cTrader Proxy Setup on macOS.
One proxy settings. Four values. Your orders stop touching commodity ISP routes.
In cTrader on macOS, go to Settings (gear icon, top-right) ? Advanced ? Connection ? Use proxy to connect. Select SOCKS5, paste in your host, port, username, and password from the TradersProxy portal. Restart the platform. Done — under 5 minutes.
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How to configure cTrader on macOS
Before you start
You need three things:
- cTrader installed and able to reach your broker without the proxy first — confirm a clean baseline connection.
- Your TradersProxy credentials from the portal: host, port, username, password.
- Five minutes and no active trades open.
Step 1 — Copy your credentials
Log in to the TradersProxy portal. Go to your connection details. Copy the host, port, username, and password for your assigned node. Do not type these — copy-paste. One transposed character breaks the connection.
Step 2 — Open the proxy settings in cTrader
Navigate to Settings (gear icon, top-right) ? Advanced ? Connection ? Use proxy to connect. The proxy dialog opens. On macOS, this dialog may require administrator confirmation before changes are saved — accept the prompt if it appears.
Step 3 — Select SOCKS5 and enter the details
Enable the proxy checkbox or toggle. Select SOCKS5 as the protocol. Paste your host into the server/host field. Enter your port number. Fill in the username and password.
If cTrader shows a separate DNS option — resolve DNS through proxy or similar — enable it. This prevents DNS leaks outside the proxy tunnel.
Note: cTrader also supports HTTP proxy. If SOCKS5 fails to connect, switch to HTTP — both protocols use the same host and port from your portal.
Step 4 — Save and restart cTrader
Click OK or Apply to save the settings. Fully quit cTrader — do not just minimise it. On macOS, proxy changes do not apply to an existing process. Relaunch the platform.
Step 5 — Confirm the connection
Look for cTrader's connection indicator after relaunch. A successful proxy connection looks identical to a direct connection — green status bars, server connection confirmed, data flowing. If the indicator stays red or the platform throws a connection error, see the gotchas section below.
Known gotchas on macOS
These are the issues traders hit most often when setting up cTrader on macOS. Check these before contacting support.
Spotware (cTrader developer) provides a native macOS build of cTrader. The proxy dialog is the same as Windows. The app is available via the Mac App Store or the Spotware website.
macOS may request network access permission on first launch or after an update. Click Allow in the permission dialog — this is required for the proxy connection to work.
On Apple Silicon Macs, the native arm64 cTrader build is preferred. Rosetta-translated builds may exhibit proxy timeout issues on some network configurations.
General rule for macOS: run cTrader as the same user account that configured the proxy. Settings saved under an administrator account may not carry over to a standard user session.
Why the proxy settings matter
Most traders use the network path of infrastructure. The platform (cTrader) is the tool — free, from the broker. The idea — signals, analysis, a method — is your trading idea. The connection path is the network path every order packet travels from your machine to the broker's matching engine.
The connection path is the one nobody names. Nobody charges for it. So it defaults to whatever your ISP gives you — shared bandwidth, peering decisions made for Netflix, routing paths designed for web browsing.
The proxy settings in cTrader let you replace that default path. TradersProxy puts a clean network relay — purpose-built for trading traffic — between your platform and your broker. Split TCP buffers separate interactive order flow from bulk chart data. The per-connection congestion algorithm adapts to your path conditions in real time.
Four fields in cTrader is how you access that layer. That's the whole setup.
FAQ — cTrader on macOS
Yes. Spotware publishes a native macOS cTrader application available on the Mac App Store and the Spotware website. The proxy configuration path — Settings ? Advanced ? Connection — is identical to the Windows version.
Check that macOS Firewall (System Settings ? Network ? Firewall) allows cTrader incoming connections. Also verify the macOS network adapter is not using a conflicting system-level proxy in System Settings ? Network ? Proxies — a system proxy on the same port can conflict with cTrader's in-app proxy.
Yes. The proxy applies to all cTrader network traffic on macOS, including cBot data feeds and order flow. The behaviour matches the Windows version.