E8 Markets Rules: E8 One, E8 Pro, and E8 Signature
20 min read
E8 Markets runs three different challenges, and the biggest difference between them is not the profit target. It's the drawdown. Each plan uses a different type, and picking the wrong one is how traders lose accounts to a rule they didn't know applied to them. This guide covers every E8 Markets rule across all three plans, from the challenge to the performance account.
How E8 Markets Accounts Work
E8 Markets is a simulated trading firm where you can trade forex and crypto. You pay a one-time fee for access to an account, and both the challenge account and the performance account are simulated.
Every E8 Markets challenge follows the same two-stage path. You start on a SimFi Challenge Account, where you hit a profit target without breaking any of the risk limits.
After you pass, E8 moves you to a SimFi Performance Account where you trade to earn payouts. That is the final stage: there is no live account after it, and E8 states it does not operate as a broker or handle live market transactions.
Every plan is sold on both forex and crypto, across more than 150 markets, and the rules are identical. Leverage is the one difference. Forex accounts run 1:30 on forex pairs, 1:15 on indices and metals, and 1:1 on crypto instruments. Crypto accounts run 1:5 on Bitcoin and Ethereum and 1:2 on everything else.
Account sizes run from $5,000 to $500,000 depending on the plan. You can trade through cTrader, MetaTrader 5, TradeLocker, or MatchTrader, though traders in the US are limited to TradeLocker and MatchTrader.
A few E8 rules run on a clock, and that clock is server time rather than your local one. E8's servers sit at UTC+2 in winter and UTC+3 in summer, so midnight server time lands at 5 PM Eastern year round. That is when the trading day rolls over.
E8 Markets Plans Compared
E8 Markets sells three plans: E8 One, E8 Pro, and E8 Signature. What separates them is how the maximum drawdown works. E8 One lets you choose yours, and that choice also sets your profit target and your daily limit. The level then rises as you close profit, which E8 calls Dynamic. E8 Pro fixes it at 8% and holds it there until your first payout, which is Static. E8 Signature recalculates it at the end of each trading day, which E8 calls EOD Dynamic.
E8 One | E8 Pro | E8 Signature | |
|---|---|---|---|
Account sizes | $5K to $500K | $5K to $500K | $25K to $150K |
Profit target | 6% to 21%, set by your drawdown choice | 8% | 6% |
Maximum drawdown | 4% to 14%, Dynamic | 8%, Static | 3% or 4% by size, EOD Dynamic |
Daily limit | 3% to 9.2% Daily Drawdown, hard breach | 2.5% Daily Drawdown, hard breach | 2% Daily Pause, soft, performance stage only |
Daily profit cap | None | 2% | None |
Consistency rule | 40% best day, performance stage only | None | 35% best day, performance stage only |
Payout share | 80%, 90%, or 100% | 80% or 100% | 80% |
Payout frequency | On demand, no schedule | Daily | 5 profitable days between payouts, first one exempt |
Payout caps | None | None | Yes, by account size and payout number |
News trading | Challenge stage only | Allowed on both stages | Allowed on both stages |
Weekend and overnight holding | Allowed | Allowed | Not allowed |
Passing the challenge works the same way on all three. Reach the profit target in closed profit without breaking a limit along the way. There is no deadline and no minimum number of trading days, so a challenge can be passed in a single day. None of the three plans charges an activation fee when you reach the performance account.
Inactivity is the one clock that applies. You need to place and close at least one trade every 60 days, or E8 closes the account.
E8 One Rules
E8 One is the only plan you configure yourself. You choose the maximum drawdown at checkout, and that single choice sets your profit target and your daily drawdown along with it. There are five options.
Maximum drawdown | Profit target | Daily drawdown |
|---|---|---|
4% | 6% | 3% |
6% | 9% | 4% |
8% | 12% | 5.3% |
10% | 15% | 6.6% |
14% | 21% | 9.2% |
The pattern is that the profit target is always 1.5 times the drawdown you pick. A wider drawdown costs you a higher target, so a 4% drawdown needs 6% profit while a 14% drawdown needs 21%.
You also choose your payout share at checkout, at 80%, 90%, or 100%. Account sizes run $5,000, $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000, $200,000, $400,000, and $500,000.
