Forex VPS for MT5: RAM, Restarts and Broker Distance

A forex VPS is a Windows server that keeps a MetaTrader terminal and its Expert Advisors (EAs) running while your own computer is off. Three things decide whether it does that job: the terminal staying up through Windows Update, enough RAM for every terminal you run, and the distance to your broker's trade server. Below: all three from Microsoft's and MetaQuotes' own documentation, and when an MT5 VPS from MetaQuotes is the better buy.

This is about infrastructure, not trading. Nothing here says whether an EA will make money, whether a few milliseconds change your results, or which broker to use.

What a VPS for trading has to do

MetaQuotes' help puts the requirement plainly: robots and signal copying need "constant connection to a trade server and uninterrupted power supply". A server in a data centre does not sleep, but it still installs updates, still restarts, and sits wherever its provider has racks. A good MetaTrader VPS setup is about controlling those three facts.

MetaQuotes' own virtual hosting

MetaQuotes sells hosting built into the platform. You rent it from inside MetaTrader, for one trading account, and it copies your charts, EAs and signal settings to a server MetaQuotes runs. Its help page says you can pick a server close to your broker, and its VPS page claims more than thirty hosting points.

On 9 November 2026 mql5.com listed it at 15 USD a month on a one-month plan, falling to 10 USD a month on a 12-month plan. Its documented limits matter more than the price:

	MetaQuotes virtual hosting	Your own Windows VPS
Accounts	One trading account per rented terminal	As many terminals as RAM allows
Charts with EAs	Up to 32 migrated	Limited by RAM
Interface	None; changes sync from your PC	Full desktop over RDP
DLL calls	"completely forbidden"	Your choice
Scripts	Not transferred	Run as normal
One-time-password accounts	Cannot be used	Your choice
Resources	Up to 3 GB RAM, 16 GB disk per platform	Fixed by plan

One account, no DLLs, broker far from Europe: MetaQuotes' service is probably the better buy, and we would rather say so. A Windows VPS earns its price with several accounts, DLLs or scripts, or other software next to the terminal.

Keeping the terminal running through Windows Update

An unplanned restart stops every EA on the server. Microsoft's defaults do not suit a market that trades through the night:

Active hours are the window in which Windows will not restart automatically after an update. Microsoft caps the range at 18 hours (12 on Windows Server 2016), so they cannot cover a 24-hour trading day.
Option 4 of the Configure Automatic Updates policy, "Auto download and schedule the install", installs every day at 3:00 AM if you set no schedule, and restarts automatically when an update needs it.
sconfig's Automatic setting on Windows Server also installs daily at 3:00 AM, server time.
A disconnected RDP session does not hold a restart. Even the policy that delays restarts while someone is signed in counts only active RDP sessions, Microsoft notes; a machine without one is restarted.

What Microsoft recommends for servers is option 7, "Auto Download, Notify to install, Notify to Restart", available on Windows Server 2016 and later: updates download, and you choose when to install and restart. Microsoft publishes its monthly security update on the second Tuesday of each month (often called Patch Tuesday), so set a monthly reminder and install when your broker's sessions are closed. MetaTrader shows each symbol's quoting and trading sessions for every day of the week under Specification in Market Watch. Do not switch updates off: an unpatched server reachable over the internet is a bigger risk than a planned restart.

Surviving a restart

MetaTrader is a desktop program, so it runs inside a signed-in Windows session. Close the RDP window to disconnect; do not sign out, which ends the session and the terminal with it.

After a planned restart, two documented tools bring it back. Microsoft's Sysinternals Autologon signs a chosen user in at boot; Microsoft warns that any administrator can recover the stored password, so give it a dedicated account. MetaQuotes documents starting terminal64.exe with /config: pointing to an ini file whose [StartUp] section names the Expert, Symbol and Period to load. A shortcut in that user's Startup folder ties the two together. Test it by restarting the server yourself.

How much RAM one terminal needs

MetaQuotes does not publish a RAM figure. Its installation page lists Windows 10/11 and says hardware requirements "depend on specific platform use conditions": running programs, active instruments and charts. It names Windows 10/11, not Windows Server, which a Windows VPS runs; test your own EAs before you commit.

