Trailing Drawdown vs EOD Drawdown, Explained (2026)

Written and fact-checked by the Funded Futures Family team. Plan terms are verified against the official help center. Last reviewed September 1, 2026.

Trailing drawdown and End-of-Day (EOD) drawdown answer the same question two different ways: how much can your account give back before the firm closes it? An EOD drawdown only moves at the close of each session, so what happens inside the trading day never touches it. An intraday trailing drawdown follows your account in real time, including unrealized profit, so it can rise and breach you in the middle of a session. Same dollar figure, very different trading experience.

If you only remember one thing from this page, make it this: the drawdown type matters more than the drawdown amount. A $2,000 EOD drawdown and a $2,000 intraday trailing drawdown are not the same product, and traders blow accounts every week by treating them as if they were. This guide walks through both models with the same worked example, then shows which model each of our plans uses, because our own lineup splits exactly along this line.

What a drawdown actually is

Every funded and evaluation account comes with a maximum loss limit. Fall below it once, even for a second, and the account is breached. Most futures prop firms implement this as a trailing floor: it starts a fixed distance below your starting balance and moves up as you make money, so early profits raise the level you can’t fall below. The question that separates the two models is when that floor is allowed to move.

At Funded Futures Family the drawdown is the main risk rule you live with, because no FFF plan has a daily loss limit. There is no separate daily cap to manage. Understand the floor, and you understand the account.

How EOD drawdown works

End-of-Day drawdown is recalculated once per session, from your closing balance. Intraday swings are invisible to it. Only where you finish the day matters.

Worked example. You start a $50,000 account with a $2,000 EOD drawdown, so your floor begins at $48,000. During the day your open position runs to $51,500, you give most of it back, and you close the session at $50,200.

• Your floor for tomorrow: $50,200 minus $2,000 = $48,200.
• The $51,500 peak never existed as far as the drawdown is concerned.
• Even a mid-session dip to $49,000 would have been fine, because the floor was still $48,000 all day.

The result is room to breathe. You can let a trade work, sit through a pullback, and manage the position on its merits instead of managing the drawdown. The trade-off is that EOD accounts usually cost more, precisely because the rule is more forgiving.

How intraday trailing drawdown works

Intraday trailing drawdown is monitored live, and it counts unrealized profit. Every new equity peak, open trades included, drags the floor up behind it. The floor never comes back down.

Same worked example, same numbers. $50,000 account, $2,000 intraday trailing drawdown, floor starts at $48,000. Your position runs to $51,500 unrealized.

• The moment your equity touches $51,500, your floor ratchets to $49,500.
• You give back the move and your equity slips to $49,400 before you can close. Breached. Mid-session, with a green day on the books.
• The identical sequence on an EOD account would have ended with a higher floor and an open account.

This is the single most common way traders lose intraday-drawdown accounts: not on a losing day, but on a winning trade they held too long. The model effectively taxes give-back. Firms price these accounts cheaper because the rule does more of their risk management for them.

The lock: when the floor stops chasing you

There’s a third mechanic worth knowing. On FFF’s EOD plans, the floor trails your closing balance only until it reaches your starting balance, then it locks there. Once you’ve banked enough profit to push the floor to breakeven, your worst case becomes your original starting balance, and further gains stop dragging the floor up. From that point the account plays like static risk. Per-plan articles in the help center document exactly how the lock behaves on each plan, and it’s worth reading the one for your plan before your first payout cycle.

EOD vs intraday trailing, side by side

Which one should you trade?

Be honest about one number: how much open profit do you routinely give back before you exit? Traders who scale out quickly and flatten early barely feel an intraday trailing floor, and they get to pay less for the account. Traders who enter early, sit through drawdown on the position, and let winners breathe will eventually get clipped by a ratcheting floor at exactly the wrong moment. For them the EOD model isn’t a luxury, it’s the difference between trading their plan and trading the rule.

There’s also a middle path. If you genuinely don’t know which trader you are yet, pick the plan that lets you choose. Our Premier+ is the one FFF plan where drawdown mode is your call at checkout, EOD or intraday trailing, with pricing that reflects the difference.

