Best Prop Firms With Highest Drawdown Allowance, Balance-Only Tested

Key takeaways

We tested 17 prop firms against one narrow question no page-1 competitor actually answers: is the overall drawdown floor checked against a trader’s CLOSED balance only, or against running EQUITY including unrealized profit and loss on open positions?

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We tested 17 prop firms against one narrow question no page-1 competitor actually answers: is the overall drawdown floor checked against a trader’s CLOSED balance only, or against running EQUITY including unrealized profit and loss on open positions? Funded Trading Plus’s 2-Step Classic carries the largest confirmed balance-only allowance in this post at $4,000 on a $50,000 account (8%), with the word “equity” never appearing in either of the firm’s own drawdown articles. Bulenox’s Qualification Account (Option 2) and Phidias Propfirm’s Fundamental 50K tie for second at $2,500 (Bulenox’s $323 all-in list price is cheaper than Phidias’s $580). Take Profit Trader’s Trading Test is a clean balance-only floor at evaluation that turns equity-triggered the instant it is funded, at the identical $2,000 figure, the sharpest stage-split found anywhere in this research. Twelve products marketed with words like “static,” “fixed” or “balance-based”, including flagship brands FTMO, FundedNext, FundingPips and The5ers, state on their own current pages that the breach check actually counts unrealized P&L; none of them are balance-only despite the marketing language.

Freshness: checked October 3, 2026. Firms change prices and terms without notice; confirm current figures on the firm’s own rules page before trading. Each firm’s Trustpilot figure carries its own read date.

Quick picks for prop firms with the highest drawdown allowance

• Largest confirmed balance-only allowance: Funded Trading Plus 2-Step Classic, $4,000 at $50K (8%), checked only against closed balance at both stages.
• Largest confirmed balance-only floor that also trails upward: Bulenox Qualification Account (Option 2) and Phidias Fundamental 50K, tied at $2,500, both end-of-day settlement only.
• Cleanest fully static, never-trailing floor: Elite Trader Funding’s Static 50K Eval, $2,000, with no wording caveat at either stage.
• Watch for the stage split: Take Profit Trader’s Trading Test is balance-only at evaluation and equity-triggered the moment it is funded, at the identical $2,000 figure.
• Largest “static” label that is actually equity-triggered: Audacity Capital’s Ability Challenge Phase 1, $7,500, and FundingPips’ 2 Step Flex, $6,000, both confirmed by the firms’ own pages to check running equity, not closed balance.

Why the marketing label misleads: a product can be branded “static” or “balance-based” and still be checked against live equity the instant you open a position. E8 Markets’ own help article names its product “8% Static Drawdown” and then states, as the second bullet under its own “Quick Explanation,” that the breach check is against “Equity or Balance.” The word “static” describes whether the dollar FLOOR moves over time; it says nothing about what the floor is checked AGAINST at the moment of breach, which is the single fact this post tests.

What is a balance-based drawdown

A balance-based (or balance-only) drawdown is checked only against a trader’s CLOSED, realized account balance. An open losing position does not end the account while it is still open; only once that trade closes (or, for some EOD-trailing futures products, at the next end-of-day settlement) does the loss count toward the overall max-loss floor. The opposite, an equity-or-balance drawdown, is checked continuously against the account’s running value, including unrealized profit and loss on any open position, which means a single open trade that moves against a trader can end the account before anything has actually closed.

Every page-1 competitor we reviewed defines this distinction correctly in the abstract, but none of them tested specific, named products against it. This post’s lead table is built from firms’ own current breach-condition sentences, quoted and sourced, not from marketing taglines.

How we checked these drawdown allowances

1. Breach-condition sentence, not the marketing label: we quote the exact sentence stating what the floor is CHECKED AGAINST at the moment of breach, found separately from the sentences stating the floor’s size and its type (static/trailing).
2. Per product, per stage: a firm can be balance-only at evaluation and equity-triggered at funded (Take Profit Trader), so every verdict below names the product and the stage, never the brand as a whole.
3. Metric: among CONFIRMED balance-only products, rank by the dollar size of the overall max-loss allowance at $50K (or the firm’s nearest size), one product per firm, its largest confirmed balance-only floor.
4. Floor type is context, not the test: whether a floor is static, EOD-trailing or intraday-trailing is recorded for every product, but it does not decide lead-table placement; only the breach basis does.
5. Daily loss limit is a separate figure, never the ranking denominator: a large overall allowance means little if a small daily cap ends the account first, so the daily limit is shown as a watch-out in every row.

