MetaTrader 5 (MT5)

What MetaTrader 5 (MT5) means

MetaTrader 5 is the multi-asset platform MetaQuotes released as the successor to MT4. It handles currencies, CFDs, shares and exchange-traded futures inside one terminal, offers 21 timeframes instead of nine, adds a depth of market window that displays queued bids and offers where the broker supplies that feed, and provides a wider set of pending order types including stop limit orders. Accounts can be configured as netting, where all trades in a symbol collapse into one position, or as hedging in the MT4 style.

The programming language is MQL5, an object-oriented language closer to C++ than MQL4 was. The strategy tester is multi-threaded, can distribute optimisation runs across processor cores or a network of agents, and supports real tick data and multi-symbol testing, which makes portfolio and basket strategies practical to evaluate. None of that removes the fundamental limit that a tester only measures the past. MT5 is not backwards compatible with MT4, so an existing expert advisor or custom indicator must be ported to MQL5 before it will compile.

For a retail trader the practical question is whether the extra capability is worth relearning the platform. Depth of market and an economic calendar built into the terminal are genuinely useful, and netting mode matches how futures and share accounts actually work. Against that, some brokers still expose MT5 only for a subset of instruments, third-party tools and indicator libraries remain thinner than MT4's, and the depth window shows only the liquidity the broker chooses to publish rather than a full central market book.