Tradeify is a futures-only proprietary trading firm that hands traders simulated capital, pays real money on the profits, and routes the strongest performers toward live funded accounts. Founded by Brett Simberkoff, it sells three one-time-purchase funding paths, Growth, Select, and Lightning, with a 90% profit split on simulated accounts and no monthly fees. The firm suits futures day traders who want end-of-day drawdown, frequent payouts, and a wide choice of platforms. It is a weak fit for anyone trading stocks or options, anyone who wants to control the timing of their own move to live capital, or anyone whose household setup conflicts with running simulated and live accounts at the same time.
What Tradeify Is and Who It Is For
Every Tradeify account trades CME futures and nothing else. That single fact decides most of the fit question before any rule is examined: a trader who wants equities, options, or forex should look elsewhere, while a futures day trader who scalps the E-mini and Micro S&P, Nasdaq, crude, or gold is in the right place.
The model is the standard prop structure with a Tradeify twist on the funding routes. A trader buys an account, trades on simulated capital, and earns withdrawable payouts at a 90% split. After a track record of payouts, the firm may promote the account to an Elite Live account that trades real capital at an 80% split. What separates Tradeify from single-format firms is that it offers three distinct ways to reach the funded stage, each aimed at a different kind of trader.
The Three Funding Paths
Growth Evaluation
Growth is the cheapest and fastest way in. The evaluation carries no consistency rule, which means a trader can pass in a single trading day by hitting the profit target while staying inside the drawdown and daily loss limit. Profit targets run $1,500, $3,000, $6,000, and $9,000 for the 25K, 50K, 100K, and 150K sizes. The trade-off is a Daily Loss Limit during both the evaluation and the funded stage, plus a 35% consistency rule once the account is funded. Growth fits a trader who is confident in a setup and wants the quickest, lowest-cost route to a funded account.
Select Evaluation
Select is the most flexible path and the one most likely to suit a serious day trader. The evaluation drops the Daily Loss Limit entirely, applies a 40% consistency rule, and requires a minimum of 3 trading days to pass. Profit targets match Growth at $1,500 through $9,000. The real draw comes after passing: the trader makes a permanent choice between two funded payout policies, Select Flex or Select Daily, and the funded stage carries no consistency rule at all. A trader who wants to decide how they get paid only after proving the strategy works will prefer this route.
Lightning Funded
Lightning skips the evaluation completely and funds the trader immediately, which is why it costs the most. Pricing runs from $345 at 25K up to $796 at 150K. Two mechanics raise the stakes. Consistency scales upward across payouts, starting at 20% for the first payout, then 25%, then 30% for every payout after. And there are no resets. If a Lightning account fails, the only option is to buy a full-price replacement, so a single breach is an expensive event rather than a low-cost retry. Lightning is built for an experienced, already-profitable trader who values the head start and will not need a second attempt.
How the Risk Rules Work in Practice
End-of-Day Trailing Drawdown
All Tradeify accounts use an end-of-day trailing drawdown rather than an intraday version, which gives a trader more room to ride out a temporary dip during the session. The limit trails the highest end-of-day balance and only ever moves up. Once an account profits past its drawdown amount by $100, the limit locks into a fixed floor at $100 above the starting balance and never moves again.
The detail that fails accounts is timing. The limit recalculates only at the close, but it is enforced tick by tick during the session. A trader who assumes the limit is static until 5 PM can hit it intraday and fail on the spot, with no recovery, because a drawdown breach is permanent. Worth noting too: the current limit does not appear on the Tradeify dashboard for every platform, so on Tradovate or NinjaTrader a trader has to add a dedicated column to see it.
Daily Loss Limit
The Daily Loss Limit is the softer of the two limits. Hitting it pauses trading for the rest of the session and the account resumes the next day, with no failure attached. It applies to Growth, Lightning, and Select Daily accounts, but not to Select Flex. Initial amounts run from $600 on a 25K Growth account up to $3,750 on a 150K, and at 6% profit the limit increases rather than disappears for accounts opened after September 2025.
The danger sits in the gap between the two limits. If the trailing drawdown is closer than the Daily Loss Limit, an account can breach the drawdown and fail before the daily limit ever triggers. Treating the Daily Loss Limit as a stop loss is therefore a mistake, because slippage in a fast market can blow through it and into the drawdown.
Consistency Rule
The consistency rule is a payout gate, not a trading restriction. No single day’s profit may exceed a set percentage of total profits when a payout is requested: 35% on Growth funded accounts, 40% on Select during the evaluation only, and the scaling 20% to 30% on Lightning. A trader can still post a huge green day and keep trading; that day simply pushes the payout further out until enough smaller days bring the ratio back in line. The practical effect is that one outsized session delays cash, which rewards steady size over hero trades.
Pricing and Fees
Every account is a one-time purchase. There are no monthly subscriptions and no activation fees, so the only mandatory costs are the account price and trading commissions. Growth and Select accounts can be reset for a fee if they fail, while Lightning has no reset and must be replaced at full price.
| Account Size | Growth | Select | Lightning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25K | $99 | $109 | $345 |
| 50K | $145 | $165 | $492 |
| 100K | $255 | $265 | $660 |
| 150K | $369 | $369 | $796 |
Commissions are charged per contract on a round-trip basis. The common instruments run $5.76 on ES and NQ, $1.82 on MES and MNQ, $5.66 on CL, and $6.20 on GC. One number matters for execution: 10 micro contracts cost more in commission than a single mini of the same product, $18.20 against $5.76 on the S&P, so contract selection is a cost decision and not only a risk one.
