The Gold Reaper EA MT5 — an honest look at one of MQL5's most popular Gold EAs

The Gold Reaper EA MT5 is one of the most recognisable names on the MQL5 marketplace right now. Developed by Wim Schrynemakers (Profalgo Limited), it carries a 4.51 rating from 95 reviews and moves around 21 copies a month — which, for a $849 EA, is a meaningful number. I've been keeping an eye on it for a while, and now I've sat down, ran my own independent backtests from 2018 to April 2026, and I'm going to tell you exactly what I found — the good and the not-so-obvious.

Let me say upfront: this is one of the more pleasant reviews I've written lately. Unlike many EAs I test, The Gold Reaper did not blow the deposit in a full 8-year test. The Profit Factor holds at 2.56 across different deposit sizes and timeframes. That's genuinely rare. But there are still things you need to understand before putting real money on it, and I'll walk through all of them below.

Сharacteristics of the Gold Reaper MT5 EA v4.3

• Official website: MQL5
• Platform: Metatrader5
• EA version: 4.3
• Currency pairs: XAUUSD (Gold) — primary
• Trading Time: 24/5 with optional Friday stop hour, NFP filter included
• Timeframe: M15 primary (multi-timeframe: all TFs feed into strategy)
• Minimum deposit: $300 at 1:500 leverage, recommended $1,000+ or 10 USD cents, best conditions here ➔ ProCent
• Recommended broker: Roboforex ECN | VT Markets - excellent for GOLD | XM Zero — ECN/RAW only. 2-decimal GOLD quote. 3-decimal brokers: NOT compatible
• Price: $849 (final price $990) and FREE here ↓

How does it work?

The Gold Reaper EA is built on the same foundation as the developer's earlier Gold Trade Pro — a breakout-based approach that looks for clean entry points above and below recent price structure. What makes this EA different is that it runs up to 9 separate sub-strategies simultaneously, each with its own entry logic, stop loss, and take profit. All orders I found in the test data had real stop losses — this is not a grid EA that holds losing trades indefinitely.

The EA places pending stop orders (buy stop / sell stop) at calculated levels and lets the market come to them. This appears on the chart like this:

Orders that don't fill expire after a defined window, and the EA resets. When a position is active, a High-Low trailing stop lock in profits as the trade develops. There's also a built-in NFP (Non-Farm Payrolls) filter that closes or pauses trades around major economic releases.

Here are the key features as I understand them after reviewing the code parameters:

• 9 independent sub-strategies (RunStrat1–RunStrat9) — you can run all or select specific ones
• Stop Loss on every trade — confirmed in my test data, SL levels are visible on all filled orders
• HL Trailing SL — dynamic trailing stop that follows High/Low structure
• NFP Filter — shuts down trading around the US employment report
• Spread filter — configurable max spread cap (default 500 points for Gold)
• Variable lot sizing — the EA scales position size based on current account balance (MaxAllowedDD=30% as a circuit breaker)
• FakeOut Filter — a filter that reduces false breakout entries
• Prop firm mode — dedicated set file available, adjustable SL/TP offsets

One thing I want to be transparent about: the variable lot sizing is a double-edged sword. As the account grows, the position sizes grow proportionally. This is why a $5,000 account test eventually sees individual trade profits of $136,000 — and individual losses of $38,000. The drawdown in absolute dollar terms becomes very large as the account compounds. Keep that in mind.

Backtesting

I ran three independent backtests on RoboForex ECN data, 100% quality, all using version 4.3 with default settings and all 9 strategies active. Here's what I got.

Test 1 — $300 Deposit | M15 | 2018–2026 (Conservative Start)

I wanted to see how the EA behaves with a very modest starting capital, close to the stated minimum deposit. The result surprised me positively.

• Profit Factor 2.56 — solid and consistent throughout the 8-year test
• Max balance drawdown 11.07% — well within acceptable range
• $300 grew to $40,697 — account compounded ~135× in 8 years
• LR Correlation 0.84 — good equity curve linearity

Test 2 — $5,000 Deposit | M15 | 2018–2026 (Default Variable Lots)

With a realistic trading account size, the EA runs more strategies simultaneously and opens larger positions. The trade count jumps significantly compared to the $300 test — more capital means more strategies are active at once.

• Max consecutive losses: 30 — reflects 9 strategies triggering simultaneously, not a single grid hold
• LR Correlation 0.68 — equity curve less linear with larger lot sizes
• Largest single loss: −$38,695 on a compounded $1M+ account — normal with variable lots, dollar amounts scale with balance

Test 3 — $5,000 Deposit | H1 | 2018–2026 (Timeframe Cross-Check)

I ran the same $5,000 test on H1 data to check whether the strategy is robust across timeframes or only optimised for M15. This is something good developers do, and it's something I always verify myself.