E8 One Challenge Rules
You pass by reaching your profit target in closed profit without touching the drawdown limits on the way there. There is no deadline and no minimum number of trading days, so it can be done in a single day.
The maximum drawdown and the daily drawdown are the only two loss limits that can fail you, and reaching either one closes the account permanently.
The maximum drawdown sits under the account as a floor and does not reset. It is Dynamic, which means it rises with your balance as you close profit, and that mechanic is covered in the drawdown section below. The daily drawdown is measured against the balance you start the day with, so it resets every morning and gives you a fresh limit no matter how the day before went.
Nothing else applies at this stage. There is no consistency requirement and no daily profit cap. News trading is unrestricted, and you can hold positions overnight and over the weekend.
E8 One Performance Account Rules
The drawdown limits do not change when you reach the performance account. Your maximum drawdown and daily drawdown carry over at the same levels, and the maximum is still Dynamic. Two new rules arrive, and payouts become available.
The first is a consistency rule. Your best trading day cannot account for more than 40% of your total profit at the point you request a payout.
The math bites harder than it sounds. If your best day is $4,000, you need $10,000 in total profit before you can request anything, so one outsized session early can lock you out until the rest of the account catches up. Staying on top of it means watching your best day against your running total. Tools like Tanto do that work for you: your closed trades sync from E8 automatically, your daily profit is broken out day by day so your best one is easy to spot, and you can journal individual trades or write up the whole day as you go.
The second is a news restriction. You cannot open or close a position within five minutes either side of a high impact news event, and E8 may remove profits made from trades that break this.
Payouts are on demand, with no schedule and no waiting period. You can request as soon as your net profit is more than 50% of your daily drawdown, which on a $100,000 account with a 4% daily drawdown means at least $2,000.01. The earliest a first payout lands is three days in, and that is not a waiting rule. Three days is simply the fastest the 40% consistency rule can be satisfied. E8 One has no payout caps.
Watch what a payout does to your floor. Taking profit out drops your balance, but your trailing floor stays where your closed profit put it, so withdrawing everything can leave you sitting on it or below it before you place another trade. Leave enough in to keep a working gap, and treat the amount you can request and the amount you should request as two different numbers.
You can buy as many challenge accounts as you want. Performance accounts are capped at $500,000 in total allocation, counted separately for forex and crypto, and that ceiling applies per household rather than per person.
E8 Pro Rules
On E8 Pro you pick two things at checkout: your account size and your payout share, at 80% or 100%. Every account runs an 8% profit target, an 8% static drawdown, a 2.5% daily drawdown, and a 2% daily profit cap, at every size.
Account size | Profit target | Max drawdown | Daily drawdown | Daily profit cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
$5,000 | $400 | $400 | $125 | $100 |
$10,000 | $800 | $800 | $250 | $200 |
$25,000 | $2,000 | $2,000 | $625 | $500 |
$50,000 | $4,000 | $4,000 | $1,250 | $1,000 |
$100,000 | $8,000 | $8,000 | $2,500 | $2,000 |
$200,000 | $16,000 | $16,000 | $5,000 | $4,000 |
$400,000 | $32,000 | $32,000 | $10,000 | $8,000 |
$500,000 | $40,000 | $40,000 | $12,500 | $10,000 |
E8 Pro Challenge Rules
You pass by reaching the 8% profit target without breaching the drawdown limits first. There is no deadline and no minimum number of trading days.
The 2.5% daily drawdown is measured against your starting balance for that day. The 8% maximum drawdown is static, which means it sits 8% below your initial balance and does not move as you make profit. Reaching either limit closes the account permanently. The static drawdown changes only once, at your first payout, when it rises to your initial balance level and stays there.
The daily profit cap is the rule that surprises people. You can make more than 2% in a day, and your balance will show it, but anything above the cap is automatically stripped back out between midnight and 1 AM server time. Only 2% counts toward your target and your payout performance. Splitting a large winner across days through hedging or partial closes to work around this is not allowed, and E8 may consolidate that profit into a single day.
Nothing else applies. There is no consistency rule, news trading is unrestricted at both stages, and you can hold positions overnight and over the weekend.
