Find where your broker's trade server is
Every MetaTrader account logs into a named trade server, the one you pick at login, such as "BrokerName-Live3". That server sits in a data centre, and you want your VPS in the same city or the nearest one.
- Ask the broker or read its docs. Many brokers state where their trade servers are, often in a VPS or "low latency" section. Check your own broker rather than assuming a city from a forum list.
- Read the latency the terminal reports. The terminal's status bar shows the connection to the trade server, and when you rent MQL5 hosting the terminal shows a comparison of network delays between the hosting server and the broker. On your own VPS, measure from the VPS itself: that number is the one that matters.
- Compare a few cities for an hour each. Because servers here are billed by the hour, you can open a Windows server in two or three candidate cities, log the terminal in, note the latency, and delete the ones you do not keep. On the Standard plan an hour costs about 11 cents per city.
Does latency matter for your strategy?
Not every Expert Advisor cares. A strategy that holds positions for hours or days will not notice the difference between a few milliseconds and a few dozen. Scalping, news trading and anything that fires many orders a minute does notice; MetaQuotes itself sells low latency on the grounds that it reduces slippage and requotes.
If you are not sure, run the same EA on a demo account from two cities for a week and compare fill prices. If they match, pick the city on price and reliability rather than distance.
MQL5 virtual hosting or a full Windows server
MetaTrader has its own hosting, rented from inside the terminal for $15 for one month or $10 a month on a 12-month plan, with a 24-hour free trial. Migration copies, in MetaQuotes' words, "account connection data, as well as all open charts, signal copying parameters, running Expert Advisors and indicators" to a server near the broker. For one EA it is cheap and simple. Its limits, all from the MetaTrader 5 migration help, are the reason people move to a full server:
- No custom software. You manage the virtual platform from the terminal's Toolbox, with no Windows desktop of its own. No other programs, no trade copiers, no Python scripts beside it.
- No DLL calls. "DLL calls are completely forbidden in the virtual platform."
- No scripts. Scripts are not migrated, even ones running in an endless loop, and charts without an Expert Advisor are ignored.
- No one-time passwords. Accounts that log in with one-time password authentication cannot be used there.
A Windows VPS is a whole Windows Server you reach over RDP. You can run several terminals for different accounts or brokers, install anything, and use EAs with DLLs.
How big a server you need
Windows here starts on the Standard plan, 2 vCPU and 4 GB of RAM at $79 a month ($0.108219 an hour) with the licence included, and Windows Server 2019, 2022 and 2025 to choose from. For comparison, MetaQuotes gives each MQL5 VPS up to 3 GB of RAM for a single terminal, so 4 GB is a reasonable start for a couple of terminals with a handful of charts each. Memory is usually the first thing to run out: every open chart, indicator and EA adds to it. Watch Task Manager for a day after setting everything up; if memory sits near full, move up a plan or close charts the EAs do not need. Plans and current prices for every city are on the price list.
Lock down RDP before you log in to the broker
A trading server holds broker logins, so it is worth ten minutes of hardening before anything else: allow RDP only from your own IP, keep Network Level Authentication on, and set an account lockout. Our guide to securing RDP on a Windows VPS walks through each step.