Apex Trader Funding Review (2026): Legit Prop Firm or Money Pit?

Apex Trader Funding has exploded onto the prop trading scene faster than almost any competitor. Founded in 2021 in Austin, Texas, by CEO Darrell Martin, the firm has already paid out over $660 million to traders, accumulated 17,000+ Trustpilot reviews at a 4.4-star rating, and attracted users in 150+ countries.

The appeal is obvious: a one-step evaluation for futures trading, account sizes up to $300,000, 100% of your first $25,000 in profits (then 90% after), payouts every 8 days, and aggressive discount codes that regularly slash evaluation fees by 70-80%.

If you’ve spent any time on trading YouTube or social media, you’ve seen Apex promoted everywhere. It’s one of the most-searched prop firms in the world — 135,000 monthly Google searches — and the marketing machine is relentless.

But beneath the promotional frenzy, there’s a more complicated picture. The 30% consistency rule has locked traders out of payouts. The trailing drawdown eliminates accounts that were in profit. And the business model raises the same question every prop firm faces: does the company profit more from your success or your failure?

First, This Is Important

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What Is Apex Trader Funding?

Apex Trader Funding is a proprietary trading firm specializing exclusively in futures markets. It provides traders access to capital through a one-step evaluation process across exchanges including CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX.

Unlike FTMO, which covers forex, indices, crypto, and commodities, Apex is futures-only. This means you’re trading instruments like the E-mini S&P 500 (ES), Nasdaq futures (NQ), crude oil (CL), gold (GC), and other CME Group products.

Apex supports trading through Rithmic, Tradovate, NinjaTrader, and WealthCharts — all with included real-time data (valued at ~$55/month), which is baked into the subscription fee.

How the Apex Evaluation Works

Apex uses a single-step evaluation — simpler than FTMO’s two-step process.

Step 1: Pass the Evaluation. Choose an account size, trade for a minimum of 7 days, hit your profit target without breaching the trailing threshold (drawdown), and you qualify for a Performance Account (PA).

Step 2: Trade the Performance Account. Once funded, you trade with Apex’s capital and can request payouts every 8 trading days. You keep 100% of your first $25,000 in profits per account, then 90% of everything after.

Apex Account Options and Pricing (2026)

Account Size	Monthly Fee	Profit Target	Trailing Threshold
$25,000	~$147/mo	$1,500	$1,500
$50,000	~$167/mo	$3,000	$2,500
$75,000	~$187/mo	$4,250	$2,750
$100,000	~$207/mo	$6,000	$3,000
$150,000	~$297/mo	$9,000	$5,000
$250,000	~$517/mo	$15,000	$6,500
$300,000	~$657/mo	$20,000	$7,500
$100,000 Static	~$137/mo	$2,000	$625 (fixed)

Critical note: These are monthly recurring fees, not one-time payments. If it takes you 3 months to pass, a $50K account costs $501 in fees alone. Apex frequently runs 70-80% discount promotions that can reduce the first month significantly, but the recurring nature means costs add up for traders who take longer to qualify.

Evaluation resets cost $80. Funded account maintenance is $85/month.

Who Runs Apex Trader Funding?

Apex was founded in 2021 by Darrell Martin, who is also the CEO. Martin is based in Austin, Texas and has a background in options and futures trading. He’s active on social media and regularly appears in Apex’s marketing content.

The company has grown aggressively through influencer marketing. If you’ve seen Apex promoted on YouTube, it’s almost certainly through an affiliate link — Apex runs one of the most generous referral programmes in the prop trading industry, which explains its ubiquitous presence in trading content.

Staffing and infrastructure: Apex operates with a relatively lean team compared to firms like FTMO (300+ employees). This shows in customer support response times — a consistent complaint in reviews is slow ticket resolution, sometimes taking a week or more for a response.

