Running MT4/MT5 trading terminals on a Windows RDP: a sizing guide

Why location beats specs here

Trading terminals are not CPU-hungry. What matters is the round-trip to the broker's matching engine, because that is your execution latency. Most brokers host in one of three places:

Find your broker's location in the terminal: Tools → Options → Server shows the ping, and the server hostname usually resolves to a range you can look up. If your broker is in LD4 and your VPS is in Singapore, you are adding ~170 ms to every order for no reason — even if you personally live in Singapore. Your terminal talks to the broker; you only talk to the desktop, and a laggy desktop is an annoyance while laggy execution is a cost.

Sizing

Memory

Measured on our own machines with 2026 builds:

• MT5 terminal, one chart, no EA: ~380 MB
• MT5, 6 charts + 2 indicators each: ~700 MB
• MT5 running a strategy tester pass: 1.5-3 GB, transient
• MT4 is lighter: roughly 60% of the MT5 figures
• Windows Server 2022 idle: ~1.9 GB

So: RAM needed ≈ 2 GB + (1.5 GB × terminals). Round up, because Windows Update, Defender and your browser all want a share.

CPU

A terminal with live charts uses 2-6% of one modern core. The exceptions are the strategy tester (which will happily consume every core you give it) and badly-written EAs that busy-loop in OnTick. If you backtest regularly, the CPU is worth paying for; if you only run live, it is not.

Disk

Terminals themselves are small, but tick history grows fast — a year of M1 data across 20 symbols is easily 15-20 GB. 60 GB is fine for two or three terminals; go to 120 GB if you archive history.

Keeping it running unattended

Survive reboots

Windows Update will restart your machine eventually. Make the terminals come back:

$action  = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "C:\Program Files\MetaTrader 5\terminal64.exe"
$trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -AtLogOn
$set     = New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet -RestartCount 3 -RestartInterval (New-TimeSpan -Minutes 1)
Register-ScheduledTask -TaskName "MT5-Main" -Action $action -Trigger $trigger -Settings $set -RunLevel Highest

Then enable auto-login so the desktop session exists after a reboot, and set a fixed maintenance window so updates never land during your session:

Set-ItemProperty 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings' -Name ActiveHoursStart -Value 6
Set-ItemProperty 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings' -Name ActiveHoursEnd   -Value 23

Disconnect without closing

Closing the RDP window with the X leaves the session running — that is what you want. Never use Sign out: it terminates the session and every terminal in it. If you want to be certain, disconnect from the Start menu with Disconnect, not Sign out.

Watch for the silent killer

Group Policy can set an idle-session timeout that logs you off after a few hours. Our images ship with it disabled, but check it if terminals mysteriously die overnight:

gpedit.msc → ... → Remote Desktop Session Host → Session Time Limits
  "Set time limit for disconnected sessions" → Disabled

What we would actually buy

Add automated backups. An EA misconfiguration that wipes your templates and history at 4 a.m. is a one-click rollback with them and a bad week without.