Apex Live Accounts: The Written Rules, and What Traders Dispute

Apex Trader Funding’s live program moves selected sim-funded traders into one real-money account: $0 starting balance, a $3,000 end-of-day drawdown, a 90/10 split with daily payout requests, and scaling to a maximum of five accounts. Selection is by invitation, sim accounts close when it happens, and declining ends your Apex membership with a final $3,000 payment. All of that is in Apex’s own written FAQ — this post lays out those rules, and then the parts traders are publicly disputing.

The program, as Apex documents it

Apex’s Live Prop Trading Program FAQ is the written record of the program. The move is invitation-based and explicitly not automatic — Apex says it may move a trader to live based on discipline, consistency, lifetime sim payouts, speed of profit accumulation, and “any other information Apex considers relevant.” The FAQ names example monitoring triggers (three consecutive withdrawals from a single PA, or accumulated sim profit balances) but labels them guidelines, not qualification rules. Once selected, a trader cannot hold live and sim accounts at the same time: evaluations and Performance Accounts are closed, with refunds only for evaluations still active at selection.

The live account itself:

Rule	What the FAQ says
Starting balance	$0 — not based on 25K/50K/100K sim sizes
Drawdown	$3,000 end-of-day
Safety net	At +$3,100 profit, the drawdown locks at +$100; at $100 or less, the account closes
Level 1 (up to $10K profit)	10 minis / 100 micros, no daily loss limit, no consistency rule
Level 2 ($10K–$25K)	25 minis, $5,000 daily loss limit
Level 3 ($25K–$50K)	30 minis, $10,000 daily loss limit
Level 4 ($50K+)	Custom review with a risk manager
Payouts	90/10 split, requests daily, $500 minimum, processed within 48 hours — only from profits above the $3,100 safety net
Scaling	At $4,500 profit, request a second account; repeat per account up to five, capped by how many PAs you held at graduation
Account cost	No monthly or up-front fee for the live account itself

Live-account conduct rules matter as much as the numbers: automation and algorithms are not allowed, trade copying is not allowed, all trades must be closed by 4:50 PM ET with no overnight holds, and an account with no trading for 30 days may be closed.

The Bonus Vault, in Apex’s own words

When a trader moves to live, open Performance Account profit balances are totaled and tracked in the “Bonus Vault.” The FAQ is unusually direct about what that is: “The Bonus Vault is not real money. It is not live trading capital,” and the summary table calls it “simply a tracking report.” It pays out as a bonus tied to live withdrawals: 20% of each month’s live payouts, deducted from the tracked balance and sent on the 15th of the following month — and only if the live account is still active on that date.

The FAQ currently contradicts itself on the enhanced first-month rate. The detailed Q&A says the 40% bonus applies “on your first Live trading account only,” while the summary table on the same page still says it applies to the first month “of each new account.” Archived captures show the detailed answer changed between July 13 and August 14, 2026 — the news log tracks that edit — and the page’s own conflict clause says the user agreement, not either section, controls.

The arithmetic is worth spelling out. At a 20% rate, clearing a tracked balance requires live withdrawals of five times that balance. A trader who arrives with $46,000 tracked — a real example below — would need roughly $230,000 in live payouts, from an account that starts at $0 with $3,000 of room, before the vault is exhausted.

Declining the invitation

The FAQ answers this directly. A trader may decline, and if they do: the Apex member account is “fully deactivated,” evaluations, PAs, and other Apex services are “no longer available,” Apex issues a final payment of $3,000 — described as the initial risk amount of the live account — within 30 days, and Bonus Vault amounts plus any other simulated balances are forfeited. The FAQ does not address whether a declined trader can ever open a new Apex account.

If the live account fails

The road back is a paid product: the “Second Chance Eval-to-Live,” at $199 per attempt with no attempt limit. Its parameters are stricter than a standard evaluation — five-day minimum, $4,000 profit target against a $2,000 trailing drawdown, a 40% consistency rule, a $250 minimum daily profit requirement, and a “Done-for-Now” mechanism that flattens open trades at each $1,000 of daily loss. Through three live attempts the full Bonus Vault balance remains available; after a third failure a risk manager decides whether there is a fourth round at all, and if there is, only 50% of the remaining vault balance stays payable.

