TopstepX Alerts: How to Set Them, and How to Make Them Trade

TopstepX got native price alerts in 2026, so the short answer is yes, you can set alerts on TopstepX. The longer answer is that they tell you something happened. They do not do anything about it. This guide covers both halves: how to set a TopstepX alert properly, including the four limits that catch people out, and how to wire a TradingView alert through to your funded account so the signal actually places the order.

Can you set alerts on TopstepX?

Yes. Price Alerts arrived on TopstepX during 2026 and are available to every trader on the platform at no extra cost. They let you mark a level and get told when price reaches it, rather than sitting on the chart all session waiting for it.

They are genuinely useful, and they are also more limited than most traders expect coming from TradingView. Read the constraints below before you build a routine around them, because two of the four have bitten people badly.

How to set alerts on TopstepX

On desktop: right-click anywhere on the chart and choose Create Alert.

On mobile: tap the three dots at the bottom right, choose Price Alerts, then + Create Alert at the top left.

You then pick a condition and a trigger behaviour.

Alert conditions

• Crossing: fires when price crosses your level in either direction
• Crossing Up: fires only when price crosses moving up
• Crossing Down: fires only when price crosses moving down

Trigger behaviour

• Once: fires a single time, then moves to a paused state. You can restart it from the alerts icon at the top right, or from the active and paused alerts menu.
• Every time: fires repeatedly, but throttled to a maximum of once per minute. Topstep caps it deliberately so a fast market cannot lag the platform, and there is no way to slow it further.

Expiry

You get End of Trading Day, One Week, or Till Cancelled. The first two both expire at midnight local time of the computer that created the alert, which matters if you trade US futures from another timezone. Till Cancelled does not expire on a clock at all, but it still dies at contract rollover.

A handy detail most people miss: you can drag an alert up or down on the chart to change its price instead of editing it.

Four TopstepX alert limits worth knowing before you rely on them

These come straight from Topstep's own documentation, and each one has a practical consequence.

1. Forty alerts total, including paused ones

The cap counts active and paused alerts together. Since a Once alert parks itself in the paused state after firing rather than deleting itself, a busy week quietly eats your allowance. If new alerts stop saving, clear out the paused list first.

2. Rollover deletes everything

Alerts are attached to a specific contract, not to an instrument. When the front month rolls, every alert on the expiring contract is permanently deleted and has to be recreated on the new one. This is the one that hurts, because rollover is exactly the week your levels matter and exactly the week you are least likely to notice a silent deletion.

3. Alerts are per user, not per account

Any alert you create is shared across every trading account tied to your username. If you run a Combine and a funded account side by side, you cannot give them separate alert sets. For a trader working several accounts on different plans, that is a real constraint.

4. In-platform notifications only

There is no email, no SMS and no phone notification. The alert will still trigger server side while you are logged out or your machine is asleep, but you will not see the notification until you log back into TopstepX, and sound alerts will not play unless the platform is actually open on your machine.

That last point is the one that decides whether TopstepX alerts are enough for you. If your plan is "get told on my phone while I am away from the desk", TopstepX alerts cannot do it today. If your plan is "have the trade taken while I am away from the desk", nothing in the alerts system does that either, and you need the rest of this guide.

TopstepX alerts vs TradingView alerts

Neither platform's alerts place trades on their own. TradingView's advantage is that its alert can leave the building. That single fact is the whole basis of the setup below.

What you need to make an alert actually trade

1. A TradingView plan with webhooks

Webhooks are the feature that lets an alert send an HTTP request to software you control. Checked against TradingView's current pricing table, the tiers are:

Essential is the cheapest plan that can send a webhook. Older guides still say you need Pro or Pro+, which were renamed years ago, so ignore any article that uses those names because it has not been updated since.

One extra note if you only trade off very short timeframes: second-based alerts are Premium and above.

2. TopstepX API access

This is the part most guides skip, and it costs money. TopstepX API access is powered by ProjectX and is billed separately from your Topstep subscription. Setup runs in four parts and they must be done in order, because part four fails if you skip part three.

