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An expert advisor, or EA, is a program that runs inside MetaTrader 4 or 5 and places trades from rules you set. It watches prices around the clock and acts without you clicking anything.
An expert advisor is a piece of code written in MQL4 or MQL5, the languages of the MetaTrader platforms. You attach it to a chart, and it reads the prices, applies its rules and sends orders to your broker. Traders use EAs to trade a fixed plan without emotion, to trade while they sleep, or to run many strategies at once.
A simple EA might buy EUR/USD when the 20-period average crosses above the 50-period average, place a stop loss 30 pips away and a take profit 60 pips away, and risk 1% of the account per trade. Once attached, it does that every time the rule fires, on every tick, until you switch it off.
First, backtest it in the strategy tester with real tick data, then run it on a demo account for a few weeks. Curve-fitted EAs look perfect on past data and fail on live prices. Second, read your broker’s rules. Some brokers ban scalping EAs or limit them to certain accounts, and every prop firm has its own EA rules. Third, decide where it will run. An EA only trades while the platform is open, so many traders rent a VPS, a small server that stays on all the time.
Most prop firms allow EAs, but many ban copy trading, tick scalping or trading the same strategy across many accounts. The rules are on each firm’s profile in our prop firm directory, with the date we checked them.
Our MT5 brokers list covers brokers built for automated trading. See also spread and spread-only pricing, because an EA that trades often pays the spread often.
EA stands for expert advisor, the MetaTrader name for an automated trading program. Other platforms call the same thing a bot, a robot or an algo.
Some do for a while, and many do not. An EA is only as good as its rules and the market it was built for. Test it on a demo account and treat any seller’s profit claims as advertising.
Sources: MetaQuotes MQL5 documentation on expert advisors. Checked 25 September 2026.
Risk warning: trading forex and CFDs on margin carries a high risk of losing money. Most retail accounts lose money. Never trade with money you cannot afford to lose.