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Most futures prop firms sell you one evaluation and call it a day. Elite Trader Funding (ETF) sells you six — and the drawdown style, daily loss rules, and account sizes are genuinely different from one to the next, not just a relabeled version of the same product. That's the whole appeal, and it's also the trap: pick the wrong ETF plan for how you actually trade, and you'll blow an account on a rule you didn't know applied to you.
This is a plan-by-plan breakdown of everything ETF currently sells — 1-Step, Static Drawdown, End of Day, Diamond Hands, Fast Track, and Direct to Funded (DTF) — pulled directly from ETF's own evaluation pages and help center docs. Full firm page with live promo details: Elite Trader Funding on PropFirmElite.
Current promo: Use code DEAL for 65% off non-Fast Track evaluations, plus up to 3 free evaluations, when the "Pass One, Get One" promo is live — start from the and confirm the discount at checkout before you pay.
ETF says it has paid out more than $13M to over 13,000 funded traders. That's a real track record, but ETF is also a firm that revises its own rules often — the Active Trade Day requirement for a first payout dropped from 8 days to 5 days for accounts purchased on or after July 6, 2026, and ETF's help center still has separate articles for "Legacy" and "Revamped" versions of several plans. Read the current rules before you buy, not a screenshot from six months ago.
Verification status on our site is currently PENDING — ETF doesn't publish evaluation fees statically on its plan pages (pricing is served live and moves with active promos), so we've verified every rule and dollar figure below except the sticker price. Check the live evaluations page for current fees.
Before you buy anything, compare the three things that actually decide whether you pass: the drawdown style, whether there's a daily loss limit, and the account sizes on offer.
Plan
Drawdown style
Daily loss limit
Account sizes
Min trading days
1-Step
Live trailing (intraday)
None
50K, 100K, 250K
5
Fast Track
End of Day or Static (your choice)
None
10K
3
End of Day
End-of-day trailing
Yes ($1,100–$2,200)
50K, 100K
5
Static Drawdown
Static (fixed, never trails)
None
10K, 25K, 50K
5
Diamond Hands
End-of-day trailing
Yes ($1,500)
100K
5
Direct to Funded
EOD (10K/50K) or fixed (100K)
None
10K, 50K, 100K
None — skips the eval
Three drawdown styles, in plain terms:
Live trailing (1-Step): follows your highest unrealized profit, including open positions. An open winner that gives back profit before you close it can still push the floor against you.
End-of-day trailing (End of Day, Diamond Hands, Fast Track EOD variant): only ratchets up at the session close, based on realized P&L. Intraday spikes never move the floor — only a higher closed balance does.
Static (Static Drawdown, Fast Track Static variant, 100K DTF): a fixed dollar floor set on day one that never moves, no matter how much profit you make. The closest thing to trading a real cash account.
1-Step is ETF's flagship and, per its own help docs, its most popular product. One evaluation phase, no Phase 2, no separate verification round.
Size
Balance
Live trailing drawdown
Profit target
Max position
50K 1-Step
$50,000
$2,000
$3,000
8 minis / 80 micros
100K 1-Step
$100,000
$3,000
$6,000
14 minis / 140 micros
250K 1-Step
$250,000
$6,500
$15,000
24 minis / 240 micros
No daily loss limit — you're governed only by the trailing drawdown. That sounds forgiving until you remember it's a live trail: a $2,000 open-profit spike that gives back to $200 before you close it has already dragged your floor up with it. This plan rewards traders who bank profit quickly and punishes traders who let winners round-trip.
Best for: experienced day traders who can hit a target fast without giving back open profit. Skip it if: you routinely watch a good trade turn into a mediocre one before you exit.
Static Drawdown is the plan ETF markets as closest to trading a real cash account, and the numbers back that up.
Size
Balance
Static drawdown
Minimum balance
Profit target
Max position
10K Static
$10,000
$500
$9,500
$1,000
1 mini / 10 micros
25K Static
$25,000
$1,000
$24,000
$2,000
2 minis / 20 micros
50K Static
$50,000
$2,000
$48,000
$4,000
4 minis / 40 micros
The floor is calculated once, on day one, and never moves — even if you grow a $50K account to $80K, your minimum balance stays $48,000. No daily loss limit, no consistency rule. The tradeoff is a smaller max drawdown in absolute dollars and tighter position caps than 1-Step, so there's less room to size up.
