What an account-locked build is

• Your Expert Advisor is compiled for the MT5 account numbers you give at checkout and refuses to start on any other.
• It never contacts a server: no licence key, no allowed URL, nothing to register or renew.
• A new version for the accounts you already have is free. A different account is a new licence.

Most Expert Advisors are sold the way software was sold in 2005: one binary for everybody, plus a key, plus a licence server the binary phones for permission. XauStack does it the other way round. There is no key and no server, because the account number is compiled into the file.

How it works

When you buy, you give the MetaTrader 5 account numbers the Expert Advisor is for — up to two per licence. Those logins are turned into salted hashes and built into your .ex5 alongside any expiry the licence carries.

At start-up the Expert Advisor hashes the account it finds itself on and compares. On a match it initialises. On anything else it refuses and says so. Nothing is asked, nothing is sent and nothing is stored anywhere but in your own copy of the file.

Why offline was the point

The obvious alternative — a licence check over the network — has costs that only show up later.

It needs https://xaustack.com added to your terminal under Tools → Options → Expert Advisors → Allow WebRequest for listed URL. It means the Expert Advisor stops working when our servers do, or when your VPS provider has a bad afternoon, or when a firewall somewhere decides an outbound request from MetaTrader 5 looks suspicious. And it means your trading depends on a company staying online.

An account-locked build removes all of that. There is no URL to allow, no key to paste, no account to create on our site and no renewal date. The file works on a machine with the network unplugged, which is the only definition of “offline” worth having.

We accepted a real cost for it, and it is worth stating plainly: a delivered build cannot be revoked or changed remotely. Once the file is with you it is with you. That is the trade we chose.

What it refuses

• Any MetaTrader 5 login the build was not compiled for — live or demo, any broker.
• Nothing else. Within your own accounts there is no trade limit, no lot cap and no time window beyond whatever the licence itself carries.

The free Backtest edition is locked the other way

The free download is not account-locked, because it is not for an account. It carries one restriction instead: it initialises only inside the Strategy Tester and refuses to start on a chart on any account, demo or live.

That single restriction is the whole of the free build’s protection. It means the free file cannot place a real-time order for anybody, so there is no live trade stream for a copier to mirror — and it still runs on whatever account is connected to your terminal, real included, so you can backtest before you buy. No email address, no form.

What happens when your account changes

This is the question worth reading twice, because two different things sound alike and only one of them is free.

A rebuild is free. When we release a new version of a strategy, it is recompiled for the accounts your licence already covers and appears on your order page. You download it and install it over the old one. You pay nothing.

A different account is a new licence. Your licence is bound to the logins you gave at checkout and stays bound to them. Moving to a different MetaTrader 5 account — a new broker, a fresh prop firm account, a login your old one was migrated to — means buying a licence for that account at the current price. Support does not re-bind a licence and no part of the system can.

If you know you will be moving brokers soon, that is worth thinking about before you check out rather than after.

One thing to do before installing a rebuild

A new build carries its own magic number, which is how MetaTrader 5 tells one Expert Advisor’s positions from another’s. The new file therefore does not recognise the positions the old one opened, and will not manage or close them.

So before you attach a rebuild: close the previous build’s open positions, or take them over by hand. Then install. Skipping this is the one way a free upgrade can cost you money.

What it is not

An account-locked build is not a subscription, and it is not a guarantee about anything that happens once it is running. It is a licence to run one piece of execution software on the accounts you named. It places and protects orders on the parameters you set; it cannot make a losing idea profitable, and we do not claim it will.

Before you act on any of this

Every figure XauStack publishes comes from the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester, never from live trading, and no result is promised anywhere on this site. Trading gold on leverage carries a high risk of losing money rapidly, and depending on your broker and jurisdiction you can lose more than you deposit — the risk disclosure sets out the limits, including what a stop order can and cannot do. The refund policy explains why a build compiled for your own account numbers cannot be returned once it has been delivered.