Apex is a futures firm that sells evaluations for the price of a takeaway after its permanent coupons, passes you in a day, and pays 100 percent of approved payouts, capped at six per account. It is also the firm whose funded accounts expire after six payouts, whose drawdown moves on your open profit, and which rebuilt its entire product line this year. We read every rule in the new help centre and added up the most an account can ever pay you. Independent, no affiliate deal.
Written by Wesley, Founder & CEO·Reviewed by The Forex Complex trading team·Last updated 15 October 2026
Apex is the fast, cheap, disposable end of futures prop trading, and it is honest about that in its own numbers. A 50K Intraday Trail evaluation listed at $249 on 21 October 2026 with a 90 percent coupon showing on the card, a $3,000 target, a $2,000 trailing drawdown, one minimum day, no consistency rule and 30 days to do it. Pass, pay a one-time activation fee within a week, and your Performance Account pays 100 percent of approved payouts as often as weekly, capped at six payouts per account with published limits per request. The rules are all in dollars, all in a public help centre, and the March 2026 relaunch removed the recurring billing and the "interpretation" that fed years of complaints.
The limits are structural. Every Performance Account closes after six payouts, and each of the six is capped: a 50K PA can never pay more than $14,500 in its life. The intraday drawdown moves up on unrealised profit, so a spike that reverses costs you floor you cannot get back. Payouts need five days above a minimum daily profit, a Safety Net left in the account and a 50 percent consistency check. Nothing is refunded, nothing is reset, and everything is simulated with live trading only by invitation. For a UK forex trader there is the bigger issue that there is no forex here at all, only CME currency futures. A well-priced evaluation machine for futures traders who plan to run several accounts at once; not a home.
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| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| One-time evaluation fee, no recurring billing on the new products | Evaluation expires after 30 days with no reset; buy again |
| Pass in one day; no consistency rule during the evaluation | Performance Accounts close after six payouts, each capped |
| 100 percent of approved payouts under Apex's own policy, weekly at most, capped at six payouts per account with published limits per request | $500 minimum payout, Safety Net and 50 percent consistency at every request |
| Near-permanent coupons cut list prices by up to 90 percent | List prices are therefore close to meaningless; the discount culture obscures real cost |
| Choice of intraday or end-of-day drawdown; EOD adds a fixed daily loss limit | Intraday drawdown trails on unrealised profit and never comes down |
| Trade up to 20 accounts; Rithmic, Tradovate, NinjaTrader, WealthCharts | Futures only: no spot forex, no CFDs, no MetaTrader |
| 4.2 on Trustpilot from 21,397 reviews, 81 percent five-star | All accounts simulated; live trading by invitation only; long restricted-country list |
Four sizes, two drawdown types, all in dollars. The "new Apex" products launched 1 March 2026 replaced monthly billing with a one-time fee and 30 days of access; legacy accounts bought before then keep their old rules. Figures from the homepage configurator and the drawdown and daily loss articles.
| Account | Profit target | Max drawdown | EOD daily loss limit | Max contracts | Min days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25K | $1,500 | $1,000 | $500 (EOD only) | 4 minis / 40 micros | 1 |
| 50K | $3,000 | $2,000 | $1,000 (EOD only) | 6 / 60 | 1 |
| 100K | $6,000 | $3,000 | $1,500 (EOD only) | 8 / 80 | 1 |
| 150K | $9,000 | $4,000 | $2,000 (EOD only) | 12 / 120 | 1 |
$3,000 on 50K is 6 percent at every size. One minimum trading day and no consistency rule in the evaluation; a single good session can pass it.
$2,000 on 50K. Intraday Trail follows your peak including open profit and never comes down. EOD Trail updates once a day at 6 PM ET.
Only on EOD accounts: a fixed amount that flattens you and pauses trading for the session. Not a failure. In a Performance Account it grows with your profit tier.
The evaluation is active for 30 days and expires; there are no resets. Passing gives you seven calendar days to pay the activation fee.
Where the intraday threshold stops: in a Performance Account, at the starting balance plus $100 (so $50,100 on 50K, reached once your peak hits $52,100). In Rithmic and WealthCharts evaluations, at the target balance. In Tradovate evaluations it never stops trailing. Trading day: resets 6 PM ET. Contracts scale in the Performance Account with profit tiers, from 2 to 10 minis, and the daily loss limit scales with them. Instruments: CME Group futures including ES, NQ, YM, RTY, currencies, energy, metals, agriculturals and micros; EUREX on Tradovate.
