Hedging vs Netting Accounts in MT5, Explained

MetaTrader 5 has two ways of holding a position, and MetaTrader 4 has one. If you have just been told your EA needs a hedging account and yours is netting, this explains what that actually means, how to check it yourself in under a minute, and what your options are.

Last updated 14 August 2026

The difference in one sentence

On a netting account, MetaTrader 5 keeps one position per symbol. On a hedging account it keeps as many as you open, each with its own ticket.

That is the whole thing. Everything else follows from it.

Buy 0.10 EURUSD, then sell 0.10 EURUSD:

• Hedging. Two positions sit in the Trade tab. Your net exposure is flat, but both tickets still exist, each with its own open price, stop loss, take profit and floating result.
• Netting. You have nothing. The sell was applied to the existing position, the volume went to zero, and the position closed.

Buy 0.10, then buy 0.10 again. Hedging gives you two rows and two open prices. Netting gives you one row at 0.20, its open price recalculated as the volume-weighted average of the two fills.

MetaTrader 5 has a third mode, exchange, for stock and futures accounts where you hold a net quantity of an instrument. For this purpose it behaves like netting.

Why MT4 users never hit this

MetaTrader 4 has no netting mode. Every order you send gets its own ticket and stays independent until something closes it. A buy and a sell on the same pair simply coexist.

So the question only ever bites MT5 users. It is also why the MT4 build of Forex Success AI carries no account-type check at all, while the MT5 build runs one before it does anything else in OnInit.

How to tell which type you have

1. Watch the Trade tab

Open the Toolbox with Ctrl+T and select the Trade tab. On a demo, open a minimum-lot position, then open a second one in the same direction on the same symbol. Two rows means hedging. One row whose Volume changed means netting.

2. Right-click an open position

On a hedging account the context menu offers Close By and Multiple Close By, which close one position against an opposite one. On a netting account those entries are absent, because there is never an opposite position to close against.

3. Read the account type name, or just ask

Brokers that offer both usually put it in the account type name at signup, so check your account opening email or client portal. If it is not there, "Is my MT5 account hedging or netting?" is a question every broker's desk can answer in one line.

4. Attach the EA

This one is definitive. Forex Success AI reads the account's margin mode before it does anything else, and on anything other than retail hedging it stops with:

UltraHedgingBot requires a HEDGING account (this account is netting/exchange mode).

The message still carries UltraHedgingBot, the EA's original internal name, which is what you will see on screen. It is the same product as Forex Success AI.

Initialisation fails, no order is sent, and the EA comes back off the chart.

You cannot convert an account. You open a new one.

The mode is fixed when the account is created, and no setting in MetaTrader changes it. Brokers do not convert an existing account either, because its open positions and its history are already recorded under one model. The answer from support will be to open a new account of the hedging type. Most brokers let you hold several MT5 accounts under one client portal login, so that is a few clicks plus an internal transfer.

Why some brokers only offer netting

Brokers regulated by the NFA in the United States are not permitted to offer hedged retail forex positions and must close positions first in, first out. An account under those rules is netting by construction. Netting is not a worse model, just a different one, and most strategies do not care which they get. Grids do.

Why a grid strategy structurally needs hedging

This is the part most explanations skip. It is not a preference.

Forex Success AI runs up to four separate baskets on one symbol, kept apart by magic number: trend buy, trend sell, counter buy, counter sell. On the default settings the two counter-trend baskets are the live ones, and they are opposite directions on the same pair. On a netting account those two would cancel out in the terminal before the strategy existed at all.

Each basket then works from its own newest entry:

• the next level sits Range pips from the open price of the newest position or pending order in that basket (21 by default, and wider while the ForexFactory news filter has a news window open);
• its volume is that entry's volume multiplied by DiMarti (1.7 by default), then aligned to the broker's lot step;
• the basket grows to at most Level_Max positions and pending orders combined (12 by default);
• once it holds Star_ModifTp market positions (4 by default), every position in it is modified to the newest one's take profit, so the basket exits together;
• optional trailing works from the lot-weighted average open price of that basket's positions.

Every one of those reads needs individual positions to exist. On a netting account there is one position per symbol, with one open price the terminal has already averaged, one ticket, one stop loss and one take profit. There is no "newest entry in this basket" to measure 21 pips from, no per-position volume to multiply, and no way to give one basket a different take profit from another.

So the EA does not degrade on a netting account, it has nothing to work with. Refusing to start is the honest outcome: the alternative is orders that quietly net themselves away while the on-chart panel reports a grid that is not there.

If your broker only offers netting

You are not stuck. MT4 is always hedging, so the MT4 build is a genuine route, and one Forex Success AI licence covers both builds: one slot per trading account number, and you pick the platform when you register that account. Otherwise, open a hedging MT5 account with a broker that offers one.

Either way, check the account type before you fund anything. It costs a minute and saves a transfer out and back.