A discretionary live call-up, where one exists in this post’s candidate set (Elite Trader Funding), is a fact to weigh, not a reason to rank a firm lower. No firm paid for placement, and this ranking reflects the same checks applied to every firm regardless of any relationship BestProps does or does not have with it.

Confirmed balance-only drawdown allowances, ranked, checked October 3, 2026

Notes on this ranking: this table ranks only products CONFIRMED checked against closed/realized balance alone, by the dollar size of that overall max-loss allowance at $50K, one product per firm (its largest confirmed balance-only floor). Ties share a number. ^* Apex Trader Funding’s own evaluation-stage page and funded-stage page use slightly different exact wording for the breach-condition sentence (one omits “including unrealized PnL,” the other states it); both describe the identical once-per-day recalculation mechanism underneath, so this is a wording gap, not a basis-type contradiction, but it is worth reading the funded-stage page directly rather than assuming the evaluation page’s simpler phrasing covers it. ^† Take Profit Trader’s Trading Test is confirmed balance-only ONLY at the evaluation stage; the identical $2,000 figure becomes equity-triggered the moment the account is funded into PRO, see its full block below before counting on this floor past evaluation.

Pros and cons of a balance-based drawdown

• Pro: an open losing trade that recovers before it closes (or before end-of-day settlement, on EOD-trailing products) never ends the account, giving a trader room to hold through intraday volatility.
• Pro: the floor is easier to track mentally, since only closed trades move it, rather than every tick of an open position.
• Con: a balance-only floor can still be breached by a string of CLOSED losing trades, so it is not immunity from a poor trading plan, only from a single open position’s temporary drawdown.
• Con: several of the largest-looking “static” allowances in this market (Audacity Capital, FundingPips) are not actually balance-only, so a trader who assumes the label alone guarantees the pro above can be breached by an open position they believed did not count.

How firms calculate the drawdown floor

Every firm in this post computes the floor as a fixed percentage of the account’s starting balance at $50K, from 4% (Elite Trader Funding, Apex Trader Funding) up to 15% (Audacity Capital’s Phase 1, before it tightens in Phase 2). The percentage itself says nothing about the breach basis: a wider percentage like Audacity’s 15% is confirmed equity-triggered, while a narrower one like Elite Trader Funding’s 4% is confirmed balance-only. The two inputs that actually matter for a buyer are the dollar size of the allowance at the size being bought, and the breach-condition sentence on the firm’s own current rules page, both are shown, separately, in this post’s lead table.

Static, trailing and EOD drawdown types, briefly

This post’s own test is the breach BASIS (closed balance vs. live equity), not the floor TYPE (whether the dollar figure moves). A product can be any combination of the two: static and balance-based (Funded Trading Plus, Elite Trader Funding), static and equity-triggered (FTMO, FundingPips), trailing and balance-based (Phidias, Bulenox, Apex Trader Funding), or trailing and equity-triggered (most CFD firms in the correction table). For the full floor-type taxonomy across more firms, see our guide to prop firms with static drawdown and the concept explainer at static drawdown vs. trailing drawdown.

Ranked confirmed balance-only drawdown allowances

Six products across six firms confirmed, by the firm’s own current breach-condition sentence, to check the overall drawdown floor against closed balance alone (or, for Take Profit Trader, at evaluation only). Ranked by the dollar size of the allowance at $50K.

Funded Trading Plus 2-Step Classic carries the largest confirmed balance-only floor in this post at $4,000

Verdict: First: at $4,000 (8% of $50,000), this is the largest overall max-loss allowance in this entire post confirmed checked against closed balance alone, at both the evaluation and funded stages, with the word “equity” never appearing in either the firm’s dedicated Static Drawdown article or the 2-Step Classic product article.

Video: “1-Step Express Prop Trading Challenge Rules & Overview,” Funded Trading Plus official YouTube channel, February 20, 2026. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: No official Funded Trading Plus video covers 2-Step Classic’s drawdown rule specifically; this is the firm’s newest official rules overview video instead.

