Elite Trader Funding Review

The short answer

Elite Trader Funding sells six futures plans, and four of them are subscriptions. Those bill every 30 days until you pass, at $147 to $497 a month, and passing then costs an activation fee on top. The other two charge once, from $57 to $997.

To pass you need the profit target and five trading days on every evaluation except Fast Track, with no time limit. What differs between the plans is the loss limit: it is fixed on some and trails on others, and on 1-Step it trails your highest open profit rather than your closed balance.

Once funded you keep up to 100%, but you are paid in cycles with a minimum, a maximum and a number of qualifying days each, and the total stops at $25,000 per trader. After that, or earlier if ETF chooses, you move to a small live account.

The thing to check before you buy is what happens at that move. Your simulated balance does not carry over, and turning the offer down bars you from ETF for two years.

How it works

ETF sells six plans. The table shows how each one’s loss limit behaves.

Plan	Drawdown	Daily loss limit	Sizes
1-Step	Trails your highest open profit	None	$50,000 to $150,000
End of Day	Trails your end-of-day balance	$1,100 to $2,200	$50,000 to $100,000
Static Drawdown	Fixed	None	$10,000 to $50,000
Diamond Hands	Trails your end-of-day balance	$1,500	$100,000
Fast Track	End of day or fixed, $500	None	$10,000
Direct to Funded	End of day, or fixed on $100,000	None	$10,000 to $100,000

• Every evaluation except Fast Track needs 5 trading days and the profit target. A paid One Day to Pass add-on, bought at checkout, removes the 5-day minimum.
• There is no time limit, but the evaluation bills every 30 days until you pass.
• Fast Track is different: 3 days, a $2,000 target against $500 of drawdown, a 40% consistency rule, and 10 calendar days to finish or it fails with no reset.
• Direct to Funded skips the evaluation for a one-time fee and starts you in the funded stage.
• On 1-Step, and on the end-of-day trail of a Direct to Funded account, the drawdown stops trailing once your realized profit reaches the drawdown plus $100. From then on the floor is your starting balance plus $100. Static Drawdown does not trail at all.

How much does Elite Trader Funding cost?

ETF bills four of its six plans every 30 days until you pass, then charges again to activate the funded account. Those two numbers are the entry cost, and they are set out below.

Plan	Account	Each month	Activation, once
1-Step	$50,000	$207	$177
1-Step	$100,000	$257	$247
1-Step	$150,000	$347	$247
End of Day	$50,000	$347	$177
End of Day	$100,000	$487	$257
Static Drawdown	$10,000	$147	$177
Static Drawdown	$25,000	$277	$177
Static Drawdown	$50,000	$497	$177
Diamond Hands	$100,000	$397	$307

Activation can be paid at $87 a month instead, which costs less to start and more to hold. An evaluation reset is $47 on every plan in that table.

The remaining plans charge a single fee:

Plan	Account	One-time fee
Fast Track (End of Day)	$10,000	$57
Fast Track (Static)	$10,000	$77
Direct to Funded	$10,000	$357
Direct to Funded	$50,000	$747
Direct to Funded	$100,000	$997

The monthly billing is the part that catches people. Pass a $50,000 1-Step in your first month and the evaluation has cost $207. Take four months and the same pass costs $828, before activation. Four more costs sit outside both tables:

• Passed evaluations keep billing until you activate the funded account.
• Fast Track includes its first month of activation, then charges $87 a month, and cannot use the one-time option. Direct to Funded skips the evaluation, so it carries no activation fee at all.
• Resets cost extra. A failed evaluation can be reset at renewal. A failed funded account can be reset up to 10 times, from $87 to $557.
• Platforms and data can cost more: platform subscriptions are yours to pay, and new Rithmic accounts carry a monthly connection fee.

ETF’s refund policy says all sales are final, with one exception: on your first purchase only, within 7 days, before 5 trades and only if the account has not failed, you can swap, get a refund or take credit once. ETF can void that exception if several accounts were bought as a new user.

Platforms and trading conditions

ETF supports more than a dozen futures platforms, including Tradovate, NinjaTrader, TradingView, Quantower, Sierra Chart and MotiveWave. Which ones you can use depends on the connection you pick at checkout, Tradovate or Rithmic, and that one choice covers your whole cart. The checkout also lists Tickblaze, but marks every account on sale as not supported on it.

• You trade futures only, and only the front-month contract.
• News trading is allowed on every plan, with no restrictions.
• 1-Step positions must be closed one minute before the market closes, for example 3:59 PM Central on ES.
• Diamond Hands and Direct to Funded are the plans ETF describes as allowing overnight and weekend holds.
• Position limits count 10 micros as 1 mini on evaluations. Direct to Funded counts them one for one, so micros give far less room there.

The rules that matter

ETF’s drawdowns differ by plan, but three rules catch traders who are otherwise inside their limits.

1-Step’s floor follows open profit

On a $50,000 1-Step with $2,000 of drawdown, a trade that reaches $1,000 of open profit lifts the floor from $48,000 to $49,000, even if you close it for $500. The trail stops only once you have banked $2,100 of realized profit.

Giving back profit can end the funded account

Once a funded account is 20% up, losing more than 35% of your total profit from that point lets ETF remove the account and rules you out of LIVE ELITE, even if you are still above the drawdown. ETF checks this when you ask for a payout and in audits.

Trade every week, alone, from your own connection

• At least one trade a week on every account, or the account closes and payouts are voided.
• No one else in your household can trade with ETF, and no one can trade for you.
• No VPN, VPS or proxy, and no IP masking, except ETF’s approved partner IP ranges.
• No hedging on the same or correlated markets, in one account or across several.

Getting paid: how does Elite Trader Funding pay out?

