A reset restarts a failed or damaged evaluation at its starting balance with a fresh Max Loss Limit, for roughly 70% of the original price. What you buy is drawdown room, not a second chance at the same plan. It pays when the remaining room is too small to reach the target, and it wastes money when the sizing that caused the damage is unchanged.
What is a reset on a futures evaluation?
A reset is a paid restart of the same evaluation account: the balance returns to its starting figure and the Max Loss Limit returns to its initial distance below it. An evaluation ends in exactly one way, by touching that limit, and a reset gives the account a new start without a new account number.
The trailing history is cleared along with it, so the limit is no longer anchored to a high you reached last week. On a 50K the room goes back to the full $2,000, measured from the starting balance rather than from any peak.
One thing is lost: progress. The profit target resets to its full value, $3,000 on a 50K Cycle. A reset bought at $2,400 of accumulated profit throws that profit away along with the damage.
How much does a reset cost?
A reset costs between $55 and $255 depending on the family and the account size, against evaluation prices of $79 to $365.
| Size | Cycle evaluation | Cycle reset | Clear evaluation | Clear reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25K | $108 | $75 | $79 | $55 |
| 50K | $172 | $120 | $136 | $95 |
| 100K | $272 | $190 | $258 | $180 |
| 150K | $365 | $255 | $347 | $240 |
Two patterns are worth reading off that table. A reset sits near 70% of the evaluation price, so restarting is always cheaper than buying a fresh account of the same size. And Clear is cheaper to reset than Cycle at every size, which matters if you expect to need more than one attempt. Stream resets match Cycle; Direct has no reset at all, because it has no evaluation to restart.
Prices on this page are the catalogue reference. Promotions move the evaluation price and sometimes the reset price, so check the pricing page before deciding.
When is a reset worth buying?
A reset is worth buying when the drawdown room left is too small to reach the profit target at your normal position size. The decision is arithmetic, not emotional, and it rests on one ratio: room remaining against target remaining.
A fresh 50K Cycle carries $2,000 of room against $3,000 of target. The target is larger than the room, which is already demanding: you have to win more than you can afford to lose.
Now take the same account after a rough fortnight. The limit has trailed up to $50,600, the balance is $51,100, and $1,400 of the target remains. Room is $500. To make $1,400 with $500 of room, every trade has to be sized at a fraction of what your method requires, and a single normal losing day ends the account.
| Situation | Room left | Target left | Room ÷ target | Reasonable call |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh account | $2,000 | $3,000 | 0.67 | Trade |
| Mild damage | $1,500 | $1,900 | 0.79 | Trade |
| Heavy damage | $500 | $1,400 | 0.36 | Reset |
| Failed | $0 | $3,000 | 0 | Reset or stop |
A rough threshold: below about 0.4, the room is too thin to run your normal size, and most traders respond by trading too small to progress or too large to survive. That is the point where $120 buys back a workable account, and the figure to watch is the distance to the limit you log each morning in your trading journal.
Do you have to decide straight away?
No, there is no deadline on the decision. An evaluation carries no clock and no monthly fee: it stays open until it passes or fails, with no minimum days and no maximum.
That has two consequences. A damaged but living account costs nothing to leave alone, so there is no rush to reset on the day of a bad session. And a reset bought today does not expire, so there is no reason to buy one before you know what changed in your method.
Traders who reset in the hour after failing are usually paying for relief. The same $120 spent after a week of reviewing the journal buys the same room with a better chance of keeping it. The how it works page sets out the full sequence from evaluation to funded account.
When is a reset the wrong purchase?
A reset is the wrong purchase in four situations.
When nothing in the plan has changed. A reset restores room. It does not change position size, stop discipline or session length. An account that failed from four-contract entries on a 50K will fail again on fresh room, and the second failure is often faster, because a restart feels like a clean slate rather than a warning.
When the size was wrong. If a normal trade in your method risks more than 10% of the starting room, the account was too small for your method, not unlucky. Resetting the same size repeats the mismatch. A 100K Cycle carries $3,000 of room against $6,000, which absorbs a $300 trade the way a 50K absorbs $200. Compare every size on the account comparison table.
When the failure was a prohibited practice. A reset restores the balance, not eligibility. Review the prohibited practices page before buying anything.
When the loss was a daily stop, not the real limit. Hitting the Daily Loss Limit blocks the rest of your day and leaves the account open. Nothing needs resetting. Some traders buy one anyway, having confused the two limits.
Is resetting cheaper than buying a second evaluation?
Yes. A reset costs about 30% less than a second evaluation of the same size, and it is never the worse option. Here are the two routes on a 50K Cycle, assuming the second attempt passes.
- Reset route. Evaluation $172 plus one reset $120. Same account, same platform credentials, trailing history cleared.
- New-account route. Two evaluations at $172 each. New account number, new platform setup, no advantage over the reset.
The reset route is cheaper by the difference between the two prices, and there is no case where buying a second identical evaluation is preferable to resetting the first. The only reason to buy a new account rather than reset is to change family or size, which the reset cannot do.
What neither route buys is an outcome. Evaluation and funded accounts are simulated until the Live stage, futures trading involves a substantial risk of loss, and no number of resets converts a losing method into a funded one. Budget for at most two attempts at a given size; a third is a signal to drop a size rather than spend again. The payout terms that make a pass worth pursuing are on the payouts page.
Sources
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission, customer advisories on leverage and the risk of loss in futures trading.
- National Futures Association, investor information on the US futures markets and their participants.
- CME Group, equity index contract specifications and point values used for the per-trade figures in the room-against-target tables.
Simulated accounts until Live. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss.