Reset Fee
A fee paid to restart a failed evaluation account from scratch, typically $50-$100 per reset, allowing traders to retry without buying a new evaluation.
What is Reset Fee?
A reset fee is a small fee — typically much less than the original evaluation cost — that restarts a failed evaluation account. You hit the trailing drawdown, blew the daily loss limit, or otherwise breached a rule and lost the eval. Instead of buying a brand-new evaluation, you pay the reset fee and the same account spins back up at the original starting balance with the original rules.
This is a key economic feature for prop firms. Without resets, every failed eval would force the trader to buy a new one — pricing many traders out of the model. With resets, a trader can retry as many times as they’re willing to pay, and most firms find that 3-5 resets is the average path to a passed eval.
Reset fees are evaluation-only. There is no equivalent for funded accounts — if you blow a funded account by breaching the trailing drawdown, the account is permanently closed and you must buy a new evaluation (and re-pay the activation fee on top).
How Reset Fee works
How a reset works mechanically: You log in to the firm dashboard, navigate to your failed evaluation, click the reset button, pay the reset fee. The account refreshes to the original starting balance, the rule clock starts fresh, and your eval is live again — same account number, same login, no broker handover.
Time-to-reset: Most firms reset within minutes to a few hours. Apex resets are typically instant on the dashboard. TPT resets process within the trading session. There’s no “cool-down” period between resets at most firms.
Reset cost as % of original eval: Reset fees are usually 30-50% of the original evaluation cost. Apex $50K eval $167, reset $80 = 48%. TPT $50K Test ~$165/month, resets vary. Tradeify resets typically run $25-$75 depending on account size, often cheaper than competitors.
Limits: Most firms allow unlimited resets. A handful cap at 3-5 resets per account per quarter (rare). Verify on the firm’s website if you anticipate needing many resets.
Reset economics for serial failers: A trader on their 10th reset has paid $50 (eval discount) + (10 × $80) = $850. At that point, they should probably be reflecting on whether the strategy works, not paying for another reset. Resets are cheap individually, expensive cumulatively.
Worked example
Realistic eval-pass cost trajectory at Apex $50K:
- Initial eval purchase (with DGT discount code): $50
- Reset 1 (failed via trailing drawdown breach on day 4): $80
- Reset 2 (failed via daily loss limit on volatile NFP day): $80
- Reset 3 (cleanly passed on day 11): $80
- Activation fee on pass: $130
- Total: $420 from initial purchase to first funded-account trade
Reset vs. new eval economics:
- Reset fee: $80 (Apex $50K)
- New eval purchase (no discount): $167
- Difference: $87
- If a trader could pass on the next attempt either way, reset is the obvious choice.
- If a trader has been failing repeatedly, sometimes a fresh psychological start helps — some traders deliberately buy a new eval after 3-4 failed resets, treating the higher fee as a re-commitment cost.
Reset Fee vs related concepts
Side-by-side comparison of Reset Fee against the most commonly confused alternatives.
| Concept | Definition | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Reset Fee this term | A fee paid to restart a failed evaluation account from scratch, typically $50-$100 per reset, allowing traders to retry without buying a new evaluation. | Fees & Costs |
| Activation Fee | A one-time fee charged by most prop firms to activate the funded account stage after passing the evaluation, typically $85-$200. | Fees & Costs |
| Rule Breach | Any violation of a prop firm's trading rules — some breaches are warnings, others permanently end the account. | Rules & Risk |
| Trailing Drawdown | A drawdown limit that follows your account's high water mark, tightening as you profit and capping your maximum loss from peak balance — the dominant risk model in the futures prop firm industry. | Rules & Risk |
How major prop firms handle Reset Fee
Every firm implements reset fee differently. Here's the firm-by-firm breakdown — DGT-trusted firms surface first, with implementation notes for each.
| Firm | How they handle it | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Apex Trader Funding DGT TRUSTED | Reset fee approximately $80 per reset (varies by account size). Unlimited resets allowed. Reset is instant on the Apex dashboard — same account number, same login, fresh starting balance. | |
| Take Profit Trader DGT TRUSTED | Reset fee available on Test (evaluation) accounts; varies by account size. PRO and PRO+ accounts CANNOT be reset — failure ends the account permanently. Important distinction. | |
| Tradeify DGT TRUSTED | Reset fees on Tradeify evaluations typically run $25-$75, often cheaper than competitors. Resets allowed across Growth and Select evaluation products. Lightning Funded accounts may have different reset policies. | |
| Lucid Trading DGT TRUSTED | Reset fees apply on evaluation accounts. Verify exact reset fee on lucidtrading.com per product — Lucid occasionally bundles resets into discounted eval packages. | |
| FundedNext DGT TRUSTED | Reset policy applies on the futures vertical evaluation. Specific reset fee varies — check fundednext.com for current pricing on the relevant account size. | |
| Bulenox | Reset fees apply on Bulenox evaluations and are typically among the lowest in the industry, matching their cheaper-entry positioning. |
Why traders fail Reset Fee
Resetting too quickly after a failure. A trader who breaches drawdown by overtrading often resets the same day and overtrades again. Take a day off, review what went wrong, then reset.
Treating resets as risk-free retries. Each reset is real money. $80 × 5 resets = $400 — that’s a real loss most traders never accounted for in their “prop firm budget.”
Forgetting the reset doesn’t reset payouts. If you’ve taken 2 payouts from a previous funded account that’s now closed, those payouts are kept. But if you reset a still-active eval, you don’t lose anything you’d already “earned” on that eval (eval profits aren’t real money — they’re just progress toward the target).
Resetting after one bad day. Eval drawdowns are designed to give you breathing room. If you’re down $1,500 on a $50K eval with a $2,500 drawdown, you have $1,000 of room left — that’s not a reset situation, that’s a “trade smaller for the next 3 days” situation.
Frequently asked questions about Reset Fee
How many times can I reset a failed evaluation?
Most major prop firms allow unlimited resets. Apex, TPT, Tradeify, Lucid, and others have no cap on reset count. A few smaller firms cap at 3-5 resets per quarter — verify on the firm site if you anticipate needing many.
Can I reset a funded account?
No. Resets apply only to evaluation accounts. If you breach a rule on a funded (PA, PRO, etc.) account, the account closes permanently and you must buy a new evaluation to start over. There is no equivalent of a "funded reset."
Is reset cheaper than buying a new evaluation?
Usually. Reset fees are typically 30-50% of original eval cost. Apex eval $167 reset $80 (48%). TPT and Tradeify follow similar ratios. The math favors resetting unless you're using a heavy promo discount on a fresh eval.
Does resetting affect my reputation with the firm?
No. Firms do not track or penalize traders for high reset counts. From the firm's perspective, every reset is revenue. As long as you eventually pass, the reset history is irrelevant to the funded account.
What happens if I reset right before passing?
Your progress resets to zero — back to starting balance with no profit. If you were $500 from passing, that progress is gone. Only reset on a clear failure, never on a temporary drawdown that you can still trade out of.