Best for: newer traders and anyone who wants predictable risk with no floor chasing their winners. Skip it if: you want the largest possible cushion and don't mind a trailing drawdown to get it.
End of Day splits the difference: the drawdown only moves at session close on realized profit, but it pairs that with a hard-breach daily loss limit.
Size
Balance
EOD trailing drawdown
Daily loss limit
Profit target
Max position
50K EOD
$50,000
$2,000
$1,100
$3,000
8 minis / 80 micros
100K EOD
$100,000
$3,500
$2,200
$6,000
14 minis / 140 micros
An intraday spike to +$1,800 doesn't move your floor if you don't realize it — but touch the daily loss limit or the trailing floor intraday, on an open position, and the account fails immediately, even before you'd have closed the trade. No consistency rule here, so one strong session doesn't need to be "spread out" across the eval.
Best for: traders who scale into winners and want intraday volatility to wash out without lifting their floor. Skip it if: a hard-breach daily loss limit doesn't fit your risk-per-day plan.
Every other ETF evaluation requires you to flatten one minute before the instrument closes, every day. Diamond Hands is the exception.
Size: 100K only
Drawdown: End-of-day trailing (same mechanic as the EOD plan)
Daily loss limit: Yes, hard breach ($1,500)
Profit target: $5,000
Holds: Overnight and weekend positions are explicitly permitted — no flatten-before-close requirement on any trading day
If your edge needs more than one session to play out, or you want to hold through a scheduled release to settlement, this is the only ETF product that lets you. If you're an intraday-only trader, the standard End of Day plan is cheaper and covers the same drawdown mechanic without paying for a feature you won't use.
Best for: swing traders whose strategy spans multiple sessions. Skip it if: you're intraday-only — buy End of Day instead.
Fast Track is a single $10K account sold in two drawdown flavors — pick EOD or Static, same balance and target either way.
Variant
Balance
Drawdown
Daily loss limit
Profit target
Min days
Max position
10K Fast Track EOD
$10,000
$500 (EOD trailing)
None
$2,000
3
1 mini / 10 micros
10K Fast Track Static
$10,000
$500 (fixed)
None
$2,000
3
1 mini / 10 micros
Fast Track's angle is upfront cost and speed: a 3-day minimum instead of 5, and one free month of funded activation baked into the price. The catch is the reset policy — unlike every other ETF plan, Fast Track offers no resets. Fail the evaluation and you buy a new one, full price, rather than paying $47 to reset. It's also the tightest position cap in the ETF lineup by design, to keep the cost of a mistake small while you prove an edge.
Best for: traders who want to test a strategy cheaply before scaling into a bigger account. Skip it if: you're not confident enough to pass in 3 days and don't want to eat the cost of a full restart on a fail.
DTF is a one-time payment. No Phase 1, no profit target to unlock activation — you're trading a sim-funded account from the moment you pay.
Size
Balance
Drawdown
Profit target
Max position
10K Mini Inferno
$10,000
$1,500 (EOD trailing)
$1,600
2 minis / 2 micros
50K DTF
$50,000
$5,000 (EOD trailing)
$5,100
5 minis / 5 micros
100K DTF
$100,000
$5,000 (fixed)
$5,100
3 minis / 3 micros
DTF is the most expensive path into ETF because you're paying for the shortcut — no monthly evaluation subscription, no resets to plan around, no Phase 1 target. It's built for traders who already know their edge works and would rather pay once to be sim-funded tomorrow than spend a month proving it in an evaluation.
Best for: proven traders who want instant access and are willing to pay a premium to skip the challenge. Skip it if: you're still validating a strategy — buy a cheaper evaluation first and prove it before paying DTF prices.
A handful of rules show up regardless of which plan you buy:
Flatten before close: except on Diamond Hands, all trades must be closed one minute before the instrument's market close.
Weekly trading requirement: at least one trade per week keeps every account type — Diamond Hands included — in good standing. Miss a week without notifying ETF and the account can be closed.
No hedging: you can't hedge against yourself with the same or correlated instruments across one or multiple accounts.
No trading for others, no same-household accounts: ETF prohibits trading on behalf of another user and restricts multiple traders from the same household from participating.
Resets: $47 and unlimited during the evaluation stage on every plan except Fast Track (no resets at all). Once funded, Elite Sim-Funded resets are capped at 10 uses, DTF accounts included.
