Home › Brokers & platforms › MetaTrader 4
MetaTrader 4 VPS
MetaTrader 4 VPS —
a gigabyte per terminal.
Windows included. Three gigabytes runs three MT4 terminals, four runs four — the arithmetic is the whole of it, and it holds for MT5 and cTrader too.
- MT4 pre-installed, set to start with Windows
- 42 cities — pick the one nearest your broker
- Windows Server licence included
How much RAM do I need?
So 3 GB runs three, 4 GB runs four, 8 GB runs eight. Count your terminals and that is the plan.
One gigabyte,
one terminal.
MT4 is the lighter of the two and will take one or two more at a push, but the rule is the one we give when somebody asks in a ticket, and we would rather it were memorable than precise. A terminal uses less than a gigabyte and Windows takes a share of the first one — what is left over is the headroom that stops a chart stuttering when an expert advisor decides to allocate.
Three MT4 terminals wants three gigabytes. No subtracting for Windows, no working out what a chart costs — the headroom is already in the number.
Ten charts with a stack of indicators is the exception. That is nearer double, so count two gigabytes for a terminal like that — and if you are unsure, tell us what you run and we will say which plan rather than guess at it.
Which one holds
your terminals.
Straight from the rule. If it turns out wrong we move you up free of charge — you will not be asked to buy a second month to find out.
The High Frequency plan holds the same three as the Best. What you pay the difference for is clock speed — a Ryzen 9 at 5.7 GHz rather than an EPYC core — which matters for a scalping EA and not at all for a swing strategy.
MT4 or MT5 —
what changes.
The memory rule is the same for both, so this is a features decision rather than a sizing one.
MetaTrader 4
1 GB each
- Far more EAs written for it, and copiers target it first
- Single-threaded, so core speed matters more than core count
- Lighter in practice, so a plan will take one or two more at a push
- No longer developed — MetaQuotes stopped issuing new licences
MetaTrader 5
1 GB each
- Multi-threaded tester, so optimisation uses every core you rent
- Stocks and futures as well as forex
- Depth of market, more timeframes, netting or hedging
- MQL4 code will not run on it without a rewrite, so an EA does not simply move across
Where MT4 stands now,
and how long it has.
MetaQuotes stopped selling it in 2022
New brokers cannot licence MT4. MetaQuotes closed the door in 2022, so a firm opening today offers MT5 or nothing, and the ones holding both licences are quietly steering new accounts towards the newer one.
Existing licences keep working, and there is no announced end date. But the direction is settled: the pool of brokers offering MT4 shrinks a little each year, and if you open an account with a firm founded after 2022 it will not be on MT4 at all.
What that means in practice is not urgency — it is that switching brokers becomes a smaller choice over time. Worth knowing before you build five years of tooling around it.
One core, and why that changes what to rent
MT4's Strategy Tester runs on a single thread. Give it sixteen cores and it uses one, which is the opposite of how most software behaves and catches people out when they buy a large machine expecting faster optimisation.
For MT4 the number that matters is clock speed, not core count. A Ryzen 9 at 5.7 GHz will finish a backtest that an EPYC core takes half again as long over, and the EPYC has more cores doing nothing. That is the whole argument for the High Frequency plan on this page.
The same is true in live trading, though less dramatically. A terminal is mostly idle; what it needs is a core that responds quickly when a tick arrives, rather than several that respond adequately.
The expert advisors are the reason people stay
MQL4 and MQL5 are different languages, not versions of one. An MQL4 expert advisor does not run on MT5 — it has to be rewritten, and for anything with real logic in it that is a job rather than an afternoon.
Most of the people running MT4 today are not choosing it on merit. They have a working EA, often one they bought or inherited and cannot maintain, and moving it would mean paying a developer to rebuild something that already works. That is a perfectly good reason to stay.
If you are starting from nothing, though, the calculation runs the other way, and the MT5 page is the one to read.
It is lighter, which buys you a terminal or two
MT4 holds noticeably less memory than MT5 — enough that a plan sized by our rule will usually take one or two more terminals than the count says. We do not advertise the higher number because it depends on what your charts are doing, and a rule that sometimes fails is worse than one that is always a little generous.
If you are running eight MT4 terminals on a plan we have sized for six and it is behaving, that is expected rather than lucky. Ask us and we will tell you where the real ceiling is on your machine.
Pick the city your broker sits in.
Not the one you live in. Your remote desktop session does not need to be fast; your orders do.
Any of them can be chosen at checkout, and changed later free of charge once a month. See what each broker answers in →
Before you spend anything.
The questions our support desk actually receives, answered plainly.
Still unsure which plan or which city? Send us your broker's account server name and we will measure it before you buy.
Platform compatibility
MT4 and MT5 are installed for you on request. The rest take a couple of minutes — you have full Administrator access to the machine.