E8 Pro Performance Account Rules
Most of the rules do not change when you reach the performance account. The 8% static drawdown, the 2.5% daily drawdown, and the 2% daily profit cap all carry over. There is still no consistency rule, and news trading is still unrestricted.
One rule does change. After your first payout, the static drawdown moves up to your initial balance and stays there permanently, so the floor that started 8% below your balance now sits level with it.
That move is why payouts work in two steps. Half your profit is set aside as the requestable amount, and you receive 80% or 100% of that half depending on the share you bought. The other half stays in the account as a drawdown buffer, which is what sits between you and the new floor.
You can request a payout every day, as long as you have made at least 1% profit since your last one. On a $100,000 account that is $1,000.
There are no payout caps on E8 Pro. Your total allocation across E8 Pro performance accounts is capped at $500,000, counted separately for forex and crypto, per household.
E8 Signature Rules
E8 Signature is a fixed rules challenge with an 80% payout share. Every account runs a 6% profit target, and the maximum drawdown is the EOD Dynamic type, which moves once a day at market close rather than tracking your equity through the session.
Account size | Profit target | EOD drawdown |
|---|---|---|
$25,000 | $1,500 | $1,000 |
$50,000 | $3,000 | $2,000 |
$100,000 | $6,000 | $3,000 |
$150,000 | $9,000 | $4,500 |
The percentage tightens as the account grows, at 4% on the two smaller accounts and 3% on the two larger ones. A $150,000 account gives you six times the capital of a $25,000 one but only four and a half times the drawdown room.
Signature is also the only plan with a trading hours rule. All positions are closed by 23:00 server time and trading reopens at 00:15, so you cannot hold anything overnight or over the weekend.
E8 Signature Challenge Rules
You pass by reaching the 6% profit target in closed profit. There is no deadline and no minimum number of trading days.
One limit can fail you, and that is the EOD Dynamic drawdown. There is no daily loss limit at this stage. That does not make intraday swings safe, though. What updates once a day is where the loss level sits, not whether E8 is watching it, so an equity dip that reaches the level during the session still closes the account.
Nothing else applies during the challenge. News trading is unrestricted, and there is no consistency rule and no daily profit cap.
E8 Signature Performance Account Rules
The EOD drawdown carries over unchanged, and news trading stays unrestricted. One new rule arrives, and several payout conditions come with it.
The new rule is a 2% Daily Pause, measured against your starting balance for the day. Floating losses count toward it. Reaching it is not a breach: trading stops for the rest of the day and resets at midnight with your account intact. It is the only loss limit on any plan that pauses you instead of breaching you.
Four conditions gate every payout.
The consistency rule caps your best trading day at 35% of your total profit.
Five profitable days between payouts, which does not apply to your first one. A profitable day means realized closed profit of 0.3% or more, so $75 on a $25,000 account and $450 on a $150,000 one.
A $100 minimum payout. The $100 is what you get paid, not the profit you request, so at an 80% share you need $125 of profit to clear it.
A buffer equal to your EOD drawdown, which stays in the account and cannot be requested. On a $100,000 account that is $3,000 permanently parked, and it exists so that withdrawing your profit cannot push you through the drawdown floor.
Signature also has a payout cap, and the cap rises as you take more payouts.
Payout | $25,000 | $50,000 | $100,000 | $150,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1st and 2nd | $1,000 | $1,250 | $2,250 | $3,250 |
3rd and 4th | $1,250 | $2,250 | $3,250 | $4,250 |
5th onward | $1,500 | $3,250 | $4,250 | $5,250 |
Taking the full cap requires a minimum balance, which varies by account size and payout number. Below that balance you can still request a smaller amount, as long as it clears the buffer and the $100 minimum. E8 publishes those tables in its payout caps and buffers article.
E8 Markets Drawdown Types Explained
E8 uses three types of maximum drawdown, one for each plan, plus two kinds of daily limits. Each one gives you a loss level you have to stay above. The dollar amount never changes, what changes is where that level sits and what moves it.
