Can I run a trading bot on my phone?

No, you cannot run a trading bot on your phone. The MT4 and MT5 mobile apps have no Expert Advisors tab and no MQL5 runtime to execute the bot's code, so the bot runs on a VPS and the phone monitors it. There is no setting you missed. Exness, FXTM and Orbex all publish it in their own help centres: no Expert Advisors and no custom indicators in the mobile app, on iOS or on Android.

Why can't the MT5 app run an EA?

This is where most articles stop, which is a shame, because this is the part that gets you somewhere.

An EA is not a settings file. It is a compiled program, an .ex5, written in MQL5. Running one takes the algo engine inside the desktop terminal. That engine calls your bot's OnTick function the moment a new price tick arrives for the symbol. The calculations happen there, and the orders leave from there.

None of that chain exists in the mobile app. No Expert Advisors tab, no strategy tester, no MQL5 runtime. No terminal means no ticks. No ticks means no code. And without code, no order ever leaves.

So this is not a toggle Android happens to be missing. The execution environment simply is not on the device.

So what do those "mobile EA" apps actually do?

You will run into them. The MQL5 Market and the app stores carry products with "mobile EA" or "trade from your phone" in the title, and the impression you get from that is wrong.

Nearly all of them do the same thing. They are remote controls. You send an order or a command from your phone, and the real work happens on a desktop or VPS where your EA is already running. Handy if you have that machine. Useless if you were hoping to skip the desktop.

Once you recognise the pattern, you stop hunting for an app that does not exist.

Your phone can close a trade. The bot itself runs on another machine, or it does not run at all.

What is the alternative if a phone is all you have?

A VPS. That is a Windows machine in a data centre running MT5 for you, 24 hours a day, five days a week. You set your bot up on it once and check in from your phone after that.

The pricing is more concrete than people expect. MetaQuotes sells virtual hosting from inside MT5 for USD 15 per month, or roughly USD 12.80 per month if you take the annual plan. You get a few GB of RAM and low ping to your broker's servers, and migrating your local terminal across takes a few clicks. Third-party Windows forex VPS plans generally sit between USD 15 and 60 per month.

Ask your broker too. Some hand out a VPS free once you keep a certain balance or trade a certain volume, which removes the bill entirely. What a VPS does for your bot beyond that we covered in why a VPS matters for your trading bot.

Can you just leave your laptop running?

You can. It works too, right up until it does not.

Laptops go to sleep. Windows reboots for an update, usually overnight. The wifi drops once. You close the lid because you are going to bed. Every one of those closes the terminal and stops your bot, possibly in the middle of an open position.

That last bit is what people underestimate. Your bot is not paused, it is gone. Whatever it was going to do next, move a stop or close a position on a signal, does not happen. Your position sits open with nobody watching it.

Data-centre uptime and a wired connection are exactly what you buy with a VPS. That is the whole product.

Line the three up and it picks itself. Your phone costs nothing and runs nothing: you watch, you check margin, you close a trade by hand if it comes to that. An always-on laptop does run the bot, just not reliably across a whole week, and it earns its keep as the machine you test and configure on while you are sitting there. The VPS is the only one of the three that keeps going while you sleep or work, and that is what the USD 15 a month buys.

What can you do with the MT5 app on your phone?

More than you think, and this is the part that matters in practice when you are starting out. You log in with the same account credentials the bot trades on, so you see live what it is doing, down to the cent. The orders just do not come from your phone.

The app shows open positions with the floating profit or loss attached. Your margin and margin level are in there, and you can scroll back through the account history to read exactly what the bot has been doing for the past few days. You can modify a stop loss or take profit. You can close a trade by hand.

That last one is your emergency brake, and you want it in your pocket. So the honest setup looks like this: the bot runs on the VPS, your phone is the dashboard and the button that closes everything.

How do you tell from your phone that the bot is still running?

Not from an indicator light, because the app has no status readout for your EA. You infer it.

Check whether new positions appear at the times you expect them, and scroll the account history to see when the last trade closed. That is your pulse check.

Watch the clock while you do it. MT5 shows your broker's server time, usually GMT+2, or GMT+3 in summer. "Nothing since this morning" may simply mean your bot's time filter has not opened yet. Before you assume something is broken, walk through what to do when your trading bot is not placing trades.

So what do you actually need to run a trading bot?

Three things, and no more. An account with a broker that offers MT5. A machine that stays running when you go offline, in practice a VPS. And your phone for everything else.

An expensive laptop is not on that list. The computing happens on the VPS, and the app asks almost nothing of your handset. A second-hand phone with a decent connection is enough.

Working full time and unable to check during the day? The setup stays the same, but how you configure it changes. That sits in running a trading bot alongside a full-time job.

Want to read the source yourself? MetaQuotes documents the OnTick function every EA runs on, and the specs and pricing for their own virtual hosting are public on mql5.com.