What keeps MT4 relevant after two decades
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences years ago, nudging brokers toward MT5. Yet most retail forex traders kept using MT4. The reason is straightforward: MT4 works, and people trust what works. More than a decade's worth of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts only work with MT4. Switching to MT5 means rebuilding that entire library, and most traders would rather keep trading than recoding.
I spent time testing both platforms side by side, and the differences are marginal for most strategies. MT5 has a few extras like more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but the charting is very similar. Unless you need MT5-specific features, MT4 still holds its own.
Setting up MT4 without the usual headaches
Downloading and installing MT4 is the easy part. Where people waste time is getting everything configured correctly. On first launch, MT4 loads with four charts squeezed onto a single workspace. Close all of them and start fresh with the instruments you care about.
Templates are worth setting up early. Set up your usual indicators once, then right-click and save as template. Then you can load it onto other charts without redoing the work. Sounds trivial, but over weeks it saves hours.
A quick tweak that helps: go to Tools > Options > Charts and check "Show ask line." MT4 only shows the bid price on the chart, which makes your entries look off until you realise the ask price is hidden.
Backtesting on MT4: what the results actually mean
MT4's built-in strategy tester lets you run Expert Advisors against historical data. Worth noting though: the reliability of those results depends entirely on your tick data. Standard history data from MetaQuotes is modelled, meaning it fills in missing ticks with made-up prices. For anything beyond a rough sanity check, you need third-party tick data.
That quality percentage in the results tells you more than the bottom-line PnL. Below 90% indicates the results aren't trustworthy. I've seen people share screenshots with 25% modelling quality and can't figure out why their live results don't match.
The strategy tester is one of MT4's stronger features, but it's only as good as the data you give it.
Building your own MT4 indicators
MT4 ships with 30 standard technical indicators. Few people use more than five or six. That said, the platform's actual strength is in user-built indicators written in MQL4. There are thousands available, ranging from simple moving average variations to elaborate signal panels.
Adding a custom indicator is simple: copy the .ex4 or .mq4 file into the MQL4/Indicators folder, restart MT4, and you'll find it in the Navigator panel. One thing to watch is quality. Community indicators vary wildly. A few are well coded and maintained. Some haven't been updated since 2015 and may crash your terminal.
If you're downloading custom indicators, look at how recently it was maintained and whether other traders have flagged problems. Bad code won't just give wrong signals — it can freeze the whole terminal.
The MT4 risk controls you're probably not using
There are several built-in risk management tools that the majority of users skip over. The most useful is the maximum deviation setting in the order window. This defines how much slippage you'll accept on market orders. Leave it at zero and you're accepting whatever price is available.
Everyone knows about stop losses, but MT4's trailing stop feature is underused. Click on an open trade, pick Trailing Stop, and set a distance. Your stop loss follows when the trade goes into profit. Not perfect for every strategy, but for trend-following it takes away the need to sit and watch.
You can configure all of this in under five minutes and they take some of the guesswork out of trade management.
EAs on MT4: what to realistically expect
Expert Advisors on MT4 have obvious appeal: program your strategy and stop staring at charts. In practice, most EAs fail to deliver over any meaningful time period. EAs advertised with perfect backtest curves are often curve-fitted — they worked on past prices and break down once the market does something different.
This isn't to say all EAs are a waste of time. Some traders build personal EAs for specific, narrow tasks: opening trades at session opens, calculating lot sizes, or exiting positions at set levels. That kind of automation work because they handle repetitive actions that don't require judgment.
When looking at Expert Advisors, use a demo account for a minimum of two to three months. Running it forward in real time tells you more than historical results ever will.
MT4 on Mac and mobile: what actually works
MT4 is a Windows application at heart. If you're on macOS deal with a workaround. The traditional approach was emulation, which was functional but had rendering issues and stability problems. Certain brokers now offer macOS versions built on Crossover or similar wrappers, which are better but still aren't true native apps.
On mobile, on both iOS and Android, work well for monitoring positions and managing trades on the move. Serious charting work on a mobile device is pushing it, but closing a trade on the go is genuinely handy.
It's worth confirming if your broker provides a native Mac build or just a wrapper — it makes a view site real difference day to day.