How many MT4 and MT5 terminals fit on a VPS: measured

"How many terminals can I run on it?" is the question we get most often with a MetaTrader VPS, usually from traders with several prop firm accounts or a mix of brokers. We measured it: up to 12 MetaTrader 5 terminals and 8 MetaTrader 4 terminals on one server, memory, processor and disk at each step.

1. How we measured

A new Windows Server 2025 server from our MetaTrader images, on the Pro plan (4 vCPU, 8 GB of RAM). The first terminal starts on its own at logon, as on every server we deliver. We then added portable copies of the terminal one by one, each in its own folder, and read the figures 90 seconds after each start: memory used by Windows as a whole, memory used by the terminals themselves, average processor load over one minute, disk used.

The terminals were open but not logged in to a broker, with the default charts. That is the floor: an idle terminal. A terminal receiving live quotes, with a few months of history loaded, several charts and an Expert Advisor, uses more. Section 4 explains how to size for that.

2. MetaTrader 5

Each additional MT5 terminal costs about 175 MB of RAM and 0.45 GB of disk for its own copy of the program. Twelve idle terminals still left more than half of the 8 GB free.

3. MetaTrader 4

MT4 is a 32-bit program and much lighter: about 65 MB per additional terminal, 0.15 GB of disk per copy.

On the processor side, the load stayed between 3 and 25 % of the 4 vCPU throughout, whatever the number of terminals. The peaks came from Windows itself (updates, antivirus scans), not from MetaTrader. Idle terminals do not limit you; Expert Advisors that compute on every tick do.

4. Sizing for live trading

Windows takes about 1.8 GB on its own. Then count each terminal at what it uses once it trades, not at its idle footprint. The simplest way to get that figure is to read it on your own setup: after a full trading day, open the Task Manager, tab Details, column Memory, line terminal64.exe (or terminal.exe for MT4).

Get-Process terminal64, terminal -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
    Select-Object Id, Path, @{n='MB'; e={[math]::Round($_.WorkingSet64 / 1MB)}}

Then: RAM needed = 2 GB + number of terminals × memory of one terminal + 1 GB of margin. Without a figure of your own, plan for twice the idle footprint: about 350 MB per MT5 terminal, 130 MB per MT4 terminal. On memory alone, that gives:

Beyond a dozen terminals, check the processor rather than the memory: an Expert Advisor that runs heavy indicators on every tick of every chart can keep a vCPU busy on its own. If the load in the Task Manager stays above 70 % during market hours, move up a plan.

5. Running several terminals of the same broker

The installer of a given broker installs into a single folder. To run several accounts of that broker side by side, copy the installation folder and start each copy in portable mode, so that it keeps its data in its own folder:

Copy-Item -Recurse "C:\Program Files\MetaTrader 5" "C:\MT5\account-2"
& "C:\MT5\account-2\terminal64.exe" /portable

On our servers, the first terminal starts by itself at logon. To start the others after a restart too, put a shortcut to each copy, with /portable at the end of the target, in the startup folder: type shell:startup in the Run box (Win + R).

Running several prop firm challenges at once? Our page on prop firm rules and traps on a VPS covers what the firms allow, and moving MetaTrader from a PC explains how to bring your current setup over.