What happens when MT5 or your bridge restarts.
Windows installs an update at 3 a.m., your VPS reboots, the Wi-Fi drops for a minute, or we ship a new version of the server. Here is exactly what happens to your open positions and to the TradingView alerts that fire in the meantime, why we let old signals expire on purpose, and the checklist that keeps the gaps short.
The short answer
Your open positions survive a restart; signals that arrive too late are not executed. Those are two different things and they behave differently.
- Open positions live at your broker, not in MT5. Closing the terminal, a crash or a reboot does not close them. Stop Loss and Take Profit are held on the broker's trade server, so they still trigger with MT5 off. MetaTrader 5's own help makes the distinction when it explains that its Trailing Stop runs "in the trading platform rather than on the server" and therefore stops when the platform is off (MetaTrader 5 help, checked 4 October 2026).
- Anything the EA manages pauses while the EA is down: trailing stop, break-even, multi-TP partial closes, the Prop Firm Shield stop and the news filter's closes. They resume when the EA runs again.
- New alerts wait 120 seconds. If the EA picks the signal up within that window, it executes. If not, the signal expires and your dashboard shows it as not delivered. It is never executed minutes later.
- After 15 minutes without a heartbeat (the EA reports every 30 s), the server stops queueing: if none of your accounts is live, or the account named in the alert is not, the webhook is rejected at once with HTTP 422 "no live broker accounts", and the rejection appears in your signal log.
Scenario by scenario
https://api.signalforge-ai.com so the HTTP fallback can run."Expire" means the signal is dropped after 120 s in the queue and logged with its reason; it is not retried later. SL/TP behaviour is standard MetaTrader 5: it depends on the levels being set on the position, so a position opened without stops has no broker-side protection while the EA is down.
When we deploy the server (our side)
When we release a new version of the bridge server, the new instance has to answer a healthcheck before it receives a single webhook. Old and new versions then run side by side for 30 seconds, and the old one gets another 30 seconds of draining to finish webhooks it is already processing before it shuts down. The result is that a deploy does not cut reception of your alerts, and you do not need to do anything when we ship.
We do not quote an uptime percentage here. What we do publish is latency measured on production traffic: about 0.5 s median from webhook to the order confirmed by the broker (19 to 23 September 2026), of which roughly 56 ms is our server, 116 ms network and 250 ms EA plus broker. TradingView itself takes a few seconds to send the webhook. Method and percentiles on the benchmarks page.
When the push connection drops
In normal operation the EA holds a push connection open to our server, so signals arrive the moment they are accepted and no polling is needed. If that connection goes quiet for 25 seconds, the EA marks it as down and does three things:
- Reconnects with a wait that grows from 1 second up to 30 seconds between attempts, so a short blip is recovered almost immediately and a long outage does not hammer the network.
- Falls back to HTTP polling once per second while push is down, so signals keep flowing as long as MT5 can reach the internet.
- Runs a catch-up query right after reconnecting, so anything still waiting in the 120 s queue is picked up.
The HTTP fallback needs one setting: add https://api.signalforge-ai.com under Tools → Options → Expert Advisors → Allow WebRequest for listed URL. Push does not need it, which is why many traders never notice it is missing. Without it, MT5 refuses the poll with error 4014 and the EA can only wait for push to come back. Step-by-step setup in the documentation.
When MT5 or the EA restarts
A terminal crash, closing MT5 by mistake, switching profiles or re-attaching the EA all look the same to the bridge: the EA stops sending heartbeats and new signals wait in the queue. When it starts again:
- It waits up to 60 seconds for its configuration from the dashboard (lot mode, filters, Prop Firm Shield limits) before acting, so it does not trade with defaults.
- It reloads what it saved on disk: Prop Firm Shield state, your rules, per-order settings such as TP and break-even per ticket (kept for 30 days) and multi-TP levels.
- It finds its open positions again from MT5 by magic number, so trailing, break-even and partial closes continue where they stopped.
- It does not execute the same signal twice. The EA records each signal ID it has handled; one interrupted mid-execution is marked as unknown and not repeated.
What MT5 restores by itself is standard platform behaviour: when you close the terminal normally it saves the open charts of the current profile, including the EA attached to a chart, and reopens them on the next start. After any restart, check that the EA's name shows in the top-right corner of the chart and that Algo Trading is enabled; if it is off, orders fail with 10027 (see trade not allowed errors).
What TradingView resends and what it does not
TradingView's webhook resubmission page (verified 4 October 2026) says a notification is sent again only when the receiving server answers with an HTTP status from 500 to 599, except 504. The resend comes after 5 seconds, with up to 3 resends, so at most 4 sends per trigger.
Two practical consequences. First, our deliberate rejections are 4xx codes (401 invalid token, 402 inactive subscription or expired trial, 400 empty or invalid body, 422 no live account), so TradingView treats them as final for that alert. Second, TradingView does not know or care whether your MT5 is running: it fires the webhook once the condition is met. Covering a short terminal gap is the job of our 120 s queue, not of TradingView.
