Exness on a Windows PC — where an idea is tested before it is traded · South Africa

Exness download — at a glance

How Exness runs on a Windows PC

On a desktop PC, Exness runs through the MetaTrader 5 and MetaTrader 4 Windows terminals, which install on Windows 10 and Windows 11. The download links are in the Exness account area once you have signed in.

Desktop app or web on the PC

If you would rather not install a desktop app, the Exness Terminal runs in any browser on the PC with nothing to download. MetaTrader gives more advanced charting and automated trading; the web terminal starts without an install.

MetaTrader 5 & MT4 for Windows

See the MetaTrader 5 and MetaTrader 4 pages for what each desktop terminal does. Using a phone instead? See Android or iPhone & iPad.

Testing rules on stored bars, and what the result is not

A test needs three things chosen before it runs: the instrument, the period of history to replay and the timeframe of the bars. It also needs that history present on the machine, which is why scrolling a chart back over the period first is part of the preparation rather than a separate task. The output is a report — how many trades the rules would have taken, how the equity line moved, how deep the worst stretch was.

The caveats belong on the same page as the result. A test prices trades with the costs entered into its settings, so a spread typed optimistically produces an optimistic report; it replays bars rather than the order flow inside them; and it says nothing about the next session. Running the same rules over a different period, and over a period nobody was thinking about when the rules were written, is what separates an idea that travels from one fitted to a single stretch of chart.

Expert Advisors, scripts and custom indicators

The three program types do different jobs. An indicator draws on the chart and changes nothing else. A script runs once and stops. An Expert Advisor stays attached to a chart and can send orders while it is there. All three arrive as files, go into the data folder of the terminal that will run them, and appear in the Navigator panel after a refresh.

An Expert Advisor lives inside the terminal, so it works only while the terminal is open and connected: a machine that suspends itself stops the program with it, and closing the platform ends the session for anything attached to a chart. Automated trading is also a switch in the terminal settings, off until it is deliberately turned on, which is the usual explanation for a program that loads but never acts.

The account report the terminal can export

The history tab holds every closed position with its opening and closing time, volume, prices, swap and commission, and it will write the whole set out as a report file. Opened in a spreadsheet, that file answers questions a chart cannot: how much of the month came from a single instrument, how much of the result went on cost, whether the trades taken late in the day resemble the ones taken early.

The journal beside it logs what the platform itself did — connections, reconnections, orders sent and the replies that came back. When something looked wrong at the time and cannot be reconstructed from memory, the journal is the record that settles it, and it is written on the machine rather than kept on a phone.

Two programs on one machine, and why files are not interchangeable

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are separate Windows programs, and installing both is normal. Programs for the older platform are written in one language version and programs for the newer one in another, so a file downloaded for MetaTrader 4 will not appear in MetaTrader 5 whatever folder it is put in. That mismatch is the most common reason an indicator seems to vanish after installation.

Each terminal also keeps its own data folder, opened from the File menu of that terminal rather than found by guessing at a path. Putting the file in the folder of the program that is meant to run it, then refreshing the Navigator, is the whole procedure — no installer is involved and nothing is registered with Windows.

Set up a Windows machine for testing

1. Install the Windows build of MetaTrader 5 or MetaTrader 4 from the account area and sign in.
2. Open the instrument on a chart and scroll back over the period to be tested, so those bars are stored on the machine.
3. Open the strategy tester, choose the instrument, the period and the timeframe, and enter the costs the test should assume.
4. Read the report as a description of that data, then run the same rules over a different period before drawing any conclusion.
5. Attach a program to a live chart only after automated trading has been switched on in the terminal settings.

Any figure a test produces comes from stored bars and from the settings entered for it; a live account will differ.

What runs on which build

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are separate programs; a file written for one does not run in the other.

Related Exness pages