Earn2Trade Rules: TCP and Gauntlet Mini Explained (2026)

Earn2Trade runs two parallel evaluation programs with distinct rule sets layered on the same futures-only platform. The Trader Career Path (TCP) is a five-stage ladder that scales drawdown mechanics as you climb. The Gauntlet Mini is a single-phase evaluation that funds you at the size you tested at. Both share a 10-day minimum, both enforce a consistency rule, and both restrict trading to CME, COMEX, NYMEX, and CBOT futures. This pillar walks through every active rule, where the two programs diverge, and what the March 2026 Faster LiveSim Access change means for traders moving from evaluation into a paid environment.

The short version: Earn2Trade is a futures-only, education-leaning prop firm. The rules are not the most permissive in the industry, but they are documented transparently. Earn2Trade publishes a 2025 pass rate of 8.89%, which is unusual in the prop space and suggests the rule set is designed to be passable by disciplined traders rather than minimised for marketing. For deeper context on the firm's positioning, the Earn2Trade review lays out the full picture, and traders new to the brand should also read the Earn2Trade Trader Career Path explained and Earn2Trade Gauntlet Mini explained pillars before committing to a program.

What rules apply at Earn2Trade?

Earn2Trade's rule architecture has four pillars that show up in every account, regardless of program or size:

• A daily loss limit measured against end-of-day balance.
• A max loss / drawdown that changes type as you progress (end-of-day, trailing, or static).
• A consistency rule that constrains how concentrated your profit can be on a single day.
• A minimum trading days requirement of 10 days per phase.

On top of those four pillars sit firm-wide constraints: futures-only across four exchanges, contract caps that scale with account size, and a profit target that must be hit before phase completion. Education and community access are bundled into TCP subscriptions, but those are product features rather than trading rules.

What makes Earn2Trade unusual is not the existence of these rules (almost every futures-prop firm has analogues) but the way the drawdown mechanic mutates across the TCP ladder. Most competitors keep the same drawdown type from evaluation through funded. TCP changes it twice: end-of-day during evaluation and the $25K LiveSim, trailing on live $25K, $50K, and $100K, and static on live $200K. That progression rewards traders who can adapt their risk management as they scale, and it punishes traders who only know how to game one drawdown style. Compare that with how Apex Trader Funding rules handle trailing drawdown on a static-after-payout model, or how Topstep rules enforce a trailing maximum loss across the Trading Combine.

The Gauntlet Mini takes a simpler approach: end-of-day during evaluation, trailing on live, no ladder progression. That makes it the cleaner choice for traders who already have a tested edge and want a single hurdle, while TCP suits traders who want a structured development path with smaller initial capital at risk.

How do the rules differ between TCP and Gauntlet Mini?

The two programs share the same firm-wide policies (futures-only, 10-day minimum, consistency rule, 80% profit split) but diverge on capital sizing, drawdown mechanics, and ladder structure. The clearest way to see the differences is side by side.

A few practical reads come out of that table. TCP is the path for traders who want to start small, where the $25K evaluation tier carries a tighter $550 daily loss limit and a $1,500 drawdown but also a much lower profit target ($1,750) than any Gauntlet Mini phase. Gauntlet Mini is the path for traders who want to skip the early ladder rungs and step straight into a $50K, $100K, $150K, or $200K evaluation. The two are not interchangeable: a trader who passes TCP $25K is funded at $25K and has to climb, while a trader who passes Gauntlet Mini $100K is funded at $100K immediately.

The drawdown progression is the most consequential difference. On TCP, the move from end-of-day in evaluation to trailing on live is where most traders stumble. Trailing drawdown reacts to intraday equity peaks rather than session closes, which means a strategy tuned for end-of-day risk can give back its cushion the moment it goes live. On Gauntlet Mini, the same shift happens but only once, from evaluation to live, without the additional static conversion at $200K.

For a deeper drilldown into how each program's mechanics play out in practice, the Earn2Trade TCP rules deep dive and the Earn2Trade Gauntlet Mini rules subarticles cover stage-by-stage detail. The Earn2Trade drawdown rules sub-pillar focuses specifically on the EOD-to-trailing-to-static progression and how to risk-manage each stage.

What is the daily loss limit at Earn2Trade?

The daily loss limit is the maximum negative move your account can register over a single trading session before the account is breached. Earn2Trade applies it to both TCP and Gauntlet Mini, and the value scales with account size.

On TCP, the daily loss limit is $550 at the $25K tier (evaluation, LiveSim, and live), $1,100 at the $50K live tier, $2,200 at the $100K live tier, and $4,400 at the $200K live tier. On Gauntlet Mini, the published $50K tier carries a $1,100 daily loss limit; values for $100K, $150K, and $200K were not surfaced on product pages reviewed in May 2026 and should be verified before sizing positions on those accounts.

