Topstep Review

The short answer

Topstep’s Trading Combine is a monthly subscription, and the first choice you make cannot be changed: pay less each month and $149 when you pass, or pay more each month and nothing when you pass. You also choose whether to add a daily loss limit, which caps a bad day and, for now, doubles your payout caps. Passing gives you an Express Funded Account that starts at a $0 balance, and a live account comes only if Topstep’s risk team calls you up. Positions must be closed by 3:10 PM Central every day.

How it works

Topstep has three stages: the Trading Combine test, the simulated Express Funded Account, and a Live Funded Account by invitation. The table shows the Combine at each size.

• The maximum loss limit trails your end-of-day balance and never moves down, but it is enforced in real time. If your balance touches it during the day, including an open trade’s loss, the account is closed.
• The best day must stay at or below 55% of the profit target. Go over and the target rises, so you have to make more to pass. You can pass in two days.
• There is no time limit, but the subscription keeps billing until you pass or cancel.
• The Express Funded Account starts at $0. Its size is buying power, not a balance, and its loss limit locks at $0 once you have made that much.

How much does Topstep cost?

Topstep bills every month until you pass or cancel. Two choices set the monthly figure: which fee path you take, and whether you add a daily loss limit. All four combinations:

Adding the daily loss limit costs nothing on the Standard path and takes $10 to $30 off the No Activation Fee path, so at $150,000 the two paths meet at $199 a month. The Standard path then charges $149 to activate each funded account it earns you, and the other path charges nothing. Where the two monthly prices are the same, as they are at $150,000 with the daily loss limit, the No Activation Fee path is simply the cheaper one. At every other size the cheaper choice depends on how many months you take to pass.

Four more costs sit outside that table:

• The path is permanent. The Standard Path charges a $149 activation fee for each Express Funded Account you earn. The No Activation Fee Path charges nothing when you pass, and prices the monthly higher instead at every size except $150,000 with a daily loss limit, where the two monthly prices match.
• A reset costs the same as a month on your path, you can buy at most two a day, and each monthly rebill adds one free reset credit.
• Losing an Express Funded Account before its first payout can be reversed within 30 days for $599, $699 or $829 by size.
• Refunds are narrow. Topstep generally does not refund, except up to one monthly payment within 14 days of your first-ever Combine, if you have not passed. Filing a chargeback is prohibited.

The Terms put it more absolutely than that exception suggests:

User is not entitled to any refund of any fees or costs, and all fees are final, non-cancelable, and non-refundable.

That sentence sits in the clause on closing your account, so it is the wording that governs when you walk away. Nothing paid comes back, and the 14-day exception is carved out of it.

Topstep takes cards only. PayPal is not supported.

Platforms and trading conditions

Topstep calls TopstepX, which has TradingView charting built in, its only platform:

TopstepX™ is the only available trading platform.

Its own help center also lets you trade in Quantower by logging in with your TopstepX credentials, on the Trading Combine and the Express Funded Account but not on a Live Funded Account.

• You trade futures on CME, CBOT, COMEX and NYMEX. Crypto is only available as Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether futures, and forex only as currency futures.
• Every position must be closed by 3:10 PM Central, Monday to Friday. Risk managers start flattening at 3:08 PM, and trading reopens at 5 PM.
• Topstep’s costs article puts a $3.70 per lot simulated fee on the Combine to mirror real trading costs. Its TopstepX fee article says the platform’s own per product fees apply in the Combine as well, and works an E-mini S&P 500 round turn out at $3.78 and a Micro at $1.22. The two do not agree, and Topstep has not said which governs.

The rules that matter

Topstep’s parameters are published in full, so the mechanics are what to read closely. Three things matter most: how the daily loss limit works if you choose one, which strategies are banned outright, and what happens around news.

The daily loss limit is a break, not a failure

If you add a daily loss limit, hitting it closes your positions and stops you trading until 5 PM Central. The account stays in play. Chosen at checkout, it is fixed and carries into your Express Funded Account. You can also set your own limit in risk settings, which you can change or remove.

What Topstep bans

These are hard rules, not judgment calls:

• Account stacking: hitting the loss limit on one account, switching to another and repeating to chase one big win.
• Hedging across accounts: long in one account and short the same or a correlated product in another.
• Exploiting simulated fills: scalping algorithms, hundreds of rapid trades or trading gapped markets for stray fills.
• Unfair technology: software, AI or ultra-fast systems that game the platform, and orders outside the best bid or offer.
• Trading maximum size straight into a major news event.

News is allowed, at your own risk

Topstep does not make you flatten before economic releases, in the test or once funded. It does not adjust accounts for slippage, and losses from news trades are not eligible for exceptions.

Getting paid: how does Topstep pay out?

Topstep’s published payout terms are a 90/10 split in the trader’s favor, with a $125 minimum. When you activate an Express Funded Account you pick one of two payout paths, and the table shows how much each lets you take per request.

• Adding a daily loss limit when you buy the Combine doubles those caps, under an offer Topstep calls limited-time.
• After your first payout, the loss limit moves to $0, so the whole balance you have built up is what you can lose before the account closes.
• Live account payouts are not capped.
• Payouts go to a bank account. Topstep lists Prop-to-Brokerage and Aeropay for US traders, Wise for traders in China, Canada and the UK, and ACH or wire transfer at $30 each.

