MQL5 Signals vs a Telegram signal copier
MQL5 Signals copies a listed provider into your MetaTrader account. A Telegram signal copier copies the room you already follow. Here is where each one fits.
MQL5 Signals and a Telegram signal copier solve different problems. MQL5 Signals copies the trades of a provider listed on the MQL5 site into your MetaTrader account. A Telegram signal copier reads the messages of a room you already follow and places those trades on your account. If your trades come from a Telegram room, MQL5 Signals does not replace the copier, and the other way round.
CopySignals is a cloud Telegram signal copier for MT4, MT5 and eTrader: it reads the rooms you already follow through your own Telegram account and places the trades on your own broker account. This article sets it beside the MQL5 Signals service so you can see where each one fits, using what MQL5 and MetaQuotes say on their own pages. For the wider picture of the three models, see copy trading vs social trading vs signal rooms.
What is the MQL5 Signals service?
It is a marketplace built into MetaTrader where you subscribe to a provider and your terminal repeats that provider's trades. The MQL5 signals page states that a subscription "allows you to copy provider's trades within 1 month" and that you need a MetaTrader trading terminal for the subscription to work. The same page lets you filter providers by figures such as maximum drawdown, leverage and profit per month, and it carries a plain warning that the subscriber accepts all execution risks and that historical statistics cannot guarantee any profitability in the future.
There are separate lists for the two MetaTrader versions: the MT5 signals list links to both an MT5 and an MT4 view. So the service covers the same two MetaTrader platforms that CopySignals does, but only through providers who have published their account there.
What does a subscriber need to run MQL5 Signals?
You need an MQL5.community account entered in the terminal, and the terminal has to stay connected. MetaTrader's help for subscribers says you must specify your account details under the Community tab, and that the trading account must always be on and connected to the server that the subscription runs on. The same page suggests you can rent a VPS to avoid keeping your own computer running.
That is a fair design for what it does. It means "always on" is your job, either with a machine at home or with a rented server. We wrote about the trade-off in running the terminal in the cloud or at home.
What settings do you get on a subscription?
The subscriber help page describes a short list of controls. They are worth reading before you decide, because they show what the service is built to do:
- A deposit share: the "Use no more than" percentage, which in the page's example turns a 10,000 USD balance and 90% into 9,000 USD used for following the signal.
- An equity stop: the "Stop if equity is less than" value, which ends copying and closes positions below the level you set.
- A slippage allowance, given as the permissible deviation of the executed price from the requested price.
- Copying of the provider's stop loss and take profit levels, and a switch to pause the subscription without cancelling it.
Those controls scale a provider's whole account to yours. They are not the controls you need when the source is a Telegram room, where the instrument, the stop and every target are written in a message and the room edits the trade later with follow-up posts.
Can MQL5 Signals copy a Telegram room?
The pages we read do not mention Telegram, and the service is described as copying a provider's trades from the MQL5 site. If the room you follow posts its calls in a Telegram channel, the trades are in the text of the posts and not on a provider account you can subscribe to. That is the gap a Telegram copier fills.
CopySignals reads the channel through your own Telegram account, so any room you already belong to can be copied, including one somebody else owns. It parses free text into instrument, side, entry or entry zone, stop loss and every take profit, and a post that does not read as a trade is skipped with the reason on the event log. Nothing is sent from your Telegram account. More on how that works is in user account vs bot Telegram copiers.
Which one handles the life of the trade?
That depends on where the trade management lives. With a provider's account, MQL5 Signals repeats what the provider does on their account. With a Telegram room, the management is in the follow-up messages: move to break even, take half off at the first target, the stop was hit, close the rest. The result of a signal usually comes from those messages and not the entry.
CopySignals handles them as part of the product: break even after a number of targets you choose, a partial close at each target, a trailing stop, and the exit when the room reports a stop or the last target. You decide how the take profits are split, with custom weights, first only, run to the last, or none. See break even and partial close from signal updates for the detail.
How do the two compare side by side?
| Question | MQL5 Signals | CopySignals |
|---|---|---|
| Where the trades come from | A provider listed on the MQL5 signals page | A Telegram room you are a member of |
| Platforms | MetaTrader, with MT5 and MT4 lists | MT4, MT5 and eTrader |
| Terminal kept running by | You, or a rented VPS, per MetaTrader's subscriber help | CopySignals, one terminal per account on its servers |
| Sizing | A percentage of the deposit to use | Fixed lot, percent of the account against the signal's stop, a multiple of the master's lot, or the master's lot scaled by balance, always capped by a maximum lot |
| Stops on your side | An equity stop and a slippage allowance | Maximum spread, a cap on open positions, a delay before placing, word filters, an instrument list |
When is MQL5 Signals the better choice?
When you want to follow a trader on a public track record and you have no Telegram room in mind. The service puts the provider list, the filters and the subscription in the terminal you already use, and you do not have to read any messages. If you only use MT5 and are happy to keep a terminal running or rent a VPS, it needs nothing else.
It is not the answer if the room you trust is on Telegram, if you want to copy between your own accounts on MT4, MT5 and eTrader, or if you run a funded account and a personal one at different sizes. Account to account copying is part of CopySignals: a connected account can be the master, and its positions are mirrored to the others at their own size, across brokers and platforms. Our limit is the platform list: CopySignals supports MT4, MT5 and eTrader only.
What does CopySignals cost compared with running your own setup?
Every CopySignals plan is the whole product. The plans differ only in how many trading accounts and Telegram accounts they cover: Starter is $14 a month, Basic $29, Pro $149, and Business is quoted by email. You pay by card or crypto through our payment partner, monthly, and you can cancel any time. A 30 day money back guarantee applies. Details are on the pricing page. Trading carries risk, and a copier only places, modifies and closes orders on the accounts you connect.
If the signals you follow arrive in Telegram, the shortest route is copying Telegram signals to MT5, with the same setup for MT4 and eTrader. Try it on a demo account first, as laid out in copy signals to a demo account first.
Sources
- Trading Signals, MQL5 (MetaQuotes), checked 25 October 2026
- Trading Signals, MT5 list, MQL5 (MetaQuotes), checked 25 October 2026
- Signals subscriber help, MetaTrader 5 (MetaQuotes), checked 25 October 2026