How it works

Copying is done by one program — the engine — that Trepeat runs continuously on its own servers. This page describes what that program is, how it reaches each platform, and what it can and cannot do to your broker account.

Where the copying happens

Copying happens on Trepeat's own servers, and nothing runs on your machine. There is no Expert Advisor to load, no plugin, no terminal to leave open and no VPS to rent, and your computer can be switched off while copying continues.

The engine opens its own connection to each account a Running repeater needs, and drops the connection again when no Running repeater needs it — which is why a healthy idle account reads Standby rather than Connected. An account that still holds an open copied trade stays connected until that trade closes. See Account statuses and Running, Stopped and open positions.

Only one engine process may act on any one account at a time. Trepeat updates the engine by starting a new copy before stopping the old one, and without that rule both copies would copy the same fill — which is exactly what happened once, in June 2026, and produced duplicate follower positions. The account is claimed by one process, and the other tracks it without placing anything.

How each platform is reached

MetaTrader is reached through MetaApi, and cTrader is reached directly, over an encrypted connection to cTrader's own endpoint.

• MetaTrader — through MetaApi, which maintains the connection to your broker's MT4 or MT5 server. The engine subscribes to that account and is notified of deals as the broker reports them. The engine itself never handles your trading password: MetaApi holds the login, and all the engine is given is an account reference.
• cTrader — no intermediary. The engine opens an encrypted connection straight to Spotware's cTrader demo endpoint and speaks the platform's own protocol. Every cTrader account Trepeat holds shares that one connection; yours is joined to it using the authorisation you granted on cTrader's site, so there is no cTrader password anywhere in Trepeat. See Connecting a cTrader account.

What the engine does with that connection

The engine watches the source account, and when a position opens or closes there it resolves what the instrument is called on each follower, works out the size, and sends a market order to each follower account — see Symbol allowlist and remapping and Repeater settings. It never opens a position of its own accord: every copy it places corresponds to a fill on your source account.

What it copies is opens and closes, in full or in part. Stop loss and take profit are not copied. A follower copy opens with neither, and moving them on the source changes nothing on the follower. When the source position closes — because you closed it, or because its stop loss or take profit was hit — the follower copy closes with it, at its own broker's market price. The copy holds no stop of its own at its broker, so a source stop that triggers while the engine is not running leaves the copy open; see When the engine is not running below.

Pending orders are not copied. A limit or stop order resting on the source places nothing on the followers, and cancelling it leaves nothing to undo. When it fills, that fill is copied like any other — as a market order to each follower at that moment — so the follower's entry is the market price then, not the price on your order.

Every order it places carries a marker of its own, and its automatic closes act only on positions carrying that marker, even when the symbol matches. Flatten closes the source trade and every copy of it. Trades Trepeat isn't copying are never touched.

How long a copy takes

The gap between a source fill and the matching follower fill is three things, and only the middle one belongs to Trepeat: how quickly the source broker reports the fill; the engine's own work of sizing and dispatch; and the follower broker's execution, which is usually the largest and the most variable of the three.

The figure recorded against each copied trade runs from the moment the fill reached the engine to the moment the follower broker confirmed, so the first of those three legs is not in it. Each repeater also sets its own limit on how long a confirmation may take before the copy is treated as failed.

Every copy on your Trades page shows that figure, so you see what your own brokers do; a copy can take several seconds when a broker is slow. cTrader followers are usually faster than MetaTrader ones, because a MetaTrader order passes through MetaApi on its way to the broker. Copy times are measurements, not a commitment. What your own accounts do depends on the two brokers involved, the instrument and the state of the market at that moment.

Demo accounts only, in more than one place

Trepeat currently connects demo accounts only, and the rule is enforced separately at five layers, so no single failure opens it. It is not a setting in the interface.

• At connect. On MetaTrader the connect step reads the account type from the broker and refuses one identified as live, recording the account as Error with that reason. A live login can never become a demo login, so that account is permanently barred from reconnecting.
• In the background. A periodic check re-reads the account type and tears down any account that reached an active state and turns out to be live.
• In the engine. It attaches to an account only when the account is confirmed demo. An unverified account is treated as not-demo and left alone until the check resolves it — no connection means no fills are seen and nothing can be copied.
• On cTrader, in the wire itself. The engine connects only to the demo endpoint, and the platform keeps its demo and live environments fully separate, so a live account is unreachable rather than merely refused. The engine additionally asks the platform whether the account is demo, and refuses unless it says so.
• In the database. A constraint forbids a live account from ever being recorded as connected. No code path can write that combination, and removing the rule would take a reviewed database migration rather than a setting change.

What leaves your broker account

The engine reads your fills, your open positions, your balance and equity, the contract details and live prices of the instruments in use, and on cTrader the list of accounts your authorisation covers, with whether each is live or demo. It writes market orders to open a copy, closes of positions it opened itself, and the close of a source position when you press Flatten. It does not move money and it does not read anything else.

What Trepeat stores for the connection itself — and what it deliberately does not store — is set out in Security. What it records about each copy is on Trades and positions.

When the engine is not running

Outages are rare and the process is restarted automatically, but the honest answer to what happens meanwhile is: copying stops.

• Nothing is copied, and nothing is copied later. A source fill that happens while the engine is down is not seen, and copying does not go back and fill it in when the engine returns. It resumes from live activity only.
• Your repeaters are untouched. A Running repeater stays Running with its settings intact; on start the engine reloads them and reconnects the accounts they need.
• Flatten does not work. Flatten is an instruction the engine carries out, so with no engine there is nothing to carry it out. The attempt gives up within seconds and says plainly that nothing was closed, rather than reporting a close it did not make. Close the position at your broker instead.
• A missed close leaves the copy open. If a source position closed while the close was not seen, the follower copy is still open. Trepeat raises an error alert telling you to close it yourself, and does not close it afterwards — by then the price has moved on, so a late close would be a trade you did not ask for.
• Live figures stop moving. Prices and floating profit are pushed to the app by the engine, so they stop updating. Trades and balances already recorded are still there.
• A known outage is announced. When Trepeat is aware of one, a notice appears as a banner across the app until it is resolved.