1. Register at dashboard.projectx.com and create your ProjectX account
2. In the ProjectX Dashboard go to Subscriptions, then ProjectX API Access, and enter promo code topstep for the Topstep trader discount
3. In TopstepX, open Settings, then the API tab, and under ProjectX Linking click Add Link. Subscribing is not the same as linking. Miss this and the next step fails with User lacks subscription.
4. Still in Settings, then API, click Add API Key and store the key somewhere safe

API access is $29 per month, or $14.50 with the topstep code, which Topstep states applies every month with no end date. The charge appears on your statement as Sim2Funded Solutions, so do not panic when you do not recognise it.

Two things worth knowing. There is no sandbox environment, so test against a Practice account rather than an Evaluation account. And one subscription and one key cover every eligible account on your profile, with the target account specified per order, so running several accounts does not mean paying several times.

3. Software to turn the webhook into an order

TradingView sends the alert. TopstepX accepts orders over the API. Nothing connects the two by default, so you need a receiver in the middle. Which one you choose is not just a feature question, for the reason in the next section.

The rule that decides your architecture: no VPS for order flow

This is the single most important paragraph in this article, and it is the one almost no TradingView-to-TopstepX guide mentions.

Topstep's API documentation states plainly that all trading activity must originate from your personal device, and that the use of VPS, VPNs and remote servers is prohibited by Topstep's Terms of Use. Running automation on a VPS can result in account suspension or removal from the program.

Topstep draws the line precisely:

In Topstep's own words: the line is order transmission. Your server can watch and record, but it cannot trade.

Read that against how most webhook services work. A hosted relay takes your TradingView alert on its own servers and sends the order to your broker from its own infrastructure. That is routing orders on your behalf from a remote server. If you are considering one, ask the vendor directly where the order is transmitted from and get the answer in writing.

Software that runs on your own PC does not have this problem, because the order leaves your machine, from your IP, using your own credentials. That is the architecture prop firm rules generally expect, and it is why Trade Dispensary is a desktop application rather than a subscription web service.

None of this is legal advice and rules change. Topstep is also explicit that it does not endorse or support any third-party tool, and that a rule violation is treated the same whether it came from manual trading or automation. Read the current terms yourself before you connect anything.

Step 1: Add TradingView as a source

1. Open the Trade Dispensary dashboard and go to Accounts
2. Under Source Accounts click + Add
3. Account Name: something short and memorable, for example TV_Strategy1. This name becomes part of your webhook URL, so avoid spaces.
4. Platform: TradingView
5. Webhook Secret: optional but recommended. Any alert that does not carry the matching secret is rejected.
6. Save

A note on the secret. TradingView warns against putting sensitive information in a webhook body, and that warning is correct. The secret here is not your broker password or your API key. It is a token you generate, scoped to one source account, that you can change at any time. It stops a stranger who guesses your webhook URL from firing trades into your funded account. Your TopstepX API key never appears in the alert.

Step 2: Add TopstepX as a destination

1. Under Destination Accounts click + Add
2. Account Type: TopStepX
3. Username / Email: your TopstepX login
4. API Key: the key you generated earlier
5. Account ID: leave blank to auto-detect on the first trade, or enter a specific account number if you hold several and want to pin one
6. Click Test Connection before going any further

Test Connection is not a formality. It authenticates against the gateway and returns the account it found, which catches a mistyped key, an unlinked ProjectX subscription and a wrong account ID in about two seconds. Do it before you create the alert, not after.

Worth flagging if you arrived here from another prop firm: ProjectX has been Topstep-only since February 2026. Lucid, Tradeify, Aqua, Blue Guardian, E8, Fxify, Goat Funded and Top One all moved to Tradovate, NinjaTrader or WealthCharts. If you are setting up one of those, use the NinjaTrader connection instead, not this one.

Step 3: Map your symbols, carefully

TradingView and TopstepX name contracts differently, so you need a mapping. This is where the most expensive mistake in this whole setup lives, and older versions of this article got it wrong.

ES and MES are not the same contract. ES is the E-mini S&P 500. MES is the Micro E-mini, one tenth of the size. Mapping ES1! to MES is a valid thing to do, but it silently divides your position size by ten. Mapping the other way multiplies it by ten. Neither is a bug, and neither will warn you.

Like-for-like mappings:

If you want to trade micros, map to the micro deliberately and set your quantity for that contract. Do not use the mapping as a position sizing tool, because six months later you will not remember that your ES signal has been quietly trading a tenth of the size.

