Alpha Futures Rules: Every Plan, Rule, and Limit

Understanding Alpha Futures rules before you start trading can save you from an avoidable breach. Whether you're eyeing the Zero, Standard, or Advanced plan, each one has its own set of parameters for the evaluation and the funded account that follows. This guide breaks down all of it.

Alpha Futures Evaluation: How It Works

Alpha Futures (by Alpha Capital Group) is a futures prop firm that offers a one-step evaluation. Pass the evaluation, and you become a Qualified Analyst trading a simulated funded account.

Alpha Futures offers three plan types:

• Zero Plan: 25K, 50K, and 100K account sizes

• Standard Plan: 50K, 100K, and 150K account sizes

• Advanced Plan: 50K, 100K, and 150K account sizes

Supported trading platforms include Tradovate, NinjaTrader, AlphaTicks, and TradingView. Traders can access CME Group products across all four exchanges (CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX).

The only way to fail an evaluation is hitting the Maximum Drawdown. To pass, you need to hit your profit target and satisfy the 50% consistency rule. Zero evaluations are the exception: no consistency rule is required. If you fail an evaluation, you can purchase a reset or wait for your monthly subscription to rebill for a fresh account. The rules vary by plan, and each is broken down below.

Alpha Futures Zero Plan Rules

The Zero Plan is designed as a low-barrier entry point. There is no activation fee, no consistency rule on evaluations, and you can pass in as few as 1 trading day. The tradeoff is a Daily Loss Guard on evaluations and lower withdrawal caps on Qualified accounts. You can hold up to 5 Zero Qualified accounts at a time.

To pass the Zero evaluation, you need to hit your profit target and hold your balance at or above it. The only way to fail is breaching the Maximum Drawdown. Keep in mind that the Daily Loss Guard is active on Zero evaluations, so if your daily P&L reaches -2% of the starting balance, your account is locked until the next trading day at 6PM ET.

Alpha Futures Standard Plan Rules

The Standard Plan has no Daily Loss Guard on evaluations, which gives you more room to trade without a daily limit. On the Qualified side, payouts follow a tiered profit split that increases over time. Standard accounts require a one-time activation fee after passing the evaluation. You can hold up to 3 Standard Qualified accounts at a time.

To pass the Standard evaluation, you need to hit your profit target and hold your balance at or above it while satisfying the 50% consistency rule. That means no single trading day can account for more than half of your total net profit. Your only hard fail is breaching the Maximum Drawdown.

Alpha Futures Advanced Plan Rules

The Advanced Plan removes the consistency rule, Daily Loss Guard, news trading restrictions, and scaling plan on Qualified accounts. The fewer restrictions come with tighter margins: the 50K Advanced evaluation requires a $4,000 profit target with only $1,750 in drawdown, compared to $3,000 and $2,000 on the Standard.

Advanced accounts require a one-time activation fee after passing the evaluation. You can hold up to 3 Advanced Qualified accounts at a time.

To pass the Advanced evaluation, you need to hit your profit target and hold your balance at or above it while satisfying the 50% consistency rule.

Alpha Futures Drawdown and Daily Loss Guard

Alpha Futures uses two loss-related rules to manage risk: the Maximum Drawdown and the Daily Loss Guard. The Maximum Drawdown applies to all accounts. The Daily Loss Guard applies to Zero and Standard accounts only.

Maximum Drawdown

The Maximum Drawdown is an end-of-day (EOD) trailing drawdown across all Alpha Futures accounts. It is calculated from your account balance high at the end of each trading day, not from intraday equity highs.

If your account balance or floating equity hits the drawdown floor at any point, the account is breached. On an evaluation, that means the account can no longer be passed. On a Qualified account, the account is closed.

Here's how that works in practice. Say you start with a 50K Standard account. Your Maximum Drawdown is $2,000, so the drawdown floor begins at $48,000. If you end the day at $50,500, the floor moves up to $48,500. If you lose $500 the next day and close at $50,000, the floor stays at $48,500. It does not go back down.

Once the drawdown floor reaches the initial starting balance, it stops trailing. So if your EOD balance hits $52,000, the floor locks at $50,000 permanently.

