Does the trailing drawdown stop moving?

At most end-of-day trailing firms the trail stops once it reaches your starting balance. Apex Trader Funding locks it at the starting balance plus 100 dollars. Intraday trailing firms typically trail your highest unrealised equity and never lock.

What is the difference between end-of-day and intraday trailing drawdown?

End-of-day trailing only moves the breach line using your closing balance each day. Intraday trailing moves it using your highest unrealised equity, so an open trade that goes up 1,000 dollars and comes back raises your breach line by 1,000 dollars even though you never banked the profit.

PropFirmBacktester

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Trailing Drawdown Calculator

Enter your account and your highest balance. This shows the exact dollar figure at which your account is breached, how much room you have left, and where the trail locks. Presets for 20 prop firms. No account, no email, no paywall.

Prop firm

Account size

Drawdown rule

10% · Static

Highest balance reached

Highest end-of-day balance.

Current balance

The link keeps your numbers — paste it in a thread to show someone their exact line.

Your account is breached at

$22,500

Healthy buffer — you have room to take a normal loss.

Room left

$2,500

10.00% of account

Drawdown amount

$2,500

Static

Profit target (8%)

$27,000

$2,000 to go

Daily loss floor

$23,750

5% per day

Static drawdown. The breach line never moves — it stays $2,500 below your $25,000 starting balance no matter how high you go. Every dollar of profit is a permanent dollar of buffer.

This is one account on one day.

The number above tells you where the floor is right now. It does not tell you whether your strategy survives 40 trading days of variance against it. PropFirmBacktester logs your real trades and pushes your actual win rate, average win, average loss and trades per day through 10,000 simulated evaluations of this exact ruleset — so you get a pass probability, payout odds and long-run expected value before you pay another eval fee.

See simulated pass rates for Alpha Capital →How the simulator works

How is trailing drawdown calculated?

Trailing drawdown is measured from the highest balance your account has ever reached — not from your starting balance. On a $50,000 account with a 4% ($2,000) trailing drawdown, the breach line starts at $48,000. Push the account to $52,300 and the line follows you up to $50,300. A $2,000 loss from that peak ends the evaluation even though you are still $300 above where you started.

This is the single most common reason traders blow evaluations they thought they were winning. The account looks green while the distance between the balance and the floor quietly shrinks to nothing.

Does the trail ever stop?

At most end-of-day trailing firms, yes: the trail stops once the breach line reaches your starting balance. Apex Trader Funding locks it at your starting balance plus $100. Intraday trailing firms are stricter — the line follows your highest unrealised equity, so a trade that runs $1,000 in your favour and comes back raises your floor by $1,000 even though you never banked a cent of it.

End-of-day vs intraday trailing

End-of-day trailing only uses your closing balance each day, so intraday spikes are free. Intraday trailing uses your highest equity at any moment. For a scalper who regularly gives back open profit, an intraday trail is dramatically harsher than the headline percentage suggests — which is why two firms with the same "4% drawdown" can have very different real pass rates.

Full breakdown with worked examples: trailing drawdown explained. Or compare every firm's rules side by side in the prop firm database.

Based on each firm's publicly listed rules. Independent — not affiliated with any prop firm, no affiliate links. Rules change; always verify against your firm's dashboard before trading.