Futures prop firm drawdown structures compared

The short answer

Futures prop firms use four drawdown structures: intraday trailing (follows your peak equity tick by tick), end-of-day trailing (follows your closing balance), locking trailing (trails until it reaches your starting capital, then stops) and static (never moves). They are all called "maximum drawdown". The difference between the strictest and the most forgiving decides more accounts than the profit target does.

In short

·Four structures share one name. Identify which one before you compare anything else.

·Intraday trailing punishes unrealised profit you never banked.

·A trailing limit that locks at starting capital eventually becomes a static one.

·Ask whether the limit follows equity or balance, and when it updates. Get it in writing.

·A generous profit target on a harsh drawdown is a worse product than the reverse.

Every futures evaluation you can buy publishes a "maximum drawdown". The number is usually a few thousand dollars and the firms quote it as though they are quoting the same thing. They are not. There are four structures in common use, they differ enormously in how survivable they are, and the website copy frequently will not tell you which one you are looking at.

This is the field to identify first — before the profit target, before the price, before the split. It decides more accounts than any of them.

1. Intraday trailing

The limit follows your peak equity, updating as it happens. Take a $100,000 account with a $3,000 allowance up to $102,000 unrealised at 10:15, and your floor is now $99,000 — even if you closed the trade flat and never banked a cent of it.

This is the strictest structure in the category. It charges you for profit you only ever saw on screen, and it is brutal on anyone who scales out of a runner or holds through a pullback. If a firm's rules mention "highest equity" or "peak equity", this is what you are buying.

2. End-of-day trailing

The limit follows your closing balance. Intraday swings are irrelevant; only where you finish the session counts. The same trader above ends the day flat and their floor stays at $97,000.

Substantially more forgiving than the intraday version, and the most common structure among the better futures firms. The distinction between the two is the single highest-value question you can ask a support desk.

3. Trailing that locks

An end-of-day trailing limit that stops moving once it reaches your initial capital. It rises with your profit as normal, then freezes at your starting balance and stays there.

The effect is that a profitable trader eventually converts a trailing product into a static one. Your worst case becomes finishing where you started, rather than being permanently a few thousand dollars below a high-water mark you set months ago. FTMO Futures works this way, and among the firms we list it is the structure we would pick if the rest of the terms were equal.

4. Static

The limit never moves. Set against your starting balance on day one, unchanged for the life of the account. The most forgiving of the four and the rarest in futures, though common in CFD evaluations — FTMO's 2-Step is the obvious example.

Firms we have documented as static are listed on the static drawdown ranking.

How to tell which one you have

The marketing page will not always say. Ask support these three questions in writing and keep the reply:

Does the maximum drawdown follow my equity or my balance?
When does it update — intraday, or at the end of the session?
Does it stop trailing at any point, and if so, at what level?

Three answers, and you know exactly which of the four products you are being sold. A firm that will not answer clearly has told you something too.

Why this outranks the profit target

A trader comparing two evaluations will usually weigh a 6% target against an 8% one and pick the lower. That instinct is backwards. The target is a threshold you cross once; the drawdown is a constraint you live under every session until the account ends. A generous target on an intraday trailing limit is a harder product than a demanding target on a static one, and it is priced as though the opposite were true.

Compare the structure first. Then the daily loss rule, then the payout terms, then the cost — the order we set out in how to choose a prop firm.

Every futures firm we list has its drawdown structure documented on its profile, or is marked as undocumented where the firm does not publish it. See the futures firms.

Frequently asked

What is the difference between intraday and end-of-day trailing drawdown?

An intraday trailing limit follows your peak equity as it happens, so an unrealised gain you gave back still raises your floor. An end-of-day trailing limit only updates from your closing balance, so intraday swings do not count against you. The end-of-day version is substantially more forgiving for anyone who holds a position through a retracement.

Which drawdown structure is best for a futures trader?

Static is the most forgiving, and a trailing limit that locks at starting capital becomes equivalent to it once you are profitable. Intraday trailing is the strictest. Everything else being equal, prefer a limit that stops moving over one that does not.

Now compare the rules yourself

Every firm we document, with each rule in this article as a filterable field.

Open comparison