Topstep Review for 2024: Futures Prop Trading Done Right

In the past decade, Topstep has emerged as the leading futures prop trading firm on the market, with over $23 million in funded trader payouts just since 2020. 

The company now hosts traders from 143 countries worldwide, and has been listed among the fastest-growing private companies in the US.

Topstep Overview

Topstep was founded in 2012 by Michael Patak, with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The idea behind the company is to provide both beginner and experienced futures traders the access to capital, and give them an opportunity to test their trading skills in the competitive prop trading market. 

Evaluation Process

Just last year, Topstep switched from its long-standing two-step evaluation method, and now features a one-step evaluation stage, unlike many other proprietary trading platforms we’re coming across, which still require traders to pass multiple arduous stages before getting access to funding.

This new evaluation program is called Trading Combine, and is designed to both train and educate futures traders, as well as give them a chance to earn a Funded Account with Topstep.

The program has one major rule, and several objectives that are non-rule violating, but that you will be asked to follow when trading in the simulated market space. 

We’ll start with the major rule first, and that is that your account cannot hit or go below the Maximum Loss Limit (MLL), which Topstep calculates as Account Balance High - Maximum Drawdown at the end of each trading day.

For the base subscription level of $49/month, the MML is set at $2,000, the $99/month plan has a $3,000 maximum loss limit, and the $149/month plan comes with a $4,5000 MML.

If you do break this one rule, you can use the Reset option and pay the price of a monthly subscription to reactivate your account, with no limit on how many Resets you can use in the Trading Combine.

There are also some objectives which are not rule violating, but which you will be asked to follow to get funded. For starters, you will have to maintain the profit target, set at $3,000 for the starting plan, or $6,000 and $9,000 for the two larger plans. 

You will also have to meet the Consistency Target set by Topstep, with your best trading day not amounting to more than 50% of total profit.

Last but not least, you cannot hit or exceed the Daily Loss Limit, or your account will be deactivated until the start of the next trading day, when you can start trading once again. The daily loss limits for the three available plans are $1,000, $2,000 and $3,000.

Tradable Assets

Topstep is focused exclusively on futures trading, and provides a wide range of future contracts you can trade on through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the world’s largest derivatives marketplace.

The CME products you can trade on in the Trade Combine are:

• CME Equity Futures (ES, NQ, RTY, NKD, MET, MES, MNQ, M2K, MBT)
• CME Foreign Exchange Futures (6A, 6C, 6J, E7, M6A, 6N, 6B, 6E, 6S, M6E, 6M)
• CME Agricultural Futures (HE, LE)
• CME NYMEX Futures (CL, NG, MCL, HO, QM, QG, RB, PL)
• CME CBOT Agricultural Futures (ZC, ZS, ZL, ZW, ZM)
• CME CBOT Equity Futures (YM, MYM)
• CME CBOT Financial/Interest Rate Futures (ZT, ZN, ZB, ZF, TN, UB)
• CME COMEX Futures (GC, HG, SIL, SI, MGC)

Trading Platforms

Topstep provides traders with a great deal of choice when it comes to personal trading platform preferences.

The company recommends using NinjaTrader and Quantower, or its proprietary (and currently invite-only) TopstepX platform, but there are also five more platforms which are free in the Trading Combine account, as well as eight platforms which you have to pay for if you want to use them while trading with Topstep.

Below is the full list of supported platforms and their availability in both the demo and the live funded account.

Educational Resources

With regards to the quality and the sheer amount of resources available to traders, Topstep is light years ahead of the competition, and regularly continues to innovate, as is the case with the company’s new TopstepTV feature.

With TopstepTV, you can spend an entire trading day watching and listening to experts as you trade together, with additional features like leaderboards and giveaways, making this the premier streaming option to both get educated and to compete or get rewards by participating.

The company also has one of the best digital coaching programs for traders, as well as a rich library of podcasts, blog posts, and trader success stories that you can use to improve your knowledge and to achieve the funded trader status more easily.

There is also a thriving community of traders on the official Discord and Facebook groups, where you can share insights and your experience in trading with Topstep.

Customer Experience

One issue we can point out when comparing Topstep to other prop trading firms is that it still doesn’t offer a dedicated mobile app, for either Android or iOS users, so all of the trading has to be done through the browser, but the company does state that the mobile app is coming in the future.

When it comes to customer support, the main venue right now is the AI chatbot called Windy, who you can contact through the blue messenger box on your screen, and from what we’ve seen during our testing, the bot works pretty well, but if you can’t get the appropriate answer from Windy, you can choose to talk to a person instead, and quickly be connected to a customer support agent.

With an already rich FAQ section that explains most of the main issues in great detail, the overall customer satisfaction with the service here is currently very high, as Topstep holds an impressive 4.6/5 Trustpilot rating, from almost 3,000 individual reviews.

Bottom Line

All in all, Topstep is easily the most complete platform for futures prop traders right now, with a simple program, generous profit split and an innovative approach that sets it apart from the rest of the competition in 2024.