Follow market updates and trade ideas designed to respect drawdown limits.
Apex publishes a cap for each of the six payouts a Performance Account is allowed before it closes. Add them up and you have the lifetime ceiling of the account. Here it is for a 50K Intraday PA, then the two evaluation doors.
The last row is the whole Apex business model in one number. A 50K account can pay you at most $14,500, over at least six weeks of five qualifying days each, and then you pass another evaluation to get another one. A 150K account tops out at $22,000. That is why Apex lets you run up to 20 accounts and sells five-packs: the product is designed to be bought repeatedly, and traders who copy one strategy across several accounts are the intended customer.
The first two rows explain the friction on the way. You cannot request until your balance is $500 above the Safety Net, each of your five qualifying days needs at least $200 of profit on a 50K, and your best day must be under half your total since the last payout. A $1,500 spike day means $3,000 of profit before the button appears. Test the trailing threshold in our drawdown calculator, size contracts against it with the position size calculator, and check your day spread with the consistency calculator.
No daily loss limit; threshold moves on open profit
A trade that runs to a new peak and reverses raises your floor permanently. Cheap because it is unforgiving.
End-of-day drawdown with a fixed daily loss limit
Intraday swings do not move the floor and one bad session cannot end the account. Worth the difference.
Avoiding rule violations starts with position sizing
Avoiding rule violations starts with position sizing and disciplined trade selection. Use The Forex Complex signals as one part of your trading plan.
One-time list prices in US dollars from the homepage configurator on 21 October 2026, for a 30-day evaluation. Every card showed a 90 percent coupon at the time; Apex has run discounts of this order for years, so treat list as a fiction and the coupon price as the real one until proven otherwise.
| Account | Intraday Trail (list) | EOD Trail (list) | With 90% coupon | Five-pack (list) | Lifetime PA payout cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25K | $167 | $490 | $16.70 / $49 | $749.50 / $2,250 | $6,000 |
| 50K | $249 | $590 | $24.90 / $59 | $950 / $2,450 | $14,500 |
| 100K | $790 | $1,190 | $79 / $119 | $3,450 / $4,950 | $18,500 |
| 150K | $1,190 | $2,190 | $119 / $219 | $4,950 / $9,950 | $22,000 |
Thirty days of access to a simulated evaluation. It does not include the Performance Account: passing gives you seven calendar days from the evaluation being marked Passed (after 6 PM ET on the day you hit the target) to pay a separate one-time activation fee, shown per account at checkout, which is not refundable and cannot be transferred. Miss the window and you start again. There are no resets on the new products and no refunds; the account simply expires.
Fees are in US dollars and a payment method from a restricted country ends your account at any stage, so UK cards are fine. Payouts are approved at 100 percent with a $500 minimum and are processed against the caps above. You may keep trading while a request is pending, but trade as if the money has already left, because a balance that dips below the minimum denies the request automatically.
Each day must close with at least the minimum profit for your size: $100 on 25K, $200 on 50K, $250 on 100K, $300 on 150K. Not consecutive, no deadline, so weekly payouts are the fastest cadence.
Only profit above the Safety Net is eligible, and the request must be at least $500, so a 50K PA needs $52,600 before the button appears.
Best day divided by 0.5 is the net profit you need since the last approved payout. Being above it does not fail you; it hides the payout option until it falls.
Caps per payout rise from payout one to six. After the sixth, the account is closed and you qualify again through a new evaluation. No video reviews, no screenshots, No Payout Denials.
Your platform choice changes the rules: Rithmic and WealthCharts evaluations stop trailing at the target balance, Tradovate evaluations trail forever. Pick before you buy.
CME Group futures only, with EUREX products on Tradovate. There is no forex CFD product and no swap-free option because there are no swaps.
Yes. The United Kingdom is not on Apex's restricted list, which is long and includes China, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa, Cyprus, Jersey and Kenya. You will need a valid government-issued ID from an eligible country and a bank account and address there, and using a card issued in a restricted country ends the account at any stage.
Apex is a Texas company selling simulated US futures evaluations. None of it is regulated activity in the UK: the firm is not on the FCA Register, no UK compensation scheme applies, and a dispute is a contract matter with an American company. The trading day runs on US Eastern time with a 6 PM ET reset, which is 11 PM in London in summer. Read the FCA's note on high-risk investments, and treat payouts as self-employed income for HMRC until an accountant tells you otherwise.