Plan | Drawdown type | How the level moves |
|---|---|---|
E8 One | Dynamic | Rises each time you close a profit, then locks at your initial balance |
E8 Pro | Static | Does not move while you trade. Rises to your initial balance after your first payout |
E8 Signature | EOD Dynamic | Rises with your highest end of day balance, updated once a day at market close, then locks at your initial balance |
E8 One, E8 Pro | Daily drawdown | Recalculated each day from that day's starting balance |
E8 Signature | Daily Pause | Recalculated each day from that day's starting balance. Performance stage only |
Four of the five are hard limits, and they all breach the same way. E8 checks your equity as well as your balance, so unrealized losses count against you the moment they happen. If either figure reaches your loss level the account closes permanently, and because E8 closes your positions automatically, ending up back above the level afterward does not undo it. The Daily Pause is the exception.
Dynamic Drawdown (E8 One)
Dynamic is E8's name for a trailing drawdown. Pick 6% and your floor sits 6% below your highest closed balance, following it up as you bank winners. It trails on closed balance, not equity, so an open winner does nothing for it until you close the trade. Losses are not so patient. Equity and balance both count against the floor, so an open loser can breach you before you ever close it.
It stops trailing at breakeven. Once you have banked profit equal to your drawdown, the floor has reached your starting balance and locks there.
E8 publishes a worked example with dashboard screenshots in its Dynamic drawdown article.
Static Drawdown (E8 Pro)
Static is a fixed drawdown. It does not trail, so your floor sits 8% below where you started and stays there however much you make.
It moves once, at your first payout, when it jumps to breakeven and stays there. That is why E8 holds back half your profit as a buffer: it is the cushion between you and the new floor.
Equity and balance both count against the floor, so an open loser can take you out even if you would have closed it green.
EOD Dynamic Drawdown (E8 Signature)
EOD Dynamic is an end of day trailing drawdown, the same kind used on most futures evaluations. It trails your closing balance rather than your peak, and it only updates once a day at market close. Like Dynamic, it locks at breakeven once you have banked profit equal to your drawdown.
Floating losses breach you. E8 checks your equity against the floor, not just your closed balance, so an open loser can end the account before you close it.
E8 publishes a worked example with dashboard screenshots in its EOD Dynamic drawdown article.
Daily Drawdown (E8 One and E8 Pro)
This is a daily loss limit. The amount is fixed against your starting balance and never changes, but it resets from wherever your balance sits at rollover, so you get a fresh limit each day.
On a $100,000 account with a 4% daily drawdown, the amount is $4,000. Start the day at $103,000 and you cannot go below $99,000 that session. Equity and balance both count here too, so a position sitting at a $4,000 loss breaches you whether or not you close it. Hit the limit and the account is gone, the same as the maximum drawdown.
Daily Pause (E8 Signature)
This is a soft daily loss limit. It sits 2% below your starting balance for the day, floating losses count toward it, and hitting it stops you trading until the next day instead of ending the account. It resets at midnight and only applies once you are on a performance account.
E8 Markets Payouts and Profit Split
Your profit split depends on the plan, and on two of them you pick it at checkout. E8 One runs 80%, 90%, or 100%. E8 Pro runs 80% or 100%. E8 Signature is fixed at 80%.
What you have to do to qualify for a payout differs by plan and is covered in each plan's section above. Everything after that is the same on all three.
You request payouts from the E8X dashboard. The request button stays inactive until you meet your plan's conditions, and anything still outstanding shows as pending in your payout overview.
Before your first payout you have to onboard with one of E8's two payment providers, WorkMarket for bank transfers or Rise for cash and crypto. That means signing agreements, submitting tax information, and completing KYC. Worth checking the country lists before you buy rather than after you pass, because if neither provider can onboard you, E8 cannot pay you at all. E8 links both providers' lists, including the US states Rise does not cover, in its payouts article.
E8 published median payout times of 11 hours from request to approval, and 24 hours from request to the money landing in your Rise or WorkMarket account. Those are medians, and the full process can run to five business days depending on when you request, how quickly you finish onboarding, and whether your provider asks for anything extra. Payouts are not processed over weekends.
You can trade again as soon as your request is approved, so you are not waiting for the money to land. E8 does not charge commission or fees on payouts, though your provider may.
The minimum payout is $100 on every product, and it comes out of your payout share, so at 80% you need to request at least $125.
