Free Tool
Contract Size Picker
MES or ES? MNQ or NQ? Enter your account size, max drawdown, and stop-loss in ticks — and get the right contract with a concrete per-trade risk breakdown.
Why contract size matters for prop firms
Most eval failures trace back to position sizing, not a bad strategy. One ES contract on a 50k Apex account puts $12.50 on the line per tick. A 20-tick stop runs $250 a trade, and against a $2,500 trailing drawdown, ten losers in a row is enough to end the evaluation.
MES is a tenth the size of ES, so the same 20-tick stop only risks $25 — it takes 100 consecutive losers to do the same damage. Trading the smaller contract buys a strategy room to run through ordinary drawdown swings without putting the account itself at risk.
The crossover point: when does ES make sense?
Once drawdown room clears roughly $5,000 and a per-trade stop stays tight — under 15 ticks or so — full-size contracts start to pencil out: better fills, and commissions that are proportionally smaller against the larger position. The calculator above shows exactly where that line sits for your account and stop size.
These figures use standard CME contract specs. Tick values can change — confirm current numbers on your broker's platform before sizing a live trade.