Financial transparency: Apex publishes payout milestones ($660M+ total) but doesn’t share audited financial reports or detailed pass/fail statistics. This is normal for the prop firm industry — no firm publishes audited data — but it means you’re relying on self-reported figures.

Geographic restrictions: Apex is available in 150+ countries but restricted in Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, South Africa, and several other nations.

Platforms and Trading Conditions

Apex offers four platform options:

Rithmic: The professional-grade futures platform. Ultra-low latency execution, detailed order flow data, and compatibility with NinjaTrader. Rithmic accounts are preferred by serious futures traders who need precision. The trade-off: it’s less user-friendly for beginners and requires additional setup.

Tradovate: A web-based platform that’s more accessible than Rithmic. Clean interface, works in any browser, and includes basic charting. Good for traders who don’t need advanced order flow tools. Tradovate accounts include real-time data at no extra cost.

NinjaTrader: Industry-standard futures platform with powerful charting, automated strategy support, and deep customisation. During evaluation, NinjaTrader access is free. After getting funded, you’ll need a license ($600-$1,200 depending on the plan), which is a significant additional cost.

WealthCharts: A newer option focused on charting and analysis. Compatible with Rithmic accounts and useful for traders who prioritise visual analysis.

All platforms include real-time data (valued at ~$55/month) baked into the subscription fee. However, if you select “Professional” trader status (required for certain account types), exchange data fees jump to $115+/month — a cost many traders don’t anticipate.

Tradable Instruments

Apex provides access to the full range of CME Group futures products:

Category	Examples
Equity Indices	E-mini S&P 500 (ES), Micro E-mini S&P (MES), E-mini Nasdaq (NQ), Micro Nasdaq (MNQ)
Currencies	Euro FX, Japanese Yen, British Pound, Australian Dollar futures
Energy	Crude Oil (CL), Natural Gas (NG), Micro Crude (MCL)
Metals	Gold (GC), Silver (SI), Micro Gold (MGC)
Agricultural	Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, Cattle
Interest Rates	Treasury Bonds, Eurodollars

This is a comprehensive futures offering. However, there’s no access to spot forex, stocks, or crypto — for those, you’d need FTMO.

Evaluation Rules in Detail

The Apex evaluation is simpler than multi-step processes, but the details matter:

Minimum trading days: 7 (you can spread these out however you want — no requirement for consecutive days).

Trading hours: 23 hours per day (6:00 PM – 4:59 PM ET next day). You can trade during news events, holidays, and volatile periods.

Trailing threshold: This is the killer. The threshold starts at a fixed distance below your starting balance and trails upward as your account reaches new highs. It never moves down. Once your account peaks and then drops below the trailing threshold, you’re eliminated.

No daily drawdown: Unlike FTMO’s 5% daily limit, Apex doesn’t have a separate daily loss restriction. The trailing threshold is the only risk control — which is both more flexible and more dangerous.

Scaling during evaluation: Position sizes are limited initially and scale up as you hit profit milestones. This prevents traders from over-leveraging early.

What Apex Gets Right

The 100% first $25K profit split is genuinely generous. On a $50K account, this means your first $25,000 in profits are entirely yours. At most competitors, you’d only keep $20,000-$22,500 of that. This is a real competitive advantage for profitable traders.

One-step evaluation is simpler than multi-step processes. No verification phase, no second hurdle. Pass once, get funded. This reduces the time and complexity compared to FTMO’s two-step approach.

Up to 20 funded accounts. Apex allows traders to operate up to 20 simultaneous funded accounts, creating significant scaling potential ($300K × 20 = up to $6 million in total allocation). Few competitors match this.

Futures-specific flexibility. Apex allows full-size contract trading even during evaluation, news trading is permitted (with some restrictions), and there’s no daily drawdown — only the trailing threshold.

Proven payout history. Over $660 million paid out since 2022, with $13 million average monthly in 2024-2025. Thousands of verified payout screenshots exist online.

