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Daily loss limit position sizer for Topstep and other futures prop firms
Give it a stop distance and the money you are willing to lose, and it returns a contract count that still fits inside the room your daily limit has left today.
Why the stop decides the size, not the other way round
Most losing days on a prop firm account start with a contract count chosen out of habit. Three contracts because yesterday was three contracts, and the stop goes wherever the chart says it goes. That makes the dollar loss a consequence of the setup rather than a decision, so a wide stop and a narrow one cost wildly different amounts on the same size, and neither figure was ever compared against the limit that ends the day.
Turning it around fixes the problem in one step. Decide the money first, measure the stop the setup actually needs, and let the contract count fall out of the two. A wide stop then means fewer contracts, a tight stop means more, and every trade costs about the same when it is wrong. That is the property a daily limit rewards, because a limit is a fixed pot of dollars and the only thing that empties it is dollars.
Size your next trade
Verified September 4, 2026$2 a point, $0.50 a tick
Published limit $3,000
80 ticks
A common rule of thumb is a fraction of the daily loss limit, for example one tenth.
Enter it however your platform shows it. Zero at the start of a session.
Contracts to trade
5
At risk on this trade
$200
Room left today
$3,000
Losses this size the day allows
15
Trade 5 contracts and this stop costs you $200 if it is hit, leaving $2,800 of today's limit behind it. A full day at this size allows 15 losses before the limit stops you.
The published limit for this size. It counts realised and open loss together and resets with the next session. Topstep help center: the daily loss limit article
A scaled example on one contract
Take a micro Nasdaq contract at $2 a point and a fixed $200 of risk per trade. The stop distance is the only thing that moves:
Three different sizes, one consistent cost. Notice the 30 point row: three contracts risk $180 rather than the full $200, because four would risk $240 and the count rounds down. That gap is deliberate. A sizing rule that rounds up to reach the round number is not a rule, it is a preference for bigger positions wearing one.
The same arithmetic scales to any contract in the picker, and the choice of contract matters as much as the count. A micro Nasdaq point is $2 and its full-size sibling is $20, so the identical stop on the mini costs ten times as much. On a $3,000 daily limit that is the difference between a plan and a coin flip.
Sizing after a loss, when the room has shrunk
A daily loss limit is not a level you approach, it is a budget you spend. Start a session with $3,000 of room, lose $200 twice, and the third trade is not being taken against $3,000 any more. It is being taken against $2,600, and the risk figure that was a fifteenth of the day at the open is now a thirteenth of what is left.
The damage shows up at the end of a bad run rather than at the start of it. Traders keep sizing off the original number, hit the limit on a trade that was perfectly ordinary, and read the result as bad luck rather than as arithmetic that stopped being true two trades earlier. Enter what today has cost you in the field above and the sizer caps the risk at the room genuinely left, which is why the contract count falls as the day goes on.
It also answers the question worth asking before the session rather than during it: how many losses of this size does the day allow at all? If the honest answer is two, then a third trade after two losses is not a trade, it is the account. For the wider picture on how these limits work and what they cost, see the daily loss limit guide and the trailing drawdown guide.
Common questions
How do I size a futures position against a daily loss limit?
Work out what one contract costs you if the stop is hit: the stop distance in points multiplied by the dollar value of a point on that contract. Divide the money you are willing to lose by that figure and round down. Then check the answer against the room your daily limit has left, because a risk that was correct at the open is too large once part of the day is already spent.
Why round the contract count down instead of up?
Rounding up puts the trade past the number you just decided you would accept, which is the opposite of what a sizing rule is for. On the last trade of a red day those few dollars are the difference between a session that ends and an account that does. This calculator always rounds down, and shows you the dollars the rounded size really risks rather than the figure you typed.
How much should I risk per trade?
That is your decision, not a formula. A common rule of thumb is a fraction of the daily loss limit, for example one tenth, so a normal losing run costs a fraction of the day rather than all of it. What matters more than the exact fraction is that the number is fixed before the session and applied through the stop distance rather than by picking a contract count out of habit.
Should the size change after a losing trade?
The dollars you can risk change, so yes. Your daily limit is a fixed pot and every loss takes a piece of it, so the room left after two losses is smaller than the room you started with. Sizing off the original figure late in a red day is how one ordinary loss becomes the one that breaches the limit. Enter what today has cost you and the calculator caps the risk at what is genuinely left.
Does a daily loss limit count open profit and loss?
On many programs it does. Firms commonly track the combined realised and unrealised figure through the session and flatten the account automatically when it reaches the limit, which means an open position moving against you can end the day without a single loss being booked. Check the wording on your own firm page, and treat the limit as a level your open trade can reach, not only your closed ones.
What if my firm publishes no daily loss limit?
Some plans publish none, and the drawdown is then the only published loss constraint. Pick a daily cap of your own, type it into the calculator and treat it exactly as a published limit.
Related free tools
Track your daily loss room automatically in Propfy
A journal that knows what the session has already cost you can tell you the size before the trade, instead of after the limit.
Firms and plans appear here only where the figures are published on a page this tool can link to. Figures verified September 4, 2026; rules and prices change, check the firm's page. Sources: Topstep, Earn2Trade, MyFundedFutures, Take Profit Trader.
Contract point values and tick sizes come from each contract's published exchange specification. Educational only, not financial advice. Propfy is an independent trading journal for Topstep and other futures prop firms, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any firm named on this page. Firm names are used only to identify whose published rules a figure came from.