Funded payouts at ETF come in cycles, and each cycle has a minimum, a maximum and a number of qualifying days. The table shows the 1-Step ranges for accounts bought on or after July 28, 2026.

1-Step account	Cycle 1 (8 days)	Cycle 2 (10 days)	Cycle 3 (10 days)	Cycle 4 and after (10 days)
$50,000	$250 to $1,000	$250 to $1,250	$250 to $1,500	$250 to $1,750
$100,000	$250 to $1,250	$250 to $1,500	$250 to $1,750	$250 to $2,000
$150,000	$250 to $1,500	$250 to $1,750	$250 to $2,000	$250 to $2,250

• A qualifying day needs at least $200 of realized profit, or $100 on some smaller accounts, and at least 23% of your best day. Direct to Funded counts its own day totals and sets its own thresholds, which differ by size.
• You must first bank the drawdown plus $100, and that amount can never be withdrawn.
• You move to the next cycle only after taking that cycle’s maximum.
• You keep up to 100% in the simulated stage, until $25,000 in total payouts per trader. Fast Track stops far sooner: $2,250 in total rewards on the End of Day route and $3,000 on the Static route.
• Payouts are approved weekdays and sent Mondays and Wednesdays through Rise, to a bank account, crypto wallet or exchange. ETF says it adds $1,000 if an eligible payout is not approved within 48 business hours, excluding weekends, US holidays, outages and third-party delays.
• Your subscription must stay active while a payout is processed, and ID checks come first.

The live account

Everything before LIVE ELITE is simulated. ETF describes LIVE ELITE as its own money in a live broker account, and it starts over:

• ETF may move you after 5 payouts, 50 active trading days or $25,000 in payouts, or at any time it chooses, even during an evaluation.
• Your simulated accounts close and nothing more is paid from them. The live account starts at $1,250 to $2,500 depending on your best account.
• You have 3 business days to accept. Declining pays 5% of earnings up to $12,500 and 2% above, closes your accounts, and bars you from ETF for two years.
• Live terms: an 80% split with no cap, withdrawals on business days with a $250 minimum, and an end-of-day drawdown with no daily limit.
• Live costs: market data at $197 a month per exchange, taken from your balance. A 20% fall from your high point triggers a review.
• You need a background check and ETF’s CME rules lessons first.

What can end your account

These rules can end an Elite Trader Funding account. Each comes from ETF’s own help center:

• Touching the drawdown or daily loss limit, including on open trades.
• Going over the position limit, which on a funded account also forfeits profit.
• A week without a trade, or a long pattern of scratch trading.
• Giving back more than 35% of profit after a 20% gain on a funded account.
• Hedging, household or shared trading, or a VPN.
• Missing Fast Track’s 10-day window.

Who can join

ETF accepts traders aged 18 or over whose country is supported by both of its payment providers, Rise and Stripe:

• Excluded by Rise: Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Congo (Brazzaville), Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen, plus Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
• Stripe must also support your country, and ETF publishes that list.
• Sanctioned countries cannot go live. Where only the live broker refuses a country, ETF gives a partial refund on the simulated accounts.

Who you are dealing with

Elite Trader Funding LLC sells the evaluations. Its own documents describe it in different ways, and the table shows what each says.

Detail	What ETF’s documents state
Company	Elite Trader Funding LLC
State of formation	Texas, in the privacy policy
Address	A private mailbox in Wilmington, Delaware
Governing law	Delaware
Disputes	Arbitration in King County, Washington
Founded	February 14, 2022, by Kanwal Singh

Clause 1 of the privacy policy is where it identifies itself:

Elite Trader Funding LLC, a Texas limited liability company, and its affiliated entities (collectively, “Elite Trader Funding LLC”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) […]

The definition does two things at once. It names a Texas company, and it then extends that same name to affiliated entities it never lists, so “Elite Trader Funding LLC” in this document is not reliably one company. It names no registered office, and the only postal address ETF publishes, in the privacy policy and the terms alike, is a private mailbox in Wilmington, Delaware. So the privacy policy says Texas, the address is Delaware, the governing law is Delaware and disputes go to arbitration in Washington State. Two documents, three states, and none of them gives the seat a claim would start from.

• Claims under $100,000 are decided on documents alone, with no hearing.
• The terms say any money in an account belongs to ETF.
• ETF says it has paid more than $13 million to over 13,000 traders, which is its own figure.

Why this grade

Elite Trader Funding’s grade is held down mostly by what it costs, not by what its contract says.

Four of its six plans are subscriptions. They bill every 30 days at $147 to $497 until you pass, and passing then costs an activation fee on top, so the slower you are the more you pay, and the billing stops only when you activate the funded account or cancel. That makes it an expensive route to a funded account. Price is the largest single shortfall behind the letter, measured on the cheapest route to funded capital ETF sells rather than on how long a subscription runs.

Only one thing in its contract counts against it: ETF calls itself a Texas company in one document and publishes a Delaware mailbox as its only address in every other, so a buyer cannot tell from ETF’s own papers where the company is seated, and that is where a claim against it would have to start. Its payouts and its support are still untested, so the letter says nothing about either.

Our verdict

Elite Trader Funding offers a real choice of drawdown types and a stated path to live capital, but it bills monthly at two stages, pays simulated profit in small capped cycles, and resets you to a small live balance when you move up.

Best for

• Futures traders who pick a plan by its drawdown type.
• Swing traders, on Diamond Hands or Direct to Funded.
• Traders aiming for live capital who accept starting it small.

Avoid if

• You want large payouts from a simulated account.
• Someone else in your household trades with ETF.
• You would want to decline a live offer and keep trading at ETF.

Questions traders ask

Facts checked: 17 August to 17 September 2026. No payout independently verified.