What Apex Gets Wrong

The Trailing Drawdown Is Brutal

The trailing threshold is the single biggest account killer at Apex. Unlike a static drawdown (which stays fixed), the trailing threshold follows your highest account balance upward. Once your account peaks, the threshold locks at that high water mark minus the trailing amount.

In practice: if your $50K account reaches $53,000 in profit, your trailing threshold rises to $50,500. If the market reverses and your account drops to $50,499, you’re eliminated — even though you were in profit.

This catches traders who have winning streaks followed by normal pullbacks. It punishes volatile strategies and rewards only smooth, consistent equity curves. Many traders report being funded, trading profitably overall, and still getting eliminated because of a single drawdown that breached the trailing threshold.

The 30% Consistency Rule

This is Apex’s most controversial policy. No single trading day’s profit can exceed 30% of your total account profit. If your profit target is $3,000 and you make $1,500 on one great day, you’d need at least $5,000 total profit ($1,500 ÷ 0.30) before you can request a payout.

The rule punishes traders who have one exceptional day — even if it’s a perfectly executed, legitimate trade. Multiple Forex Peace Army complaints describe traders being completely locked out of payouts due to this formula, with no manual review process and no way to escalate.

Monthly Fees Add Up Fast

Unlike FTMO’s one-time challenge fee, Apex charges monthly subscriptions. If you fail and restart, you’re paying every month. A typical trajectory might look like this:

Item	Cost
3 months of evaluation ($50K account)	$501
2 evaluation resets	$160
PA activation month	$85
Total before first payout	$746

And that’s an optimistic scenario. Many traders spend $1,000-$2,000+ in monthly fees before getting funded, if they ever do.

Rule Changes and Payout Denials

This is the most concerning pattern in Apex reviews. Multiple Trustpilot and Forex Peace Army reviews describe traders having accounts terminated or payouts denied after profitable trading — often citing rules the trader didn’t realise applied to them (like the 30% windfall rule or MAE limits).

Apex defends these decisions as legitimate enforcement of published rules. But the complexity of the rules, combined with frequent policy changes, creates situations where traders feel blindsided. The rules may be technically published, but they’re not always intuitive or well-understood.

Algorithmic/Automated Trading Restrictions

If you trade using algorithms, AI systems, or automated strategies, Apex may not be the right firm. Multiple reviews report accounts being terminated for automated trading even when the trader believed their approach was compliant. If you use EAs or copy trading, verify the current rules carefully.

The Funded Account (Performance Account) In Detail

Passing the evaluation is only half the battle. The Performance Account (PA) comes with its own set of rules that trip up funded traders:

Payout Rules

First payout: Available after 8 trading days on the PA. You can request your profits minus the trailing threshold buffer.

Payout frequency: Every 8 calendar days after each payout.

Processing time: 10-13 business days from approval to bank account. This is slower than FTMO (1-3 days) and Topstep (2-3 days).

Payment methods: ACH, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency. ACH is free; wire transfers may incur fees.

The 30% Windfall Rule (In More Detail)

This deserves a dedicated breakdown because it catches so many traders:

Your largest single-day profit cannot exceed 30% of your total account profit at the time you request a payout. The system calculates: Biggest Profit Day ÷ 0.30 = Total Profit Required Before Payout Unlocks.

Example: You make $8,700 in one day (a perfectly executed CPI trade). Before you can request ANY payout, you need total profits of at least $29,000 ($8,700 ÷ 0.30). Until then, the payout portal is literally locked — the system won’t even let you submit a request.

There is no manual review process. No appeal. No way to escalate. Support will simply refer you back to the formula.

This rule exists to prevent “one lucky trade” payouts. Apex wants to see consistency, not windfall profits. The problem is it also punishes skilled traders who execute one great trade during a volatile event — which is literally what trading skill is supposed to enable.