Safety net: on every plan, once your realized profit reaches the max drawdown plus $100, the drawdown is permanently removed for payout eligibility.
Passing any evaluation moves you to an Elite Sim-Funded account, where the rules shift:
Profit split: up to 100% of simulated profits, up to a $25,000 lifetime sim-funded cap per trader.
Loss Limit Rule: once you've earned 20% profit on the Elite account, a new floor applies — give back more than 35% of your total profit from that point, and ETF can pull the account from the Elite Sim program. This is the mechanic that replaced what older documentation described as a flat consistency-rule percentage; there's no fixed "no single day above X%" rule anymore, but the 20%/35% loss-limit trigger functions similarly.
Active Trade Day (ATD) requirement: for accounts purchased on or after July 6, 2026, the first payout needs 5 ATDs (down from 8 previously). An ATD counts if the day nets at least $200 in realized profit (or $100 on some smaller/legacy account types) and at least 23% of your best trading day's P&L. Fall short of either and the day doesn't count as an ATD, though the profit still counts toward your balance.
Payout minimum: $250 per request.
Do the math on the 23% rule before you request a payout: if your best single day made $1,000, every other day needs at least $230 in realized profit to qualify as an ATD. A string of small $50 green days won't get you there.
ETF supports a wide platform list: Tradovate, NinjaTrader, TradingView, Rithmic R|Trader, ATAS, Bookmap, EdgeProX, eSignal, Finamark, Investor/RT, MotiveWave, Quantower, and Sierra Chart. Rithmic is the primary data feed; note that new accounts selecting Rithmic will incur an added monthly connection fee starting January 28, 2026, following a CME Group data-feed policy change that's hitting the whole industry, not just ETF.
Tradable instruments are futures only across CME, CBOT, COMEX, and NYMEX — equity index (ES, NQ, YM, RTY), energy (CL, NG), metals (GC, SI, HG), Treasuries (ZB, ZN, ZF, ZT), and FX futures (6E, 6B, 6J, 6A, 6C).
Every drawdown, profit target, and position cap in this article comes directly from ETF's plan pages. Evaluation fees do not — ETF serves pricing live on its evaluations page and it moves with active promotions, so we're not going to publish a number here that could be stale by the time you read this. Check current pricing on the live evaluations page, and apply code DEAL if the 65%-off promo is still running.
Which Elite Trader Funding plan is easiest to pass?
Static Drawdown is generally considered the friendliest for newer traders — no daily loss limit, no trailing floor chasing your profit, and a fixed number you can plan risk against from day one.
Can I hold trades overnight with Elite Trader Funding?
Only on the Diamond Hands plan. Every other plan requires flattening one minute before the instrument's market close, every trading day.
Does ETF have a daily loss limit?
Only on End of Day, Diamond Hands, and the Fast Track EOD variant. 1-Step, Static Drawdown, and Fast Track Static have no daily loss limit — you're governed by the trailing or fixed drawdown instead.
How many Active Trade Days do I need for my first payout?
5, if your account was purchased on or after July 6, 2026. Legacy accounts purchased before that date need 8. Each ATD requires $200+ in realized profit (or $100 on some smaller sizes) and at least 23% of your best day's P&L.
Can I skip the evaluation entirely?
Yes — Direct to Funded (DTF) is a one-time payment that puts you straight into a sim-funded account, no evaluation phase. It's also the most expensive way in.
What's the difference between the old consistency rule and the current Loss Limit Rule?
Older documentation described a flat percentage consistency rule at the funded stage. ETF's current rule triggers once you've earned 20% profit on the Elite account — giving back more than 35% of profit from that point can get the account pulled. Read ETF's own 1-Step plan help article before you rely on older summaries, including earlier versions of this kind of breakdown.
Elite Trader Funding's biggest strength is also its biggest risk: six real evaluation structures under one roof means there's very likely a plan that fits your trading style, but only if you actually read the rules for the one you're buying instead of assuming they all work like the plan your friend uses. Static Drawdown and End of Day are the safer, more beginner-friendly picks. 1-Step is the fast lane for traders who can protect open profit. Diamond Hands is the only game in town if you need to hold overnight. Fast Track and DTF sit at opposite ends of the cost-vs-certainty spectrum.
Pick the plan that matches how you actually trade — not the one with the biggest headline account size.