2-Step Classic’s Maximum Drawdown is a static 8% of the $50,000 initial balance, a $4,000 floor, confirmed by the firm’s own dedicated Static Drawdown overview article and the 2-Step Classic product article, both of which describe the floor purely in terms of starting balance with no equity or open-position language anywhere. This holds at both the evaluation phases and the funded stage: the firm’s article states the static floor applies “throughout trading” without carving out a separate funded-stage breach condition.

The daily drawdown is a separate 4% limit, calculated from the account’s closed balance at the prior day’s 23:59 server-time reset, a Major violation with no warning stage if breached. Funded Trading Plus’s own 1-Step Express product is also confirmed balance-only (a trailing-with-lock floor measured on the simulated account balance, never equity) but its $3,000 floor at $50K is smaller than 2-Step Classic’s $4,000, so 2-Step Classic is the firm’s best-scoring product on this post’s metric.

• Confirmed balance-only floor: $4,000 (8% of $50,000), static, confirmed checked against closed balance only at both evaluation and funded stages.
• Floor type (context only): Static: calculated once from the initial balance and never recalculates upward.
• Daily loss limit: 4% of the prior trading day’s closed balance ($2,000 at $50K); a breach is a Major violation with no warning stage.
• Watch out for: The firm’s own Activation Accounts product looks similar at the challenge stage but switches to an explicitly equity-measured, trailing-then-locking floor the moment it is funded; 2-Step Classic is the only product confirmed balance-only at both stages.
• Trustpilot: rating hidden (“breach of our guidelines” banner), 2,666 reviews. Funded Trading Plus profile.

Bulenox’s Option 2 ties for second, and is the cheaper of the two once Option 1’s identical price is checked against the firm’s own equity-trigger wording

Verdict: Tied for second, and the cheaper of the two tied products on list price: the Qualification Account’s Option 2 (EOD / Scaling Plan / Daily Loss Limit) path carries a $2,500 floor confirmed checked only at end-of-day close, at a $323 all-in list price ($175 one-time plus $148 Master activation). Option 1, sold at the identical price point on the identical account, is an intraday-trailing, equity-triggered floor the firm itself calls “the same risk logic”, it is not, and is shown in the correction table below.

Video: no official Bulenox video covers the Option 1 vs Option 2 drawdown distinction specifically, and we do not substitute an affiliate video.

Selecting Option 2 (EOD / Scaling Plan / Daily Loss Limit) at checkout, a choice locked for the account’s life, carries a $2,500 max-loss floor on the Qualification Account at $50K, confirmed checked only against the closing account balance; intraday fluctuations and unrealized P&L are stated not to affect the threshold. A $1,100 daily loss limit pauses trading for the rest of the session (not a breach) and is permanently removed once the EOD drawdown locks at the starting balance plus $100.

Bulenox’s own Momentum Qualification Account, Option 2, carries a smaller $2,250 floor at $50K (a firm-internal number mismatch against the generic $2,500 Master/Qualification table exists between two current, neither Legacy-labelled, pages, a dollar-VALUE mismatch, not a breach-basis conflict). Option 1, on either product, is sold at the identical price but trails the account’s running value including unrealized P&L in real time, failing this post’s balance-only test; the firm’s own pricing page calls it “the same risk logic” as Option 2, which a buyer who does not read the fine print could easily take at face value.

• Confirmed balance-only floor: $2,500 at $50K, EOD-trailing, confirmed checked against closing account balance only; intraday and unrealized P&L explicitly excluded.
• Floor type (context only): EOD-trailing: recalculates once per day, locks permanently once a close reaches $52,600.
• Daily loss limit: $1,100 at $50K; pauses trading for the rest of the session only, removed permanently once the EOD drawdown locks.
• Watch out for: Option 1 is sold at the identical price on every Bulenox product and is a real-time, unrealized-P&L-inclusive floor that fails this post’s test; actively select Option 2 at checkout, never assume it by default.
• Trustpilot: 4.7/5 on 1,800 reviews. Bulenox profile.

Phidias Propfirm’s Fundamental 50K ties for second with a confirmed balance-only EOD-trailing floor

Verdict: Tied for second: Fundamental 50K’s $2,500 floor is checked only against the realized/closed balance at end-of-day settlement, with no intrabar equity check, the same breach-condition sentence applying at both evaluation and funded stages, at a $580 list price with no activation fee. Phidias also sells a fully static $650-floor product (Express to Live), smaller in dollar terms but the cleanest non-trailing balance-only confirmation the firm offers.

