The MT5 drawdown recovery manager that watches every EA you run.
SFRecovery EA opens no trades of its own. It watches the positions you already have (yours, your other EAs', webhook entries) and when one sinks past your dollar trigger it works it back: a capped averaging grid, a basket take-profit, and partial closes that pair winners against the worst loser so the basket shrinks while it recovers. Before every cycle it shows you the worst case, and its hard caps really stop. Free on MQL5 Market, full version.
A recovery cycle in 4 steps.
It is a position manager, not a signal generator. Attach it to one chart and it guards whatever you tell it to watch. New to the concept? Read what a recovery EA is and how it works first.
Watch
Point it at your manual trades, another EA, webhook positions, or every position on the chart’s symbol at once with the default "*" manage-all setting. It opens nothing by itself.
Launch on your $ trigger
A recovery cycle starts when a watched position loses more than the dollar amount you set. The pain threshold is money, not pips.
Average with the grid
It averages into the loser with a capped grid: ATR-spaced or timed adds (so it never freezes waiting for a big step), lot multipliers you limit, and an optional lock at max grid on hedging accounts to freeze the exposure.
Exit at break-even + target, or shrink on the way
The basket closes at break-even plus your $ target. Until then, pair partials match a winning recovery leg with the worst loser and close the pair once it nets your minimum. The default minimum is slightly negative, so the basket keeps shrinking during the recovery instead of sitting at break-even for weeks. That is the AW Recovery behavior, and it ships as the factory default.
Built to not blow up.
Averaging down is how accounts die. Everything below is on by default because we have seen what happens when it is not.
Manage-all "*"
Fresh out of the box it manages every position on its chart's symbol: manual trades, other EAs, webhook entries. Narrow it by magic number if you prefer, and attach one chart per symbol you want guarded.
Overlap partials (AW-style, default)
Pairs a winning recovery leg with the worst loser and closes both once the pair nets your minimum. The default minimum is slightly negative: small capped losses per pair, but the basket keeps shrinking instead of waiting at break-even doing nothing.
Anti-stall engine
If the grid has made no distance progress in N bars it adds anyway (InpStepBars). If the cycle is any positive after N bars it takes it and closes (InpCycleMaxBars). No sitting idle for an ATR step or a far target.
3-tier circuit breaker + absolute close
Tier 1 halves lots, tier 2 stops new orders, tier 3 kills the cycle and cools down. On top: a hard $ loss cap and an absolute close measured from the true equity peak (v3.31), so repeated cooldowns can never walk the account past it. Spread and rollover guards included.
Kalman trend filter
New recovery entries get gated by a Kalman filter against the trend. REC_KALMAN is the factory default because that mode won our parameter grid, not because it sounds fancy.
ZONE dual-side grid (v3.19)
A mirror grid opens on the opposite side of the loser with the same lots and steps, so the basket works both directions of the oscillation. That is the classic zone recovery construction — our guide covers the math behind the recovery ladder (lot sequence, zone boundaries, exit targets) in full. Both sides pay swap, so keep the loss caps on.
CONTROL mode (v3.20)
Past your equity drawdown threshold the EA takes over the whole book on that symbol (any EA, any magic), forces the dual-side grid and stays on it until the basket exits at break-even plus target or the caps stop it. Cooldown after a stop-out is minutes, not days. Requires a hard $ loss cap.
EXIT COST BUFFER (v3.24)
Every green exit now clears a cushion that covers the close-side costs the float cannot see: commission on round-turn brokers, spread/slippage on the fill, the overnight swap. The slow hidden drain that made break-even cycles lose money is gone.
Lock at max grid (optional)
On hedging accounts the EA can freeze exposure with an opposite position when the grid hits its cap. Off by default: we measured it EV-negative (double swap), but some operators want the freeze.
Worst-case preflight (v3.30)
Before every cycle it calculates the extra loss of a full grid plus an adverse run, with the same engine it trades. Shown on the panel, in the journal and in Telegram, and it can refuse cycles above your % of equity. The panel also shows the live loss against the exact trigger.
Kill scope + halt guard (v3.31)
MT5 cannot switch one EA off from another, so SFRecovery does the enforceable version: a protection stop can also flatten your other EAs on the symbol or account, and anything they open while halted is closed. The halt is published as a global variable your own EAs can read.
Account risk stack (v3.32)
The worst case of every SFRecovery instance in the terminal is summed account-wide, next to the margin the full remaining grid would lock and the free margin left after it. Protections now survive reloads (timeframe switch, VPS reboot, terminal update), and an OBSERVE log writes one row per finished cycle for calibration with your own data.
A cap is only a cap if it stops.
