MetaTrader: MT4 vs MT5 Compared, With a Netting vs Hedging Example at Real Rates

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-09-26 · Updated 2026-11-03 · Reviewed 2026-11-03

MetaTrader is a pair of trading terminals from MetaQuotes: MetaTrader 4, the older forex platform, and MetaTrader 5, its multi-asset successor. Below: the maker’s own comparison, three EUR/USD orders at real 2026 rates on both kinds of MT5 account, and what YouTube teaches about them.

How it works

MetaTrader is the screen, not the broker. You download a terminal, log in to an account a broker has opened for you, and the terminal talks to that broker’s server. The footer of both the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 sites says the company makes software and “does not provide investment or brokerage services”. Prices, symbols, spreads and the hours you can trade all come from the broker.

The two versions are separate programs, not an old and a new edition of one. Each has its own programming language, its own code library and its own market for add-ons. MQL4 belongs to MetaTrader 4 and MQL5 to MetaTrader 5. Both languages are built on C++ ideas, and MetaQuotes describes each as object-oriented.

The broker also sets the execution rules. MetaTrader 4 lists three execution modes: instant, request and market. MetaTrader 5 adds a fourth, exchange execution, and its own trading page adds a note that the mode is “set by the brokerage company for each financial security”. Two traders on the same version can see different behavior when they click buy.

Both run the same kinds of program. An expert advisor trades by itself, a custom indicator draws on the chart, and a script, in the MQL4 reference’s words, is meant for “a single execution” of some actions. Each version also has a built-in strategy tester for running an expert advisor over past data.

Who makes MetaTrader: MetaQuotes

MetaQuotes is the company; MetaTrader is its product line. The company’s history page, read on 3 November 2026, says it was established in 2000, released its first mobile trading apps in 2003, launched MetaTrader 4 in 2005 and MetaTrader 5 in 2010, and works with “nearly a thousand” financial institutions. Those institutions are the brokers and banks that license the platform and run the servers.

The App Store gap shows how much depends on that one supplier. Apple removed both MetaTrader apps from its App Store in September 2022; Finance Magnates reported the removal on 27 September as having happened the week before. MetaQuotes announced on 6 March 2023 that the apps had been reinstated, about five and a half months later. For that stretch a new iPhone user could not install either terminal from the store, whichever broker they had chosen.

What MetaTrader 5 adds

MetaQuotes publishes its own side-by-side table, and it has 19 rows. In 9 of them MetaTrader 5 has a feature that MetaTrader 4 lacks outright: partial order filling, depth of market, exchange time and sales data, the economic calendar, transfers between accounts, the community chat, Unicode text, netting and exchange trading. No row runs the other way. The counts below were the same when the table was read again on 1 November 2026.

The 12 extra timeframes are all in-between periods. The MQL4 reference lists the 9 standard ones: 1, 5, 15 and 30 minutes, 1 and 4 hours, daily, weekly and monthly. The MQL5 list adds 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 12 and 20 minutes, and 2, 3, 6, 8 and 12 hours.

The two extra pending orders are stop-limit orders. A Buy Stop Limit waits for price to reach a stop level and then places a Buy Limit at a second price; the sell version mirrors it. The mechanics are the same as the stop-limit order on a stock platform. The MQL4 reference lists MetaTrader 4’s four pending order types: buy limit, sell limit, buy stop and sell stop.

One count disagrees between the maker’s own pages. The comparison table gives MetaTrader 4 31 graphical objects, while the MetaTrader 4 product page says 23 analytical objects. This page uses the table.

Netting and hedging

MetaTrader 5 supports two ways of keeping positions, and MetaTrader 4 supports one. Under netting you can hold only one position per symbol. A new buy or sell on that symbol makes the existing position larger, smaller, or flips it to the other side. Under hedging, each new deal opens its own position, with its own trailing stop, stop loss and take profit.