Apex's natural rival is Topstep. Against the forex firms, compare the product first: a $50k futures evaluation is not the same thing as a $50k forex challenge.
| Firm | Market | Max loss | Split | $50k-class list price | Our review |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apex (50K EOD Trail) | CME futures | $2,000 EOD trailing, $1,000 daily | 100%, six capped payouts | $590 one-time, 30 days (21 October 2026) | This page |
| Topstep ($50K Combine) | CME futures | $2,000 EOD trailing | 90 / 10, uncapped in Live | $49 per month plus $149 | Topstep review |
| Blue Guardian (futures Standard) | CME futures | EOD trailing, daily soft breach | 90 / 10 | See review | Blue Guardian review |
| FTMO ($50k 2-step) | Forex CFDs | 10% static | 80% to 90% | €345 | FTMO review |
Full ranking on our best prop firms UK page, or start with how to compare prop firms safely.
Experienced futures day traders who want cheap, repeatable evaluations, plan to run several accounts in parallel, and are happy to re-qualify every six payouts.
Avoid it if you trade spot forex on MetaTrader; nothing here resembles that. Avoid Intraday Trail if you let winners breathe, because the floor rises on open profit. Avoid it if you want one funded account to grow for years, since each one is built to pay six times and close. And treat the list prices as marketing: if you ever find yourself paying full price, you are almost certainly missing a coupon.
6 percent, one minimum day, no consistency rule. A single strong session passes it. The 30-day expiry is the only pressure.
A 4 percent threshold that moves on open profit leaves little margin. EOD Trail with the daily limit is far more forgiving.
Five qualifying days, a Safety Net, a $500 minimum, 50 percent consistency and a cap per payout. Then six payouts and the account closes.
For futures traders who want a 14-year record, published pass rates and a real path to live capital.
Read the review →For forex traders who want to stay on MT5 with a static floor and the longest operating history in this comparison (paying out since 2015).
Read the review →For traders who want cheap forex evaluations, a refunded fee and advertised 24-hour payouts.
Read the review →Comparing prop firms? Join our Telegram group to see how our forex signals fit different trading rules.
Our free Telegram signals are spot forex ideas with an entry, a stop loss and staged targets. Apex trades futures, so the idea travels and the ticket does not. Most of our members who use Apex treat the signals as a directional read on the dollar, not as orders.
"Apex is a vending machine, and I do not mean that as an insult. You put in twenty-five dollars, you get an evaluation, you pass it in an afternoon if you are good, and the account pays you six times and disappears. The traders who do well there know exactly that and run ten of them. The traders who do badly bought one, thought it was a career, and got caught by a floor that moved while their trade was still open. If you are a futures scalper, fine. If you trade forex with us, this is not your firm, and the coupon does not change that."
Every firm is scored out of 10 on nine criteria: forex trader suitability, challenge fairness, cost transparency, payout reliability, rule clarity, platform support, UK accessibility, risk management fit and support quality. The overall score is the average. Apex's low forex suitability score reflects a futures-only product; its cost transparency score reflects a permanent-coupon pricing model in which the list price is rarely what anyone pays. We read the firm's own help centre and configurator in a browser, review the Trustpilot profile and its complaint themes, and re-verify on the date shown at the top. We hold no affiliate or referral relationship with Apex Trader Funding or any firm reviewed here.
Apex homepage and configurator · intraday trailing drawdown · Performance Account payouts · PA activation · daily loss limit · 50% consistency · restricted countries · Trustpilot · FCA Register · FCA high-risk investments · HMRC
Founded The Forex Complex in 2021 after several years trading forex independently. Leads the daily signals review and weekly live streams for a community of 325,000+ traders.
Apex is a real, large futures prop firm operating from Texas since 2021, with a 4.2 TrustScore from about 21,000 Trustpilot reviews, 81 percent five-star and 9 percent one-star, and a public help centre. Its accounts, including funded Performance Accounts, are simulated; the firm says so plainly and offers live trading only by invitation. It relaunched its whole product line on 1 March 2026 with one-time fees, a No Payout Denials promise and simpler rules, which is a response to the volume of complaints the old products generated.