The limit is measured against end-of-day balance, not against a running intraday peak. That means short-term equity drawdown during a session is not the trigger. It is the closing balance relative to the prior session's close that matters. If your account ends a session within the daily loss budget, you live to trade the next day, even if you were briefly underwater further than the limit during the session itself. Most futures-prop firms structure daily loss limits this way; some, such as TakeProfitTrader rules, do not have a daily loss limit at all on certain account types, which is one of the bigger structural differences across the futures-prop landscape.

Practical implication: the daily loss number is your hard backstop, not your day-trade plan. Sizing strategies that consistently push close to the daily loss line will breach eventually. Most disciplined traders keep working risk well below the cap (for example, planning around a fraction of the daily loss as the maximum acceptable session loss) so that one bad day does not end the account.

How does the max loss work?

Max loss at Earn2Trade is the cumulative drawdown floor that, once breached, ends the account. The max loss number is the same dollar figure as the drawdown amount, but the type of drawdown changes as you progress.

End-of-day drawdown applies to TCP evaluation, the $25K LiveSim phase, and Gauntlet Mini evaluation and LiveSim phases. It looks at your closing balance only. Intraday excursions don't tighten the floor.

Trailing drawdown applies to TCP live $25K, $50K, $100K, and to Gauntlet Mini live accounts. It tracks the highest closing balance and pulls the max-loss floor up with it. Once your account's high-water mark moves up, the trailing drawdown floor moves up too, and it never moves back down. That makes trailing drawdown the most punishing transition for traders coming out of an end-of-day-friendly evaluation.

Static drawdown applies only to TCP live $200K, where the drawdown locks at a balance floor of approximately $194,000. Once locked, the floor does not move regardless of how high your equity climbs. Static is the friendliest variant for traders who scale quickly: it lets the cushion grow without the floor following.

Drawdown sizes by tier are summarised below; the full mechanic explanation lives in the Earn2Trade drawdown rules sub-pillar.

For the larger Gauntlet Mini sizes ($100K, $150K, $200K), the drawdown amounts were not confirmed on product pages reviewed in May 2026. Verify on earn2trade.com before relying on specific dollar figures at those tiers.

The most important risk-management read: trailing drawdown means your "available risk" shrinks every time you bank a new high. A trader who books 8% in week one cannot then size as if the original 8% cushion is still available, because it has been consumed by the trailing floor moving up. End-of-day drawdown is more forgiving on that front, which is part of why evaluation phases generally feel easier than live trading at Earn2Trade. The shift from EOD to trailing is the single biggest behavioural adjustment for new TCP funded traders.

What's the consistency rule at Earn2Trade?

Earn2Trade applies a consistency rule on both TCP and Gauntlet Mini. A consistency rule generally caps the percentage of total profit that can come from a single trading day. The idea is to demonstrate steady performance rather than one outsized session that flattered the rest of the eval.

As of May 2026, the exact percentage threshold is not published on the public TCP or Gauntlet Mini product pages. Traders should verify the current consistency percentage inside the Earn2Trade help center before the final session of an evaluation, because the rule is checked at the point of withdrawal request, not in real time. The consistency rule is one of the more frequently-updated parameters across the prop industry. For context on how peers handle it, TakeProfitTrader rules and Tradeify rules take different approaches, and Bulenox rules explicitly bake a 40% consistency rule into the funded-account stage.

Practical implication: even if you've hit your profit target, an unbalanced distribution of profit across the eval can mean the withdrawal is held until the consistency window opens. Spreading wins across the 10-day minimum, rather than relying on one big session to pull the eval over the line, is the safest way to satisfy the rule without checking specific percentages.

What is the minimum trading days requirement?

Both TCP and Gauntlet Mini require a 10 trading day minimum per phase. A trading day is a session in which the account placed at least one qualifying trade. Sessions where no trade was placed do not count.

The minimum applies to evaluation, LiveSim, and live phases independently. That means a trader passing TCP $25K evaluation in seven calendar days still has to log 10 trading days before progressing. The 10-day minimum is industry-standard for futures-prop firms, and it exists primarily to give the firm enough data points to evaluate consistency, not to slow traders down. Some competitors run shorter or longer windows. For instance, E8 Markets rules and Lucid Trading rules have their own minimum-day frameworks that are worth comparing if speed-to-funding matters to you.

There is no maximum time limit on Earn2Trade evaluations as long as the monthly subscription is active. That is a meaningful difference from firms that impose a 30-day cap on evaluation phases. At Earn2Trade, the constraint is the subscription cost, not a calendar deadline.

Which instruments are allowed at Earn2Trade?

Earn2Trade is futures-only. Trading is restricted to four exchanges:

• CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange): equity index futures (ES, NQ, RTY, YM), currencies, agriculturals.
• COMEX: metals futures (GC gold, SI silver, HG copper).
• NYMEX: energy futures (CL crude, NG natural gas, RB gasoline).
• CBOT: interest-rate and grain futures.

