls below the 50 percent threshold of the expanded total.
| Account | Profit target | Max single-day profit (Combine) |
|---|---|---|
| $50K Combine | $3,000 | < $1,500 per day |
| $100K Combine | $6,000 | < $3,000 per day |
| $150K Combine | $9,000 | < $4,500 per day |
The Consistency Rule only applies in the Combine phase. It does not carry over to the Express Funded Account Standard. It does effectively carry over to the Express Funded Account Consistency, but at a tighter 40 percent threshold and calculated on net profit during the payout window rather than on the profit target.
During the Combine, Maximum Position Size caps the number of contracts you can hold open simultaneously. It is a hard cap — exceeding it results in rejected orders. Micros count at a 10:1 ratio toward the limit (10 micro contracts = 1 full contract) on TopstepX, but on third-party platforms 1 micro counts as 1 lot.
$50K Combine caps at 5 contracts (or 50 micros). $100K caps at 10 contracts or 100 micros. $150K caps at 15 contracts or 150 micros. This limit applies to your total open position at any given time, not cumulatively across trades. You can open and close trades as many times as you want, as long as no single point has you holding more than the cap.
Passing the Trading Combine moves you to the Express Funded Account. This is where the February 5, 2026 Standard-versus-Consistency choice matters, because you pick one when you activate the XFA and cannot convert it later.
The Standard XFA follows the original Topstep payout policy. You need 5 winning days of $150 or more in net profit to qualify for your first payout. The payout itself is capped at $5,000 or 50 percent of your account balance, whichever is lower.
There is no consistency target on payouts in Standard XFA — you can hit a big day and still qualify.
The Consistency XFA compresses the minimum to 3 trading days, but imposes a 40 percent consistency target. The formula: your largest winning day divided by your current total net profit must be under 40 percent. If you hit a $4,000 day and your total profit is $8,000, your largest-day-to-total-profit ratio is 50 percent, and you cannot request a payout until you add enough smaller days to push the ratio below 40 percent.
The payout cap on Consistency XFA is $6,000 or 50 percent of balance, whichever is lower. That is $1,000 higher than Standard.
Neither path has a profit target in the XFA phase. You can take as long as you need. The Trailing MLL from the Combine converts to the XFA-level MLL, and it remains in place throughout the Express phase.
Before December 30, 2025, Topstep was a "single-rule payout" firm. Hit the winning days requirement, qualify for payout. Simple.
After December 30, 2025, only your first payout works that way. Every payout after the first requires two conditions:
The practical effect is that a trader who takes a payout, then has a rough two weeks, cannot request another payout until they rebuild. This aligns Topstep more closely with the payout structures at several other firms, and the stated goal is to encourage smoother equity curves.
For most disciplined traders, this is a mild tightening rather than a dealbreaker. For traders used to taking back-to-back payouts during a hot streak, it changes the rhythm significantly.
The Scaling Plan replaces the Maximum Position Size once you move to the XFA. It determines how many contracts you can trade based on your current account balance, and it only updates at the start of each trading day based on the previous day's closing balance.
At a $50K XFA, you start at the lowest tier of the Scaling Plan and increase your allowed contract count as your balance grows, up to the former Combine maximum of 5 contracts. Exact tiers are published by Topstep and should be verified against the current documentation, because they have been adjusted occasionally.
The crucial detail most new XFA traders miss: the scaling applies at the start of the next day, not intraday. If your balance crosses a tier threshold at 11 AM, you cannot increase your contract count that session. You must wait until 5 PM CT when the account rebills to the new tier.
Topstep allows trading in CME-listed futures including ES, NQ, CL, GC, 6E, and the corresponding micros (MES, MNQ). Forex spot and equities are not available. The firm is futures-only by design.
Trading hours align with standard futures sessions for each product. Overnight and weekend sessions are allowed on most products but come with increased slippage risk, and Topstep has specific rules around overnight positions that traders should verify before holding a position through the close.
Topstep bans several trading practices that other firms handle differently. The main prohibitions are copy-trading from a shared signal provider, using multiple accounts in a coordinated way that would violate position size limits in aggregate, and any form of account-to-account arbitrage. The firm reserves broad discretion to investigate accounts that show patterns suggesting any of these.
Trading through news events (CPI, NFP, FOMC) is permitted in 2026, but Topstep does not guarantee fills or slippage protection during high-impact releases. Many traders choose to sit out these windows regardless because the risk-reward shifts unfavourably.
The copy-trading prohibition is worth expanding on. Running a trade copier across your own Topstep accounts (for example, copying from one of your Combines to another of your Combines) is generally permitted, subject to the position size limits applying to each account independently. Copying trades from an external signal service or another trader's account is not permitted and can result in account termination. The distinction is important: copier software itself is fine, but using it to subscribe to someone else's signals is not.
Introduced in 2025 and still active in 2026, Back2Funded allows traders who lose an XFA before their first payout to pay a reactivation fee and keep the same account size and payout policy. Up to two reactivations are permitted per XFA. The account was originally earned through a Trading Combine, was closed due to a rule violation before any payout, and was lost on or after September 3, 2025.
Back2Funded does not apply to accounts lost after a payout, to Live Funded Accounts, or to accounts under review for compliance. It is specifically a bridge for traders who blew their first XFA before taking any money out and want another shot without repeating the Combine.
After sustained performance on the XFA, some traders graduate to the Live Funded Account, which places real firm capital behind the trading and generates actual cash profits from real market activity. The transition is based on average balance across eligible XFAs (accounts with at least one payout), rounded up to the nearest tier.
LFA rules tighten further than XFA rules. The Path to Reduction system allows Topstep's risk team to temporarily reduce contract size or the Daily Loss Limit during drawdowns. The Live Performance Bonus ladder pays cash bonuses for hitting monthly profit targets consistently. The specifics of the LFA are beyond the scope of a Combine rules reference, but traders should know it exists as the final tier above the XFA.
For easy reference, here is the complete list of things you need to know to trade a 2026 Topstep Combine cleanly.
That is the complete 2026 rule set as of April 2026. Topstep updates rules periodically, and anything on this page should be cross-checked against the official Topstep help center before you make a significant decision. For the strategic side — how to actually pass under these rules — see the 2026 passing playbook. For the deep mechanics of the trailing drawdown that kills most Combines, see the trailing drawdown guide. For comparison against Apex and MyFundedFutures under their own 2026 rules, see the three-way comparison.