This matters more on a Combine than anywhere else. Topstep counts micros against your contract limit at ten to one, so a $50,000 account allows 5 minis or 50 micros, a $100,000 account allows 10 or 100, and a $150,000 account allows 15 or 150. A mapping error does not just change your risk, it can breach your contract limit.

Step 4: Create the TradingView alert

Grab your webhook URL first. In Trade Dispensary open the Webhooks page, where a URL is listed for every active source account with a copy button next to it. Do not try to construct it by hand. The URL includes your current tunnel address, which changes, and copying it is the only way to be certain it is right.

Then in TradingView:

1. Open the chart, right-click and choose Add Alert
2. Condition: your indicator or strategy, or a plain price level
3. Trigger: Once Per Bar Close is the safe default. Once Per Bar fires intrabar and will repaint on you.
4. Under Notifications, tick Webhook URL and paste the URL you copied
5. Put your JSON in the Message box

Alert message

{
  "symbol": "{{ticker}}",
  "action": "buy",
  "quantity": 1,
  "comment": "MyStrategy",
  "secret": "your_webhook_secret"
}

For the exit, send the same shape with "action": "exit". Trade Dispensary treats exit, close and flatten as closing signals, and entry, open and new as opening ones. If you send buy or sell it infers direction and treats it as an entry.

Field names are flexible, which saves rewriting alerts you already have. Any of symbol, ticker, pair, instrument or contract works for the instrument. Any of volume, quantity, qty, size, contracts or lots works for size. If you are migrating from another service, your existing alert body will most likely be understood as-is.

If you are running a Pine strategy rather than an indicator, use the strategy placeholders so direction and size come from the strategy itself:

{
  "symbol": "{{ticker}}",
  "action": "{{strategy.order.action}}",
  "quantity": {{strategy.order.contracts}},
  "comment": "{{strategy.order.comment}}",
  "secret": "your_webhook_secret"
}

If the alert never arrives

TradingView sends webhooks from four fixed IP addresses: 52.89.214.238, 34.212.75.30, 54.218.53.128 and 52.32.178.7. It only sends to ports 80 and 443. If you have put anything in front of your machine that filters inbound traffic, those addresses need to be allowed, and a custom port will silently never be reached.

Step 5: Test on a Practice account first

There is no sandbox for the TopstepX API, so a Practice account is the closest thing to one. It uses the same endpoints and the same real-time hubs with nothing at stake.

Work through this before pointing anything at an Evaluation or funded account:

• Fire one manual alert from TradingView and confirm the fill appears in TopstepX
• Check the filled contract is the one you expected, not its micro or mini sibling
• Check the size is what you intended
• Send the matching exit and confirm the position actually goes flat
• Repeat the entry and exit on the opposite side, because a reversed mapping only shows up in one direction
• Leave it running through a full session before you trust it unattended

Two Topstep rules to keep in view while you test. Orders placed through the API are final, with no review, adjustment or reversal. And high frequency trading is prohibited, so a strategy that fires constantly is a rules problem regardless of whether it makes money.

Where this fits with the rest of your accounts

Once a TradingView alert can reach one funded account, it can reach several. The same signal can drive a second Topstep account, an MT5 account at a retail broker, a NinjaTrader account at a Tradovate firm, or a cTrader account, each with its own size multiplier. That is usually the real reason people build this chain: not to automate one account, but to stop hand-copying the same trade into four.

If you are running that shape, read up on what prop firms actually permit when copying between accounts first. Copying your own trades between accounts you personally own is fine nearly everywhere. Copying someone else's, or coordinating several traders through a shared service, is not.

For the MT5 side of the same chain, the MT5 copy trading setup guide covers the EA install and symbol mapping between brokers. If your signals come from a Telegram channel rather than TradingView, automating Telegram signals follows the same pattern with a different source.

Summary

TopstepX alerts are real and they work, within four limits worth respecting: 40 alerts total, deleted at rollover, shared across your accounts, and visible only inside the platform. For marking levels while you watch the chart, they are fine.

For an alert that does something, you need TradingView on Essential or above, TopstepX API access through ProjectX at $14.50 a month with the Topstep code, and a receiver that runs on your own machine rather than a remote server. Get the symbol mapping right, prove it on a Practice account, and check the contract limits before you scale the size.