Learn · Updated 2026-09-24
Prop firm inactivity rules: which product, bought when?
Why inactivity policies differ by stage, purchase date, day type, and activity definition, and why an old video about your firm can be wrong about yours.
An inactivity rule closes an account that has not been traded for some period. It sounds like one number per firm. It is not, and treating it as one number is how funded accounts get closed while their owner is on holiday believing they had a week in hand.
Five axes, not one number
Reading firms' own policies, every verified rule varies on at least one of these:
| Axis | What varies |
|---|---|
| Account stage | Evaluation, simulated funded, and live accounts at the same firm can each have a different rule, or none. |
| Purchase date | A policy can apply only to accounts bought on or after a date. Earlier accounts keep the terms they were sold under, which may be unpublished. |
| Day type | Calendar days and trading days are different clocks. A page that says "30 days" without naming the unit has not told you which. |
| What counts as activity | Placing any trade, a round trip on a trading day, a day with at least a stated profit, or a day with non-zero net P&L are all published definitions, and they are not interchangeable. |
| Period shape | "One qualifying day per calendar week" is a weekly gate, not a rolling window. A rolling "N days" rule is a different thing with a different worst case. |
Why an old video about your firm can be wrong about your account
Rules change mid-year and product lines get replaced. When that happens, accounts bought under the old terms often keep them. A video, a forum answer, or a friend's screenshot describes a product bought on a date, under a stage, at a firm, and any of those three can differ from yours. Age alone does not make a source wrong: an older video can describe grandfathered terms correctly and still mislead a new buyer, and a newer one can mislead someone holding the older product. The question that resolves it is always the same: which product, bought when? If the source does not answer both, it is not evidence about your account.
Absence of a statement is not proof of no rule
If a firm's pages say nothing about inactivity for your stage, the correct reading is "not verified", not "no rule". Firms have closed accounts under terms that were in the agreement but not on the help page. Treat silence as unknown, and ask support in writing if the answer matters to your plans.
The worst case, in days
For a rolling rule, the worst case is the stated period counted from your last qualifying activity, in the stated day type. For a weekly gate, the worst case is shorter than it looks: trade on a Monday and again the following Sunday, and depending on where the firm's week boundary falls you may have missed a week without ever being nine days idle. Nobody publishes the timezone of the week boundary, so the safe reading is the earliest plausible one.
What to record for each account
- The stage the account is in now.
- The date it was bought.
- The rule's period, day type, and activity definition, in the firm's own words, with the URL and the date you read it.
- Your last qualifying activity, by the firm's definition, not yours.
Firmtrack's rule book stores inactivity policy per stage and per purchase cohort, keeps the firm's wording next to the entry, and shows raw idle days for every account. It counts down only where the rule is verified for that account; otherwise it shows the idle count and the wording and leaves the deadline blank. Pair this with the drawdown explainer: the two rules that end accounts silently.
Firm-neutral on purpose. Rules differ by firm, plan, account stage, and purchase date, and they change without notice; the only source that counts for your account is your firm's current page. Nothing here is a promise about pass rates, payouts, or income.
Firmtrack runs this for every account you trade
Rules for supported firms are read from the firm's own page and dated, then applied to your accounts: drawdown room, daily budgets, consistency headroom, and idle days on one screen. Guardrails warn; nothing places, blocks, or flattens a trade.