Do you need a VPS to run an MT5 Expert Advisor?
An Expert Advisor only trades while MetaTrader 5 is running and connected. Close your laptop, lose Wi-Fi, or let Windows install updates at 3am, and your EA is offline — potentially holding an unmanaged position.
A VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a small always-on Windows machine in a datacenter. MT5 runs there 24/7, unaffected by anything happening to your own computer.
What actually matters in a trading VPS
Latency to your broker: the round-trip time between your VPS and the broker's servers affects fill quality. For IC Markets, whose trade servers are in New York (NY4), a VPS in or near New York keeps latency in single-digit milliseconds.
Reliability over raw power: our EAs are lightweight — 2 CPU cores and 4 GB RAM run multiple MT5 instances comfortably. Uptime and network stability matter far more than benchmark numbers.
Keeping an eye on it
Even good VPS providers have incidents. This is why your LazyAlgos dashboard shows a live uptime indicator per license — if your EA stops checking in, the dashboard flags it, so a dead VPS never goes unnoticed for days.
Our partner page lists the VPS provider we use ourselves, with specs matched to MT5 workloads. Whatever provider you choose, set MT5 to auto-start on boot and disable automatic Windows restarts during trading hours.