Stocks, options, forex spot, cryptocurrency, and CFDs are explicitly prohibited. This is one of the most restrictive asset-class scopes in the prop industry. Earn2Trade does not offer multi-asset evaluation paths the way FTMO or The 5%ers do, and there is no parallel forex or crypto product on the same brand.

Within futures, the firm supports both full-size and micro contracts on the major instruments. Contract caps scale with account size: 3 contracts at TCP $25K, 6 at $50K, 12 at $100K, and 16 at $200K. Gauntlet Mini at $50K aligns with the 6-contract cap. Caps are absolute, and a position of three minis plus six micros may or may not consume the same allowance depending on how the firm normalises micros to full-size. Verify the current micro-vs-full normalisation on earn2trade.com if you trade mixed sizes regularly.

The futures-only scope has two implications worth flagging. First, there's no way to diversify across asset classes inside a single Earn2Trade account. Equity-index, energy, and metals are all available, but you cannot hedge with forex or use stock-specific strategies. Second, market data costs apply (CME charges separately for non-professional and professional data feeds). Earn2Trade advises traders to register as Non-Professional where applicable to avoid the higher fee.

For a side-by-side on which firms span which asset classes, the futures prop firms comparison hub is the right entry point, and the Earn2Trade vs Apex Trader Funding and Earn2Trade vs Topstep head-to-heads compare the futures-only peers directly.

What happens at Faster LiveSim Access (March 2026)?

On March 4, 2026, Earn2Trade rolled out Faster LiveSim Access. The change closes the gap between passing the evaluation and being able to trade.

Before March 2026: A trader who passed TCP or Gauntlet Mini evaluation had to wait for the full onboarding sequence to complete (agreement signing, KYC, account provisioning) before they could place a trade on LiveSim. That gap was sometimes a few days, occasionally longer if compliance documents needed back-and-forth.

After March 2026: Once the evaluation is passed, the LiveSim account is provisioned immediately and the trader can begin placing trades the same session. Compliance documentation (agreements, KYC) still has to be completed, but it runs in parallel rather than as a gating step. The hard gate sits at withdrawal time: you cannot request your first payout until compliance is complete.

The practical effect is meaningful for two reasons. First, the trader's edge does not decay while paperwork sits in a queue. A strategy that exploits a specific market regime can deploy immediately. Second, the 10-day minimum trading-days clock starts the same day the evaluation passes, which can shorten the total time-to-first-payout by several sessions.

The change also slightly shifts the rule-set around onboarding rather than rule mechanics themselves. Daily loss, max loss, consistency, and minimum-day rules remain unchanged. What changed is the operational sequence between "passed" and "trading." For a fuller treatment of how this affects withdrawal timing, the Earn2Trade withdrawal-rules article in this cluster goes deeper on the compliance-gate mechanics.

What rules apply on Funded vs LiveSim?

On Earn2Trade, "funded" and "LiveSim" both refer to post-evaluation accounts where the trader is paid an 80% profit split, but the underlying mechanics differ.

LiveSim is a simulated trading environment where Earn2Trade pays profit splits from its own funds. The evaluation rules carry over (daily loss, max loss, consistency, minimum days), the drawdown shifts to trailing on the live tier, and 94.77% of 2025 passers stayed on LiveSim rather than transitioning to a real funded account. LiveSim payouts are real cash, even though the trading happens in a sim environment.

Live (real funded) accounts trade through Earn2Trade's connected brokerage relationships and execute against real market liquidity. Only 5.23% of 2025 passers traded live accounts. The headline rules are the same (daily loss, max loss, consistency, minimum days), but the drawdown progression is more aggressive: trailing through $100K, then locking to static at $200K. The live-account experience is where slippage, partial fills, and live data latency start to matter.

Both LiveSim and Live require a $100 minimum withdrawal and pay profit weekly on a self-initiated, "anytime" cadence after compliance is complete. There is no additional profit target required to withdraw on either. Once you've passed evaluation and completed compliance, profits clear at the 80% split as you book them. About 18% of accounts (LiveSim and Live) made at least one withdrawal in 2025.

For traders deciding whether to push from LiveSim into Live, the deciding factor is usually execution-quality sensitivity. Traders running scalping strategies with tight stops feel the difference between a sim fill and a live fill more than swing traders do. The Earn2Trade payout rules article in this cluster covers withdrawal-side mechanics in more depth, and the Earn2Trade Funded vs LiveSim comparison weighs the trade-off head to head.

For broader context on how Earn2Trade fits in the futures-prop landscape, see the Earn2Trade vs TakeProfitTrader and Earn2Trade vs Tradeify comparisons. Traders considering crossover into multi-asset firms can review The 5%ers rules for a forex+futures alternative.

