What is a VPS?

What it is

A VPS — virtual private server — is a computer in a professional data centre that runs continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Unlike your laptop or desktop at home, it never sleeps, never restarts for updates at the wrong moment, and never loses connection because someone tripped over the router cable.

For automated trading, a VPS is not optional — it's essential. Your Expert Advisor needs to be running at all times to monitor the market and manage open trades. The VPS is the machine it runs on.

How it works

The word "virtual" is important. A VPS is not a physical computer you own and keep on a shelf. It's a portion of a much larger physical server, partitioned off for your exclusive use. You get a fixed allocation of processing power, memory, and storage — all running inside a professional data centre with redundant power supplies, redundant internet connections, and round-the-clock physical security.

You access your VPS remotely using a tool called Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) — the same technology that lets IT departments connect to office computers from home. You log in, you see a Windows desktop, and you can install and run software exactly as you would on a normal computer. The difference is that the computer stays on whether you're connected or not.

What makes a VPS different from a home computer

Always on: A VPS runs continuously. Your home computer doesn't.
Professional internet: Data centres use enterprise-grade connections with multiple redundant providers. Your home broadband is a single point of failure.
Location: A VPS can be provisioned in the same data centre as your broker's servers — meaning your trades reach the broker in milliseconds rather than crossing half the internet first.
Managed hardware: If a hard drive fails in a data centre, it gets replaced. If your home computer fails, your EA stops until you fix it.

A worked example

You're running an EA on EUR/USD. At 3am on a Tuesday, a major news event causes a sharp price move. Your EA needs to close a position immediately to protect against losses.

If the EA is running on your home computer and you switched it off before bed — nothing happens. The trade sits open, unmanaged, through the entire move.

If the EA is running on a VPS — it detects the move, closes the position, and handles everything automatically. You wake up in the morning to a closed trade rather than a blown account.

Why it matters

MetaTrader — the platform Expert Advisors run on — is a Windows application. It needs to stay open and connected for your EA to function. The moment MetaTrader closes, the EA stops. The moment your internet drops, the EA loses its connection to the broker. The moment your computer restarts for a Windows update, any open trades are left unmanaged.

A VPS solves all of this in one step. It keeps MetaTrader running, connected, and active regardless of what's happening on your end.

Common misconceptions

A VPS is not expensive to run. For forex trading purposes, a basic VPS costs between £6–15 per month.
You don't need to be technical to use a VPS. You never need to log into the server if you don't want to.
More RAM is not always better. A single EA running on MetaTrader 4 uses very little memory. The spec you need depends on how many EAs you're running simultaneously, not on the complexity of any individual strategy.

The Karnek note

Karnek is read-only monitoring for MetaTrader - it watches every account you run, live on one dashboard, and alerts you the moment something stops. It never trades and never asks for a trading password.

See it in Karnek: Karnek's health monitoring tells a dead VPS apart from a stalled EA.