Why old signals expire on purpose
An alert describes the market at the moment it fired. A few minutes later the price, the spread and the distance to your stop are different; on a news candle they can be very different. Executing it late would open a position your strategy never chose, with a lot that was not sized for that stop distance. So after 120 seconds the signal expires, the dashboard shows it as not delivered with its reason, and you decide whether to enter by hand.
A buy alert on XAUUSD fires at 09:30:00 with a 30-pip stop. Your VPS is installing an update and MT5 is back at 09:36.
Without expiry, the EA would buy at 09:36 at whatever gold costs then, after the move your alert was trying to catch. With expiry, nothing opens: you see the missed signal in the log and judge the chart yourself.
How to see what happened after a restart
- Dashboard signal log: each signal with its status (EXECUTED, FILTERED, FAILED, NOT_DELIVERED or PENDING) and the reason. Expired signals and 422 rejections show up here.
- Account heartbeat: the EA reports every 30 s; an account counts as live with a heartbeat in the last 15 minutes. If yours looks stale, the terminal or the EA is not running.
- MT5 Experts tab:
[PROC]when a signal arrives and[SEND]when the order goes out; errors appear as "Error: retcode - comment". Since v4.02 the log is quiet by default. - Compare before you act: match the positions in MT5 against the executed signals before entering anything by hand, so you do not double a trade that did go through.
Prevention checklist
- Windows Update: set Active hours to cover your trading session and schedule or pause restarts around the sessions you trade. An automatic restart is the most common cause of a silent overnight gap.
- Power and sleep: set the PC to never sleep or hibernate while plugged in. A sleeping PC drops both the broker and the bridge connection.
- Start MT5 automatically: put a shortcut to
terminal64.exein the Windows Startup folder (shell:startup). On a VPS, startup programs only run once a user session logs on, so reconnect after a reboot or configure the logon. - Close MT5 normally and keep one profile, so the chart with the EA reopens on the next start. Then confirm Algo Trading is on.
- Whitelist the fallback:
https://api.signalforge-ai.comin the WebRequest list, so a push drop does not stop delivery. - One MT5 account, one terminal. Do not run the same account on your PC and on a hosted terminal "as a backup": both EAs execute the same webhook and you get two tickets. More in duplicate orders.
- Move MT5 off your home PC if gaps keep happening: a VPS (best VPS for MT5) or a hosted terminal.
- Check the dashboard after any outage and decide by hand on signals that expired.
Hosted MT5 instead of your PC
SFCloud is our managed MT5 for the bridge: each terminal runs in its own isolated container in our UK or France data centres, you open it from the browser over HTTPS, and it is ready about 30 minutes after checkout. Restarts can happen on any machine; what changes is that your home PC's sleep, updates, power and Wi-Fi are no longer in the path between TradingView and your broker. It comes with Starter + SFCloud ($9.99/mo, 1 terminal) or Trader + SFCloud ($19.99/mo, up to 3), both with a 14-day free trial without a card. You can upload your own compiled EAs (.ex5/.set up to 10 MB); MQL5 Market EAs are not supported.
FAQ
What happens to my open trades if MT5 closes?
Nothing closes them. Positions live on your broker's server, not in the terminal, so closing MT5, a crash or a VPS reboot leaves them open. Stop Loss and Take Profit stay active on the broker's side. What pauses is anything the EA manages: trailing stop, break-even, multi-TP partial closes and Prop Firm Shield's stop. It resumes when the EA is running again.
Do stop loss and take profit work while MT5 is offline?
Yes. Stop Loss and Take Profit are held on the broker's trade server and trigger with the terminal closed. MetaTrader 5's help contrasts them with its Trailing Stop, which runs in the terminal and does not work when the platform is off (checked 4 October 2026). The same applies to trailing or break-even logic run by an EA.
Will a TradingView alert sent while MT5 was offline execute later?
Only if the EA is back within 120 seconds: SignalForge queues each signal for 120 s and then lets it expire, on purpose, because the price it was sent for is gone. If none of your accounts has sent a heartbeat for more than 15 minutes, the webhook is rejected at once with HTTP 422 and shows in your signal log.
Does TradingView retry a failed webhook?
Only in one case. TradingView's webhook resubmission page (verified 4 October 2026) says it resends when the receiver answers with a status from 500 to 599, except 504, after 5 seconds and up to 3 times. It does not queue alerts for a terminal that is offline.
Do I lose my EA settings or Prop Firm Shield state when the EA restarts?
No. Settings come from the dashboard: on start the EA waits up to 60 seconds for them. Prop Firm Shield state, rules, per-ticket TP and break-even settings (kept 30 days) and multi-TP levels are saved on disk, and the EA finds its open positions again by magic number.
Do SignalForge server updates interrupt my signals?
They are designed not to. A new server version has to pass a healthcheck before it receives traffic, old and new versions overlap for 30 seconds, and the old one gets 30 seconds to finish requests already in flight, so reception of your alerts does not stop during a deploy.
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SignalForge AI is an order-execution tool. We do not provide investment advice. Trading involves risk of loss. Stop Loss and Take Profit behaviour depends on your broker's execution.