Daily Loss Guard

The Daily Loss Guard is a separate, daily soft breach rule. It is set at 2% of the starting account balance and applies to Zero evaluations and Qualified accounts, and to Standard Qualified accounts only (not Standard evaluations). If you hit it, your account is locked until the next trading day (6PM ET). You do not lose your account.

The Daily Loss Guard is based on each trading day's P&L, including simulated commissions, fees, and both unrealized and realized trade P&L. Alpha Futures notes that the Daily Loss Guard should not replace a stop loss. It triggers liquidation market orders, and fills may vary depending on market volatility.

Alpha Futures Funded Account: Payout Rules and Profit Split

Once you pass your evaluation and receive your Qualified account, the payout structure depends on which plan you chose.

Zero Payouts

Zero Qualified accounts can request a payout up to 4 times per month, after accumulating 5 winning trading days of $200 or more in profit. The winning days do not need to be consecutive. You can withdraw up to 50% of the profit in your account per request. The remaining balance stays on the account for drawdown protection or future withdrawals.

The 40% consistency rule must also be satisfied. This means no single trading day's profit can be 40% or more of your net profits since your last payout request. If you exceed it, your account is not breached, but you won't be able to request a payout until the ratio comes down. This rule resets after each withdrawal. Tools like Tanto auto-sync your trades from your broker, making it easier to monitor your daily P&L against the 40% consistency threshold.

Withdrawal limits vary by Zero account size:

• 25K: $200 minimum, $1,000 maximum

• 50K: $200 minimum, $1,500 maximum

• 100K: $200 minimum, $2,500 maximum

The profit split is 90% from the start with no tiered system.

Standard Payouts

Standard Qualified accounts can request payouts every 14 days from the first trade placed on the Qualified account, as long as the 40% consistency rule is satisfied (see Zero Payouts above for how this works). The minimum payout request is $200, and the maximum is $15,000 per account per request.

The profit split is tiered:

• Payouts 1 and 2: 70%

• Payouts 3 and 4: 80%

• Payouts 5+: 90%

Advanced Payouts

Advanced Qualified accounts can request a payout up to 4 times per month, after accumulating 5 winning trading days of $200 or more in profit. The winning days do not need to be consecutive.

You can withdraw up to 50% of the profit in your account per request, up to the withdrawal limit. The remaining balance stays on the account for drawdown protection or future withdrawals.

There is no consistency rule on Advanced Qualified accounts.

The minimum payout request is $1,000 and the maximum is $15,000 per account per request. The profit split is 90% from the start with no tiered system.

Withdrawals and Drawdown

Keep in mind that withdrawals affect your drawdown floor. Alpha Futures does not block withdrawals that would put your balance at or near the drawdown floor, so it's on you to manage this carefully. If you grow your 50K Standard account to $55,000 (floor now at $50,000) and withdraw all $5,000 of profit, your balance returns to $50,000, which would breach the drawdown and close the account.

Your drawdown floor does not reset after a withdrawal. If it was at $49,200 before your payout, it stays at $49,200 after.

Scaling Plan

Standard and Zero Qualified accounts start with reduced position sizes that increase as you build profit on the account. The scaling tiers are based on dollar amounts of accumulated profit, and your buying power grows at each level. You can find the full scaling tier details in the Alpha Futures Help Center.

Maximum Payable Balance

Simulated Qualified Accounts have a maximum payable balance of +$40,000 per account, or 5 payouts. Once you hit either threshold, your trading history is reviewed for the opportunity to move to live funds through the Alpha Prime program. Alpha Futures may also initiate this review earlier at their discretion.

Alpha Prime: Path to a Live Trading Account

Alpha Futures offers a path from simulated Qualified accounts to live funding through their Alpha Prime program.

When you move to Alpha Prime, all of your simulated Qualified Accounts are closed. Alpha Futures processes a final withdrawal of 50% of your account profit. Of the remaining balance, $5,000 goes toward funding your live account. The firm matches that with $5,000, giving you a $10,000 static drawdown live account.

The live account rules differ from the simulated Qualified accounts:

• Daily payouts

• No consistency rule

• No news trading restrictions

• No maximum withdrawal request

• Static, non-trailing drawdown

• 30% of account balance daily loss limit, starting at $3,000 (scales with account). This is not a breach, just a pause until the next trading day.

