Live Brokerage is the last stage of the BluSky path and the only one where your orders reach the real market. Everything before it — Evaluation, the BluLive/Buffer Zone and Sim Funded — is simulated. This article covers the whole of it: how you qualify, what transfers, what the first weeks look like, the rules that apply once you are live, and what happens if things go wrong.

You do not apply for a brokerage account and you cannot buy one. You earn it in Sim Funded, and our Risk and Brokerage teams decide when you are ready.

There are two routes, depending on which plan you are on.

Standard plans (Launch, Propel, Instant, Stocks). The trigger is $10,000 of total profit on the account — total, meaning profit still sitting in the account plus every payout you have already taken. When you cross it, stop trading and open a support ticket requesting a Brokerage Review straight away. Continuing to trade past the threshold without a review can cost you the account, and anything earned above $10,000 before the review is not payable.

Orbit plans. The review is automatic and triggers the moment your Sim Funded account reaches its profit ceiling. Stop trading and raise a ticket as soon as you hit it.

Separately from the profit thresholds, our Risk Team can review any account at any time — you do not have to be near $10,000 for it to happen, and traders with previous BluSky account history are reviewed as a matter of course.

The Risk Team examines your trading for consistency and discipline, not just your balance. While a review is open you cannot trade the account and payouts are held. Reviews normally take up to five trading days; broader risk reviews can take up to seven. The decision comes by email and is final.

Three things can happen:

Trading during a review forfeits the account. This is the single most common way traders lose an account they had already earned.

A Live Brokerage invitation is valid for 5 calendar days from the moment it is issued. Within that window you need to complete preliminary onboarding — choosing your platform, returning the initial confirmations, and signing the first document packet.

If you do not, we treat it as declining the transition, and the consequences are permanent: the source Sim Funded account is closed, the profit balance earmarked for the transfer is forfeited, and the brokerage setup is cancelled. If you are travelling or cannot act in time, tell support before the window closes.

On standard plans, up to $10,000 per account, minus payouts already taken, is transferred as your live starting balance. With three Sim Funded accounts the ceiling is $30,000 per trader.

For example: you reach $10,500 in total profit and have already withdrawn $6,000. Your live account is provisioned with $4,000 — the $10,000 cap less the $6,000 you were paid.

On Orbit plans it works differently, because every Orbit trader is consolidated into a single centralised brokerage account. Your live account starts at $0.00 and your risk buffer is duplicated into the live environment instead. Your simulated gains are not lost — they move into the Profit Vault described below.

No simulated capital is ever deposited into a live trading balance. That applies to every plan: what you traded in Sim Funded was simulated, and what funds the live account is BluSky capital allocated against your track record.

When an Orbit account passes its Brokerage Review, the simulated profit above your buffer is banked into a Profit Vault and paid back to you over time as cash bonuses.

The Vault balance is your Sim Funded balance minus your initial balance and your drawdown limit, capped at the figure in the table above. Anything beyond the cap is not vaulted.

How it pays out: for every $10,000 you earn and withdraw from live trading, BluSky adds a $1,000 cash bonus from your Vault. That continues until the Vault is empty; if less than $1,000 remains, the final bonus is simply whatever is left.

Vault money is never deposited into your live trading balance — it is paid strictly as a bonus alongside your normal payouts. If you breach or blow the live account, whatever is left in the Vault is permanently forfeited.

Live accounts use an end-of-day (EOD) trailing drawdown. Your drawdown floor moves up with your closed daily profit, dollar for dollar, and only ever updates on your balance at the close of the trading day — intraday swings do not move it.

The trail stops permanently once your lifetime net profit equals your starting drawdown limit. At that point the floor locks at your starting balance and never moves again. On a $2,500 drawdown, for instance, the floor stops trailing once you are $2,500 in net profit — from then on the whole cushion is yours to work with.

The first days on a live account are statistically the most dangerous, so the Risk and Brokerage departments may place a new brokerage account into a Ramp-Up Period. It is not a punishment — it exists so a single bad session on day one cannot end an account you spent months earning.

