What is a source account vs a follower account?

The source is the account whose trades you want repeated; followers are the accounts that receive the copies. You point followers at a source, and the copier mirrors each of the source's orders onto them.

What can a trade copier copy?

A faithful copier mirrors the whole trade life cycle — opening a position, closing it (full or partial), and stop-loss / take-profit changes mid-trade — and scales the lot to each follower's account rather than copying it one-to-one.

Do I have to be online for copying to work?

It depends where the copier runs. A copier on your own PC only works while that machine is on; a cloud copier runs on hosted infrastructure, so it keeps copying independently of your own devices.

Guides

What Is a Trade Copier? How Copying Trades Works

Q: Is a trade copier the same as a copy-trading platform?

No. Copy-trading platforms let you follow a stranger's signals. A trade copier repeats your own trades across accounts you control — it isn't following someone else, it's mirroring you.

A trade copier repeats the trades on one account onto one or more others automatically. Here's the source → follower model, what gets copied, and what it doesn't do.

27 Jun 2026 · 5 min read

A trade copier is software that repeats the trades on one trading account onto one or more other accounts automatically. When a position opens, changes or closes on the first account, the copier reproduces that action on the others within moments — so several accounts stay in step without you placing each trade by hand.

The source → follower model

Every copier works the same way. One account is the source — the account whose trades you want repeated. The accounts that receive the copies are the followers. You connect them to the copier, point the followers at the source, and from then on the copier listens to the source and mirrors each order onto the followers. The source can be traded however you like — by hand, or by an Expert Advisor — the copier just repeats whatever happens there.

What gets copied

A faithful copier mirrors the whole life of a trade, not just the entry:

Opens — a new position on the source opens a matching one on each follower.
Closes — closing on the source closes the follower's position too (full or partial).
Modifications — stop-loss and take-profit changes are mirrored mid-trade.
Sizing — the follower's lot is scaled to its own account, not copied 1:1 (more on that below).

Where a copier runs

Because a copier only works while it's connected to the broker, where it runs matters: on your own PC, on a rented VPS, or in the cloud as a hosted service. Each trades off uptime, cost and upkeep differently — we cover the full comparison in cloud vs local (VPS) trade copiers.

Sizing: matching trades to each account

Copying a 1.0-lot trade straight onto a smaller account would over-expose it, so copiers scale the size to each follower — commonly by an equity ratio (each follower scaled by its own balance) or a fixed multiplier. How that arithmetic works, and how rounding and broker minimums come in, is covered in position sizing when copying trades; you can try it on the lot size calculator.

What a trade copier does not do

A copier is a distribution tool, not a strategy or an advisor. It doesn't decide what to trade, when, or whether a trade is a good idea — it only repeats decisions that already happened on the source. It's also distinct from social / copy-trading platforms, where you follow a stranger's signals: a trade copier repeats your own trades across accounts you control, not someone else's.

Where Trepeat fits