What is the difference between an EA, an indicator and a script?

An indicator only calculates and draws on the chart, such as a moving average line, and cannot trade by itself. A script runs once when you drop it on a chart, does one job such as closing all orders, and then stops. An expert advisor keeps running on every price update and can open, change and close trades until you remove it.

Can a trade copier copy trades between two different brokers?

Usually, yes. A local copier works between MetaTrader terminals running on the same computer or server, whichever brokers they connect to. Watch for different symbol names, different minimum lot sizes and small delays between the two fills. Some brokers restrict copying or signal services in their terms, so read them before you connect a live account.

Can I run a trade manager and a trading robot at the same time?

Yes, on separate charts, but set them up so they do not fight each other. Many trade managers act on every trade in the account unless you tell them which symbol or magic number to watch. If the robot already trails its own stops, a second trailing stop from the manager can close trades early. Test the pair together on a demo account first.

Do I need to know how to code to use an expert advisor?

No. Installing an EA means copying files into the right folder and pressing one key in MetaEditor to compile it. Coding skills help when you want to check what an EA really does, fix a small error or change its rules. Frameworks and templates are the one type that expects you to write code yourself before they are useful.

Types of Expert Advisors: Robots, Trade Managers, Copiers & More

Beginner8 min read

Wall of hand tools hanging on a dark pegboard — Image by Anton Savinov on Unsplash

What types of expert advisors are there?

There are eight main types of expert advisors. Trading robots open and close trades on their own. Trade managers look after trades you open yourself, and risk EAs protect the whole account. News EAs trade or pause around economic data. Copiers and bridges pass trades between accounts or apps. Frameworks, collections and utilities serve coders and tinkerers.

Diagram of eight types of expert advisor in three groups: trading robots and news EAs, trade managers, risk EAs and copiers, and frameworks, collections and utilities — The eight types of EA, grouped by what they do for you. The EA Library uses the same types, so you can filter straight to the kind you need.

An expert advisor (EA) is a program that runs inside MetaTrader 4 or 5 and acts on your account by itself. Our honest guide to forex robots explains how EAs work; this guide sorts them by job, following the Type filter in the ForexR EA Library, a free directory of EAs whose source code is on GitHub.

Trading robots: EAs that trade on their own

A trading robot checks its rules on every price change and opens, manages and closes trades with no help from you. A simple one might buy when a fast moving average, the average price of recent candles, crosses above a slow one.

Who it suits: traders with tested rules they want carried out the same way every time, even at 3 a.m.
Main risk: the robot keeps following its rules after the market has changed. A strategy that did well in a trend can lose trade after trade in a quiet range.

Robots are the biggest type in the library’s trading robot list; the strategy tags at the end help narrow them down.

Trade managers: help with trades you open yourself

A trade manager does not decide when to trade. You open the position; the EA handles chores that are easy to forget under pressure:

Trailing stop: moves your stop-loss, the order that caps a losing trade, behind the price as the trade gains.
Break-even: moves the stop to your entry price once the trade is a set distance in profit, say 15 pips (a pip is the standard small price step).
Partial close: closes part of the position at a first target, such as half at 20 pips.
One-click tools: chart buttons that open a trade with a preset lot size, stop and target, or close everything.

They suit manual traders who want consistent exits. The main risk is a bad setting: a trailing stop set too tight closes good trades on normal price noise, and a manager that watches the whole account may change another EA’s trades. The trade manager view is short but useful.

Risk and protection EAs: a safety net for the account

A risk EA watches the whole account and steps in when a limit is broken. It is a seat belt, not an engine.

Daily loss limit: closes all trades and blocks new ones once the day’s loss reaches, for example, 3% of the account.
Equity guard: closes everything if equity, your balance plus or minus open profit and loss, falls below a floor such as $900 on a $1,000 account.
Spread filter: blocks new trades while the spread, the gap between the buy and sell price, is unusually wide.

These suit anyone running another EA or prone to chasing losses. The main risk is false comfort: a risk EA only acts while the platform is running and connected, and it cannot stop a weekend price gap. The risk and protection list is small, so check each one carefully.