A payout guideline, quietly removed

One documented change sits at the center of the trader dispute. Apex’s “Legacy PA Payout Parameters” page carried, under its “100% Payout Eligibility Guidelines,” a bullet reading: “Withdraw profits before the sixth payout if transferred to a Live Prop Account.” Archived captures show that bullet present from at least September 2025 through May 27, 2026. On the current page it is gone — the surrounding section is otherwise word-for-word identical, and no note marks the edit. A different section of the same page still references transfer to a live account, so the removal is targeted, not a page rewrite. First reported by Via Ascendary in July; the archive captures independently confirm it.

What traders and the founder say, on the record

The founder. In an August 14 interview with Words of Rizdom, Apex founder Darrell Martin confirmed the one-account start and the roughly $4,500 scaling step, said a second account can follow “within a week,” and conceded that some traders waited up to 60 days for live onboarding — a delay he himself called “ridiculous.”

A selected trader who declined. In the Via Ascendary video, trader Martin Stejskal — who documents more than $100,000 in lifetime Apex payouts across 20 accounts — says he was invited on April 14 while the program’s rules were still being finalized, and that about $46,000 of his PA balances went into the Bonus Vault, recoverable only through the 20% bonus mechanics above. He declined the invitation and took the exit terms. His account is one side of a dispute; the program numbers he cites match the FAQ.

The rollout. PipBack, an Apex affiliate channel that covered the program critically in late May, reported that Apex told affiliates about 600 funded traders were being moved to live in the first wave, and that the leaked account parameters circulating in May — the $0 balance, the $3,000 end-of-day drawdown, one account to start — turned out to be accurate.

What it means for NinjaTrader and Rithmic traders

The connection layer is where the live program quietly changes the most, and the FAQ says less about it than about anything else.

• The live FAQ names two platforms: Tradovate and NinjaTrader. Any other charting platform “must make sure” it works with Ninja Brokerage, and needs a live license key — a demo or trial platform license will not connect to live trading. The word Rithmic does not appear anywhere in the live-program FAQ, and no data-feed vendor or FCM is named.
• Sim-side connections are untouched. Apex evaluations and PAs still issue Rithmic credentials, and that path into NinjaTrader 8 works exactly as before — including running several Apex Rithmic logins side by side, which is the case the Apex connection guide documents step by step. If you’re still on the sim side, or run accounts at other Rithmic firms, nothing in the live program changes your setup.
• Live status changes your market-data classification. The FAQ states live traders are treated as professional for data purposes, with professional feeds around $140 per month; Apex covers the initial main data fee, and additional instrument feeds are the trader’s cost.
• Multi-account habits don’t carry over. The sim world’s copy-trading and automation workflows are explicitly barred on live accounts, and the live program starts you at one account regardless of how many PAs you held. Plan for that discontinuity before it’s chosen for you.
• Census note: the live program is a separate track, not a change to how Apex’s Rithmic-credential accounts connect — the connectivity census row for Apex stands.

Common questions

Is the move to live automatic?

No. It’s invitation-based, at Apex’s discretion. The FAQ lists monitoring guidelines — like three consecutive withdrawals from one PA — but says explicitly they are not automatic qualification rules.

Can you keep sim accounts after selection?

No. Live and sim are mutually exclusive; all sim accounts close, and active evaluations are refunded while blown ones are not.

What happens if you decline?

Your member account is fully deactivated, a final $3,000 payment arrives within 30 days, and the Bonus Vault plus any other simulated balances are forfeited.

Is the Bonus Vault your money?

Not per the FAQ, which calls it a tracking report rather than stored value. It converts to cash only as 20% bonuses on live withdrawals, while the live account stays active.

Rules verified against Apex’s written FAQ as captured August 14, 2026 and re-checked August 17, 2026. Apex states it may change program rules at any time, with or without notice — if you’re weighing an invitation, read the current FAQ and your agreement, not summaries.