Workaround: Keep your daily profits capped below 30% of your running profit total. If you’re up $3,000 total, don’t let any single day exceed $900 in profit. This requires actively managing your position sizing and potentially walking away from winning trades — which feels counterintuitive but is necessary under the rules.

Monthly Account Fees

Funded accounts cost $85/month. This is an ongoing charge regardless of whether you’re trading or requesting payouts. If your account gets terminated, you stop paying — but you’d need to purchase a new evaluation to start again.

Account Termination

Your PA gets terminated if you breach the trailing threshold (drawdown), violate the 30% consistency rule when requesting payouts, or engage in prohibited trading strategies (certain forms of automation, hedging across accounts, etc.).

After termination, there’s no reinstatement. You must purchase a new evaluation at full price. No “Back2Funded” programme like Topstep offers.

What Real Users Are Saying

The Apex Trader Funding review landscape is polarized.

Positive reviews (the majority) praise the fast funding process, the generous profit split, the accessible pricing during promotions, and reliable payouts for traders who follow the rules. Many funded traders have received multiple payouts and describe the experience as smooth.

Negative reviews focus on payout denials after profitable trading (usually due to rule violations the trader didn’t understand), slow customer support response times, the trailing drawdown being too aggressive, and frequent rule changes that shift the goalposts. Non-US traders report more issues than US-based traders.

The pattern is clear: disciplined traders who understand every rule thoroughly tend to succeed. Traders who assume “just be profitable” is enough tend to get caught by the fine print.

Apex Trader Funding vs. FTMO vs. Topstep

Feature	Apex Trader Funding	FTMO	Topstep
Markets	Futures only	Forex, indices, crypto, commodities	Futures only
Evaluation	1-step	2-step (or 1-step)	1-step (Trading Combine)
Fee structure	Monthly subscription	One-time (refundable on 2-step)	Monthly subscription
Profit split	100% first $25K, then 90%	Up to 80-90%	100% first $10K, then 90%
Max accounts	20	Multiple (up to $400K combined)	Multiple
Drawdown	Trailing (aggressive)	5% daily + 10% overall	4% max loss (end-of-day)
Trustpilot	4.4★ (17K+ reviews)	4.8★ (38K+ reviews)	4.3★ (13.6K+ reviews)

Choose Apex if: You trade futures, want the highest profit split for early payouts, and value the ability to manage up to 20 accounts for maximum scaling.

Choose FTMO if: You trade forex or multiple asset classes, prefer a one-time fee structure, and prioritise the strongest reputation and longest track record. Read my full FTMO review here.

Choose Topstep if: You want the most established futures-only firm (since 2012), the strongest educational support, and prefer a more conservative environment. Read my full Topstep review here.

7 Tips If You Do Use Apex Trader Funding

1. Start with the $100K Static account. At $137/month with a fixed (not trailing) drawdown of $625, this is the lowest-risk way to test the Apex environment. The profit target is only $2,000, which is achievable with disciplined futures trading.

2. Understand the trailing threshold before you trade a single contract. Paper trade for a week while tracking your theoretical trailing threshold manually. Most account terminations happen because traders don’t intuitively understand how the trailing drawdown moves with their high-water mark.

3. Plan around the 30% rule from day one. Before you take any trade, calculate what your maximum single-day profit should be relative to your target total profit. If your target is $3,000, no day should exceed $900. Build your trading plan around this constraint.

4. Wait for discount codes. Apex runs 70-80% off promotions regularly — sometimes weekly. Never pay full price for your first evaluation. The savings are significant: a $50K account at 80% off is ~$33 vs. $167.

5. Don’t stack multiple accounts until you’ve proven yourself on one. The 20-account maximum sounds exciting, but managing multiple funded accounts with different trailing thresholds and payout cycles adds complexity that can lead to errors.

6. Screenshot everything. Document your trades, your P&L, your compliance with rules. If a payout is ever denied, having detailed records gives you a basis for a support conversation.