Clearing the minimum is not the same as being safe to withdraw, because taking profit out drops your balance back toward your drawdown floor. E8 One is the one to watch, since a payout does not move your trailing floor, so taking everything out can leave you sitting on it. E8 Pro handles this for you through the built-in split, where half your profit stays in the account either way, so you can request whatever the account allows. Signature does it with a fixed buffer equal to your EOD drawdown, which can never be requested.
Your daily limits are never affected by a payout. Both the daily drawdown and the Daily Pause recalculate from your new balance.
Rules for Every Account
These apply on all three plans, at both stages, on forex and crypto.
Prohibited Trading Practices
E8 prohibits five things outright:
All or nothing trading, meaning risking your entire daily drawdown on a single trade
Hedging across multiple accounts, including accounts you own yourself
Large volume trades placed without a coherent strategy
Running an Expert Advisor that other users are also running
Holding more than half your trades for under a minute, which is E8's guard against high frequency trading
Breaking any of these ends your participation in the program, and E8 refunds the fee for the account where it happened. E8 also reviews your trading before issuing a performance account, so a challenge you technically passed can still be denied. Short of termination, E8 can cap your risk at 1% per trade idea if it detects prohibited practices, and its risk team can ask you to keep trading for longer to show your results are repeatable.
Expert Advisors and Copy Trading
Expert advisors are allowed. The limit is one strategy per user, so if E8 sees several traders executing the same trades, it can terminate the accounts involved. E8 recommends using an EA you programmed yourself.
Copy trading is fine as long as every account involved is yours, which includes copying between challenge accounts, performance accounts, and your own personal accounts. Beyond that, every account has to be traded by you alone, and cooperating with other traders is not allowed in any form.
Stop Losses and Risk Per Trade
E8 does not require either. There is no stop loss rule, so whether you use one is left to your strategy, though E8 recommends it. There is no maximum risk per trade either. E8 notes that its most successful traders risk between 1% and 1.5% per trade idea, but presents that as a pattern rather than a rule. If your approach looks overly aggressive, the risk team may get in touch about adjusting it.
Order Sizes and Trade Frequency
Order sizes are capped at 50 lots per ticket, or 20 on gold. You can trade more than that by splitting it across multiple orders. E8 also allows 2,000 server requests a day, which covers placing, cancelling, and modifying orders along with stop loss and take profit edits.
Account Limits
There is no limit on how many challenge accounts you can buy, but performance accounts are capped, and the cap works differently depending on the plan. E8 One and E8 Pro limit your total allocation to $500,000 per product, counted separately for forex and crypto, and that ceiling applies per household rather than per person, so traders sharing an address or IP share it. E8 Signature limits you to five accounts actively managed at once, whatever size they are.
Passing more than your cap allows does not cost you anything. The extra accounts are held in reserve and become active once your allocation drops back under the limit. E8 also allows one user profile per person, so every challenge you buy has to run through the same profile.
Inactivity
You need to place and close at least one trade every 60 days. Miss that and E8 closes the account, with no entitlement to a refund.
Size does not matter, so a single 0.1 lot trade resets the clock. The rule also runs on accounts you have bought but never traded, so an account left sitting can expire before you place your first trade.
Resets and Refunds
If you fail a challenge, E8 offers a 10% discount to start again from the challenge phase. The option appears in your dashboard once the account fails.
Refunds are narrower than resets. You can only request one if you have not placed a single trade on the account and it is less than 30 days old, and E8 cannot refund a challenge paid for in crypto at all, which it puts down to anti money laundering rules. Refunds go back to your original payment method and take two to five business days.
Risk Team Interviews
E8's risk team may ask for a short interview. This is not tied to passing a challenge or requesting a payout, and E8 describes it as a random procedure rather than standard practice, covering your background, your approach to risk, and the strategy behind your results.
Bottom Line
The three E8 Markets plans differ most in how the drawdown behaves, and that is the thing to settle before you buy rather than after. E8 One lets you pick your own drawdown and buy a payout share up to 100%, at the cost of a floor that trails every winner you close. E8 Pro fixes every number, pays daily, and never trails at all. E8 Signature trails once a day on your closing balance instead, but charges you a tighter drawdown and a hard close every night. Prop firm rules change often, so check E8's help center before you commit to a plan.
By Team Tanto · Last updated: August 11, 2026