What Is a Trade Copier?
A trade copier is software that reproduces trades from one leader account to one or more follower accounts automatically and in real time. In futures trading it connects directly to broker APIs, reads each leader fill, and submits matching orders to every follower, applying each account's own size and risk settings first. For a full walkthrough see how a futures trade copier works.
The terms below are the vocabulary you will see across a copier's setup screens and documentation. They are grouped so related ideas sit together, and the final group covers the words Tradecopia uses for its own plans and hosting so the descriptions on this site read clearly.
Core Accounts and Groups
Leader account. The account you trade yourself. The copier watches it and mirrors its fills. It is sometimes called the master account.
Follower account. An account that receives copies of the leader's trades. Also called a child account. A setup can have many followers.
Copy group. A leader plus the followers assigned to it, managed as one unit. You can run several copy groups at once, including across different prop firms, each with its own leader and settings.
Multi account trading. Running a strategy across several accounts at once from a single leader, rather than placing each trade by hand on every account.
Execution and Timing
Event driven execution. The copier reacts the moment the broker reports a leader fill, with no fixed wait before it acts. This is the faster of the two common models.
Polling. The copier checks the broker on a fixed timer to see whether anything changed. It adds a delay equal to the timer interval on top of network time.
Latency. The time between the leader fill and the follower fill. It is shaped by the detection method, the broker APIs, and network conditions, so it varies rather than being a single fixed number.
Slippage. The difference between the price you expected and the price a follower actually filled at. Some slippage is normal because each account fills on its own against the live market.
Broker API. The direct connection between the copier and a trading platform such as Tradovate, NinjaTrader, Rithmic, or TopstepX. Direct API connections are how the copier reads fills and sends orders without a plugin sitting in between.
Sizing and Allocation
Quantity multiplier. A per follower setting that scales the leader's size up or down for that account. A multiplier of 0.5 takes half the leader size, 1 matches it, and 2 doubles it. Tradecopia also calls this a scaling factor.
Per account sizing. Applying a different multiplier to each follower so accounts of different sizes each take an appropriate quantity from the same leader trade.
Bracket order. An entry with an attached stop loss and take profit. A copier that carries brackets through protects each follower the same way the leader is protected.
Risk and Prop Firm Rules
Per account risk filter. Rules applied to a single follower before each order is sent, such as a daily loss limit, a daily profit limit, a trades limit, or a position size cap. Each account is checked on its own on every signal.
Trailing threshold. A drawdown limit that follows your account's balance upward, common in prop firm accounts. Many firms trail it off the highest end of day balance rather than intraday.
Distance to Drawdown. A live display of how much room an account has left before its trailing threshold, so a copied order does not quietly push one account past the line while you watch the others.
Consistency rule. A prop firm requirement that your profit be spread reasonably evenly across days rather than earned in one session, often checked before a payout. A consistency calculator shows where each account stands against it.
Flatten group. A control that instantly closes all open positions across every account in a copy group at once, so you can step fully out of the market without closing each account by hand.
Reliability and Staying in Sync
Position reconciler. A mechanism that compares each follower to the leader and squares up any account that has drifted out of sync after a disconnect or reconnect, so you are not left with an orphaned position.
Prevent hedging. Logic that handles flips and reversals cleanly so a follower does not end up holding a position opposite to the leader after a fast direction change.
Reconciliation. Checking the copier's logged fills against your broker statements to confirm each account did what it should have.
Deployment and Tradecopia Plans
Desktop copier. The copier runs as an application on your own machine, so your broker credentials and runtime stay local. Tradecopia Pro works this way.
Cloud copier. The copier runs on hosted infrastructure rather than your own computer, reachable from any browser. Tradecopia Pro+ Lite and Pro+ work this way, using the same copy engine as the desktop plan. Running in the cloud is a choice about where the copier lives, not a lighter version of it.
Managed hosting. Tradecopia runs and maintains the copier for you on high performance hosted infrastructure, so there is no local application to keep open and nothing to patch yourself. It is included with Pro+ Lite and Pro+.
Your own unique URL. A private web address for your hosted Tradecopia instance, so you reach your copier from any browser by signing in to that address. Included with Pro+ Lite and Pro+.
Single-tenant environment. A hosted setup where your copier runs in its own isolated environment rather than sharing one with other accounts. Tradecopia Pro+ is fully hosted and single-tenant.
Dedicated VPS. A virtual private server reserved for your account alone. Pro+ runs on a dedicated VPS.
Dedicated static IP. A fixed internet address for your hosted environment that stays the same between sessions, which some brokers and prop firms prefer for account access. Pro+ adds a dedicated static IP.
Always-on. A hosted copier keeps running whether or not your own computer is powered on, so it follows the leader while your machine is off.
Tradecopia plans. Pro is the desktop plan that runs locally. Pro+ Lite is browser-based and adds managed hosting and your own unique URL. Pro+ is fully hosted on a dedicated single-tenant VPS and adds a dedicated static IP. All three run the same copy engine, so the choice is about where it runs and how it is managed, not about copying power. See current plans and pricing.
Ready to see the terms in action? Start with how futures copy trading works or the Tradecopia feature overview.