End-of-day vs intraday trailing drawdown, explained
How prop firm trailing drawdowns move, why intraday trailing catches out winning traders, where the limit stops trailing, and which firms use which.
What a trailing drawdown is
Your account has a floor. Touch it and the account fails. With a trailing drawdown that floor follows your best balance up, and never moves back down. On a $50,000 account with a $2,000 drawdown, the floor starts at $48,000. Make $1,000 and the floor rises to $49,000.
The difference between firms, and between plans at the same firm, is when the floor gets to move.
End-of-day trailing
The floor only moves at the close, based on your closing balance. What happens during the day does not move it, although most firms still fail you the moment your live balance, open trades included, touches the floor.
Example: the floor is $48,000. You run a trade to +$1,500, give back $1,000 and close the day up $500. With end-of-day trailing the floor rises to $48,500, the closing balance minus $2,000. The open profit you gave back did not count.
Intraday trailing
The floor follows your best balance in real time, open profit included. In the same example, the floor rises to $49,500 the moment the trade reaches +$1,500, and stays there. You closed the day up $500, but you now have only $1,000 of room, where end-of-day trailing would have left you $2,000.
This is why intraday trailing catches out traders who let winners run and then give some back: a green day can leave you with less room than you started with.
- Scalpers who take profit quickly are less affected.
- Traders who hold for big moves feel it most.
- The rule is the same size on paper; the room it leaves is not.
Static drawdown
The floor never moves. A $50,000 account with a $2,000 static drawdown always fails at $48,000, however much you make. It is the easiest to plan around, and usually comes with smaller accounts or lower contract limits.
Where the drawdown stops trailing
Many firms stop trailing once the floor reaches a set point, often the starting balance or start plus $100. After that, every dollar above the floor is room you keep. Check this before you buy: on some evaluations the floor never stops trailing, on others it stops at the profit target, and funded accounts usually have their own point.
Which firms use which
From each firm's own pages, checked November 2026. Firms change these often, so check the plan you are buying.
- End of day on every plan: Topstep, Tradeify, Alpha Futures, FundedNext Futures, Earn2Trade (Gauntlet Mini).
- Your choice of end of day or intraday: Apex Trader Funding, Lucid Trading (LucidDaily), Bulenox.
- End of day to pass, intraday once funded: MyFundedFutures Rapid, Take Profit Trader PRO (PRO+ stays end of day).
- Static, intraday and end-of-day plans: Elite Trader Funding.
- Intraday: TradeDay's evaluation.
Track your room on every trade
The trailing drawdown calculator shows where your floor sits day by day. In Afterfill, pick your firm's plan on each account and the journal shows your room to the floor and today's loss limit, and marks the trade that would have ended the account.