MetaTrader 5 is software, not a broker. That single fact shapes every decision below, including the one most guides get wrong: there is no financial regulator that licenses a "forex VPS," and nothing about hosting your terminal changes who holds your money or what protections you have.
What hosting does change is uptime, and whether your Expert Advisors keep running when your laptop is shut. This piece covers the three routes to that, the hard limits MetaQuotes publishes in its own service rules, how to pick a data centre using turnover data instead of guesswork, and the checks worth doing before you pay anyone.
MetaQuotes sells a virtual hosting service directly inside the terminal. You can also rent a Windows VPS from any hosting company and install MT5 yourself. Or your broker may supply one, usually free if you clear a balance or volume threshold set out in the client agreement.
Which one suits you depends less on price than on what your EAs need. MetaQuotes' own service is the cheapest to start and the most restrictive by design. A third-party Windows VPS gives you a full desktop and lets you pick the city. A broker-supplied one costs nothing but locks you to that broker and usually comes with modest specifications.
These are not marketing caveats. They are written into the Rules of Using the Virtual Hosting Service on mql5.com, and they decide whether the built-in option is usable for you at all.
One rule works in your favour: automated trading is always enabled on a virtual terminal, even if you disabled it in the terminal settings or in the EA's parameters.
Prices for third-party and broker-supplied hosting change constantly, so the table compares constraints rather than monthly fees. Those stay true after the pricing pages move.
| MetaQuotes virtual hosting | Third-party Windows VPS | Broker-supplied VPS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DLL-based EAs | Blocked. Critical error on any DLL call | Allowed, subject to your Windows licence | Usually allowed, check the client agreement |
| Accounts per terminal | One | As many instances as the machine carries | Set by the broker |
| Chart and EA cap | 32 paid, 16 free | Limited by RAM and CPU | Usually modest |
| Choose the data centre | Assigned from the hosting cloud network | You choose the city | Fixed by the broker |
| Desktop or file access | None, logs only | Full RDP desktop | Varies |
| Software other than MT5 | No | Yes | Rarely |
| Stated maintenance window | Up to 4 h at weekends, 15 min weekdays | Per the host's SLA | Per the broker |
| Minimum term and refunds | 1 month, no refund on user cancellation | Often hourly or monthly, check terms | Tied to the balance or volume condition |
| Published price | 15 USD per month at 1 month, 13 at 3, 10.83 at 6, 10 at 12, per mql5.com | Varies by provider, verify on their site | Usually free if you meet the stated condition |
The MetaQuotes figures above were read from mql5.com and are the vendor's current published rates. Confirm them on the day you order, because they can change. There is a 24-hour free trial, and the service rules state that you are switched to the paid plan automatically once it ends, so set a reminder if you intend to test and walk away.
"Choose a server near your broker" is the standard advice, and it is right for a reason you can actually check. The BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey, published on 30 September 2025, puts global OTC FX turnover at $9.6 trillion per day in April 2025, up 28% from 2022. Sales desks in four jurisdictions accounted for 75% of that activity: the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR. The UK alone held 38% of total turnover, and Singapore reached 11.8%.
Where sales desks sit is where liquidity providers and prime brokers place their matching engines. That is why the same handful of facilities keep coming up in this niche: Equinix LD4 in London, NY4 and NY5 in New York, TY3 in Tokyo, and the Singapore sites. If you do not know where your broker's trade server physically is, ask support for the hostname or the facility, then resolve it and trace the route.
Cross-check the answer against the pair you actually trade. A broker running Asian-session pairs out of a Tokyo facility and a broker running USD crosses out of London will point you to different cities, and copying someone else's choice helps only if you share their broker.
I am not going to give you a millisecond figure, because any number that does not name both endpoints is decoration. Latency is a property of one specific path: the machine running your terminal, and the one specific server your broker matched your order against. Change either and the number changes.
Measure it yourself, like this.
Vendor claims are vendor claims. MetaQuotes publishes that its optimised core gives 0-5 ms latency against 100 ms from a home PC, that 96% of broker servers can be reached in under 10 ms and 84% in under 3 ms, that it operates more than thirty hosting points, and that hardware is specified for up to 99.99% uptime with up to 3 GB of RAM and 16 GB of disk per virtual machine. Those are the provider's own published statements, not independent measurements, and you should read every competing provider's numbers the same way.
Hosting infrastructure is not a regulated financial activity. No authority issues a forex VPS licence, and a provider that implies otherwise is selling you something. The real constraints sit in three places, and the first one is worth reading in the vendor's own words.
The MetaQuotes service rules state that the administration does not own the physical servers in its hosting cloud network and makes no guarantee of smooth operation. Section VII says the service takes no responsibility for losses or short-received profit from using or being unable to use it, and that MetaQuotes is a technology provider which gives no financial advice, with all transactions processed through your broker. The same section lists the risks outright: hoster hardware malfunction, MQL4 or MQL5 program errors sending wrong or late orders, simultaneous connections from different places on one account, and communication failures causing trade requests to go unfilled.
The second constraint is your broker's client agreement. Some permit Expert Advisors and some restrict them. Several prohibit strategies that exploit price feed latency or that place and cancel orders at a rate their infrastructure was not built for, and those clauses exist whether or not your EA does so deliberately. Read that section before you deploy, because the sanction is a closed account rather than a refund.
The third is data location. You are putting credentials, EA logic and trade history on someone else's machine, often in another country. That has privacy and, for some traders, reporting consequences that no hosting review can answer for you.
The failure mode most people hit is not latency. It is discovering after a month that the environment cannot run what they already built, which is why the DLL rule and the chart cap belong at the top of your checklist rather than at the bottom.
This article describes published vendor rules and publicly available market statistics. It is not investment advice, and nothing here creates any regulatory protection for funds held with a broker. Confirm all pricing and terms on the provider's own site before committing money.