The account decides which one you get, and the broker sets it. That is how the MetaTrader 5 help file puts it. The MetaTrader 5 trading page adds that netting is the mode adopted on exchange markets, while hedging is widely used in forex trading. MetaTrader 4 has only the hedging mode.

Closing works differently in each. On a netting account you close by sending an equal trade the other way, and when you add to a position the help file says its open price becomes the weighted average. On a hedging account you close a specific position from its own menu, and a position cannot be reversed; the help file says the current one is closed and a new one opened for the rest.

Hedging accounts get one extra tool, Close By. It closes two opposite positions on the same symbol against each other, and the MetaTrader 5 help says it “saves the trader one spread” compared with closing them one at a time. It exists only on hedging accounts.

This is bookkeeping, not strategy. The word shares a name with hedging as risk control, but here it only means opposite trades are kept apart.

A worked example: three EUR/USD orders at real rates

The orders. Send the same three EUR/USD orders on two MetaTrader 5 accounts, one netting and one hedging, on the first business day of three months in 2026: buy 1.00 lot on 3 August, sell 0.40 lot on 1 September, sell 1.00 lot on 1 October. Price each at that day’s European Central Bank reference rate: 1.1535, 1.1590 and 1.1298. Mark everything at the 30 October rate, 1.1172. One lot is 100,000 euros, so each pip (0.0001) is worth $10 a lot.

On the netting account there is only ever one position. The sell of 0.40 lot closes 0.40 of the long, 55 pips up, and books $220. The sell of 1.00 lot closes the other 0.60 lot 237 pips down, booking -$1,422, and the remaining 0.40 lot opens a short at 1.1298. By 30 October that short is 126 pips in profit, $504. Total: $220 - $1,422 + $504 = -$698. This split assumes the open price of what is left after a partial close stays at 1.1535, the usual weighted-average bookkeeping.

On the hedging account nothing closes. Three positions sit side by side: the 1.00-lot long, 363 pips down at -$3,630; the 0.40-lot short from 1.1590, 418 pips up at $1,672; and the 1.00-lot short from 1.1298, 126 pips up at $1,260. Total: -$698, as on netting.

What is not the same. The hedging account has 2.40 lots open to carry a net short of 0.40, three sets of exits to manage and three positions to close, each one paying a spread unless Close By pairs two of them. Overnight financing is charged on open positions, so 2.40 lots can cost more to hold than 0.40, at rates the broker sets. The lot size page covers what 1.00 and 0.40 lot mean in units of currency.

Moving code from MQL4 to MQL5

MetaQuotes calls MQL5 “maximally compatible” with MQL4, then lists the differences. The reference page for programmers moving across starts with the entry points. MQL4 programs run through three functions: start(), init() and deinit(). MQL5 has none of them. An expert advisor’s start() becomes OnTick(), an indicator’s becomes OnCalculate(), and only a script keeps a direct match in OnStart().

The price data is reached differently too. MQL5 has no ready-made Ask, Bid or Bars variables, and no built-in Open[], High[], Low[] or Close[] arrays; a program asks for history through functions instead. Indicator buffers, capped at 8 in MQL4, have no fixed limit, and drawing styles go from 6 to 18.

The practical result: an MT4 expert advisor is a rewrite, not a copy. If you run one you did not write, ask the seller whether a separate MQL5 build exists before you change platforms.

The original data

The prices in the worked example. The ECB publishes one euro reference rate a day, at 2:15 p.m. Central European Time; it is a reference, not a price anyone traded, and a broker’s bid and ask will differ. As a check, the Fed’s noon New York rate on FRED sat a median 17 pips from the ECB rate over 2,665 shared days since 2016. Priced on FRED’s rates for the same three days and marked at its latest value, 23 October, the total is -$1,194 instead of -$698, yet netting and hedging still match each other exactly, because the total depends only on the prices of the deals and the mark. The daily rates and both positions are in the EUR/USD netting vs hedging file.

