Prop firm payout rules, decoded
Minimum trading days, buffers, safety nets and split thresholds — every gate between your profit and your bank account.
Getting funded is the easy half. These are the gates that stand between a funded account and money arriving in your bank.
The four gates
- Minimum trading days — usually 5 to 10 days with real activity, not one-tick trades.
- Profit buffer — many firms require you to sit above the starting balance by a set cushion before withdrawing.
- Consistency rule — no single day above a set share of total profit.
- Minimum payout — commonly $250 to $500 per request.
Split thresholds
Watch for firms that advertise 90% but start you at 80% until you clear a threshold. Topstep gives you 100% of the first $10,000 and Apex the first $25,000 — both genuinely better than a flat 90%. Lucid is the outlier: 90% from the first dollar on every plan, with nothing to unlock.
Before your first payout request, read the payout page on the firm's own site the same day. These rules change more often than any other part of the offer.
Next step
Put it into practice
Compare every firm against what you just read, then grab the live offer before you buy.