Is my EA martingale or grid? How to tell

EA Trade Tester Demo lab How we test For AI agents

Published 11 November 2026 · methods v2.5 · by TrueTest

A martingale EA makes the next trade bigger after a loss. A grid EA opens more trades as the price moves against it. Both produce beautiful backtests - a high win rate and a smooth rising curve - until one move is too long, and the account is gone. Vendors rarely say "martingale". Here is how to spot it yourself, and what our free tester checks.

Check my EA for martingale See a full example first

Drop your .mq5/.mq4 code, a Python bot or an MT5 report on the home page. The first read takes seconds and needs no sign-up; the lab verdict is free too. Only the detailed technical report is paid (the full PDF report is GBP 49). The price shown is the total price: no VAT is added. TrueTest is not VAT-registered in the UK. We read your code as text and never run it as given; an outside AI service drafts the rule card only if you tick the box (see Security). Not financial advice.

What are the signs in the code?

A lot size multiplied after a trade: lots *= 2, lot = lot * multiplier, or a ternary such as lots = lastLoss ? lots * 1.5 : start. Our first read flags any multiplier above 1 on a lot or volume variable as high risk.
Settings named Multiplier, LotExponent, GridStep, MaxTrades, Distance or Pips Step.
No stop-loss on each trade, and one basket take-profit for all open trades.
A loop that opens a new order whenever the price is a fixed distance from the last one.

What are the signs in a trade record?

Our record check flags these from the trades alone (MT5 report, statement or CSV):

Sign	The rule we use
Win rate paid for by rare big losses	80% or more of trades win, and the average loss is over 4 times the average win
Lot size grows after losses	on average, the next trade after a loss is more than 1.3 times bigger than the next trade after a win
One outsized position	the largest position is over 8 times the typical (median) one
One loss wipes the profit	a single losing trade is bigger than half of the whole profit
Deep drawdown	the drawdown reached half the account or more

Any of these gives the verdict HIDDEN RISK: the profit comes with a shape that can wipe an account.

A worked example

A record shows 400 trades, 372 winners (93%) averaging +6 a trade, and 28 losers averaging -45. The total is +2,232 - 1,260 = +972, so it made money. But the average loss is 7.5 times the average win and the win rate is above 80%: that is the grid / martingale shape. One run of bad luck slightly longer than the ones in this record would turn the total negative. A smaller lot does not fix it: it only delays the end.

Is every grid EA a scam?

No. Some traders run grids on purpose and size them small. The point is to know what you are running: the backtest profit of a grid says very little about the risk, because the risk is in the rare move the backtest did not contain.

More guides: How to test a gold (XAUUSD) EA properly · How many backtests? Overfitting explained · EA costs: spread, commission and swap · TrueTest vs StrategyQuant, Forex Tester, MT5 · EA trading at the wrong hour? Server time · Why live results are worse than the backtest · Does my EA repaint or look ahead? · Can a scalping EA make money after costs? · Does my EA make money every year? · Will my EA pass a prop-firm challenge? · What to check before you buy an EA

Questions people ask

Can a martingale EA pass a backtest?

Easily. A martingale wins most of the time by design; its losses are rare and large, so a short or calm test period may contain none.

Does TrueTest copy my EA's lot rule?

No. Our lab trades every signal of the rebuild at a fixed 0.01 lot and flags martingale or grid sizing as a code fault, so the test shows the signal without the sizing.

I only have the vendor's report. Can I still check?

Yes: upload the report and the record check reads the trades, including the lot sizes.

Is this financial advice?

No. It describes the risk shape of a record or code. Not financial advice.