PulseWatch · Guides
Updated August 2026 · written while running three live accounts on one VPS
A MetaTrader 5 terminal holds exactly one trading account at a time. Logging into a second account through File → Login to Trade Account disconnects the first one — the old account stays in your saved list, but it is no longer live, and any EA attached to a chart is now trading the new account. To have two or more accounts running simultaneously you need one terminal instance per account, each with its own data folder. There are two ways to get that: install MT5 more than once, or copy an installation and run it in portable mode.
That's the whole answer. The rest of this page is how to do each one, which to pick, and the part nobody warns you about — what happens to your attention once four terminals are running.
It isn't a licensing limit or something a setting unlocks. A terminal keeps one connection to one broker server, authenticated as one login, and the entire interface — Navigator, Toolbox, Trade tab, charts, attached EAs — is built around that single session. Switching accounts is a full reconnect, not a tab change.
The saved accounts you see under Navigator → Accounts are just remembered credentials, not parallel sessions. Only the bold one is connected.
The same is true of MT4. And if your accounts are with different brokers, you already need separate terminals anyway — each broker ships its own branded build pointed at its own servers, so a StarTrader terminal cannot log into an IC Markets account.
The straightforward route, and the one to use if you're not comfortable with command-line switches.
C:\MT5-Account2
rather than the default — and change the program group name too, so the Start
menu entries don't collide.Trade-off: each installation updates itself independently, so you'll approve the same MetaQuotes update several times, and every EA, indicator and template has to be installed into each copy separately.
Faster once you've done it once, and much easier to move between machines.
By default MetaTrader stores your data — profiles, charts, the MQL5 folder, logs, saved logins —
in a hashed folder under C:\Users\you\AppData\Roaming\MetaQuotes\Terminal\, away
from the program itself. Two copies of the same installation would fight over that one data
folder. The /portable switch changes that: the terminal keeps everything inside its
own program folder instead, which makes each copy fully self-contained.
C:\Program Files\MetaTrader 5) to a new
location you can write to — C:\Terminals\Account2 works well. Program Files has
permission quirks; a plain folder on C: avoids them.terminal64.exe, and finish. /portable to the end
of the Target field, after the closing quote mark. It should read
"C:\Terminals\Account2\terminal64.exe" /portable.Watch out for two things. First, you must always start it from the modified
shortcut — double-clicking terminal64.exe directly starts it in normal mode and it
will reach for the shared AppData folder again. Second, each portable copy has its own
MQL5\Experts folder, so EAs must be copied into every instance; the terminal's
File → Open Data Folder now opens the local one, which makes that easy to check.
Getting three terminals running is a twenty-minute job. Living with them is the hard part. Each one only knows about itself — its own balance, its own margin level, its own open positions — and there is no combined view anywhere in MetaTrader. Your actual exposure is spread across windows that are mostly minimised.
In practice that means the account you check least is the one that gets into trouble. A margin level sliding toward a stop-out on terminal three looks exactly like a healthy account, because the window is behind two others. Alt-tabbing through four terminals every hour is not a monitoring system, and it stops entirely the moment you're asleep or away from the machine.
People try to fix this with more screens, which helps a little — see MT5 on multiple monitors — but it only works while you're sitting in front of them. The alternative is to have each terminal report to something outside itself, so one view covers all of them and something is watching when you're not.
That's what PulseWatch does. A small read-only EA in each terminal posts balance, equity, margin level and open trades every few seconds; you get every account on one page, on your phone, plus Telegram alerts when a margin level drops, a daily loss limit gets close, or a terminal goes quiet for 90 seconds. It never sends orders and never needs your broker password — the EA can only read. First account is free.
C:\Terminals\Live1,
Live2, Prop. Future you will be restoring these at an awkward hour.More guides: Monitor multiple MT4/MT5 accounts · MT5 on multiple monitors · How to tell if your EA stopped trading · Telegram alerts for MetaTrader