7. Read the current rules the day you start trading — not last week’s rules. Apex changes policies more frequently than most prop firms. What was true when you signed up may not be true when you request your first payout.

The Prop Trading Reality Check

Here’s the context that Apex’s marketing (and every prop firm’s marketing) carefully avoids.

The business model profits from failure. Apex makes money from monthly subscriptions, evaluation resets ($80), and funded account fees ($85/month). The company earns revenue whether you succeed or fail — but the math heavily favours failure. If most traders fail (which they do), the subscription revenue far exceeds the payouts.

YouTubers are affiliates, not journalists. Almost every Apex review you find on YouTube includes a discount code. The reviewer earns a commission when you sign up through their link. This doesn’t make their review wrong, but it means they have a financial incentive to present Apex positively and downplay the risks.

Prop trading is not passive income. You’re actively trading futures every day, making split-second decisions under risk, and one bad trade can eliminate your funded account. After elimination, you’re back to paying monthly fees for a new evaluation. This cycle can continue indefinitely.

The real question isn’t “Is Apex legit?” It is. The real question is: “Is prop trading the best use of my time and money?” For most people, the answer is no. The skills required to consistently profit from futures trading take years to develop, and the monthly fees during that learning period add up to thousands of dollars.

For a broader view of how to make money online without market risk, there are models that build recurring assets rather than requiring daily speculation.

Who Should Consider Apex Trader Funding?

Apex makes sense for: Experienced futures traders with consistent strategies who want the highest profit split available. Traders who want to scale across multiple accounts (up to 20). US-based traders (fewer friction points than non-US). Day traders who can handle trailing drawdown mechanics.

Apex does NOT make sense for: Beginners still learning futures trading. Algorithmic or automated traders (verify rules carefully). Traders who can’t afford ongoing monthly fees during the evaluation period. Anyone uncomfortable with complex, frequently changing rules.

The Bigger Picture

Apex Trader Funding is a legitimate prop firm with real payouts and genuine opportunities for skilled futures traders. The 100% first $25K profit split is the best in the industry, and the scaling potential across 20 accounts is unmatched.

But the trailing drawdown is unforgiving, the 30% rule can lock you out of deserved payouts, and the monthly fee structure means you’re paying whether you’re making progress or not. The rule complexity — combined with frequent changes — creates an environment where even profitable traders can lose their accounts over technicalities.

Prop trading, regardless of the firm, is a high-skill, high-stress path. Most traders lose money. The firms profit from challenge fees and subscriptions regardless of your outcome.

If you’re looking for a more predictable path to online income — one that builds assets you own rather than positions that can be liquidated on a bad day — there are better options.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Apex Trader Funding legit? Yes. Apex has paid out over $660 million since 2022, has 17,000+ Trustpilot reviews at 4.4 stars, and is based in Austin, Texas. It’s a legitimate prop firm.

How much does Apex cost? Monthly fees range from $137 to $657 depending on account size. Evaluation resets are $80 and funded account maintenance is $85/month. Apex frequently runs 70-80% discount promotions.

What is the 30% consistency rule? No single day’s profit can exceed 30% of your total profit. This prevents traders from requesting payouts after one large winning day without demonstrating consistency.

How often can you get paid? Payouts can be requested every 8 trading days. Processing typically takes 10-13 business days.

Can you use automated trading? With significant restrictions. Many traders report issues with algorithmic and automated strategies. Verify the current rules before using any automation.

Final Verdict

Apex Trader Funding offers the most generous initial profit split in the prop trading industry and genuine scaling potential. For disciplined, experienced futures traders who understand the rules thoroughly, it’s a legitimate path to funded trading.

But the aggressive trailing drawdown, the 30% consistency rule, monthly recurring fees, and frequent rule changes make it a challenging environment — even for skilled traders. The gap between Apex’s marketing (easy money, huge discounts, fast payouts) and the actual funded trading experience (strict rules, potential payout locks, account terminations) is wider than it should be.

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