A trading journal has two halves. One is the plan: why you took the trade, what you expected, how calm you were, what you did wrong. Nobody can write that half for you, and it takes thirty seconds a trade. The other half is the receipt: the fills, the prices, the commission and swap, the net the broker actually settled. That half the platform already has, and typing it again is where journals quietly go wrong: a rounded entry price, a forgotten partial exit, a swap left out. Live sync is the receipt half arriving by itself, so the thirty seconds you spend go on the half that teaches you something.

This article explains how SetupBook connects to MetaTrader 4 and 5, cTrader, Bybit, Binance and OKX, what each connection can and cannot do, and when the older file import is still the better tool. Everything described here is free and read-only.

What a synced trade looks like

A synced trade is an ordinary trade in the journal with one difference: the fields that came from the platform are locked. Symbol, side, open and close time, every fill with its price and size, commission, fees and the net P&L belong to the platform and are overwritten on every sync. Stop, target, risk, strategy, setup quality, emotion, calm at entry, mistakes, screenshots and the four notes are yours, and the sync never touches them.

Two details are worth knowing. First, the net is what the broker settled, not what the price arithmetic says. On a cross pair, or when a swap landed overnight, the two differ; the journal shows the settled figure and marks it broker so you can see why. Second, if you remove a connection, its trades stay and become editable again. Nothing is lost by trying it.

MetaTrader 4 and 5

MetaTrader has no public API, so the connection runs the other way: a small Expert Advisor (EA) inside the terminal reads the account history and pushes it to the journal. The EA is read-only. It never places, modifies or closes an order, and it does not need trading permission to run.

Setting it up takes three steps, shown in the dialog when you create the connection:

  1. Create a MetaTrader 5 or MetaTrader 4 connection in Settings → Connections and copy the token it shows. The token is shown once; it is the only secret the EA holds, and it can only write to that one connection.
  2. Put the EA file (SetupBookSync.mq5 or .mq4, downloaded from the same dialog) into the terminal's MQL5/Experts (or MQL4/Experts) folder, open MetaEditor and compile it, and allow https://setupbook.io under Tools → Options → Expert Advisors → Allow WebRequest for listed URL. Without that last step MetaTrader silently blocks every request.
  3. Drag the EA onto any chart, paste the token into its inputs, and confirm that the smiley in the chart corner is not crossed out.

The first run sends the whole account history. After that every new deal arrives within seconds while the terminal is open, and the stop and target of your open positions follow the terminal, so a moved stop shows up in the journal as moved. When the terminal is closed nothing is sent; the next time it opens, the EA catches up from where it stopped.

One trap specific to MetaTrader: the broker's server clock. Most brokers run on UTC+2 in winter and UTC+3 in summer, switching on New York's daylight-saving dates, but some run UTC all year. The journal assumes the New York rule and lets you change it per connection; if your trading-day and session breakdowns look shifted by an hour, that setting is the first thing to check.

cTrader

cTrader has a proper API, so the connection is a sign-in. Press Connect cTrader, sign in with your cTrader ID, and approve the request. The permission asked for is accounts, which is read-only; the journal cannot trade, deposit or withdraw. Every trading account under your cTrader ID comes back as its own connection, live and demo alike, and you pick which SetupBook account each one feeds.

Deals are pulled rather than pushed: press Sync now for the first pull, and after that the journal fetches new deals on a schedule. The first pull reaches as far back as the broker keeps history.

Bybit, Binance and OKX

Exchanges connect with an API key. Create one in the exchange's API management page with read-only permissions and nothing else: no trading, no withdrawals, no transfers. Paste the key and secret into the connection dialog (OKX also asks for the passphrase you set when creating the key), tick the markets you trade (spot, USDT-margined perpetuals), and save. The journal checks the key's permissions and warns if it can do more than read; if you see that warning, delete the key on the exchange and make a read-only one.

Each exchange caps how far back its API will go. Bybit returns about two years of fills, Binance and OKX about three months. For older history, export the trade history file from the exchange and import it; the two paths skip duplicates against each other. Fills are grouped into positions the same way the file import does it, so a position closed in three parts is one trade with three exits. Coin-margined (inverse) contracts are not supported yet.

How the secrets are kept

Exchange keys and cTrader tokens are stored on the server, sealed with AES-256-GCM under a key that never leaves the server, so a scheduled sync can run while your phone is in your pocket. MetaTrader tokens are stored only as a SHA-256 hash; if the database were read, the tokens could not be recovered from it. None of this is readable from the browser, and none of it is ever sent to a third party. A key can be revoked on the exchange at any moment and the connection simply stops.

When a file import is still the better tool

Sync does not replace the import, it joins it. Use a file when:

  • the platform is not on the list (TradingView, a futures broker, a prop firm dashboard, a spreadsheet);
  • the history is older than the exchange's API reaches;
  • the account is closed and the terminal is gone, but you still have the report;
  • you want one clean backfill and no connection afterwards.

The import guide covers each file format and the time-zone trap that corrupts hour-of-day statistics.

Which path for which trader

You trade on Best path What you get
MetaTrader 4 or 5 Expert Advisor every deal within seconds, stops and targets followed
cTrader cTrader ID sign-in all your accounts, pulled on a schedule
Bybit, Binance, OKX read-only API key fills grouped into positions, two years or three months back
anything else file import one clean backfill per report
a new account with no history by hand thirty seconds per trade, position size from the calculator

Whichever path the receipt takes, the plan half stays yours: tag the strategy, rate the setup, note what you felt, mark the mistake. That is the part that changes the next trade, and it is the part no sync can do.

Connections live in Settings → Connections of a free account. The user guide walks through each dialog with screenshots.