The live account

Topstep’s Express Funded Accounts are simulated. The Live Funded Account uses real capital, and it comes only when the risk team calls you up:

• There is no fixed threshold. Topstep reviews consistency, risk management, position sizing and payout history case by case. When you are called up, all your Express Funded Accounts close.
• You do not start with your full balance. The live account size is the average of your eligible funded account sizes, rounded up, and what transfers is capped at that size, with any excess forfeited. You trade 20% of it straight away, at least $10,000, and the other 80% is released in four steps as you hit profit targets.
• A daily loss limit is automatic on live accounts, starting at $2,000, $3,000 or $4,500 by size, and it grows as your profit reaches higher tiers.
• Live trading has real costs: professional market data at $133 per exchange a month (Topstep covers one), plus commissions and a platform license.
• You can be moved back to a simulated account, which Topstep calls a Shoulder Tap, after repeated losses or undisciplined trading.

What can end your account

These rules can end a Topstep account. Each comes from Topstep’s own help center:

• Touching the maximum loss limit at any point in the day, including on an open trade.
• On an Express Funded Account after a payout, letting the balance fall to $0.
• Any banned strategy listed above, including hedging across accounts and account stacking.
• Holding more than one Topstep profile.
• Intentionally draining a live account to force it to fail.

Who can join

Topstep decides eligibility on both citizenship and residence, and publishes two lists:

• Not eligible at all: 32 countries, including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Iran and Venezuela.
• Funded accounts but no live account: 25 countries, including Germany, Iceland, Hong Kong, Serbia and Vietnam. Traders there can take up to $200,000 in total payouts, and some may be offered a simulated Pro Account instead of live.

You must be 18 or over. Living in an ineligible country makes you ineligible whatever your citizenship.

Who you are dealing with

Topstep’s terms split the product between two companies by stage, and the group includes others. The table shows who does what.

The registration is the line most worth reading carefully, because of which company it attaches to. Topstep’s own terms put it this way:

Introducing brokerage services are offered through Topstep Brokerage LLC (“Topstep Brokerage”), a registered introducing broker and a member of the National Futures Association.

It covers an affiliated brokerage, not the Combine you bought and not the funded account. A registration named on the same site as the product is easy to read as covering the product. We have not checked the registration against a regulator’s record, so what we can tell you is what Topstep’s terms state, not what a register shows.

Where a dispute goes is set by section 22 of the Terms, and that section opens by telling you what it takes away:

PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE SECTION CAREFULLY. EXCEPT WHERE PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IT REQUIRES MANDATORY ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCESSES INSTEAD OF LITIGATION AND AFFECTS LEGAL RIGHTS YOU MAY OTHERWISE HAVE AND PROVIDES THAT YOU WAIVE YOUR RIGHTS TO SUE IN COURT.

The section does name the Delaware Court of Chancery. But both of the sentences that name a court begin “Subject to the next paragraph”, and the next paragraph sends any dispute, claim or controversy to arbitration in Wilmington, Delaware, before a single arbitrator administered by JAMS. The two sides share the cost at the start, and the winning side can then recover its costs and its legal fees from the loser. A further paragraph waives the right to bring or join a class action. The courts are the fallback for what arbitration does not reach, not the route a trader takes first.

• The brokerage registration does not cover what you buy. It belongs to the brokerage affiliate, not the company selling the simulated evaluation.
• Disputes go to individual arbitration in Delaware, with the loser paying the winner’s costs and legal fees, and class actions waived.
• The terms call fees “final, non-cancelable, and non-refundable”, on a monthly subscription.
• The Combine, Express Funded and Live agreements are not published before purchase, and Topstep’s rules pages say they take precedence over them.

The firm’s public rating carries a shape worth naming. Its Trustpilot profile scored 3.6 across 14,678 reviews on 27 August 2026, with 19% at one star against 70% at five. That is a heavy negative tail. The profile invites reviews, so the distribution is invited, not organic.

Why this grade

Topstep’s drawdown is what holds its grade down, and the value of what you buy is the part that cannot be scored at all.

The maximum loss is $2,000, $3,000 or $4,500 by account size, and the way it is applied matters more than the number. The level updates at the end of each day, but it is enforced in real time with your open positions counted, so a trade that goes underwater during the session can end the account before the day has closed.

What you buy is a subscription rather than a one-off, and that has two consequences. On the Terms’ own wording, fees already paid cannot be recovered and the subscription cannot be canceled out of. The lines advertised with no activation fee price the monthly higher instead, so the cheaper monthly is not the cheaper product for anyone who passes quickly. The agreements that set out the profit split and the scaling are not published, so the value of what you buy cannot be scored here in full.

The daily loss limit is chosen at checkout and fixed from then on, and it carries into the Express Funded Account afterwards, so a decision made before you have traded follows you into the funded stage. Whether Topstep pays as it says, and how it answers when something goes wrong, are the parts that have not been put to the test.

Our verdict

Topstep publishes its rules in unusual detail and offers a real path to live capital, but it bills monthly, closes every position by mid-afternoon, and hands out live funding at its own discretion and in installments.

Best for

• Futures day traders who close out every afternoon anyway.
• Traders who want to choose a daily loss limit, and a payout path, that suit them.
• Traders aiming for live capital through a published call-up process.

Avoid if

• You hold positions overnight or swing trade.
• You live in one of the ineligible countries, or need live funding from a country on the funded-only list.
• You need to read the contract before paying.

Questions traders ask

Facts checked: 21 to 27 August 2026. No payout independently verified.