A recovery grid can lose, and in long out-of-sample runs it does. What a manager has to guarantee is that the limits you set hold. Before v3.31, every circuit-breaker cooldown reset the drawdown reference, so a series of tier-3 stops could walk an account past the absolute close. v3.31 measures the absolute close from the true equity peak of the session. We checked it in the MT5 Strategy Tester (XAUUSD, 2019-2023, Guardian preset, random tester entries):
The tester entries are random, so these runs show how the manager behaves, not a strategy result. The market decides the sign of the result; the EA contains the tail. Past tester performance does not guarantee future results.
Running in 3 steps.
From the Market to a guarded account in a few minutes. Start from a v3.32 preset: they ship with the hard caps on.
Install from MQL5 Market
Download it free from the MQL5 Market listing and install it through MetaTrader 5 like any other EA. Try it in the Strategy Tester first: it is the full version.
Attach to the chart of each symbol
The EA manages the positions of the symbol of the chart it runs on. With manage-all "*" it takes every EA and manual trade on that symbol; for more symbols, attach one copy per chart.
Load a v3.32 preset and read the summary
Six calibrated XAUUSD presets for 10k accounts (Guardian, Control, AW Zona, Agresivo, Conservador, Equilibrado), all with a basket cap and an absolute close. The factory defaults leave the hard caps off, so set them if you start from scratch. At start the Experts journal prints a CONFIG SUMMARY: the trigger, every cap (or OFF) and the inputs your setup does not use.
The money inputs (trigger, basket target, loss cap) are written for a 10k account and auto-scale to your equity (InpAutoEquityScale); the panel footer shows the scale in use. The trigger also never sits below the spread cost of your position, so a big lot cannot launch a cycle on its own entry.
To run your own backtest: open the Strategy Tester, select the EA and in the inputs (Strategy Tester group) set "Auto-open losing trades in tester" (InpTestAuto) to TRUE. The EA then opens a random-direction trade every N bars so you can watch complete recovery cycles; those entries have no edge, so read the result as manager behaviour, not strategy profit. In visual mode you can trade from the on-chart pad instead (the random entries pause). For reproducible runs fix the direction (InpTestDir: 1 = buys only, 2 = sells only) and use a fixed date range. Set InpTestAuto=false before using the EA on any live account.
SFRecovery EA vs AW Recovery EA.
AW Recovery is the reference in this category, so here is the side-by-side.
SFRecovery EA (us)
✓ Free on MQL5 Market, full version
✓ AW-style overlap partials by default (configurable net threshold)
✓ ZONE dual-side grid (v3.19) + CONTROL take-over mode (v3.20)
✓ Anti-stall engine: time-based adds and cycle auto-exit
✓ Worst-case preflight before every cycle (v3.30)
✓ Absolute close from the true equity peak + kill scope over other EAs (v3.31)
✓ Daily loss breaker + day halt after N kills
✓ 3-tier circuit breaker with hard $ loss cap
✓ Manage-all "*" out of the box
AW Recovery EA
✓ The category reference: 4.35★ with 102 reviews and 9,300+ demo downloads
✓ On MQL5 Market since May 2020, currently v3.90 (Mar 2025)
✓ Mature, feature-rich panel and documentation
— $195 one-time (or $95/mo rent) as of Aug 2026
— MT4 listing (the MT5 version is a separate product); one symbol per chart
— Gradual-reduction partials; our overlap guard is our take on the same idea
Need MT4, or want the most-reviewed product in the category? Buy AW Recovery. On MT5 and want the anti-stall engine, dual-side grids and take-over mode for free instead of $195? That is what we built. AW has a free tester demo and SFRecovery is free, so run both and keep the one you like. For the full breakdown, read our AW Recovery alternative guide for MT5.
Free. Full version.
Free download on MQL5 Market. No subscription, no token, no SignalForge account.
- Manages manual trades, other EAs and webhook positions
- Manage-all "*" factory default
- AW-style overlap partials: the basket shrinks during the cycle
- ZONE dual-side grid + CONTROL take-over mode
- Worst-case preflight + 3-tier circuit breaker + hard $ loss cap + absolute close
- Kill scope and halt guard over your other EAs
- Anti-stall engine (never sits idle)
- 6 XAUUSD presets for 10k accounts + full inputs manual
- Full version, all features unlocked, no time limit
Averaging down increases exposure while you are losing. It converts many small losses into fewer, bigger ones. Configure the hard $ loss cap first. SFRecovery EA is not a trading system and will not make a losing strategy profitable. Hedging account recommended.
Quick questions.
Email soporte@signalforge-ai.com if yours isn't here.
Want the deep dive? Read the full setup walkthrough: Recovery EA setup guide, every setting in the SFRecovery inputs manual, and the explainer what a recovery EA is and how it works.
Guard every EA you run.
SFRecovery EA v3.32: manage-all drawdown recovery for MT5, with the worst case shown before every cycle. Free on MQL5 Market, full version.