Trading Rules

Reach the profit target to get Funded. There is no time limit.

There is no minimum number of trading days on either plan. Pass on your own schedule.

Your trailing drawdown moves up with your highest equity. If you touch it, the account is closed.

The Growth Plan is End of Day: the floor updates at market close. Express Plan is Intraday: the floor moves in real time.

End of Day vs Intraday only controls how often your floor moves UP with a new peak. On every plan the floor is monitored in real time throughout the session, so a breach is recorded the moment your equity crosses it, intraday, not only at the close.

Available on all plans (Growth and Express). If you breach drawdown, you can purchase a Discounted Reset and continue trading. A reset costs 10% less than what you pay for that account, so it is always cheaper than starting a new one. Before the first monthly renewal on that account, that is the price you paid for it at checkout; from the first renewal on, it is your monthly price. If we cannot match the account to a subscription price, it is priced off the current list price instead, at ten percentage points deeper than whatever sale is running that day. There is no deadline on a reset. Each account can have up to three paid resets, for as long as its subscription stays active.

The limit of three paid resets per account applies from October 6, 2026, 12:45 AM ET. Paid resets an account had before then count toward it, and so does the earlier flat-price redemption, so an account that already had three or more cannot buy another. Once an account has reached its limit of three paid resets, another is not sold for it. A free reset credit can still be used on it, its next monthly renewal still resets it while the subscription is active, and a new account can be opened at any time.

When purchased, your account is fully reset to its original starting balance. Your drawdown floor goes back to starting balance minus your max drawdown, your peak equity goes back to the starting balance, and all other trading rules stay the same.

A paid reset renews your subscription: your next monthly charge moves to one month from the reset date, for the same amount. The reset itself is a separate one-time charge.

Your trailing drawdown will reset when your Funded account is activated. Once your balance reaches the lock balance, the drawdown stops trailing and becomes static.

Your first paid payout also locks the floor at your starting balance, even if your balance has not reached the lock balance yet. From then on the floor never moves, so every dollar of profit you make adds to your cushion.

If you breach drawdown, that Funded account is closed permanently. There is no reset for a breached Funded account, at any price: it is never restored to Funded and it is never returned to an Evaluation. To trade again you start a new Evaluation.

Paid fast: as quick as 12 hours from your request. Your payouts page shows your time and the fastest track open to you.

You keep 80% of profits (80/20 split).

Each payout, you can withdraw up to 50% of profits, subject to the payout cap for that payout number.

A flat $129 activation fee is charged before your Funded account goes live, and it is fully refunded on your first payout. Once you receive your first payout, your balance at request time must be at least $1 above the balance you last requested a payout at, less any amount your payout cap prevented you from taking, up to the size of that payout.

Your withdrawal is deducted from your trading account when the payout is paid, not when it is requested and not when it is approved.

Each payout also needs 8 qualifying winning days in the current payout cycle. See Qualifying Winning Days below.

A payout needs 8 qualifying winning days in the current payout cycle.

A qualifying winning day is any trading day you finish with realized profit of at least $100 on a 25K account, $150 on a 50K, or $200 on a 100K. The amount is the same on the Growth and Express Plans at the same account size.

A day that finishes flat, finishes down, or finishes up by less than that amount does not count. Unrealized gains on an open position do not count either, only realized profit.

The 8 days do NOT have to be consecutive. Any 8 qualifying days inside the cycle count, in any order and spread across as many weeks as you like. Flat days, losing days, and days you do not trade at all sit in between without resetting anything, and nothing about the count is a streak.

The count is per payout cycle. It resets to zero every time a payout is paid, so each new cycle has to build its own 8 days.

When a payout is paid, the new cycle is measured from the moment you submitted that request, so the days while it was under review count toward your next payout instead of being lost. If you cancel a request, nothing restarts.

Real firm capital at Interactive Brokers, in real markets. You keep 80% of realized net profit. Withdrawals have no cap, with a $100 minimum.

You enter Live at half your plan size in buying power and scale up to 1.25x it. A step up needs realized profit AND at least thirty closed live trades whose average result is statistically greater than zero, so profit alone does not move you: until thirty live trades exist you stay at entry buying power however well you are doing.

Your drawdown floor trails your peak equity and never moves down. Reaching it closes your positions and ends the Live account permanently: there is no reset at Live and no demotion to a lower tier. Your lock threshold is your plan's drawdown, and nothing reduces it, brings it forward or offsets it. Your floor locks at $100 above break-even at the end of the first day on which your total profit (every payout taken, the firm's share included, plus the profit in the account, unrealized included) reaches your plan's maximum drawdown and your equity is at least $200 above break-even. If your profit gets there on a day your equity does not, the lock waits for the first day both are true. Your floor trails the highest value your account has held at the end of a trading day, by your maximum drawdown, and never rises above break-even while it is trailing. Taking a payout sets it at break-even, and it never goes below break-even after that. It stops moving for good when it locks.