So measure, on the PC where your setup already runs:

Open MetaTrader's Task Manager (F2). MetaQuotes says it shows the memory charts consume and the CPU each EA uses.
Watch terminal64.exe in Windows Task Manager's Details tab over a full trading week, not one quiet hour.
Trim before you size. MetaQuotes' own migration advice is to remove unused symbols from Market Watch, close charts you do not need and lower "Max bars in chart".

Two published numbers give a budget while you measure. Microsoft's minimum for Windows Server with Desktop Experience is 2 GB, and MetaQuotes' hosting gives each platform up to 3 GB. Treat 3 GB as a cautious worst case, not a requirement.

Matching terminals to a plan

MetaQuotes' instructions for several accounts at once are to install one platform per account, each in its own directory, so terminals add up. With 2 GB set aside for Windows:

Terminals	Plan, a month	RAM left after Windows	Caveat
1	WIN1, €22	4 − 2 = 2 GB	Only if your measured peak is well under 2 GB
2	WIN2, €26	8 − 2 = 6 GB	2 × 3 GB worst case fits exactly
4	WIN3, €49.40	16 − 2 = 14 GB	4 × 3 = 12 GB, 2 GB spare
5 or more	WIN4, €93.80	32 − 2 = 30 GB	Same 8 vCPU as WIN3; more RAM only

WIN2 costs €4 more than WIN1 (€26 − €22) for twice the RAM and vCPUs, which is cheap insurance for a single terminal you have not measured. If EAs drive the CPU hard in the platform's Task Manager, go up a plan for the cores (WIN1 2, WIN2 4, WIN3 8).

Distance to the broker's trade server

Ask your broker which data centre hosts your account's trade server. Only they can tell you.

NexonHost has no London, New York or Tokyo location. The store's VPS regions are the Netherlands, Germany and Romania, listed by country; we use the dedicated-server city in each: Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Bucharest. To show what that means, here are physical floors to two Equinix sites, used only as examples: LD4 on the Slough Trading Estate west of London, and NY4 in Secaucus, which Equinix says serves "the world's largest financial, media and enterprise companies". Light in fibre covers about 200 km per millisecond, so the round-trip floor is 2 × distance ÷ 200. Great-circle distances use OpenStreetMap coordinates for the two Equinix addresses and the three city centres:

From	To LD4, Slough	To NY4, Secaucus
Amsterdam	390 km, 3.9 ms	5,862 km, 58.6 ms
Frankfurt	673 km, 6.7 ms	6,202 km, 62.0 ms
Bucharest	2,126 km, 21.3 ms	7,649 km, 76.5 ms

Worked through: Amsterdam to LD4 is 390 km, so 2 × 390 ÷ 200 = 3.9 ms. These are floors, not measurements: real routes are longer and add equipment. Our guide to choosing a European server location explains why.

Read the table both ways. A London-area server is a few milliseconds of physics from Amsterdam or Frankfurt; a New York server is at least 58.6 ms away from any of them, and a server near New York will beat that. Whether those milliseconds matter is a question about your strategy, not the server.

What about Linux?

MetaQuotes documents running MetaTrader 5 on Linux through Wine, with an install script for Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint and Fedora. The page is written for a desktop: on a Linux plan from our VPS range you would add a graphical desktop and remote access yourself, and MetaQuotes does not document a server setup. It can work, but you support it; Windows is the route MetaQuotes' main installation page describes.

Choosing a forex VPS plan

The Windows VPS page says the Windows licence is included on every plan; in the store that is Windows Server 2022, and on monthly billing it adds a one-off €35 setup fee (none on annual). The store lists WIN1 at €22, WIN2 at €26, WIN3 at €49.40 and WIN4 at €93.80 a month, each with SSD storage and a 10 Gbps port, and every plan includes 100 Gbps Layer 4 DDoS protection (what that covers on a VPS). Annual billing takes 10 % off. Licensing and that fee are covered in our Windows VPS RDP guide, along with extra users and locking down port 3389. NexonHost provides the server; you install and run MetaTrader.

For a forex VPS, measure your terminal first, pick the plan from the table, and start on a one-month term so you can watch it through a Patch Tuesday. Compare plans on the Windows VPS page.

Prices as of 9 November 2026, EUR ex VAT, a month; the store preselects a 1 TB backup add-on at €5 a month extra. Check the product page.