How to copy trades between MT5 accounts, even across brokers

You trade one MetaTrader 5 account and want the same trades on others: a second funded account, a hedge account at another broker, a family account you manage. Placing every order twice is slow and error prone. A trade copier does it for you.

This guide covers the three ways to copy trades between MT5 accounts, the settings that decide whether the copies come out right, and the checks to run before you point a copier at a funded account.

Three ways to copy trades in MT5

1. MetaTrader Signals

MT5 has copy trading built in through the Signals service. A provider publishes a signal on MQL5.com and you subscribe to it from your terminal. It is designed for following other traders' public signals, not for linking accounts you own: the source has to be published as a signal first, and you get the service's settings rather than your own.

2. A local copier EA

The most common setup. You run two or more MT5 terminals on the same computer or VPS, attach a "master" copier EA to the account you trade and a "slave" EA to each follower. The master writes every trade somewhere the followers can read, and they repeat it.

It is fast, because everything happens on one machine, and many copier EAs are free or cheap. The catch is that machine: it has to stay on, so in practice you rent a VPS and maintain it, and every new account means installing and configuring the EA again.

3. A cloud copier

A cloud copier runs on the provider's servers and connects to your accounts there. Your computer can be off, and there is no EA to install on each terminal.

Atlaas works this way with one difference: your accounts run as hosted MT5 terminals, and copy rules connect them. The copier and the terminals sit side by side on Atlaas, so nothing depends on a machine of yours.

The settings that decide whether copies are right

Most copying problems come from a handful of settings. Whatever tool you use, check each one.

Lot sizing

Copying 1.00 lot from a 100k account onto a 10k account is a different risk. The usual options:

• Multiplier. The follower trades a multiple of the source volume, for example 0.5 for an account half the size.
• Fixed volume. Every copied trade uses the same lot size, whatever the source traded.
• Proportional to balance or equity. Some copiers scale by account size automatically.

Atlaas offers a multiplier or a fixed volume, then snaps every copy to the target symbol's lot step and limits. A size below the broker's minimum lot is skipped with a warning rather than rounded up, and one above the maximum is capped with a warning.

Symbol names

Brokers name the same instrument differently: EURUSD, EURUSD.m, EURUSDm, XAUUSD.r. A copier that sends the source's symbol name unchanged fails at a broker that uses a suffix. Look for a symbol map, and map every symbol you trade before you rely on it.

Stops

Decide whether the follower should copy the source's stop loss and take profit, and whether later changes to them should follow. Copying stops keeps risk aligned; leaving them off lets you manage each account's levels on its own.

Which trades to copy

If the source runs several EAs, you may only want one of them copied. A magic number filter copies only trades carrying the magic numbers you list. With an empty filter, everything is copied, manual trades included.

Pending orders and closes

Check how your copier handles:

• Pending orders. Some copy them as pending; others, Atlaas included, copy the fill as a market order when the pending order triggers.
• Partial closes. The follower should close the same share of its position, not the same lot size.
• Reconnects and restarts. A good copier never replays history as new trades when a terminal reconnects, and never copies the same deal twice. Atlaas records every deal it acts on before sending an order, so each one is copied once, even across restarts.
• Late copies. An open placed long after the source fill enters at a different price. Atlaas drops an open it could not place within 30 seconds of the source fill and raises an alert instead.

Reverse copying

Mirror (reverse) mode takes the opposite side: a buy on the source becomes a sell on the follower, with stop loss and take profit swapped. It is useful for hedging between accounts and easy to switch on by accident, so check it is off unless you mean it.

Copying across prop firm accounts

Running one strategy across several funded accounts is the most common reason traders look for a copier. Three cautions:

• Read the rules. Firms differ. Some restrict copy trading, trading the same strategy on several accounts, or copying from accounts that belong to someone else. Check your firm's terms before you connect a funded account.
• Size per account. Each account has its own drawdown limits. Set the multiplier so a full loss on the source stays inside the smallest follower's daily limit.
• Mind the challenge rules. A challenge phase may forbid things the funded phase allows, such as holding over the weekend or trading news. Copying blindly carries the source's behaviour into every account.

Step by step on Atlaas

1. Host each account. Add the source and every follower as Atlaas MT5 terminals. They can be at different brokers.
2. Open Copy trading in the dashboard and choose New rule.
3. Pick the source and the target. One rule connects one pair; create a rule for each follower.
4. Set sizing. A multiplier, or a fixed volume.
5. Map symbols wherever the two brokers name an instrument differently.
6. Filter by magic number if only some strategies should be copied.
7. Save, then test. Place a small trade on a demo source and watch it open, then close, on the target.

Every copied order carries a copy: comment, so it is easy to spot in the follower's history, and a deal with that comment is never copied again. Two rules pointing at each other cannot loop.

When a copy does not appear

Work through these in order:

• Is the target running? A stopped or disconnected follower cannot trade. On Atlaas the copy is retried while the target comes back; an open that misses its 30 second window raises an alert on the target terminal.
• Did sizing fall under the minimum lot? A small multiplier on a small trade can land below the target broker's minimum.
• Does the symbol exist on the target? Add it to the symbol map.
• Is trading allowed on the follower? Check that the account is not read-only (an investor password) and that the market is open for that symbol.
• Was the trade filtered out? Check the magic number filter.

Summary

A local copier EA is fine when every terminal lives on one machine you keep running. If you would rather not run that machine, a cloud copier moves the work off it. On Atlaas, your accounts and the copier run together, and setting up a rule takes a few fields in the dashboard.