23 september 2022
MetaTrader 4 (MT4) was introduced in 2004. MetaTrader 5 (MT5) was introduced in 2009 as its successor. Initially MT5 was poorly received. Over time MT4 development has stopped and MT5 is under active development. Even now, many argue that MT4 is still the better platform. We at EA Builder Pro have been moving away from MT4 towards the MT5 platform for years now. If you should too, you'll find out below.
Please take note it's possible to have both versions of the platform running simultanously and switch between them. However, it may be wise to invest more in the one than the other.
In order to decide which is the better platform you must decide for yourself which properties are most important. We'll give an overview of the properties we can think of which play a role in the choice between MT4 and MT5.
| MT4 | MT5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Features and ease of use | Poor | Good |
| Community support | Excellent | Good |
| Available indicators/ EA's on the market | Excellent | Good |
| Broker support | Excellent | Excellent |
The features and ease of use of MT5 simply blows MT4 away, which isn't strange considering at the fact that the MT4 platform has not been under development anymore for a long time and MetaQuotes is really trying to get the crowd moving to the MT5 platform. There are numerous examples of features, specifically surrounding backtesting and code development, which makes MT4 simply feel like an outdated platform. The MT5 platform will automatically download history data you want to use for your backtests, which MT4 does not and relies on a manual process. The MT5 platform allows for you to set breakpoints in your code while backtesting, whereas in MT4 you have to add logging manually and see if you can figure out what exactly goes wrong, when something goes wrong. This MT5 feature greatly reduces development and problem-solving duration. Also, MT5 has more backtesting options, which greatly enhances the accuracy of your backtest and also performs better executing these tests (MT4 will run on a single vCpu only). Simply put, you will move forward more quickly using MT5.
70% of all users is currently using the MT4 platform and thus has more users than MT5 which will be able to help on the MetaTrader/ MQL forums. Also, the average MT4 user will be more experienced, because they have been around a longer time, on average. MT5 also relies on the same forums. MT5 users are still less numerous and may consist of more of a mixture between experienced and novice traders. It's very useful that MT4 has so many archives and posts from the past. Every question will be asked and answered a lot of times, which really helps you finding an answer to your question. Personally, I do find my own way reading the documentation and I haven't found it hard to find the information I was looking for when working with MT5.
MT4 definitely has the most indicators available to download freely or at marketplaces. However, MT5 has now been around for long enough to offer any indicator you should need, I personally would say.
Brokers will generally support you in any way they can. I've been in touch with many brokers on behalf of our users and I would say their support has been excellent for either platform. I wouldn't say the choice of platform would rely on the broker, I would like to suggest the opposite: to find a broker which has a good offering, latency-wise and commission-wise and pick the related platform to that offering.
MetaTrader 4 has the better community and available resources (indicators and EA's), whereas MetaTrader 5 has the best technology and features, which will give you a more pleasant experience. Which platform you prefer depends on the question if you're willing to risk investing in the older (MT4) platform and make the transition or decision to move on to MT5 later, or if you'd rather be ahead of the pack and sometimes need to do a bit of extra effort to find the answerers/ resources you're looking for on community pages. EA Builder Pro advices the use of the MT5 platform.