Webhook to MT4 — trade JSON signals on MetaTrader 4

Risk warning: CFDs are complex instruments with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 70–80% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. Risk disclosure · Past performance.

The payload is deliberately simple: an action of buy, sell or close, the broker's exact symbol name, and optional price, sl, tp, lots and comment fields. The webhook URL itself carries a secret token and acts as the credential, so any system that can make an HTTPS POST — a screener, a backtest runner, a custom bot — can drive trades on MT4 without keeping a terminal open. PipSync is the execution bridge between your code and the broker, replacing the old MQL4-EA-on-a-VPS stack with a hosted API.

1. 1

   Create a free PipSync account

   Sign up at app.pipsync.io. The Free plan is EUR 0 and needs no credit card to start.

2. 2

   Add your MT4 account

   Connect your MetaTrader 4 broker account as a destination in the dashboard. Note that MT4 is hedging-only, so each signal opens its own position.

3. 3

   Create a custom webhook source

   Generate a unique webhook URL for this source. The URL contains a secret token and is the credential — keep it private and rotate it from the dashboard if it ever leaks.

4. 4

   Configure server-side risk rules

   Set fixed-lot or percent-risk sizing, SL/TP mapping, max open trades, symbol filters and optional manual approval. These run server-side before any order reaches MT4.

5. 5

   Send a test payload in Test Mode

   POST a sample flat JSON body (action, symbol, optional price/sl/tp/lots) and use Test Mode to confirm PipSync interprets it correctly without placing a real order.

6. 6

   Test on demo, then go live

   Point the URL at a demo MT4 account first to verify end-to-end execution, then switch to your live account when the behaviour matches your expectations.

Typical setup time: about 11 minutes.

A webhook to MT4 expects a single flat JSON object, not a nested or templated structure. The required field is action, set to buy, sell or close; close flattens the open position on that symbol. You also send symbol, which must match your broker's exact symbol name.

All other fields are optional. price is the absolute entry price, with 0 meaning a market order; sl and tp are absolute prices, with 0 meaning omit that level. lots overrides your configured sizing for that single trade — leave it out to let server-side sizing run instead. An optional comment is attached to the order for your own reference.

• action: "buy", "sell" or "close" (close flattens the symbol's position)
• symbol: must match the broker's exact symbol name
• price: absolute entry, 0 = market order
• sl / tp: absolute prices, 0 = omit
• lots: overrides configured sizing for that trade; omit to use server-side sizing
• comment: free-text label on the order

The webhook URL is the credential: each source gets its own unique HTTPS endpoint containing a secret token, so possession of the URL is what authorises a signal. Treat it like a password — never publish it, and send only over HTTPS.

If a URL is ever exposed, rotate it from the dashboard to invalidate the old one immediately. PipSync also applies a per-minute inbound rate limit that scales by plan, from ten per minute on the entry tier up to custom limits on Enterprise; when you exceed it the API returns 429 with a Retry-After header, so your client should back off with jitter.

MT4 automation was historically built around an MQL4 expert advisor running inside a terminal on a rented VPS, which had to stay online to receive and act on signals. PipSync removes that entire stack: it accepts your JSON over HTTPS in the cloud and places the order on MT4 through a hosted bridge, so there is no EA to compile, no terminal to keep open, and no VPS to maintain.

Because execution lives in the cloud, signals are processed even when your own computer is off. The trade-off to know is that MT4 is hedging-only with no netting concept, so each buy or sell opens a distinct position rather than offsetting an opposite one — a key difference from MT5.

You get three layers of feedback. The dashboard shows every parsed signal and resulting order on all plans, so you can audit exactly what arrived and what PipSync did with it.

For programmatic feedback, PipSync sends signed outbound webhooks for events such as trade.opened, trade.closed, tp_hit and sl_hit, each carrying an HMAC-SHA256 signature in the X-PipSync-Signature header and retried up to five times with backoff. A REST read API (GET /v1/signals and GET /v1/trades, documented in OpenAPI 3.1) lets you poll state directly; the read API is part of the Enterprise plan.

The JSON payload and the webhook-URL credential model are identical, so your sending code does not change between the two. The difference is in how the destination platform handles positions: MT4 is hedging-only with no netting, meaning each signal opens its own position and opposite trades coexist.

MT5 supports both netting and hedging accounts and can apply partial fills, so an opposite order may reduce or close an existing net position depending on the account type. If your strategy assumes opposite signals offset each other, that behaviour exists on MT5 netting accounts but not on MT4, where you typically use a close action to flatten.