How copy trading works

Copy trading means that positions opened on one account, the provider's, are repeated on another, the follower's, by the platform. This page follows the help pages of cTrader Copy, read on 6 November 2026, and the broker list on ctrader.com. Where those pages are silent, the page says so. A copied trade is a leveraged contract on a price; the follower carries the loss on their own account.

Two accounts and one rule

The provider trades from their own account. The follower allocates money to the strategy, and the platform repeats the provider's trades on the follower's side. The help pages call the follower an investor and the provider a strategy provider. The rule that links them is a ratio: trades are copied based on the investor's equity relative to the provider's equity.

The help pages put the same thing in the page about starting: "Trades are copied automatically based on your equity relative to the provider's." This site adds no number to that sentence, because the ratio depends on two balances that change every day.

What the follower does, in the order the help page gives it

The help page on investing lists the steps. Select a strategy in the strategy list and choose "Start copying". Pick the account the money comes from and enter the amount. The amount has to be at least the strategy's minimum investment. Then the funds you allocate are placed in a special copy-trading account, and that account starts copying the strategy.

Before the last click, the help page says, the fee information can be found on the "Start copying" button. This site could not read that button, because it sits inside the application. The fees a given strategy charges are therefore not on this site, and the page about fees says what is.

What happens to positions that are already open

The help page says that after you copy a strategy, "cTrader will attempt to open new positions to match the positions currently opened by the provider". The word attempt is the help page's. A position the provider opened some time ago was opened at a price from some time ago, and the follower's matching position is opened at the price of the moment. The page on prices takes this one step further.

What cTrader's broker list showed on 6 November 2026

The list is the page ctrader.com/copy/brokers, read on 6 November 2026. The data inside the page held 53 broker entries; 24 of them carry the copy flag, and the page prints that flag as "Copy available" on every broker it shows. The figures below are about those brokers.

What the broker list does and does not tell you

The page's data held 53 broker entries on 6 November 2026, and 24 of them carried the copy flag. cTrader's page on copying adds that availability of live copying "may vary by broker, jurisdiction and applicable regulatory requirements". For FxPro, the broker this site links to, the list prints a copy flag, a maximum leverage of 1:30 and a minimum deposit of USD 100. The list does not say whether a resident of South Africa can use the copy service, and this site has not found a public page that does. That is a question for the broker before any deposit.

Hedging accounts matter too: the help page says only investors with hedging accounts can copy strategies, and that copying is not supported for netting accounts.

Who controls what after copying has started

The follower can add funds, remove funds, set an equity stop loss, or stop copying, all described on the help page. Each of these has a consequence the page also states. Adding or removing funds changes the size of open positions, because they are recalculated by the equity-to-equity ratio. Removing funds can make part of the unpaid fees due at once, in proportion to the amount removed. Stopping copying closes the copied positions and sends the funds back to the main account.

The follower does not choose trades. The provider chooses them, and the platform repeats them. The only brakes the follower has are the ones the help page lists.

The provider's money changes the follower's position

A note on the fees page describes a mechanic that is easy to miss. When the provider adds their own funds to the strategy account, the platform decreases the investor's positions. When the provider withdraws funds, the platform increases the investor's positions. A follower's exposure can therefore change without the follower doing anything and without the provider opening a trade.

The same note says that paying the investor's fees to the provider does not trigger such a recalculation, so that no unplanned volume change is made.

Demo copying

Demo strategies, the help page says, are always free to copy because they deal in virtual funds. The cTrader page on copying adds that one can copy with a demo account "if the provider allows". Whether a demo account at FxPro can follow a strategy is not stated on any page this site read, and it is something to ask the broker.