Why Both Platforms Still Exist

If you're brand new to forex, our What Is Forex Trading guide is a better starting point than a platform comparison. For everyone else, here's the actual question worth answering: MetaTrader 5 (MT5) was released as MetaTrader 4's (MT4) successor back in 2010, yet both platforms are still in active use across brokers in 2026. That's not an accident or an oversight. MetaQuotes, the company behind both, continues to actively maintain MT4 rather than sunset it. As recently as 2025, MetaQuotes published minimum supported build requirements for both platforms going forward, confirming MT4 remains a live, connectable platform rather than a discontinued one^[1].

The reason both persist is that MT4 built up 15+ years of custom indicators, Expert Advisors (EAs), and trader familiarity that many traders and brokers still rely on, while MT5 was built as a genuinely newer platform with capabilities MT4 was never designed to have. This isn't one platform simply being an upgraded version of the other in every respect. They're different enough in places that the right choice depends on what you actually need.

A Few Key Differences

This isn't every difference between the two platforms, just the handful that actually affect how you trade day to day. Confirmed directly against MetaQuotes' own official comparison page.

What These Actually Mean for You

Confirmed directly against MetaQuotes' own official MT4/MT5 comparison page^[5].

Timeframes: more built-in timeframes on MT5 (21 vs 9) means finer control over how you view price action, without needing a custom indicator to create in-between timeframes MT4 doesn't offer natively.

Account modes: covered in full detail just below, since it's genuinely one of the more practically important differences here.

Depth of Market: lets you see the actual order book, other pending buy/sell orders at different price levels, not just the current price. MT4 doesn't offer this natively at all.

Pending order types: MT5 adds Stop Limit orders (a stop order that becomes a limit order once triggered, giving more control over your exact fill price) on top of the order types MT4 already has.

Economic Calendar: MT5 has one built directly into the platform; on MT4 you'd need a separate app or website to track scheduled news events.

Symbols: MT4 caps you at 1,024 tradable instruments; MT5 has no such limit, which matters if you want access to a wide range of markets beyond just forex pairs.

Strategy Tester: MT5's version runs multi-threaded, across multiple currencies at once, using real historical tick data, meaningfully faster and more accurate than MT4's single-threaded tester, if you ever plan to backtest a strategy or build an EA.

Netting vs Hedging Accounts

This is one of the more genuinely practical differences, not just a spec-sheet item. In a hedging account, you can hold a buy and a sell position on the same instrument at the same time, tracked as separate, independent positions. MT4 was built around this model. MT5 supports it too, but also offers a netting mode, where opposing trades on the same instrument automatically combine into a single net position instead of being tracked separately^[2].

Which mode you actually get on MT5 depends on your broker's account configuration, not something you toggle yourself after opening an account. This is worth checking directly with a broker before assuming either mode is available, since it varies by provider rather than being a universal MT5 feature you can rely on everywhere.

Indicators, EAs, and Switching Later

The practical cost of choosing MT4 today is felt later, not now. MQL4 and MQL5 are not directly interchangeable languages, so a custom indicator or Expert Advisor written for one does not automatically run on the other without being separately ported or rewritten. If you're relying on a specific older tool that only ever shipped for MT4, switching to MT5 later could mean losing access to it, or paying someone to port it.

ForexDealsPro's own free tools sidestep this problem entirely: Session Highlighter, FVG Scanner, and Order Block Detector are all built and maintained for both MT4 and MT5, so your platform choice doesn't limit which of them you can use, and switching platforms later doesn't mean losing access to any of them.

Which One Should You Choose

If you're relying on a specific older custom indicator or EA that was only ever written in MQL4 and hasn't been ported, MT4 may still be the practical choice for now, for the exact reason covered above.

If you're starting fresh with no existing MT4-specific tools to carry over, MT5's wider timeframe selection, stop-limit orders, and netting-mode option give it more built-in capability out of the box, with no real downside for most new traders. Both platforms remain actively supported by MetaQuotes as of 2026, so "which one is still maintained" isn't a deciding factor either way^[1].

Checking Broker Availability

Not every broker offers both platforms, and not every MT5 account from every broker supports netting mode, so this is genuinely worth confirming before you open an account rather than assuming. XM, IC Markets, AvaTrade, and PUPRIME all support both platforms. Our detailed XM, IC Markets, AvaTrade, and PUPRIME reviews cover exact account types and netting/hedging support, so you can check before committing to one over the other.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

References

1. MetaQuotes: Support for older versions of MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 to end on July 1 (minimum supported builds notice): metaquotes.net/en/company/news/5479
2. MQL5 Documentation: Account type — netting or hedging: mql5.com/en/book/automation/account/account_netting_hedge
3. MQL5 Reference: Chart Timeframes (ENUM_TIMEFRAMES): mql5.com/en/docs/constants/chartconstants/enum_timeframes
4. MQL4 Reference: Chart Timeframes: docs.mql4.com/constants/chartconstants/enum_timeframes
5. MetaTrader 5: Comparison of MetaTrader 5 and MetaTrader 4: metatrader5.com/en/trading-platform/comparison-mt5-mt4