Micro vs Mini Futures: Which to Trade in a Prop Challenge
Micro vs mini futures in a prop firm challenge: how contract size shapes risk, drawdown speed, and how many lots you can sit on at each size.
Rev One Trading4 min read
Futures 101
Rev One
Micro vs mini futures in a prop firm challenge: how contract size shapes risk, drawdown speed, and how many lots you can sit on at each size.
The contract you trade is the second-most important decision after account size. A trader who's perfectly disciplined on a $25K can still blow up in 20 minutes if they pick the wrong contract.
This is a working trader's breakdown of micro vs mini futures in a prop challenge: what each one is, what it costs you per tick, and which one fits the account size you bought.
The CME runs two parallel families of equity index, energy, metal, and FX futures:
Same underlying, same charts, same hours, same liquidity profile. Different size on each tick.
The number that decides everything is the dollar value of one tick.
If you take a 4-point loss on 1 ES, that's $200. The same 4-point loss on 1 MES is $20. Same trade, different bill.
The $25K Rev One account has a $750 max loss limit (3% of $25,000). That's 600 ticks of MES on a 1-lot.
On a 1-lot of MES with a 60-tick stop, you risk $75. You have ten of those before you hit MLL. That's a workable runway.
On a 1-lot of ES with a 60-tick stop, you risk $750. That's the entire MLL on one trade. One bad fill and you're out.
The $25K rules allow up to 2 full or 20 micro contracts. The math says you should not be using more than one ES on this account size at all.
Two conditions, both required:
On the $100K Rev One, that's $500 to $1,000 per trade. One ES with a 40-tick stop is $500. That fits. One ES with a 100-tick stop is $1,250. That doesn't.
For more on the right risk-per-trade math, see how to pass a futures prop firm challenge in 2026.
The contract caps scale with size:
| Account | Promo | Base | Profit target | Max loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $25K | $89 | $149 | $1,500 | $750 |
| $50K | $108 | $180 | $3,000 | $1,500 |
| $75K | $161 | $269 | $4,500 | $2,250 |
| $100K | $179 | $299 | $6,000 | $3,000 |
| $150K | $239 | $399 | $9,000 | $4,500 |
Live numbers from the Rev One Futures 1-Step Challenge.
A few things worth flagging:
Round-trip commissions on Rev One:
Trading 10 MES is the same notional as 1 ES, and 10 MES costs $5 in commissions per round trip vs $5 for 1 ES. Equal at that ratio. Trading 20 MES (the cap on $25K) costs $10 per round trip, which is double the equivalent ES cost.
For most traders, this means: scale into minis once you can trade 1 to 2 minis at your dollar risk size, instead of running 20 micros.
If you're under 100 sessions on micros, stay on micros. If you've graduated, scale to minis at the size where one mini contract is your normal trade.
The point of a prop challenge is not to feel rich on big size. It's to pass a math test you set yourself. The contract is part of the math.
For where most challenges actually break, see 5 mistakes that fail 80% of prop firm challenges. For the drawdown rule that interacts with all of this, see trailing vs end-of-day drawdown.
Pick the account size that fits your contractRight contract, right size, right rules. That's the whole job on day one.