News EAs: trading or pausing around economic data

Some news EAs try to trade the release itself, often by placing a buy stop above the price and a sell stop below it just before a big report. Others pause trading for a set time around important releases.

Who it suits: the pausing kind suits most robot users; the trading kind, experienced traders only.
Main risk: around a release, spreads widen and orders can fill far from the price you asked for, which is called slippage, so backtests of news EAs often look far better than live results. Many rely on an online calendar; if that feed fails, the filter can silently stop.

You will find a handful in the news trading view.

Copiers and bridges: moving trades between accounts and apps

A trade copier repeats trades from one account on another. A common local copier runs as two EAs on one computer: one in the sending terminal writes each trade to a shared file, and one in each receiving terminal reads it and opens matching trades, often at a set lot ratio.

A bridge links MetaTrader to something outside it. Bridges can post trade alerts to a Telegram channel, pass data to a Python script, or turn a webhook, a message sent automatically by another website or app, into an order.

Who it suits: traders with several accounts, and coders connecting their own tools.
Main risk: delay and mismatch. Copied trades can fill at worse prices, symbol names differ between brokers (EURUSD on one, EURUSD.m on another), and bridges often need passwords or keys that must stay private. Before copying trades for other people, check your broker’s terms and local rules.

Browse the copier and bridge list to compare approaches.

Frameworks, collections and utilities

Frameworks and templates: starter code for writing your own EA in MQL4 or MQL5, the languages EAs are written in, with ready-made parts such as order handling and lot sizing. They suit people learning to code. The main risk is treating a template as finished: it needs your strategy and testing first.
Collections: one repository holding many EAs, such as an author’s back catalogue. They suit readers who want to study code. The main risk is uneven quality: one good EA does not vouch for the other twenty.
Utilities: helpers that do one task, such as sending alerts or closing all orders at a set time. They suit anyone with a specific chore. The main risk is scope: even a small tool can close trades you did not mean it to.

Start with the framework and template view; Collection and Utility sit beside it in the same Type filter.

Why a trade manager or risk EA is often a safer first EA

A fully automatic robot makes every decision, so every flaw in its logic costs you money. A trade manager or risk EA has a narrow job you can check with your own eyes.

Table-style diagram comparing a trading robot, a trade manager and a risk EA by who opens a trade, who closes it and how much control you hand over — A robot makes every decision; a trade manager only handles trades you chose; a risk EA can only reduce risk. That is why the last two are gentler first EAs.

You keep control of entries. The EA only moves stops or closes trades, so it cannot fire off trades you never wanted.
It is easy to check. Open one demo trade and watch whether the stop moves to break-even at the distance you set.
It limits damage instead of chasing profit. A 3% daily loss limit on a $1,000 account caps an ordinary bad day at about $30, as long as the platform is running.

When you feel ready for a robot, read how to choose a forex EA first. Spreads, minimum lot sizes and whether EAs are allowed also vary by broker, so compare them on our broker comparison page.

Strategy tags: a second way to sort trading robots

For robots, a strategy tag tells you how the EA decides to trade, and one EA can carry several:

Trend following: buys rising prices and sells falling ones. Expect many small losses in ranges.
Breakout: trades a break of a recent range, Sensitive to spreads and false breaks.
Scalping: many small, short trades, so costs and execution speed decide the result.
Mean reversion: bets that a stretched price returns to its average. It often wins small, but can lose heavily in a strong trend.
Grid and martingale: a grid opens a ladder of orders at fixed distances; a martingale raises the lot size after a loss. Both can look smooth for months, then lose a large part of the account in one strong trend.

In the library, trend following and indicator crossover are the most common tags, and the large share that use grid or martingale are marked High risk. Our guide to martingale and grid strategies shows the maths, and the low-risk view hides them in one click, a sensible default while you learn.

No type or tag makes an EA safe or profitable: an EA only follows its code and cannot react to events it was not built for. Automated trading of forex and CFDs carries a high risk of loss, so test on a demo account first and only risk money you can afford to lose.