MT4 in 2026: why it refuses to die
MetaQuotes stopped issuing new MT4 licences a while back, steering brokers toward MT5. But most retail forex traders kept using MT4. The reason is simple: MT4 has twenty years of muscle memory behind it. A huge library of custom indicators, Expert Advisors, and community scripts run on MT4. Moving to MT5 means rewriting that entire library, and most traders would rather keep trading than recoding.
I spent time testing MT4 and MT5 side by side, and the differences are less dramatic than the marketing suggests. MT5 has a few extras including more timeframes and a built-in economic calendar, but chart functionality is about the same. If you're weighing up the two, there's no compelling reason to switch.
Getting MT4 configured properly the first time
Downloading and installing MT4 is the easy part. The part that trips people up is getting everything configured correctly. Out of the box, MT4 loads with four charts crammed into one window. Close all of them and open just the instruments you care about.
Save yourself repeating the same setup by using templates. Set up your usual indicators on one chart, then right-click and save as template. From there you can load it onto other charts instantly. Small thing, but over months it makes a difference.
One setting worth changing: open Tools > Options > Charts and check "Show ask line." The default view is the bid price on the chart, which can make buy entries seem misaligned by the spread amount.
How reliable is MT4 backtesting?
MT4 mt4 brokers comes with a backtester that allows you to run Expert Advisors against historical data. But here's the thing: the accuracy of those results depends entirely on your tick data. Built-in history data is interpolated, meaning it fills in missing ticks mathematically. If you're testing something more precise than a quick look, download third-party tick data.
Modelling quality is more important than the bottom-line PnL. If it's under 90% indicates the results are probably misleading. People occasionally post backtest results with 25% modelling quality and can't figure out why the EA fails in real conditions.
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 built-in technical indicators. Few people use more than five or six. But the real depth comes from community-made indicators coded in MQL4. The MQL5 marketplace alone has a massive library, covering everything from tweaked versions of standard tools to full trading dashboards.
Installing them is straightforward: drop the .ex4 or .mq4 file into your MQL4/Indicators folder, refresh MT4, and the indicator shows up in the Navigator panel. One thing to watch is quality. Free indicators range from excellent to broken. Some are solid tools. Others haven't been updated since 2015 and can freeze your terminal.
Before installing anything, verify the last update date and if users have flagged problems. Bad code doesn't only show wrong data — it can freeze the whole terminal.
Risk management settings most MT4 traders ignore
MT4 has a few native risk management tools that a lot of people never configure. The most useful is the maximum deviation setting in the trade execution window. It sets the amount of slippage is acceptable on market orders. Leave it at zero and you'll get whatever price is available.
Everyone knows about stop losses, but trailing stops are overlooked. Right-click an open trade, pick Trailing Stop, and set a distance. The stop adjusts when the trade goes in your favour. Doesn't work well in choppy markets, but on trending pairs it reduces the urge to sit and watch.
None of this is complicated to set up and the difference in discipline is noticeable over time.
EAs on MT4: what to realistically expect
Expert Advisors on MT4 attract traders for obvious reasons: set rules, let the code trade, walk away. In practice, most EAs lose money over any meaningful time period. EAs sold with perfect backtest curves are often curve-fitted — they look great on past prices and break down the moment the market does something different.
That doesn't mean all EAs are useless. A few people build custom EAs to handle specific, narrow tasks: opening trades at session opens, managing position sizing, or closing trades at set levels. These utility-type EAs tend to work because they execute defined operations that don't require judgment.
Before running any EA with real money, use a demo account for a minimum of several weeks in different conditions. Running it forward in real time reveals more than backtesting alone.
MT4 on Mac and mobile: what actually works
MT4 was built for Windows. Running it on Mac deal with a workaround. The traditional approach was running it through Wine, which mostly worked but introduced visual bugs and occasional crashes. A few brokers now offer Mac-specific builds wrapped around Crossover or similar wrappers, which is an improvement but remain wrappers at the end of the day.
The mobile apps, on both Apple and Android devices, work well for monitoring open trades and tweaking stops. Doing proper analysis on a mobile device doesn't really work, but adjusting a stop loss from your phone is worth having.
Check whether your broker offers a native Mac build or just a wrapper — the experience varies a lot between the two.