A daily loss limit applies while your drawdown floor is still trailing. Hitting it closes every open position in your account and holds trading until 9:30 AM ET on the first trading day after the day you reach it. It is not a breach and it does not end the account, and it stops applying once your floor is locked or you have taken your first payout. The Live Program Rules at optionsfunding.co/live-program-rules publish it in full.

You can withdraw profit down to $100 above your drawdown floor and never below that, and a payout never includes what your open positions can still lose, so an open spread reduces what you can take until you close it. The $100 is there because reaching your floor ends the account, and a payout must never be the thing that reaches it. Nothing else is held back. You can make one payout request per Eastern Time calendar day. We decide your payout request when you make it, and we can decline or hold one that does not meet these rules or that is associated with conduct under review. Once it is approved the full amount is taken out of your account at once and your 80% share is sent the same day. Identity verification and tax documentation have to be complete before any payment is sent.

Advancement is by invitation, and the Live Program Notice changes nothing on its own. On the day it is sent, every evaluation and funded account you hold stays open and tradeable, and billing is unchanged. Every payout request already pending is held: not cancelled, and not paid while the Notice is open. You have 30 calendar days to accept or decline, and the deadline is shown to you.

New payout requests are paused while your Live Program Notice is open. Every payout request you had already submitted is held while your notice is open. It is not cancelled, and it is not paid in the meantime. It is resolved by your answer: accepting cancels it without payment, and declining pays it in cash, up to the cap.

If you accept, every evaluation and funded account you hold is closed, the subscription behind each one is cancelled, every payout request then pending is cancelled and you are paid nothing for it, nothing is credited in its place or carried into the Live account, and you may not open, purchase or hold a further evaluation or funded account afterwards, including under a different email address.

If you decline, every payout request pending at that moment is paid in cash, summed across every account you hold and capped at $3,000 in total for the trader. The cap is per person, not per account: five accounts with $2,000 pending each pays $3,000, not $10,000. Your accounts then close, billing stops, and re-entry is permanently barred. Declining with nothing pending is paid nothing, and declining is not a breach and creates no debt.

An unanswered notice expires after 30 days and is treated as a decline. No settlement is payable on an expired notice. Fees already charged for a closed evaluation or funded account are not refunded.

You hold exactly one Live account no matter how many evaluation or funded accounts you held. Allocated capital is set by the single largest eligible funded account you held on the date of the Notice: plans are never added together, so a trader who held five funded accounts receives the same Live account as a trader who held one of the same size. Every funded plan size we publish is eligible for advancement: $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000. Eligible does not mean selected, though: admission stays at the firm's discretion and the same standard applies at every size. The Live account is smaller in real dollars than the combined simulated nominal, because the capital at Live is real and it belongs to the firm.

Overnight positions are allowed, subject to your plan and instrument rules. Growth and Express Evaluation and Funded accounts are not closed just because the trading day ends; expiring positions have their own cutoff. Pro also permits overnight holding. A Pro evaluation keeps the daily loss limit it was bought with until it gets the updated Pro rules at its daily reset, and reaching that limit closes open positions; Pro funded accounts have no daily loss limit. At the Live stage what you hold overnight is capped at 70% of your remaining drawdown room, and in the last five minutes before each market closes the firm closes only enough to bring you back under that cap. The firm closes whole positions at a time, never part of one: every option you hold on one underlying with the same expiration date and option class is one position, and your shares of that underlying, or the other expiration of a calendar or a diagonal, go with it. The Live Program Rules publish it in full.

We believe traders should have the freedom to manage positions on their own terms.

Pass the Evaluation and your Funded account is issued the same day you activate it. There is no waiting period and no next day batch.

Activation is what starts it: Pro has no activation fee. Growth and Express require their activation fee to clear before the Funded account is created and ready to trade.

Growth and Express Funded accounts have a one-time, flat $129 activation fee for every size. It is charged to your card on file or crypto balance before activation. Pro has no activation fee.

The moment you take your first payout, that fee is added back on top of the payout, so once you are profitable, activation costs you nothing. If an account never reaches a payout, the fee is not refunded.

New Growth and Express purchases allow buying options only. Pro allows buying and selling supported options, including long calls and puts and debit and credit spreads. Existing accounts keep their purchased strategy permissions. See the Pro section for how Pro counts profit.

Existing Growth accounts with selling permissions retain access to supported spreads, multi-leg strategies and uncovered option sales, subject to their account rules.

There is no firm-wide ban on selling supported index options and no minimum opening delta. Selling requires an account with selling permissions. The ticker whitelist, supported-contract requirements and account risk limits still apply.

