Apex Trader Funding rules explained: the trailing threshold and no daily limit
Apex has the strictest drawdown basis in this directory and, unusually, no daily loss limit at all. Those two facts are related: with no circuit breaker on the day, the trailing threshold is the only thing standing between a bad session and a closed account.
Prop firms change their terms, and rules differ by plan size, phase and promotion. Apex Trader Funding’s own rules page is authoritative — always check it against the plan you hold before you trade.
Apex Trader Funding at a glance
Where a row says “set per plan size”, the firm states that limit in dollars per account rather than as a single percentage — read it off your own account and enter it when you set the account up.
An Apex account is governed by one number that moves: a threshold that trails your live equity, open profit included. There is no separate daily loss limit, so unlike most futures firms there is no rule that stops you at a fixed loss and gives you tomorrow back. Whatever you lose in a session comes straight off the same distance the threshold is measuring.
A threshold that follows unrealised profit
This is the important mechanic and it is worth being precise about it: the threshold trails your live equity, not your closed balance. If a trade is up $700 at its best tick, the threshold has already moved up by $700 — whether or not you were watching, and whether or not you kept a cent of it. The high-water mark is set by the market, not by your decision to take profit.
On an intraday-trailing threshold, every unrealised peak is a permanent transfer from your buffer to the floor. A trade that runs $800 in your favour and returns to breakeven has cost you $800 of room and paid you nothing. That is the opposite of the instinct most traders bring from a retail account, where an open swing costs nothing if you get out flat.
The floor stops rising once it reaches $100 above your starting balance, and everything above that point is buffer the trail can no longer take. Until then, the account behaves like a ratchet: profit raises the line permanently and losses do not lower it. Once it locks, your position is far more comfortable — everything above the lock is a cushion the trail cannot take — which is why the early phase of an Apex account deserves the smallest size you are willing to trade.
No daily loss limit is not a freedom
A daily loss limit is usually described as a restriction. It is also a stop: it ends your day at a known number and lets you come back tomorrow with the same account. Without one, nothing external stops a bad session except the threshold itself — and hitting the threshold does not end your day, it ends the account.
The correct response is to impose the missing rule yourself. Pick a dollar figure that ends your session, write it down before the session starts, and treat it as though the firm enforced it. A self-imposed daily stop is the single highest-value habit on an account with no published one, and it is worth tracking whether you actually honoured it rather than trusting memory.
For completeness: the trading day rolls at 5:00 p.m. America/Chicago, which matters for how trades are grouped even without a daily limit — your own daily stop needs the same boundary the firm uses, or you will keep trading past it without noticing.
The 30% rule
No single day may be worth more than 30% of total profit — the tightest cap in this directory. In practice it means an account cannot be carried by one enormous session: to withdraw, your profit has to be spread across days. A trader who makes their whole target in a morning has not finished; they have started a waiting game where every subsequent normal day improves the ratio.
It is a ratio rather than a penalty, which is the part worth internalising. Nothing is confiscated and nothing needs undoing — as total profit grows, the share held by your best day shrinks. The mistake is trying to "fix" the ratio quickly with more size, which risks the account to solve a problem that patience solves for free.
Trading days, payouts and the split
10 trading days on this rule set. Any day with a trade on it counts, whatever the result. The split is 100% to the trader, and $100 of profit stays in the account as a buffer rather than being withdrawable.
What most often ends an Apex account
- Round-tripping an open winner. On an equity-trailing threshold this is the most expensive habit available, and it does not even require a losing trade.
- No self-imposed daily stop. With no published daily limit, a bad session has nothing to stop it but your own judgement at exactly the moment your judgement is worst.
- Sizing up to clear the threshold faster. Larger size raises the equity peaks that raise the threshold. It is the one accelerant that works against you in both directions.
Tracking a Apex Trader Funding account
The reason these rules are worth reading closely is that none of them are checked by your platform. Your broker shows you a balance; the firm is watching a floor and a share of profit that your balance alone does not tell you about. Edgekeeper loads this rule set onto an account and does the arithmetic on every trade you log: where the drawdown floor currently sits, how many qualifying days you have, and whether one big day has put the consistency rule between you and a payout.
It also warns you before you write the trade, not after. The point is not to be a scoreboard — it is to be the thing that says "this trade takes you inside the last third of your remaining drawdown" while you can still decide something about it.
Prop firms revise their rules regularly, and they differ by plan size, by phase and sometimes by promotion. Everything above is the rule set Edgekeeper loads for Apex Trader Funding, checked against the firm's own published rules on the date at the top of this page — but Apex Trader Funding's own page is the authority, and every field is editable on your account, so if your plan differs you can change it and the app will judge you by your numbers rather than these.
Apex Trader Funding rules: common questions
Does Apex have a daily loss limit?
No. On this rule set the trailing threshold is the only hard line, which is why setting your own daily stop matters more here than at a firm that enforces one for you.
How does the Apex trailing threshold work?
It trails your live equity, open profit included, so an unrealised high raises it even if the trade later gives the profit back. The floor stops rising once it reaches $100 above your starting balance, and everything above that point is buffer the trail can no longer take.
What is the Apex consistency rule?
No single day may account for more than 30% of total profit on this rule set. It is a ratio measured across the account, so it clears naturally as more days are added.
When does the Apex trading day reset?
At 5:00 p.m. America/Chicago. Even with no daily loss limit this is the boundary your own daily stop should use, so that a late-evening trade is not silently added to a day you had already closed.
How many trading days does Apex require?
10 on this rule set. Any day with a trade on it counts, whatever the result.
Track a Apex Trader Funding account in Edgekeeper — free
These are the exact rules Edgekeeper loads. Create the account and every trade you log updates your daily loss room, your live drawdown floor, your qualifying days and your payout eligibility — and warns you before a trade takes you past a limit. One prop account is free, forever, no card.
Track a Apex Trader Funding account freeOther prop firms
New to these limits? Start with daily loss vs. trailing max drawdown.