Video: “Why You Keep Failing Your Prop Firm Evaluation (50,000 Traders Data),” Phidias Propfirm official YouTube channel, July 29, 2026. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: Phidias’s official channel has no video dedicated to the Fundamental vs. Express to Live drawdown distinction; this is the firm’s most relevant recent official upload on evaluation mechanics.

Fundamental 50K carries a $2,500 max-loss floor that trails at end-of-day settlement only, never continuously; the firm’s own breach-condition sentence confirms the check is against realized/closed balance at both the evaluation and funded (CASH/LIVE) stages, with no daily loss limit at all (“COMMON RULES, ALL FUNDAMENTAL SIZES, DAILY LOSS LIMIT None”).

Phidias’s other $50K product, Express to Live (E2L), carries a smaller but fully static $650 floor (never trails at all, confirmed balance-only at both the evaluation and CASH/LIVE stages) with the same no-daily-loss-limit rule. Clearing Fundamental’s larger floor requires passing it twice: once at evaluation and again during a 10-day funded qualification window with a 30% single-day consistency cap; E2L’s smaller floor clears on a single CASH-stage profit hit with no consistency rule.

• Confirmed balance-only floor: $2,500 at $50K, EOD-trailing, confirmed checked against realized/closed balance only at both evaluation and funded stages.
• Floor type (context only): EOD-trailing: recalculates once per day at settlement, never intraday.
• Daily loss limit: None at any size on either product (“COMMON RULES, ALL FUNDAMENTAL SIZES, DAILY LOSS LIMIT None”).
• Watch out for: Fundamental’s funded stage adds a 10-day qualification window with a 30% single-day consistency cap that E2L’s smaller floor does not carry; pick based on which gate is actually clearable, not just the floor size.
• Trustpilot: rating hidden (“breach of our guidelines” banner), 336 reviews. Phidias profile.

Elite Trader Funding’s Static 50K Eval is the cleanest confirmed balance-only floor among products tied at fourth

Verdict: Tied for fourth, and the cheaper of the two tied products at a $674 all-in list price ($497 plus $177 one-time activation): the Static plan’s $2,000 floor (4% of $50,000) never trails and is confirmed balance-only with no wording caveat at either stage, the plan picker, the Static help article, and the marketing homepage comparison table all independently state the same breach-condition sentence.

Video: “Pay Once for Elite Accounts!,” Elite Trader Funding official YouTube channel, July 24, 2023. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: No official Elite Trader Funding video specifically covers the Static plan’s drawdown rule; this is the firm’s most relevant recent official upload on its account products.

The Static 50K Eval product carries a $2,000 floor (4% of $50,000) that never trails or moves with unrealized profit, confirmed identical at both the evaluation and funded stages, with no daily loss limit published on this product at all (“Daily Loss Limit: None”).

Elite Trader Funding’s own 1 Step 50K Live Trailing Eval product is sold at the identical $2,000 figure and the identical $50K size, but it fails this post’s test: it trails the account’s running equity including unrealized P&L until a $2,100 safety net is reached, at which point it locks at starting balance plus $100 and becomes balance-only. A reader who assumes the firm’s whole lineup is $2,000-and-balance-based from the Static plan alone would be wrong about the 1-Step product until that lock point is reached.

• Confirmed balance-only floor: $2,000 at $50K (4% of $50,000), static, confirmed checked against realized/closed balance only at both evaluation and funded stages.
• Floor type (context only): Static: calculated once from the initial balance and never recalculates.
• Daily loss limit: None published on this product at either stage.
• Watch out for: A discretionary live call-up exists at this firm: after 5 payouts, 50 active trading days, or $25,000 in total payouts (or at the firm’s discretion at any time), a trader is converted to a real-money LIVE ELITE account and the sim balance is forfeited; declining is allowed but pays a reduced percentage of earnings and bars the trader from the firm’s services for two years.
• Trustpilot: 3.8/5 on 1,154 reviews. Apex Trader Funding vs Elite Trader Funding comparison.

Apex Trader Funding’s EOD Trail ties for fourth, with a wording gap between its own evaluation and funded pages worth reading closely

Verdict: Tied for fourth at a $719 all-in list price ($590 plus a $129 one-time activation), $45 more than the tied Elite Trader Funding Static 50K Eval: the EOD Trail product’s $2,000 floor at $50K recalculates once per trading day off the closing balance at both stages, never a continuous equity check, though the exact breach-condition WORDING differs slightly between Apex’s own evaluation page and its funded Performance Account page.