The bottom line

Earn2Trade's rule set is structured rather than minimal. The two-program design (TCP ladder vs Gauntlet Mini single-phase) gives traders a real choice between gradual capital scaling and direct funding at a chosen size. The drawdown progression (end-of-day in evaluation, trailing on live, static at the $200K live tier) rewards traders who can adapt risk management as they climb, and it is the rule mechanic most likely to surprise traders coming from firms that hold drawdown style constant. The 10-day minimum, consistency rule, and futures-only scope are firm-wide constants that apply to everyone.

The March 2026 Faster LiveSim Access change shortened the gap between passing and trading, but it did not loosen any rules. Daily loss, max loss, consistency, and minimum trading days are unchanged. What changed is the onboarding sequence: passers can begin LiveSim immediately, with compliance gating only the first withdrawal.

For traders evaluating Earn2Trade against peers, the headline trade-offs are these: futures-only scope (versus multi-asset firms), education-bundled subscription model (versus pure-evaluation peers), transparent 8.89% pass-rate disclosure (versus firms that don't publish), and 80% profit split (in line with industry-standard but lower than the 90% offered by some scaling-tier firms). The rules themselves are mid-pack in difficulty (not the loosest, not the tightest), and the drawdown progression is the most distinctive design choice. Traders who want a structured development path will find TCP a good fit; traders who want the cleanest single-step funding route will find Gauntlet Mini simpler. The Earn2Trade review has the full firm-level context, and the futures prop firms comparison hub maps Earn2Trade against the rest of the industry.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main rules at Earn2Trade?

Earn2Trade enforces a daily loss limit, a maximum drawdown, a consistency rule, and a minimum 10 trading days per phase. The exact daily loss and drawdown amounts vary by program (TCP vs Gauntlet Mini) and by account size, and trading is restricted to CME, COMEX, NYMEX, and CBOT futures.

Does Earn2Trade have a daily loss limit?

Yes. Both TCP and Gauntlet Mini use a daily loss limit. On TCP it scales from $550 at the $25K tier up to $4,400 at the $200K live tier. On Gauntlet Mini at $50K it sits at $1,100. The daily limit is checked against your end-of-day balance.

How does Earn2Trade's max loss work?

The max loss type changes by stage. During TCP evaluation and LiveSim it is end-of-day, on most live TCP tiers it converts to trailing, and at the $200K live level it locks as a static drawdown. Gauntlet Mini uses end-of-day during evaluation and trailing on live.

What is the consistency rule at Earn2Trade?

Earn2Trade applies a consistency requirement on both TCP and Gauntlet Mini. The exact percentage is not published on the public product pages as of May 2026 — verify the current threshold inside the help center before submitting your withdrawal.

How many trading days do I need at Earn2Trade?

Both TCP and Gauntlet Mini require a 10 trading day minimum per phase. A trading day generally means a session in which you placed at least one qualifying trade.

Which markets can I trade at Earn2Trade?

Earn2Trade is futures-only across CME, COMEX, NYMEX, and CBOT. Stocks, options, forex, crypto, and CFDs are explicitly prohibited firm-wide.

What changed in March 2026 with Faster LiveSim Access?

On March 4, 2026 Earn2Trade rolled out Faster LiveSim Access. Once you pass an evaluation, you can begin trading on LiveSim immediately rather than waiting for full onboarding. Compliance documentation must still be completed before any withdrawal is processed.

Are the rules different on LiveSim vs Live at Earn2Trade?

The headline rules — daily loss, max loss, consistency, minimum trading days — are aligned across LiveSim and Live within the same tier, with the drawdown type shifting from end-of-day during evaluation to trailing or static on live. The biggest practical difference is the funding source: LiveSim payouts come from Earn2Trade, live payouts come from a real funded account at an 80% split.

Can I hold trades overnight or over the weekend at Earn2Trade?

Overnight and weekend holding policies were not stated on the product pages reviewed in May 2026 and should be verified inside the help center before relying on them. Most futures-prop firms restrict holding through major rollover windows.

Is news trading allowed at Earn2Trade?

News trading rules are not surfaced on the public TCP or Gauntlet Mini pages as of May 2026. Traders should review the help center evaluation rules article for the current policy before high-impact data releases.

What happens if I break a rule at Earn2Trade?

Breaching the daily loss limit or the max drawdown ends the current account. Whether you can reset and continue depends on the program. TCP resets cost $65, and Gauntlet Mini reset terms should be verified on earn2trade.com.

Does Earn2Trade restrict any trading strategies?

Earn2Trade enforces the consistency rule, contract-size caps that scale by account, and the 10-day minimum. Strategies that depend on a single oversized day, copy-trading across many accounts, or holding through prohibited sessions can run into trouble. Always read the current rule set on earn2trade.com before scaling a strategy.