Graduating is not automatic. Once you have your tenth profitable day, email the Risk Team at [email protected] to request a Performance Review; they will look at your consistency and, if approved, lift or adjust the daily loss limit and raise your contract limits.

There is only one way to fail a Live Brokerage account: fall below your minimum static balance. Unlike the evaluation, a funded account has a static floor — go under it and the account is closed.

Things that do not fail your account:

Place at least one trade every 30 days. Dormant accounts attract broker fees and warnings and can be closed — and a closed account cannot be reopened.

Beyond that, once you are through the risk zone you have earned the right to trade freely. That flexibility is the point of the whole structure.

Your live contract limits are not the limits you had in the Evaluation or BluLive. Sizing is scaled to margin requirements and to the capital actually in the account, so a trader who used 15 minis in an evaluation will not have 15 minis live.

As the account grows you can open a support ticket to request an increase. Limits can also come down if your balance falls. Scaling behaviour depends on the broker: Tradovate scales with available margin and can even scale during news events, Project X scales with account growth, and Rithmic and Volumetrica do not scale — though Sweet Futures brokerage accounts on Rithmic do scale with account size.

The data that comes with your plan costs you nothing during the Evaluation, the BluLive/Buffer stage or Sim Funded. Data fees only begin once you have earned a live account, at which point you are classed as a professional subscriber to CME market data and are responsible for your own fees.

What is included is Level 1 data — best bid, best ask and last traded price. That comes with every plan, at every stage, at no cost to you, and it is enough for the large majority of strategies.

Level 2 — the full depth of market, showing resting orders at every price level — is an optional extra, and where you buy it changes when you go live. Through the Evaluation, the BluLive/Buffer stage and Sim Funded you buy Level 2 from BluSky. Once you move to Live Brokerage you pay your broker for it directly, alongside the market data fees in the table below.

Payouts stay daily. Requests submitted before 11:00 ET on a trading day are processed the same day; after that, the next business day. Transfers land in one to three business days depending on your bank and method.

The split is 90% to you, 10% to BluSky, unless a Risk Team decision changes it. Payments run through Gusto or Rise Pay, you are paid as an independent contractor on a 1099-NEC, and non-US traders submit a W-8BEN on the first payout. Claim a submitted payout within 30 days or it is voided — complete your Gusto or Rise onboarding promptly.

The strong recommendation is to build a real cushion above your drawdown floor before withdrawing. Taking out everything the moment you can leaves you no room to trade through a normal losing stretch.

The Risk Department actively oversees every live and Sim Funded account, and may adjust daily loss limits, restrict contract sizing, or apply a temporary intraday pause after a large P&L swing. These are a safety net, applied to keep an account viable rather than to punish you. Questions about your specific settings go to [email protected].

Trading outside your contract limits or an active restriction triggers automated corrections — P&L recalculations, balance adjustments, or liquidation of non-compliant positions.

Breaching your drawdown on a live account puts you into a mandatory 30-day cooldown. It is a deliberate circuit breaker: the period straight after a live loss is when revenge trading does the most damage, and the break gives you time to review your data and come back to a plan rather than to a screen. The 30 days stand unless the Risk Team approves otherwise.

A live account is a real brokerage account, so it comes with real onboarding. You will complete KYC through Veriff — make sure your ID is unexpired and clearly shows your date of birth — and the broker and clearing firm run their own KYC and AML checks, usually asking for a government ID plus a bank statement or utility bill as proof of address.

Some countries cannot be supported because of our clearing firm's restrictions; the current list is in this article.

Please read this carefully: if a broker declines your brokerage application after we have invited you, it results in immediate account closure, forfeiture of all simulated profits, and no refund. Every trader must be legally able to hold a brokerage account. Check the restricted list and your own eligibility early — long before you are near the threshold — rather than discovering a problem at the finish line.

BluSky connects traders exclusively through Tradovate and Sweet Futures, the latter covering both Rithmic and Volumetrica accounts.

Still have a question? Our team is here to help.