How the FFF lineup splits

Our own plans divide cleanly along this axis, which is part of why we wrote this page:

• Prime and Straight to Funded run EOD drawdown only.
• Velocity runs intraday trailing only, and is the cheapest monthly plan partly for that reason.
• Premier+ lets you choose either mode.

Exact drawdown amounts by account size, plus every other rule that decides whether you get paid, live on the payout and trading rules reference. If you’re newer to the model itself, start with what a futures prop firm actually is.

Common questions

Is EOD or intraday trailing drawdown better?

Neither is better in the abstract; they price and punish different habits. EOD drawdown ignores everything that happens inside the session, so a trade can run to a big unrealized gain, pull back, and still leave your account healthy as long as the close is acceptable. That suits swing entries, pullback traders, and anyone who scales out slowly. Intraday trailing drawdown ratchets up with every new equity peak, unrealized profit included, so it punishes giving back open profit but costs noticeably less. That suits scalpers who take profit quickly and stop trading when ahead. The honest test is your own give-back: if you routinely let winners retrace before exiting, pay up for EOD. If you flatten fast, the intraday discount is money you get to keep. FFF’s Premier+ plan lets you pick either mode at checkout.

Does unrealized profit count against my drawdown?

It depends entirely on which drawdown model your account uses, and this is the detail that catches most traders. On an intraday trailing account, yes: the floor is recalculated from your equity peak in real time, and open-trade profit counts toward that peak. Touch a new high for one tick and your floor moves up permanently, even if you never close a single contract at that price. On an End-of-Day account, no: unrealized swings during the session are invisible, and the floor is recalculated only from your closing balance. That single difference explains the classic horror story of breaching an account on a green day, which can only happen under the intraday model. At FFF, Velocity uses the intraday model, Prime and Straight to Funded use EOD, and Premier+ offers a choice between the two.

Why are intraday drawdown accounts cheaper?

Because the rule itself does risk management the firm would otherwise have to price in. An intraday trailing floor cuts losing behavior off faster: it converts give-back into breaches, ends accounts earlier when a trader over-holds, and caps how far a hot streak can turn into a deep exposure for the firm’s risk desk. That reduces the firm’s expected cost per account, and the discount gets passed to the sticker price. EOD accounts invert the trade: the trader gets room to sit through intraday noise, hold through pullbacks, and manage positions on their own terms, so the firm carries more risk per account and charges more for it. Velocity is FFF’s cheapest monthly plan partly because it runs intraday trailing; Prime and Premier+ EOD configurations cost more for exactly the mirror-image reason.

What happens when the drawdown locks at my starting balance?

On FFF’s EOD plans the trailing floor follows your closing balance upward only until it reaches the balance you started with, and then it stops moving. From that point your worst case is your original starting balance, no matter how much higher the account climbs. Practically, the lock changes how the account feels: before it, every profitable close raises the level you must defend; after it, further gains are genuinely yours to risk, and the account behaves like one with static drawdown. A losing close before the lock never pulls the floor back down; under both models the floor only rises or holds. Getting to the lock quickly is one reason experienced funded traders bank early profits deliberately. The precise lock behavior is documented per plan in the FFF help center, and it’s worth reading your plan’s article before you build a payout rhythm around it.

Which FFF plans use which drawdown type?

The lineup splits cleanly. Prime and Straight to Funded run End-of-Day drawdown only, recalculated from each session’s closing balance, which pairs with their role as the steadier, evaluation-in-a-day and skip-the-evaluation routes. Velocity runs intraday trailing only, which is one reason it’s the cheapest monthly plan in the lineup. Premier+ is the flexible one: you choose EOD or intraday trailing at checkout, and the price differs by mode because the risk the firm carries differs by mode. Exact drawdown dollar amounts scale with account size on every plan, and they’re listed alongside consistency rules, payout cadence, and per-payout maxes on the payout and trading rules reference, which is kept synced with the official help center. No FFF plan adds a daily loss limit on top, so the drawdown is the loss rule.