Yes, within a very specific structure. Performance Accounts pay 100 percent of approved payouts, weekly at most, once you have five trading days each above a minimum profit ($100 to $300 by size), keep a Safety Net of drawdown plus $100 in the account, and no single day is half or more of your profit since the last payout. Each payout is capped, from $1,000 on a 25K account to $5,000 on a 150K account, and after six payouts the Performance Account closes. The minimum payout is $500. The firm's homepage promises No Payout Denials and no video or screenshot reviews.
Both are US futures firms. Apex is cheaper after coupons, passes you in as little as one day, has no evaluation consistency rule and pays 100 percent of Performance Account profits, but every PA dies after six capped payouts and every account stays simulated. Topstep is a monthly subscription with a 55 percent consistency target, a 90/10 split and lower early caps, but it has a 14-year record, publishes its pass rates and offers a real Live Funded Account with uncapped and eventually daily payouts. Choose Apex for cheap, fast, repeatable evaluations; choose Topstep for a career path.
Pick a size (25K, 50K, 100K or 150K) and a drawdown type. Targets are $1,500, $3,000, $6,000 and $9,000; maximum drawdown is $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 and $4,000. Intraday Trail: the drawdown trails your peak balance in real time including open profit and there is no daily loss limit. EOD Trail: the drawdown updates at end of day and a fixed daily loss limit of $500, $1,000, $1,500 or $2,000 applies. One minimum trading day, no consistency rule in the evaluation, 30 days to pass, no resets. Contracts range from 4 minis on 25K to 12 on 150K.
The threshold sits a fixed distance below your highest balance and moves up whenever you set a new high, including on unrealised profit while a trade is open. It never moves down. On a 50K account the distance is $2,000: if an open trade takes you to $52,500 the floor is $50,500 even if you close the trade at $51,000. In a Performance Account the floor stops rising once it reaches the starting balance plus $100; in Rithmic and WealthCharts evaluations it stops at the target balance; in Tradovate evaluations it trails indefinitely.
List prices on 21 October 2026 for a one-time 30-day evaluation: Intraday Trail $167 (25K), $249 (50K), $790 (100K), $1,190 (150K); EOD Trail $490, $590, $1,190 and $2,190. The checkout showed a 90 percent coupon on every card at the time, so the effective prices were $16.70 to $219. Passing requires a separate one-time Performance Account activation fee within seven days, shown per account at checkout. Nothing is refunded and there are no resets on the new products.
It applies to payouts, not to the evaluation. Your largest profitable day must be less than 50 percent of your net profit since your last approved payout, or since the account started if you have not been paid yet. The easy check is best day divided by 0.5: a $1,500 best day means you need at least $3,000 of net profit before the payout button appears. You do not fail for being above 50 percent; you keep trading until the percentage falls. It resets after each approved payout.
Yes. The UK is not on Apex's long restricted list, which does include China, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa, Cyprus and Jersey among others. You need a government-issued ID from an eligible country and a bank account there. The product is US futures on simulated accounts, so nothing about it is FCA-regulated, and the trading day runs on US Eastern time with a 6 PM ET reset.
Rithmic-connected platforms, Tradovate, NinjaTrader and WealthCharts. There is no MetaTrader and no CFD product. Instruments are CME Group futures: E-mini and micro equity indices, currency futures, energy, metals and agriculturals, with EUREX products available on Tradovate.
Only as currency futures such as the euro (6E), pound (6B) and their micro contracts. There is no spot forex, no CFD pairs, no MetaTrader and no swap-free option. A forex trader would need to translate pairs into contracts, pips into ticks and dollars, and work to US futures hours. If keeping your MT5 workflow matters, Apex is the wrong tool; look at FTMO, FXIFY or The5ers instead.
Only with translation and mostly for context. Our signals are spot forex ideas with pips-based stops; on Apex you would trade the equivalent CME currency future, convert the stop into ticks and dollars against a $1,000 to $4,000 trailing threshold that moves on open profit, and make sure no single day is half your profit before a payout. The directional idea carries over, the instrument and sizing do not. No signal service can guarantee you will pass or be paid.
Risk disclaimer: Prop firm evaluations involve a non-refundable fee and trading on simulated accounts; futures trading carries a high level of risk, and most retail traders lose money. Nothing on this page is financial, investment or tax advice, and no signal service, including ours, can guarantee that you will pass an evaluation or receive a payout. Apex Trader Funding changes its products, rules, coupons and prices often; rules and prices here were read from the firm's own help centre and homepage configurator in a browser on 21 October 2026. The firm's own pages take precedence. The Forex Complex has no affiliate or referral relationship with Apex Trader Funding.
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