You installed a trade copier on your VPS, opened it, and the account list is empty. Or it shows one account when you expected three. Meanwhile you are certain you are logged in, because you can see the accounts on your own computer or in your broker’s app.
This is the single most common copy trading support question we get, and in almost every case it comes down to one of six causes. Work through them in order and you will find yours in a couple of minutes.
First: Your Logins Do Not Travel to the VPS
Your VPS is a separate Windows computer sitting in a data centre. It shares nothing with your laptop, your phone, or your broker’s web portal. MetaTrader stores account logins inside the terminal installation on the machine where you typed them.
So if you logged into your accounts at home and then connected to the VPS expecting to see them, they will not be there. Nothing is broken. You have to log into each account again, inside the terminals that are running on the VPS itself.
The same applies in reverse. Accounts you log into on the VPS will not appear on your home PC.
💡 Tip: Connect to your VPS over RDP and log into each account there, once. From then on the VPS holds the sessions and keeps them alive 24/7, which is the whole point of running copy trading on hosted infrastructure.
Second: One Account Per Terminal Installation
MetaTrader holds one live login per running terminal. When you go to File > Login to Trade Account and enter a second account, it replaces the first. You do not end up with two accounts, you end up with one.
Copy trading needs the master and every follower connected at the same moment, so each account needs its own MetaTrader installation in its own folder:
C:\MT4_Master\C:\MT4_Follower_01\C:\MT4_Follower_02\
Download the installer from your broker again for each one and change the destination folder during setup. Our guide on installing multiple MT4 platforms from the same broker covers this step by step, and running multiple MT4/MT5 terminals covers mixing brokers and platforms.
⚠️ Warning: Do not install to
C:\Program Files (x86)\. Windows redirects writes from that folder into a per-user VirtualStore copy, so your copier’s master EA can end up writing signal files that the follower EA never sees. Install to a plain folder at the root ofC:\instead.
Third: The Copier Only Sees Terminals Running Its EA
This is the cause people miss. A trade copier does not scan your VPS and discover accounts. It only knows about terminals that are actively running its own Expert Advisor or plugin.
For a file-based copier such as Local Trade Copier, that means:
- Attach the server or master EA to any chart in the master terminal.
- Attach the client or follower EA to any chart in each follower terminal.
- Give each follower a unique client number if your copier asks for one.
- Turn on AutoTrading in the toolbar of every terminal, master and followers.
- Confirm the smiley face in the top right corner of each chart. A sad face or a cross means the EA is loaded but not permitted to trade, and that terminal will never register with the copier.
An account with no EA attached is invisible to the copier no matter how correctly it is logged in.
✅ Best Practice: Check Tools > Options > Expert Advisors in each terminal and enable “Allow automated trading”. If your copier needs it, also allow DLL imports, but only for software you obtained directly from its vendor.
Fourth: All Terminals Must Run in the Same Windows Session
Copiers running on one machine talk to each other through files or shared memory, and both of those are scoped to the Windows account and elevation level of the process.
Two things break this:
Different Windows users. Your VPS has a trader account. If you sometimes connect as trader and sometimes as Administrator, you get two separate desktops. Terminals you started in one session are simply not present in the other. Always connect with the username on your welcome email.
Mixed elevation. If you start one terminal with “Run as administrator” and the copier or the other terminals normally, they land in different views of the file system and never see each other. Either run everything elevated or nothing elevated. Nothing is the better choice.
Also worth knowing: closing your RDP window with the X leaves your session running, which is what you want. Choosing Sign out from the Start menu shuts your terminals down. See how to properly disconnect from an RDP session.
Fifth: You May Be Logged In With the Investor Password
Brokers issue two passwords per account. The master password trades. The investor password is read only.
A terminal logged in with the investor password connects normally, shows live prices, and looks completely healthy. It just cannot place an order. Most copiers either hide such accounts from the follower list or accept them and then fail on every single copy attempt.
Check the terminal’s Journal tab at the bottom of the screen. A line reading “logged in as investor” or an account name ending in “investor” confirms it. Log out and back in with the master password.
Sixth: The Account Is Not Actually Connected
Look at the bottom right corner of each terminal. You want a green connection indicator with a data rate next to it. If it reads No connection or Invalid account, the terminal is not logged in at all, and the Journal tab will say why. The usual causes are a wrong server chosen from the dropdown, a password reset at the broker that was never updated on the VPS, or a demo account that has expired.
If Your Copier Is Cloud Based Rather Than Local
Some copy trading works entirely at the broker or on a web platform, including MQL5 Signals, broker-side copy programmes, and services like Duplikium. With these you link accounts in a web dashboard by entering the account number, password, and server name. Nothing is discovered from your VPS, so an empty list there means the account was never linked in the dashboard, or it was linked with the investor password.
MAM and PAMM structures are different again. Allocation happens inside the broker’s system and no copier software is involved at all. Our MAM and PAMM account manager guide explains which model suits which situation.
The 60 Second Checklist
Run down this list on your VPS and the empty account list almost always explains itself.
| Check | What you should see |
|---|---|
| Are you on the VPS desktop, not your own PC? | The RDP window, logged in as trader |
| One MetaTrader folder per account? | C:\MT4_Master\, C:\MT4_Follower_01\, and so on |
| Is every terminal actually running? | One taskbar entry per account |
| Is each one connected? | Green bars, bottom right of each terminal |
| Master password, not investor? | Journal tab shows a normal login |
| Copier EA attached to a chart in each terminal? | Smiley face, top right of the chart |
| AutoTrading on in every terminal? | Toolbar button green, not red |
| Everything started the same way? | All normal, or all elevated, never mixed |
Sizing It on Your Plan
Each MT4 terminal uses roughly 300-500 MB of RAM once it is running with a chart and an EA. MT5 uses closer to 600 MB-1.2 GB. Windows itself wants about 1.5 GB.
On the Pro VPS at $39/mo with 4 GB of RAM, a master plus four or five MT4 followers is comfortable. If you are on MT5, plan for a master plus three followers, or move up to the Scaling plan if you need more.
Keep follower terminals lean. One chart each, with the copier EA on it, and nothing else. The copier watches all trading activity on the account regardless of which symbol that chart shows, so extra charts and indicators cost you memory for no benefit.
🚀 Need more room? Upgrading your plan takes a few minutes and no reinstallation. Open a ticket from the client area and we will size it with you.
Once It Works, Prove It
Do not go live on the strength of an account list that finally populated. Place a 0.01 lot trade on the master and confirm three things on every follower: the trade appears within about a second, the lot size and direction are what you configured, and the stop loss and take profit came across. Then move the stop loss on the master and confirm the change copies. Then close the trade on the master and confirm every follower closes too.
Open, modify, and close all have to work. A copier that opens trades reliably but misses closes is more dangerous than one that does not work at all, because you will not find out until a position is sitting unmanaged.
For the full configuration walkthrough, including lot scaling, symbol mapping between brokers with different symbol names, and monitoring for silent drift between accounts, read our complete copy trading setup guide.