• H1 results nearly identical to M15 — Profit Factor 2.54 vs 2.56
• Max drawdown essentially unchanged at 11.77% balance
• Timeframe consistency confirms the strategy is not curve-fitted to M15 data
• No cherry-picking detected — all tests start January 2018, the same full period

Test Comparison Summary

I've reviewed dozens of EAs on this site. It is genuinely uncommon to see all three tests — different deposit sizes, different timeframes, full 8-year period — come back consistently profitable with a Profit Factor above 2.5. That deserves acknowledgement.

The developer runs a public live signal (Gold Reaper New V2 2, ID 2265877) since October 2024 — 73 weeks, 676 real trades, 217% growth on a real account, and a live Profit Factor of 2.63 that directly confirms my backtest results. That's the honest positive. The honest negative: MQL5's own automated system flagged this signal six times as suspicious, repeatedly warning that 80% of total growth was achieved in just ~5% of all trading days — meaning the account grows in sharp, unpredictable bursts rather than consistently, which the live Sharpe Ratio of 0.26 also confirms. On top of that, slippage for copiers is a serious problem — IC Markets subscribers average 10–21 pips per trade against an expected payoff of $4.86, mathematically eliminating the edge; only Exness shows clean execution. Three of six user reviews report trades not copying at all, with no response from the developer. The strategy works on real money — the live PF proves that — but if you're buying this EA, run it yourself on a proper ECN broker. The signal subscription is a different, riskier proposition:

The Gold Reaper New V2 2 Live Signal

Key Input Parameters

The EA has an extensive settings panel. Here are the parameters that matter most for managing risk:

• TradeFrequency (1–5) — controls trade intensity. 5 is the most active (default in all my tests)
• MaxAllowedDD (%) — circuit breaker that stops trading if overall drawdown hits this level (default 30%). I recommend keeping this at 20–25%
• MaxRiskPerStrategy_ — caps risk per individual sub-strategy. Default 1% is reasonable
• UseWeightedLots — enables smarter lot distribution across strategies based on performance. Keep enabled
• MaxSpread — spread filter in points. 500 is the default for Gold. Lower this to 200–250 on ECN accounts
• FakeOutFilter (0, 1, or 2) — 2 is strictest entry filtering; recommended for live accounts
• RunStrat1–RunStrat9 — you can selectively enable/disable individual strategies. All enabled is the default
• EnableNFP_Filter — I strongly recommend keeping this true

Note on the Risk=1234 parameter: This appears in the test inputs and is likely the EA's internal strategy identification code, not a risk percentage. The actual position sizing is controlled by MaxRiskPerStrategy_ and the lot settings. Do not confuse the two.

What Users Are Saying

With 95 reviews and a 4.51 rating, the community response is overwhelmingly positive. What stands out from reading through the reviews is the consistency of a few themes: live results match the backtests, the developer is genuinely responsive and transparent, and the Gold Reaper EA rewards patience. A few users specifically mention 10–15% annual returns on low-risk settings, while others running higher risk settings report 40%+ on their accounts over 11 months.

There are occasional complaints about drawdown periods — which is inevitable with any EA — but the reviewers who stick around report recovery. No verified reports of account blow-up on default settings. That's the real test.

Conclusion

The Gold Reaper MT5 is one of those rare EAs where my independent backtests actually support the developer's claims. All three tests I ran came back profitable across the full 2018–2026 period — different deposit sizes, different timeframes — with a consistent Profit Factor of 2.54–2.56 and maximum balance drawdown staying around 11–12%. That's not marketing. That's what the numbers say.

That said, I want to be honest about the risks that do exist: the variable lot sizing means the dollar amounts of both profits and losses become very large as the account compounds. If you run this EA, withdraw your profits regularly. The 30 consecutive losses I see in the $5,000 test look alarming at first glance, but they reflect multiple strategies opening simultaneously — not a single position sitting underwater for weeks.

At $849, it's not cheap. But compared to many overpriced and underperforming EAs on the MQL5 market, I think the price is justified by what you're getting: a transparent developer, consistent backtests, live signal running since February 2024, and a track record of updates (version 4.3 as of December 2025).

If I were running this myself, here is how I would approach it:

1. Start on a demo account for at least 4–6 weeks and compare live fills to backtest prices
2. Use Low or Medium risk settings — MaxRiskPerStrategy_ at 0.5–1%, MaxAllowedDD at 20–25%
3. Withdraw profits every time the account grows by 20–25%. Don't let the compounding run unchecked
4. Use a reliable VPS — the EA needs to be running 24/5. Any downtime means missed entries or open positions without management
5. Choose an ECN or RAW spread account — Roboforex ECN or IC Markets Raw are my preferred brokers
6. Keep the FakeOutFilter at 2 and the NFP filter enabled on live accounts
7. Monitor the MaxAllowedDD circuit breaker — if it triggers, review before re-enabling

In the archive Gold_Reaper_MT5.rar (227.9 Kb):

• The Gold Reaper MT5_4.3_fix.ex5
• propfirm__1.set

Free Download Gold Reaper EA MT5 v4.3

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