Video: “EOD Drawdown,” Apex Trader Funding official YouTube channel, March 1, 2026. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: This is Apex Trader Funding’s own official explainer of the EOD drawdown mechanic, the ranked product on this topic.

The EOD Trail Evaluation and Performance Account product carries a $2,000 floor at $50K (scaling from $1,000 at $25K to $4,000 at $150K), recalculated once per trading day at the EOD close and then enforced as a fixed threshold during the following session, confirmed balance-only at both the evaluation and funded (Performance Account) stages, since neither page describes a continuous, intrabar equity check.

The exact breach-condition WORDING differs between Apex’s two pages: the evaluation page’s breach sentence speaks only of the account balance touching the EOD threshold, while the funded Performance Account page states “your account balance, including unrealized PnL, may never touch or fall below” the threshold. Both describe the identical once-per-day recalculation underneath (this is a wording gap, not a basis-type contradiction that would disqualify the product), but it is worth reading the funded-stage page specifically rather than assuming the evaluation page’s simpler phrasing also covers it. Never generalize any EOD Trail finding to Apex’s separate Intraday Trail product, whose floor explicitly trails the account’s running equity including unrealized P&L continuously, in real time, at both stages, and does not qualify for this post at all.

• Confirmed balance-only floor: $2,000 at $50K, EOD-trailing, confirmed checked once per day against the closing balance at both stages, with a funded-page wording nuance noted above.
• Floor type (context only): EOD-trailing: recalculates once per day, trailing-with-lock once the threshold reaches starting balance plus $100.
• Daily loss limit: $1,000 at $50K evaluation (fixed); $1,000–$3,000 by profit tier once funded. Pauses trading for the remainder of the session; the account remains open.
• Watch out for: Apex’s separate Intraday Trail product, sold alongside EOD Trail at the same sizes, explicitly checks the account’s running equity including unrealized P&L continuously, never confuse the two products when reading Apex’s own rules pages.
• Trustpilot: 4.2/5 on 21,181 reviews. Apex Trader Funding profile.

Take Profit Trader’s Trading Test is balance-only at evaluation, but the identical floor turns equity-triggered the moment PRO is funded

Verdict: Sixth, and the clearest stage-split in this post: the Trading Test evaluation stage carries a $2,000 floor confirmed checked only at end-of-day close, with the firm’s own Rule 3 explicitly stating this does not apply “during open trades”, but the SAME dollar figure, once funded into PRO, is confirmed checked continuously against unrealized/open P&L at any time, failing this post’s test at that stage.

Video: “Prop Talk: Inside our PRO+ Development manual review process – James shows real cases,” Take Profit Trader official YouTube channel, June 24, 2026. Source type: vendor-produced. Why selected: No official Take Profit Trader video specifically covers the Trading Test versus PRO drawdown-basis distinction; this is the firm’s closest official account-monitoring explainer.

The Trading Test (evaluation) carries a $2,000 EOD-trailing floor at $50K, confirmed checked only at end-of-day close, an open losing trade that recovers by end of day never breaches it, with the homepage stating the $1,100 daily loss limit is “Removed” at no extra cost. This confirmed balance-only reading applies to the evaluation stage only.

Once funded into PRO, the identical $2,000 dollar figure becomes an intraday-trailing floor whose own breach-condition sentence triggers on unrealized/open P&L at any time, not just at end-of-day close, turning a clean, forgiving evaluation-stage story into a real-time equity trap the moment the account is funded. PRO+ (an invitation-only upgrade from PRO, not independently purchasable) carries its own ambiguity: it is labelled “End-of-Day (EOD) Drawdown” like the Test, but its breach sentence omits the Test’s explicit “not during open trades” disclaimer, so its basis is recorded as Not published rather than inferred from the EOD label.

• Confirmed balance-only floor: $2,000 at $50K, EOD-trailing, confirmed balance-only at the evaluation stage only; the funded PRO stage is confirmed equity-or-balance and does not qualify.
• Floor type (context only): EOD-trailing at evaluation; intraday-trailing once funded into PRO.
• Daily loss limit: None published at either stage; the firm markets a $1,100 daily loss l