Apex vs Topstep (2026): the futures head-to-head

Apex Trader Funding and Topstep are the two largest futures prop firms by their own payout numbers, and in 2026 they are further apart than they have ever been. Apex tore up its subscription model on 1 March 2026. Topstep repriced its Combine and moved every new trader to a straight 90/10 split. Most comparison pages online still describe the 2025 versions of both firms.

This is the current head-to-head, checked against both firms' published rules on 21 September 2026. We score Apex 88/100 and Topstep 84/100. Neither firm pays us for this page: Apex runs a 15% lifetime-recurring affiliate program that we are not enrolled in, and Topstep's PTV affiliate program has been paused since April 2026. Every outbound link below is a plain link.

The quick verdict

If you have never traded futures under real risk rules, neither. Both firms' own numbers say most evaluations fail. Trade a demo against a trailing drawdown for a month first.

What changed in 2026

Apex: subscription out, one-time fee in

Until March 2026 Apex charged a monthly subscription for as long as your evaluation ran. The "All New Apex" that launched on 1 March 2026 replaced that with a one-time evaluation fee and a 30-day evaluation window. Third-party trackers quoting Apex's pricing page list Intraday evaluations at $167, $249, $399 and $599 and end-of-day (EOD) evaluations at $390, $490, $790 and $1,490 across the account sizes, plus an activation fee of $79 (Intraday) or $99 (EOD) when you pass. Apex's site blocks automated requests, so treat those as the figures other trackers report, not ours, and confirm on the checkout page.

Other changes in the same overhaul: the consistency rule moved from 30% to 50%, the MAE rule was removed in favour of a daily loss limit, hedging is no longer allowed, and funded accounts now carry a lifetime cap of six payouts before you need a fresh evaluation.

Topstep: cheaper Combine, flat 90/10

Topstep's Trading Combine now costs $49, $99 or $199 per month for the $50k, $100k and $150k accounts, plus a one-time $149 activation fee when you pass. A second path with no activation fee runs $95, $149 or $229 per month. Traders who signed up after 12 January 2026 get a 90/10 split from the first dollar; earlier accounts kept the old 100% of the first $10,000. Those figures were verified by a third-party tracker on 26 August 2026 and match what topstep.com showed at our review.

Side-by-side

Where each one quietly costs you

Apex: the six-payout lifetime and the ladder

The headline is 100% of your first $25,000. The fine print is that each funded account now has a per-payout cap that steps up with every successful payout and a hard ceiling of six payouts per account. On a $100k account, third-party summaries of the ladder put the first payout at a $2,000 maximum and the sixth at $4,000, for an $18,000 lifetime total before the account closes and you buy another evaluation. If you are a consistent trader who wants to compound on one account for a year, that ceiling is the number to model, not the split.

The other trap is unchanged from the old Apex: the trailing drawdown on Intraday accounts follows your equity up in real time. Traders hit peak equity, assume the cushion is permanent, then give back a few hundred dollars and get closed. If you want a drawdown that only updates at the close, buy the EOD account and pay the higher fee.

Topstep: the subscription clock and the daily loss

$49 a month is the cheapest entry in this comparison, but only if you pass in a month. Two resets and you have spent $147 on Combines before the $149 activation, and you are now above Apex's cheapest one-time route. The $50k Combine also carries a $2,000 maximum loss limit and, if you opt into it, a daily loss limit that ends your day the moment it is hit. Topstep's own 2025 disclosure says only 16.8% of Combines started were completed, so budget for more than one.

The receipts: what each firm has actually published

This is the section that should decide it for anyone who has been burned before.

Topstep published its 2025 funnel on 15 January 2026. Of all Trading Combines initiated, 16.8% were completed. Of individuals who entered at least one Combine, 51.8% reached the Funded level in at least one of them. Of individuals at the Funded level, 33.3% received at least one payout. And 0.71% of Express Funded traders were called up to a Live Funded account. No other firm we track has published a denominator like that. It is not a flattering number, which is exactly why it is credible.

Apex publishes a cumulative payout total on its site and a stream of large individual payout screenshots, including a widely reported single payout of over $2.5 million in April 2025. It does not publish pass rates or the share of funded traders who get paid. The cumulative figure has climbed from roughly $598 million when we reviewed the firm page in May 2026 to somewhere between $718 million and $835 million by mid-2026, depending on which tracker quoted the site and when. Those are Apex's own figures and we cannot verify them independently.

Neither firm's payouts show up on the on-chain trackers we use for forex firms, because both pay through conventional rails. If you want independently verifiable payout data, the futures firm that has it is MyFundedFutures, which pays through Rise and shows over $234 million in on-chain-verified payouts. We cover it in Apex vs Topstep vs MyFundedFutures.

Cost to first payout, modelled honestly

Assume two attempts and a first payout at the cap.

• Topstep, $50k Combine: two months ($98) plus activation ($149) is $247 out of pocket. First payout capped at $2,000 on the standard path, split 90/10. You net $1,800 and are $1,553 ahead.
• Apex, cheapest Intraday tier: two evaluations at $167 ($334) plus $79 activation is $413. First payout at the first rung of the ladder, kept at 100% while you are under $25,000 withdrawn. Using the $2,000 first-rung figure trackers report for the $100k account as a ceiling, you would be at most $1,587 ahead, and less if the smaller account's rung is lower.

The two firms land within a couple of hundred dollars of each other on this path. The difference is what happens next: Topstep has no lifetime payout cap on the account, Apex closes it after six. Over a year of steady withdrawals, Topstep's flat 90/10 with no ceiling beats Apex's 100% with one, unless you run several Apex accounts in parallel, which Apex explicitly allows (up to 20).

Who should pick which

You are a Topstep trader if: you pass evaluations quickly, you want a firm that has been paying since 2012 and publishes its own failure rates, and you plan to withdraw steadily from one account rather than swing for a large payout. You are also a Topstep trader if the Live Funded pathway matters to you. It is the only route in this comparison that ends with a real-money account.

You are an Apex trader if: you want a one-time fee and no monthly clock, you trade well enough to clear five qualifying days and the 50% consistency rule, and you are happy to run multiple accounts to get around the six-payout ceiling. The 100%-to-$25k split is real money for a trader who can hit the ladder rungs.

Neither if: you are choosing on a discount code, a YouTube recommendation, or the "paid out $1.4 billion" banner. The banner is true as far as we can tell and irrelevant to whether you will be in the 33.3%.

Sources and what we checked

• Apex 2026 overhaul: effective date, fee model, consistency, hedging and payout-cap changes, from Apex's help centre as summarised by PropScorer (September 2026). Apex's site returns HTTP 403 to automated requests, so per-size prices are quoted from Tradecovex and PropTradingVibes, both dated 2026.
• Topstep pricing and rules: PropDataLab, last verified 26 August 2026, cross-checked against topstep.com on 21 September 2026.
• Topstep 2025 funnel: "The truth about prop firm payouts", topstep.com blog, 15 January 2026.
• Cumulative payout claims: topstep.com homepage ($1.4B+); Apex figure as quoted by PropFirmsFinder's payouts leaderboard (5 August 2026) and other trackers. Self-reported, not verified by us.
• Our own scores: the Apex firm page and Topstep firm page, each with its last-reviewed date. See the methodology for what moves a score.