Most traders do not fail an eval because their strategy is bad. They fail because a rule fired at a moment they did not expect. This page walks through the four rules that end most evals, in the order they usually bite.
Your drawdown line follows your highest balance, not your starting balance. Every new peak drags the floor up with it. Take a $2,000 winner on a 50K account and your bust level moves up $2,000 too. That profit is now load-bearing. Give it back and you are much closer to dead than the raw P/L suggests. On most Apex-style evals the line trails until it reaches the starting balance plus the buffer, then it locks. Until it locks, every peak is a new floor.
Check where your floor sits after every winner, not just at the end of the day.
Daily loss limit: the clock matters more than the number
The DLL is measured from a fixed point. Usually your balance at the session open, not your best moment of the day. Traders blow it by anchoring to the peak: up $800, down $1,200 from there, and the loss the firm counts is only $400. It works the other way too. Down early, back to flat, then a normal-size loss can trip a limit you thought you had rebuilt room under. The number resets on the session boundary, not at midnight in your timezone.
Know which balance your DLL is measured from before you size up.
End of day: 16:59 ET decides everything
Evaluations settle end-of-day. An open position at the session close is not a position anymore. It is a settled number that counts toward your drawdown and your target. This is why a trade that felt fine at 16:45 can fail you at 17:00. Anything still open when the session flips gets marked at that moment, and the new session starts from whatever that produced.
Treat 16:59 ET as a hard stop, not a suggestion.
Contract limits and the freeze
Each account size has a maximum position size, and some firms scale it with your progress or freeze it once you are near the target. Going over is not a warning. It usually voids the account outright. The freeze catches people at the finish line: you hit the target, size up to close it out, and the size you used is the one that ends the run.
Look up your max contracts for the account size you actually bought.
Practice the rules, not the strategy
A demo account will happily let you trade all day after you have technically busted. That is the gap this simulator closes: same drawdown math, same DLL, same EOD settlement, zero dollars. Import a month of your real trades and see which day would have ended the run. Most traders find it two or three days earlier than they expected.
It's a bust level that follows your highest balance instead of sitting at your starting balance. Every new peak lifts the floor by the same amount, and it never comes back down. On an Apex PA the line trails until it hits your starting balance plus $100, then stays put. In the eval it keeps trailing, except on Intraday accounts on Rithmic and WealthCharts, where it stops at the profit target balance.
Is trailing drawdown calculated on closed balance or intraday equity?
It depends on the firm, and it's the single most expensive detail to get wrong. Apex EOD accounts and Topstep move the line off your end-of-day balance. Apex Intraday accounts follow your peak balance during the session, so a spike you never banked can still raise your floor. The simulator builds the intraday peak from your logged trades, so on a live account the line can rise a bit sooner than it does here.
What is a daily loss limit and when does it reset?
It is the most you can lose measured from a fixed daily anchor. Normally your balance at the session open. It resets on the session boundary the firm uses, not at midnight where you live. If you are up early and give it back, the loss the firm counts is measured from the open, not from your peak.
Why did my eval fail at 16:59 ET when I was still green?
Evaluations settle end-of-day. Anything open at the session close is marked at that moment and counts toward drawdown and target. A position that looked fine at 16:45 can be settled as a loss at the close, and the next session starts from that settled number.
Does the simulator use the same rules as the real evaluation?
Yes, 1:1. Same trailing drawdown method, same daily loss limit anchor and intraday lock, same end-of-day settlement at 16:59 ET, same contract limits and freeze behaviour per firm and account size. Open positions are checked against the limits through your stop loss or logged worst price. If a day would have ended your run at the real firm, it ends it here.
Can I import my TradingView history and see which day would have busted me?
Yes. Export your trades as CSV, drop the file in, and the simulator replays them through the eval rules in order. The import stops at the trade that would have blown the account, so you see the exact fill that ended the run instead of a final number.
How many evals do traders usually blow before passing?
Two to four is the common range, and every reset is another purchase. That is the part the marketing skips: the failure rate is the business model. Running the same month of trades through a free simulator first costs nothing and usually surfaces the same mistake the paid attempt would have.
Do contract limits reset between eval and funded accounts?
Usually they change rather than reset. Funded accounts often carry different maximum sizes and scaling rules than the eval that earned them. Check the size for the exact account you hold, because exceeding it is typically an instant violation rather than a warning.
What happens to my data? Is anything stored on your servers?
Once you're signed in, your eval accounts, trades and settings are saved to your account, so every device you sign in on shows the same data. A share link stores a copy of that one account on our server: its trades, rules, progress and the account name you gave it. No email, no IP address. The link expires after 90 days, and you can delete it any time from My shares.
Can I simulate multiple accounts or firms side by side?
Yes. Each account keeps its own firm, size, rule set and history, so you can run an Apex 50K and a Topstep 50K on the same trades and see where the rules diverge. The free tier covers one active account; more accounts are a paid tier.
Does passing the simulator mean I will pass the real eval?
No, and anyone promising that is selling something. The simulator makes the rules exact; it cannot make your discipline exact. What it does remove is the category of failure where you did not know a rule was about to fire.
Which prop firms does the simulator support?
Apex Trader Funding (End of Day and Intraday evals: 25K, 50K, 100K, 150K) and Topstep (Trading Combine: 50K, 100K, 150K), each with its own rule set, account sizes and prices. Coming next: MFFU · Take Profit · Tradeify · Lucid Trading · Top One Futures · Alpha Futures · Bulenox (and many more coming). The rule engine is shared, so a new firm is a rule set rather than a rewrite.
Is there a mobile version?
It runs in your phone's browser with the same rules and a layout built for one thumb. Tabs, quick trade entry, no sideways scrolling. There's no app to install: sign in on your phone and your accounts and trades are already there.