The Express Plan is buy only and allows single leg long calls and long puts.

At the Live stage, spreads and naked short puts are permitted, subject to your account's margin and drawdown rules, and the firm's risk engine may buy a naked short option back, in whole or in part, at once and without notice, if a sharp move in the underlying could take your account through its drawdown floor. A naked short call is not permitted at the Live stage, and the broker refuses the order. See the Live Program Rules for how a naked option is treated at an overnight checkpoint. If assignment or an expiring leg leaves you holding a naked short option, closing it is permitted.

On Evaluation and Funded accounts you may only trade options on whitelisted tickers. Any non-whitelisted tickers are automatically restricted from trading. Check the whitelist to view approved tickers. Ticker whitelist requests may be sent to support@optionsfunding.co.

The Live stage is a different account at a different broker and the ticker whitelist does not apply to it. US listed stock options and US listed index options, on any ticker. There is no symbol whitelist at the Live stage, and same-day expiries are permitted. Stock itself is closing only. You can close or reduce a stock position you already hold, including shares you were assigned, and you cannot open a stock position or add to one. Spreads are permitted, credit or debit, including vertical spreads, iron condors, butterflies and calendars, and so is selling a put without cover, a naked short put. Selling a call without cover, a naked short call, is not permitted, and the broker refuses the order. A calendar or a diagonal, whose legs expire on different dates, is measured one expiry at a time at an overnight checkpoint, so its short leg is measured there as if it had no cover, and the whole position can be closed there, its short leg first. If assignment, exercise, or the expiry or closure of another leg leaves you holding a naked short option, a put or a call, closing it is always permitted. Everything else is refused at the broker before the order reaches the market: futures, futures options, foreign exchange, bonds, mutual funds, metals, crypto, CFDs, warrants, structured products, event contracts and non-US products.

Options at the Live stage may be bought, and may be sold with cover, and a put may also be sold without cover. Credit and debit spreads, iron condors, butterflies and other spreads are permitted, and so are naked short puts, subject to your account's margin and drawdown rules. A naked short call, a short call with no long call or shares covering it, is not permitted: you may not open or increase one, and the broker refuses the order. If you hold a naked short option and a sharp move in the underlying could take your account through its drawdown floor, the firm's risk engine may buy it back, in whole or in part, at once and without notice. That is a right the firm keeps, not a promise that a naked option will be closed before your floor is reached. At an overnight checkpoint a naked short put is measured at its worst case, the strike times 100 per contract less what it would cost to buy back now. On an index, and on most stocks, that is more than the overnight cap of 70% of your remaining drawdown room, so a naked short put you still hold when a checkpoint opens will normally be closed there, along with the rest of what that checkpoint closes. A cash-settled index put expiring that day is not carried through the close at which it settles, so the checkpoint in front of that close does not close it. A short call left without cover has no limit to its loss, so it cannot be carried overnight: one you still hold is closed at the first checkpoint that can still trade it, however much room you have, which for an index call is normally the Curb. A cash-settled index call expiring that day is not carried through the close at which it settles, so the checkpoint in front of that close leaves it to settle. Assignment can leave stock in your account, and the firm may close it at any time. Closing or reducing something you already hold is always permitted, including an option left without cover after an assignment.

If you do not close expiring positions before the cutoff on expiration day, they will be closed automatically at 3:55:00 PM ET. For SPY, QQQ, IWM, DIA the cutoff is 4:10:00 PM ET.

This protects you from unexpected assignment risk and keeps accounts compliant.

Growth and Express: There is no drawdown lock during Evaluation. In Funded, your trailing drawdown follows new highs until the earlier of two events: your balance reaching the lock balance (your starting capital), or your first payout being paid. Either one locks the floor at your starting capital permanently. If your floor was still trailing below your starting capital when your first payout is paid, it moves up to your starting capital at that moment. Live has its own lock: once your profit reaches your plan's drawdown, the floor locks at your allocated capital plus $100 ($50,100 on a 100K plan, $25,100 on a 50K and $12,600 on a 25K).

Pro has a different Funded lock: the loss line saved at the verified second payout request locks only when that payout is paid. Before then it continues trailing. See the Pro loss-limit section below.

Once locked, the drawdown stops trailing and stays static. On the Growth Plan, the trailing floor updates at the end of each trading day. On the Express Plan, the trailing floor updates in real time throughout the session.

This structure rewards controlled growth, reduces risk over time, and gives disciplined traders more breathing room as they perform.

Growth and Express: Once you receive your first payout, your balance at request time must be at least $1 above the balance you last requested a payout at, less any amount your payout cap prevented you from taking, up to the size of that payout.

Pro uses the profit available for payout and its published withdrawal checks instead of this Growth and Express balance rule. See the Pro payout section below.

This promotes steady progression and encourages discipline and structured risk management.