MT4 or MT5: the differences, and which to choose

Updated on September 16, 2026

Two platforms, not two versions

The trap is in the name. People assume an update, when in fact these are two separate programs, released by the same company five years apart and maintained in parallel ever since.

The practical consequence is immediate: an MT4 account does not connect to MT5. Credentials are not transferable, and there is no conversion. Moving from one to the other means opening a new account at your broker, with a new number and a new server, as our page about the server and account number explains.

Trade history does not follow either. That is a common reason to stay on MT4 when you have several years behind you there.

What MT5 actually brings

Not every difference sold as major really is. Four of them count for a retail trader.

• More timeframes: twenty-one against nine, which gives intermediate scales MT4 does not have;
• More order types, including stop limit orders, absent from MT4;
• A built-in economic calendar, where MT4 forces you out of the platform;
• Market depth and volume data, when the broker sends them.

There is also a difference in how positions are accounted for. MT4 works in hedging, where you can hold a buy and a sell on the same instrument at once. MT5 offers hedging or netting, where the two cancel into a single net position, depending on what the broker configured. That changes how you read your open positions, not your result.

Why MT4 never went away

The reason is entirely about software, and has nothing to do with the quality of the market.

MT4 indicators and robots are written in a language MT5 cannot read. Twenty years of free tools, indicators shared on forums and purchased robots therefore do not run on the newer platform without being rewritten.

Many traders stayed for that reason alone, and many brokers kept offering both so as not to lose them.

What it changes for a third-party tool

This is where the difference stops being a matter of comfort.

MT5 exposes an official programming interface, documented and maintained by the vendor, which lets an external program read an account and send orders to it cleanly. MT4 never had an equivalent: anything that plugs into it goes through workarounds installed inside the platform itself.

That is why many modern tools, ours included, only serve MT5. It is not an aesthetic preference, it is the only one of the two platforms where a third-party connection is provided for by the vendor.

Which to choose

If you are starting today, take MT5. You get more timeframes, a built-in calendar, and access to the tools that plug into an account.

If you are already on MT4, the question is different. Stay if your indicators live there and you need nothing external. Open an MT5 account alongside if you want to try something else: nothing forces you to close the first one, and most brokers accept both. The case of funded accounts is treated separately on our page about prop firms.

And if your broker only offers MT4, that is a criterion to weigh the day you change, alongside its costs, covered on our page about the real cost of a trade.

What AlphaGPT does

The tool works with a MetaTrader 5 account only, for the technical reason explained above.

If you have an MT4 account there is nothing to convert: you need to open an MT5 account at your broker, which generally takes a few minutes from their client area, and connect with those credentials. What that connection actually permits is described on our page about what an analysis tool can access.

Trading carries a risk of capital loss.