Fortex pioneered the MT Bridge industry 15 years ago and has since built a large installation base with hundreds of FX brokerages. The company frequently gets asked by clients to evaluate whether MT4 or MT5 is more suitable for them, therefore they prepared the following article exclusively for LeapRate.
In the retail foreign exchange business, everyone believes that this field is dominated by only two front-end trading platforms from one company – MetaQuotes’ MT4 and MT5.
Without any doubt, MT4 which launched in 2005 has proven itself well against the test of time. It has an unrivalled reputation and has all the features traders need. Such as numerous charting software, over 1,700 trading robots, over 2 thousand kinds of technical indicators in the MT4 market, copy trading, alerts, financial news and mobile trading.
In 2010, MetaQuotes launched MT5. MT5 is a diversified financial trading platform that allows the use of an account to trade multiple assets and supports assets such as foreign exchange, CFDs, futures, options, stocks, and bonds. MetaQuotes’ ambition for MT5 is to position it as “the best trading platform in foreign exchange and financial markets”. But it had lived in the shadow of the massive success of MT4 for quite some time until recent years. From our vantage point, there are even days MT5 trading volume actually exceeded MT4’s. MT5 has become a force to be reckoned with finally.
The debate over the two platforms has never stopped; MT4 and MT5 each have a group of loyal supporters. So, what causes customers to split up into two teams? We can take a look at the differences between the two platforms and the advantages of each.
MT4 and MT5 trading platform comparison
| MetaTrader 5 | MetaTrader 4 | |
| Partial Order Filling Policies | Supported | Not supported |
| Order Fill Policy | Fill or Kill
Immediate or Cancel Return |
Fill or Kill |
| Pending Order Types | buy stop, buy limit, sell limit, sell stop | buy stop, buy limit, sell limit, sell stop, buy stop-limit, sell stop-limit |
| Depth of Market | The Depth of Market (DOM) option in MT5 features bids and offers for a financial security at varying prices depending on the volume. | No DOM. |
| Technical Indicators | 38 | 30 |
| Graphical Objects | 44 | 31 |
| Timeframes | 21 | 9 |
| Economic Calendar | MT5 offers an Economic Calendar, the fundamental analysis tool featuring publications on various countries’ macroeconomic indicators, which can affect financial instrument prices. | No Economic Calendar. |
| Transfer funds between accounts | YES | NO |
| Programming Language | MQL5 (Expert Advisors, scripts, and indicators used in MT5 aren’t compatible with MT4) | MQL4 (Expert Advisors, scripts, and indicators used in MT4 aren’t compatible with MT5) |
| Strategy Tester | Multi-threaded
+ Multi-currency + Real ticks |
Single thread |
| Hedging | Allows hedging (by request) and netting | Allows only hedging |
| Supported Markets | Forex / Futures /
Options / Stocks / Bonds |
Forex |
Advantages of MT4 compared to MT5:
- The positioning of MT4 trading product is relatively precise, focusing on financial investment trading varieties such as foreign exchange, gold and silver.
- MT4’s same side / opposite side of trading will be processed as separate tickets, while MT5’s same side orders will be merged into the one position with weighted average price, and positions with opposite sides (buy and sell hedging) are not allowed. MT4 is more convenient.
- The stability of MT4 is relatively good. It is easier to use and manage.
While MT5 offers brokers more advantages:
- Supports symbol groups
- Supports gateway
- Supports managing reports through the interface
- Runs multiple servers separately
- Settings are more refined
- Permission management is simplified
- Support for trading of exchange symbols
- Supports managing routing through the interface
- The decimal number of trading volume has been changed from 2 to 8 digits
And in order to accelerate the use of MT5 in the foreign exchange market, MetaQuotes continued to add traders’ favored features such as locked position, hedging, DOM (Depth of Market), allowing one-click market order and pending orders.
Which platform is better, is MT5 the future?
When it comes to usage, if you have to comply with US regulatory requirements, or need to do a lot of back-testing offline, or want to trade stocks and commodities, MT5 is a better choice over MT4. MT5 is also more popular with the new up and coming brokerages that try to bring new innovations to the market.
Other than that, the MT4 platform is currently more popular with established brokerage brands due to its very high usage rate. Some of the limitation in the MT4 platform is tolerable. It runs smoothly and traders are already familiar with various functions, charts and expert advisors.
Most experienced traders say they just want the platform to be reliable, easy to use, intuitive and uninterrupted. And that is what trading platforms should focus on. At Fortex, we see strong order flow from both MT4 and MT5.
With Fortex’ MT4/MT5 Bridge OMX, you can give MetaTrader (MT4/MT5) users direct access to global Tier 1 liquidity and advanced trading capabilities.
Fortex Bridge OMX gives MetaTrader (MT4/MT5) users direct access to vast Tier 1 liquidity from all major money center banks and venues for more than 80 global currency pairs as well as metal, energy and CFD products. You can gain instant, low-cost Straight-Through Processing (STP) of your orders at razor-thin spreads.
Fortex Bridge OMX transforms FX trading for MetaTrader (MT4/MT5) users while preserving your system investment. Bridge OMX transformed FX trading for tens of thousands of MetaTrader users and was the driving force behind the success of MT4/MT5 powerhouses such as Interbank FX, Forex Liquidity LLC, Pepperstone, and Advanced Markets. We process up to $12 billion and more than 500,000 tickets daily, helping our clients achieve nine-figure annual revenues.
Anthony Brocco, Founder and Executive Chairman of Advanced Markets, said:
The Fortex ECN platform and MT4/MT5 Bridge OMX have enabled our trades to be processed faster, cleaner, and in sizes and numbers that far exceed any other platform I have used.
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