Futures Position Size Calculator
Our Account Risk Planner sizes every trade off how much drawdown you have left, the one number that decides whether a funded account lives.
One number, straight off your platform. It already accounts for your drawdown type, so you don't have to.
This account is sold with a choice of drawdown types, so both sets of rules are below. Size off the one you actually bought.
Your drawdown line never moves. Every dollar of profit adds to your available drawdown, and the math you see here stays good until you give profit back.
Your drawdown line follows your high point, including open trades. A spike in open profit moves it up, and giving that profit back doesn't move it back down. Re-check your available drawdown after every trade.
Your drawdown line only moves at the session close, on profit from closed trades. During the day it holds still while you trade, and it steps up overnight.
Some firms freeze the trail for good once you reach a set profit level. After the lock your available drawdown can grow past the listed max drawdown, and any amount at or above that number sizes you at full size here.
This tool teaches position sizing. It is not financial advice, and your firm's dashboard is the final word on your numbers.
How It Works
- Pick your account. Choose your firm and account size, or enter any account size and max drawdown by hand.
- Tell it where you stand. Planning a fresh account needs nothing. On a live account, type one number: your available drawdown, how much drawdown you have left right now, read straight off your platform.
- Set your stop. Pick your market and your stop distance in ticks, and the tool returns your contract count, your max loss per trade, and how many losers you can survive from here.
How Position Sizing Works on a Funded Account
The math is one division and one ladder. Take your max drawdown and divide it by your cushion, 20 losing trades by default, and that is your full-size max loss per trade. A $3,000 drawdown with a cushion of 20 means you never lose more than $150 on one trade at full size. That single number is doing more risk management than most funded traders ever set up, because it ties your trade risk to the only thing the firm actually measures: how much drawdown you have left.
The ladder kicks in as that number shrinks. Use up half your drawdown and the tool cuts you to half size. Use up three quarters and it cuts you again, to quarter size. The reason is simple, the less drawdown you have left, the more losers you need to be able to survive while you trade your way back, so the size has to come down before the account forces the issue. If you want the dollar risk and the losers you have left without the contract math, the funded account risk calculator does that half.
The cut is not permanent, and that is a design decision worth saying out loud. The ladder reads your available drawdown right now, not the worst point you ever hit. Climb back above half your drawdown remaining and full size returns on its own. Plenty of traders assume one bad week means trading small forever, and that assumption quietly costs them the recovery.
Why Available Drawdown Instead of Your Balance
Under a trailing drawdown your drawdown line follows your high point, and a balance on its own cannot tell you where it sits. Your platform already tracks it to the penny. This tool asks for the number your platform already solved instead of asking you to rebuild it from memory, and that one choice makes the same math work on static, trailing, and locked accounts alike.
Tick Values and Stop Distance
Futures risk is measured in ticks, and every market prices its ticks differently. The tick size is the smallest move the contract can make. The tick value is what that move costs you in dollars, and the point value is what a full point costs. On the E-mini S&P 500, a tick is 0.25 points and it is worth $12.50, so a 20 tick stop on one contract puts $250 at risk. Same stop on crude oil, where a tick is worth $10, risks $200. Your stop in ticks means nothing until you know the tick value under it.
This is also where micros earn their keep. Most of the big CME markets sell a micro sibling at one tenth the size, MES under ES, MNQ under NQ, MGC under gold. When your max loss per trade cannot cover one full-size contract at your stop, the right answer is not a tighter stop that your trade idea never called for. It is the micro. This tool makes that swap for you automatically and tells you when it did, so the stop your setup needs stays the stop you actually use.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I risk per trade on a 25k account?
It depends on the drawdown, not the 25K. A $25,000 evaluation with a $1,500 max drawdown is really a $1,500 account, so at a cushion of 20 losing trades your full-size risk is $75 per trade. Run your own numbers through the calculator above, the account size on the label is the least important number on the account.
How do you calculate position size in futures?
Divide your max loss per trade by your stop distance in ticks times the tick value of your market, then round down. Risking $300 with a 20 tick stop on the E-mini S&P 500, where a tick is worth $12.50, gives $300 divided by $250, so one contract. If the division rounds to zero, size the trade on the market's micro instead.
What is the 1-2% risk rule?
It is the old rule of risking 1% to 2% of your account per trade, and it was built for cash accounts where the balance is real. On a funded account your real capital is the drawdown, not the balance, so percent-of-balance sizing quietly over-risks you. 2% of a 50K account is $1,000, which can be a third of the entire drawdown. Size off how much drawdown you have left instead, that is the number that ends the account.
How many contracts can I trade on a funded account?
Every firm publishes a contract cap per account size, usually with a separate, larger cap for micros, and this tool holds its answer to your firm's cap automatically. The cap is a ceiling, not a target. Most of the time the risk math above keeps you well under it, and the firm's cap only bites when your stop is tight and your cushion is loose. Each firm's exact caps are in its review.
More Tools
Two more tools read the same firm data this planner does: the Consistency Calculator checks your best day against your firm's published consistency rule, and the Drawdown Calculator shows your drawdown line day by day. Every tool we build is on our All Tools page.
If you are still shopping for the account itself, the prop firm finder will match you to firms off how you actually trade. And the two rules that interact with your sizing the most each have a full guide: how a trailing drawdown really moves, and how the consistency rule punishes uneven size. Know all three and you are ahead of most of the funded field before your first trade.