117 videos in this site’s 24,971-video study name MetaTrader in the title, from 87 channels. Their median is 5,448 views, about half the study-wide median of 10,684. Of those, 78 name MT5 and 38 name MT4, and 5 titles sit in both counts because they name both. Another 6 just say MetaTrader. The counts use whole-word title matches, with each video counted once.

The newer platform has more videos, but the older one earns more views per video. The 33 titles naming only MT4 have a median of 15,518 views. The 73 naming only MT5 sit at 5,133. None of the 117 pits MT4 against MT5.

What MetaTrader videos teach is mostly how to use it. 80 of the 117 titles are how-to, tutorial, guide, beginner or setup videos, with a median of 15,319 views. The 28 with “indicator” in the title have a median of just 352.

One caution on the platform comparison. The study was built from 1,409 YouTube searches, of which 29 named TradingView and only one named MetaTrader, so medians are the fair read: 5,104 views across 1,044 TradingView titles, 5,957 across 81 NinjaTrader titles and 5,448 for MetaTrader. Upload dates are empty on every row, so the study cannot show whether MT4 videos are fading.

The overlap with TradingView is small: 8 of the 117 MetaTrader titles also name it. The video counts are published as platform title demand and the full 19-row MetaQuotes table as MT5 vs MT4 official features.

When it fails

The platform is right and the account is wrong. MetaTrader 5 on a netting account will fold a new order into the position you already hold. A trader who meant to open a second, separate trade finds one bigger position with one set of exits, or a flipped position, as the 1 October order did above.

A trailing stop that stops trailing. The MetaTrader 5 help file says a trailing stop runs in the terminal, not on the server like a stop loss. Close the terminal and the level stops moving; only the stop loss it last set will still trigger. A fixed stop loss sent with the order stays with the broker either way.

An old program on a new platform. An MQL4 expert advisor has to be adapted before MetaTrader 5 can run it. A quick port can compile and still read history backward: by default an MQL5 indicator buffer puts the oldest bar at index 0, the reverse of the MQL4 habit. Test the MQL5 version in the strategy tester before trusting it with money, and read backtesting first if the test report is new to you.

A timeframe that only one version has. A setup built on a 2-hour or 12-minute chart on MetaTrader 5 has no matching live chart on MetaTrader 4, whose reference keeps those periods for offline charts only.

Assuming the platform decides what you can trade. MetaTrader 5 can show stocks and futures, but only if the broker offers them on that account. The software’s list of markets is a ceiling, not a promise.

Questions people ask

Is MetaQuotes the same as MetaTrader?

No. MetaQuotes is the software company and MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are its platforms. A download from either MetaQuotes site still needs an account at a broker before it can trade.

Is MetaTrader legal in the US?

The software is not the regulated part; the firm on the other side of your trades is. The CFTC’s Foreign Currency Trading page (read 1 November 2026) says firms offering retail forex contracts register as futures commission merchants or retail foreign exchange dealers, and the CFTC’s registration check lets you look a firm up before you open an account.

MT4 or MT5: which should a beginner use?

There is no tested answer. MT5 has more of everything in the maker’s table and the netting mode; MT4 has the larger back catalog of tutorials, with MT4-only titles drawing a median 15,518 views in this site’s study. Your broker may offer only one, which settles it.

Can you use MT5 without a broker?

Not to trade. The MetaTrader 5 help (read 1 November 2026) starts even a demo account by choosing a broker’s server; demo accounts need no deposit.

Do traders still use MT4?

MetaQuotes still publishes it, with its own MetaTrader 4 site, and of the 117 MetaTrader titles in this site’s video study, 38 name MT4.

Related

The programs MetaTrader runs are covered on the expert advisor page, and the tool that tests them on the strategy tester page. Most MetaTrader accounts trade currencies, so forex explains the market underneath, and pip the unit its prices move in.

For charting with a different tool, TradingView covers the platform that shares many of these videos, and algo trading covers automation beyond any one terminal. Choosing who supplies the server is on the broker choice page.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.