Topstep's Trading Combine, reviewed

Most challenge sellers publish a rulebook and leave the outcomes to forum arithmetic. Topstep publishes the outcomes. Four percentages sit on its risk-disclosure page, covering January through December 2025, and they are the most useful thing anyone in this category has put on the record.

The candour is also a trap: the four figures count four different things, and are routinely quoted as though they counted one.

The file

Topstep — the file

Model	Simulated evaluation, then an Express Funded Account, then a possible Live Funded Account
Combine rules	Do not touch the Maximum Loss Limit; hit the Profit Target; keep the best single day below 50 percent of it, or the Consistency Target rises
Express loss limit	2,000 dollars on 50K, 3,000 on 100K, 4,500 on 150K; permanent closure on breach
Split	90 percent of profits to the trader, per the Express rules

Four numbers, four denominators

In the firm’s own words, from January through December 2025: “16.8% of all Trading Combines initiated were successfully completed and afforded the opportunity to advance to the Funded Level”; “51.8% of individual participants who entered one or more Trading Combines advanced to the Funded Level in at least one of their Trading Combines”; “33.3% of all individual participants at the Funded Level received a payout”; and “0.71% of individual participants trading in an Express Funded Account were called up to a Live Funded Account”.

The denominators are the story. The first counts Combines, so a candidate who buys six subscriptions contributes six to the base. The second counts people, crediting a success anywhere across however many attempts. The third counts people already at the Funded Level, which the page says aggregates Express and Live accounts. The fourth counts promotions to live capital alone.

They do not chain. Multiplying them yields a figure Topstep has not published and the cohorts do not support, and this desk will not manufacture one. Nor is any of it a forecast: the page states the statistics “are not indicative of future results”.

Read side by side, the first two describe repeat purchase: 16.8 percent per attempt against 51.8 percent per person — a gap that opens only because participants enter, in the page’s words, “one or more Trading Combines”.

The rules underneath

The Combine is admirably thin: one rule and two objectives, per the parameters page in Topstep’s help centre, last updated 24 June 2026. Do not touch the Maximum Loss Limit; reach and hold the Profit Target; keep the best single day below 50 percent of that target or the Consistency Target ratchets upward. Fifty percent is loose against the 30 percent daily cap on MyFundedFutures’ Rapid EOD plan, but a single outsized session leaves the target further away than the P&L suggests. Two details in the same article deserve more attention: Combine profits do not carry into the Express account, and refunds end once trading has occurred, or after 28 days.

The Express account opens at a zero balance with a loss limit of 2,000 to 4,500 dollars by size, per the Express Funded Account rules, which still carry a last-updated date of 26 June 2025. The limit sits against the highest end-of-day balance and does not retreat when you lose. Touch it and the account closes permanently.

A subscription buys an attempt and nothing more; the money stops being yours the moment a trade prints; and last year’s percentage is a record, not a promise about yours.

The payout gate, and the paid retry

Two routes to a withdrawal: five winning days of 150 dollars or more, or three trading days at a 40 percent Consistency Target. Either draws up to half the balance, capped at 5,000 dollars on the first route and 6,000 on the second.

Then the clauses that cost. Close an Express account voluntarily and you may take up to half the reward balance, capped at 5,000, forfeiting the rest — but only if you are already eligible for a payout. Close before that and the page promises nothing. Rule adherence, the page says, is determined solely by Topstep on account activity, expressly not by the platform metrics the trader watches.

And recovery is a product. Back2Funded reactivates an account lost before any payout, within seven days, twice at most, at 599, 699 or 829 dollars by size plus sales tax, non-refundable. A useful option — and a firm selling the retry at a stage it already sold you.

The word “funded”, and which entity is registered

The homepage invites you to trade futures with “our prop firm capital” and keep up to 90 percent. The footer of that same page calls the Combine and the Express account realistic simulations. The footer is the operative one.

The corporate architecture is disclosed, and repays reading. Per that footer, introducing brokerage services are offered through Topstep Brokerage LLC, described there as a registered introducing broker and a member of the National Futures Association under NFA ID# 0567079, while the simulated programs are operated by TopstepTrader, LLC and the live funded services by TopstepFunded LLC. That registration attaches to the brokerage affiliate, not to the evaluation you buy or the live desk past it — and the page claims no more.

Both columns

The short version

Pros

Publishes its own funnel with the period stated — almost nobody else does
One loss rule and two objectives, not a stack of conditions
Express drawdown tracks the highest end-of-day balance, not an intraday peak
A 90 percent split with two published payout routes rather than one

Cons

The four percentages run on four denominators and cannot be chained into your odds
One touch of the loss limit — 2,000 dollars on a 50K account — closes it permanently
No Combine refund once trading has occurred, or after 28 days
Getting back in is a paid product: 599 to 829 dollars, twice at most, non-refundable
Voluntary closure pays at most half the reward balance — and only if you are already payout-eligible; the rest is forfeited either way
Adherence is judged solely by the firm, expressly not by the metrics the trader watches

Verdict

Topstep takes a high mark for a reason this desk values above terms: it printed figures its rivals decline to gather. Grade the disclosure, not the marketing, and read the four percentages as four separate answers.