Market data is free as long as the trader signs the Non-Professional Agreement on first login. Skipping that signature exposes the account to a $300 per month professional data fee, which is an easy and costly thing to overlook. No broker carries a surcharge, so Tradovate, Rithmic, and WealthCharts all cost the same. All sales are final, including resets, so there are no refunds at any point.
Platforms and Instruments
A trader picks one of three brokers at checkout, and that choice determines which platforms are available. Tradovate is the cloud-based option and also unlocks NinjaTrader and TradingView on the same credentials. Rithmic opens up Tradesea, Quantower, Sierra Chart, and R|Trader. WealthCharts is its own broker and platform, run by a third party with separate logins.
The constraint to understand before buying is that platforms are switchable within a broker but not across brokers. A Rithmic trader can move freely between Quantower and Sierra Chart, but cannot reach TradingView or NinjaTrader without buying a new Tradovate account. Anyone who relies on TradingView charts or NinjaTrader automation should select Tradovate from the start.
Getting Paid
Simulated accounts pay 90% to the trader from the very first payout, processed through Rise or Plane. The mechanics differ sharply by account type, and on Select the trader chooses the structure after passing. That choice is permanent, so it deserves a close look.
| Feature | Select Flex | Select Daily |
|---|---|---|
| Payout frequency | Every 5 winning days | Daily eligibility |
| Daily Loss Limit | None | $500 / $1,000 / $1,250 / $1,750 |
| Per-payout cap (25K/50K/100K/150K) | $1,250 / $3,000 / $4,000 / $5,000 | $600 / $1,000 / $1,500 / $2,500 |
| Buffer to start withdrawing | None | $1,100 / $2,100 / $2,600 / $3,600 |
| Minimum payout | None | $250 |
Flex rewards patience with larger, less frequent withdrawals worth up to 50% of total profit per request. Daily trades that ceiling for speed, allowing a withdrawal every day up to twice the profit earned since the last payout, with a 24-hour processing window, but it adds a Daily Loss Limit and a buffer the balance must clear first. Both policies share one rule that trips up new funded traders: after any payout, the cycle resets to zero, and a losing run must be earned back to net positive before the next request is allowed.
Lightning runs on a profit-goal system instead. The first payout requires $1,500 to $9,000 in profit depending on size, dropping to $1,000 to $4,500 for later payouts, with a $1,000 minimum withdrawal and per-payout caps that scale modestly with payout number. Funded accounts of every type also start with reduced contract limits and scale up only as end-of-day equity clears set thresholds, so a trader who passed at 8 minis will not trade 8 minis on day one of the funded account.
The Live Transition and Other Restrictions
This is where Tradeify earns its caveat. The move from simulated to Elite Live trading is mandatory and timed at the firm’s discretion. A trader who is selected cannot decline. When the transition fires, all simulated and evaluation accounts close, only funded accounts that have taken at least one payout carry over, the live account restarts at a $0 balance, and the split drops from 90% to 80%. A trader therefore never fully controls when a strong simulated account ends. Fail a live account and a cool-off period of up to 4 weeks follows before a new evaluation can be purchased.
A second restriction reaches into the household. A trader cannot hold simulated and live accounts at the same time, and that exclusion applies to everyone in the household, so two traders under one roof cannot run a simulated account and a live account in parallel. Eligibility for the live consideration starts at 3 payouts on one account or 10 payouts across accounts, though hitting those numbers guarantees nothing. A trader can hold up to 5 funded accounts at once.
Bottom Line
Tradeify is one of the more flexible futures prop firms available, and its payout terms are genuinely strong. The end-of-day drawdown, the 90% simulated split from the first payout, and the option of daily withdrawals on Select Daily and Lightning make it easy to recommend for an active futures trader who understands the rules. The structure does most of its damage to traders who do not read the fine print on the drawdown timing and the live transition.
Select is the path most day traders should choose, for the no-limit evaluation and the freedom to pick a payout style after passing. Growth wins on speed and price, and Lightning is best reserved for proven traders who will not need a reset.
Pros
- Three distinct one-time-purchase funding paths with no monthly fees and no activation fees.
- 90% simulated profit split applied from the first payout, paid through Rise or Plane.
- Daily payout eligibility on Select Daily and Lightning, with a 24-hour processing window on Select Daily.
- End-of-day trailing drawdown on every account, giving more intraday room than an intraday-trailing model.
- Wide platform choice at one price, covering NinjaTrader, TradingView, Tradesea, Quantower, and Sierra Chart, with free non-professional market data once the agreement is signed.
- Growth can be passed in a single day with no evaluation consistency rule, and Select drops the Daily Loss Limit during the evaluation.
Cons
- The live transition is mandatory and timed by the firm. It closes every simulated account, restarts the balance at $0, and cuts the split to 80%, so a trader never controls when a top-performing simulated account is retired.
- The household-wide rule blocks two traders in the same home from running a simulated account and a live account at the same time.
- Lightning’s high price comes with no reset, only full-price replacement, which makes a single breach costly.
- The end-of-day drawdown is enforced in real time despite updating only at the close, and a breach is permanent, which catches traders who assume intraday dips are safe.
- All sales are final, including resets, with no refunds at any stage.