Traders choose between a 60% profit split with the full Alpha Prime development program, or an 80% profit split without it. Traders who decline the live program receive their final payout and end their relationship with Alpha Capital Group. More details are available in the Alpha Prime section of the help center.

Prohibited Trading Practices at Alpha Futures

Alpha Futures enforces strict rules around trading behavior on both evaluation and Qualified accounts. Violating any of these can result in account termination, voided profits, or denial of advancement to the Qualified phase.

Automation: AI, bots, and fully automated trading systems are prohibited. Semi-automated trading (such as a custom indicator that gives buy or sell signals) is allowed as long as the trader manually places, monitors, and manages each trade. High-frequency trading with over 100 trades per day is restricted, whether automated or manual.

Tick or micro scalping: Trades that are both less than 10 ticks and less than 2 minutes are prohibited when it forms a clear pattern in your profit. There is no blanket "must hold past X minutes" rule, but consistently opening and closing positions under 2 minutes to collect favorable fills is not allowed.

"All or nothing" trading: Using maximum leverage on a single position and relying on the Daily Loss Guard as a stop loss is prohibited.

Reverse trading and hedging: Going long on one account and short on another is not allowed. Going long one product and short a correlated product on the same account (for example, long NQ and short MNQ) is also prohibited.

Group trading: Collaborating with others to execute identical or opposite strategies across separate accounts is prohibited.

Order book spamming: Excessively stacking orders or placing multiple limit orders at the same price to manipulate fills is not allowed.

Account rolling/stacking: Taking maximum leverage positions with no plan, hitting max loss, then buying more accounts and repeating is prohibited. Storing multiple passed accounts to roll into the next one after a breach is also not allowed.

Exploiting simulated fills: Trading strategies that rely on the absence of slippage or use tight brackets to gain from favorable fills that would not occur in a live market are prohibited. Initiating trades to profit from isolated fills in gapped or illiquid markets is also not allowed.

Copy trading is permitted, but only for a single user copying across their own Alpha Futures accounts. Automated, group, and reverse trading through a copier are still prohibited.

VPS usage is allowed, but using a VPN to hide or change your IP address is not.

All trading must adhere to CME Group rules and regulations.

Other Alpha Futures Rules to Know

News Trading Policy

There are no news trading restrictions on any evaluation account.

Advanced Qualified accounts also have no news trading restrictions, though prohibited practices (like "all or nothing" trading) still apply during high-volatility events.

Standard and Zero Qualified accounts may hold through news releases, but no orders may be executed within 2 minutes before or 2 minutes after high-impact news events. Alpha Futures defines high-impact events as those marked with a red folder on ForexFactory that relate to the asset being traded. For speeches, the 2-minute window before and after applies only to the listed start time, not the entire speech.

A first-time violation results in a warning: profits from the trade within the 4-minute window are voided and the payout is denied. You will have to wait until the next eligible payout date to request again, but the account is kept. Subsequent violations after the warning lead to a breach.

Price Limit Trading

Trading is prohibited when a product is within 2% of a CME price limit. This rule applies to all Alpha Futures accounts, not just evaluations. If equity index futures (ES, NQ, RTY, YM, and their micros) have overnight price limits of 7%, you would need to stop trading once the product reaches a 5% net change on the day.

Price limits are updated at 5:05 PM EST after each session and can be found on the CME Price Limits page.

Inactivity Rule

You must place at least one trade every 10 trading days to keep your account active, regardless of trade size. This applies to both evaluation and Qualified accounts.

Trading Hours

Trading hours run from 6PM ET to 5PM ET the following day. All trades must be closed before 4:20PM ET each day.

Account Limits

Only one username per individual is permitted, and one individual per household may use Alpha Futures' services.

Bottom Line

Alpha Futures rules vary significantly across the Zero, Standard, and Advanced plans, so it pays to understand exactly which rules apply to the plan you're considering. The plan you choose determines your tradeoffs: fewer restrictions on the Advanced plan come with tighter profit-to-drawdown margins, while the Zero and Standard plans offer more room but with additional rules like the Daily Loss Guard and consistency requirements. For the latest details, check the Alpha Futures Help Center, as rules and plan parameters can change over time.

Last updated: March 25, 2026