Listen to the Article: How Far Along is MetaQuotes' "MT4-to-5" Upgrade Plan Going in 2022?

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​MetaTrader has always been the product that sells MetaQuotes, the developer, for it is the best known and mostly used trading software in the forex market. It is, practically, more than half of all forex trading applications out there. Although Apple quietly took down MT4 and MT5 from its iOS App Store in this late September​, the incident has had no devastating blow to MetaTrader's market share.

MetaTrader is Probably the Only Choice for Most FX Traders

Well they do get to choose, many emerging MT alternatives are pretty good, including cTrader, Match Trader and many others; and the MT removal from iOS that happened in September provided an opportunity for these trading platforms to convert some of MT users into theirs. In practice, however, traders' choice is somewhat dependent on what choice a broker makes, and a broker, in a lot of cases, would still go for MT as one of the, or sometimes even the only, platform they provide access to.

Despite their dominance, MetaQuotes has been working intensely in recent years to introduce MT5 to replace MT4, the latter was released in 2005. So what are the differences between the two? Why is MetaQuotes obsessed with MT5? As 2022 draws to a close, what has been the reaction of the market so far?

MT4 vs. MT5, More Than Just An Upgrade

There are actually tons of infographics available online if you wanna know the differences. But according to Fazzaco, the most significant difference lies in the ways they position themselves in the market. MT4 is an FX-dedicated trading platform where CFDs are supported as well, but other than those, you cannot trade other assets on it. For MT5, on the other hand, FX trading is simply one of the features, and they cover futures, stocks and bonds etc., which means it is a multi-asset platform. Therefore, it can be seen that MT5 symbolizes the ambition of MetaQuotes to grow out of the forex community and barge into a broader financial spectrum.

So, launched in 2010 by MetaQuotes, MT5 is more than a simple upgrade to MT4. Of course, there are more differences in what programming language is used, user interfaces, installation, order processing, order pending, and hedging feature, but we will spare you from them today.

How Far Along is MetaQuotes' "MT4-to-MT5" Plan Going Since 2016?

Back in 2016, MetaQuotes carried out a number of moves to put spotlight on MT5, such as discontinuing MT4 support, increasing service charges, and no more MT4 white-labeling etc. In particular, they upgraded the backtesting on MT5 and made it respond faster since many investors are apt to position-locking and order-pending in one click. They not only kept the multi-pair synchronization, but added a Calendar and a lot more charts. As a result, numerous brokers chose to embrace MT5.

Fazzaco has successively covered stories of brokers introducing MT5 throughout this year, including Saham Holding introducing it to the Saudi Stock Exchange​; INFINOX, a world-leading online broker, too, introduced it at the beginning of 2022​; closely followed by Equiti Group, a multi-asset provider​; other brokers that joined the MT5 community this year include Hantec Markets​, and easyMarkets​, a dedicated forex and CFD trading broker in the middle of 2022. What's more, Saxo Japan announced to stop supporting the MT4 platform this September​.

Statistics Suggest Otherwise: Still A Long Way to Go Before Replacing MT4 with MT5

Fazzaco has put all search data regarding MT4 and MT5 on the internet in 2022 (until December 13), and the data is shown below.

Globally, the MT4 (blue) search index is as high as 82, and the MT5 (red) index is only 48. The gap in between the two perfectly depicts the level of acceptance of the two among forex traders and brokers. It is, too, a reflection of the fact that MT5 still has a long way to go before it completely replaces MT4.

But when we zoom in to a specific area, like in Hong Kong, we can obviously tell what MetaQuotes is planning. In Hong Kong, the search index of MT5 abruptly jumped over that of MT4 during late October and early November. The reason? Well, MetaQuotes announced the launch of the web terminal for MT5​ in response to the removal of MetaTrader from App Store. It looks like they are trying to push the upgrade plan forward with this whole Apple removal thing.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the question of whether MT5 should replace MT4 once and for good is not that important for retail FX traders, because they are not dealing directly with MetaQuotes. Brokers, are those who are actually throwing money to buy the MT4/5 license from MetaQuotes.

Of course, Fazzaco believes that if MetaQuotes could somehow manage to take care of the dispute with Apple, and probably lower the requirements for brokers to purchase license (e.g., many offshore-regulated brokers have been complaining this year regarding the MT license purchase requirement on a corporate bank account, making it more difficult to purchase MT license), perhaps they could get what they want much sooner. Even if they carry out a hard cut without any transitioning, there might not be too much complaining. After all, we all have to realize the fact that whether in the forex market, or any other financial market, the real deal is always the act of trading itself.