Best MetaTrader 4 and MT5 Brokers Compared

MetaTrader is the most widely deployed retail trading software in the world, and it is also the most misunderstood. Traders search for a MetaTrader broker as though the platform itself were the product being bought. It is not. MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are terminals licensed from MetaQuotes, and every broker in this article runs essentially the same software. What differs — and what actually decides what a trade costs you — is the pricing, the routing and the execution infrastructure the broker connects behind it.

That distinction is not academic. Across our own testing, the same MetaTrader terminal produced a median fill of roughly 12 to 14 milliseconds at one broker and around 150 milliseconds at another, with a third sitting near 90 milliseconds. Same platform, same order types, same charts. The gap is entirely the broker’s bridge, server location and liquidity arrangement. A trader who chooses on the MetaTrader logo alone is choosing on the one variable that does not vary.

This article covers the twelve brokers we have published reviews on that confirmed MetaTrader access during our testing. For each one we state which MetaTrader versions are available, which account types run on them, what we actually measured on cost and execution, and a specific drawback. The scores are our own six-category ratings, published to one decimal. Every figure below comes from our own review of that broker and describes the period in which we tested it — spreads are repriced, fee schedules change, and licences move. Treat the numbers as a measurement with a date on it, not as today’s rate card.

One thing to be clear about before any of it: CFD and leveraged forex trading carries a high risk of loss, and most retail investor accounts lose money trading these products. Nothing here is investment advice, and no platform, broker or account type changes that underlying probability.

Why traders look for a MetaTrader broker

Three reasons come up repeatedly, and two of them are good ones.

Automation. MetaTrader’s Expert Advisor framework is the reason most algorithmic retail traders will not move. An EA written in MQL4 or MQL5 runs on any broker’s MetaTrader build, so a strategy developed at one broker transfers to another without a rewrite. Competing platforms have automation too — cTrader has cAlgo in C#, and Eightcap layers Capitalise.ai on top for plain-English rules — but neither approaches MetaTrader’s installed base of third-party bots and indicators. When we assessed cTrader at Pepperstone, its clearest weakness against MT4 was exactly this: a smaller community and fewer third-party tools.

Familiarity and portability. A trader who knows MT4 can open an account at any of the twelve brokers below and be placing orders in minutes. Custom indicators, templates and chart layouts move across with them. That has real value, and it is why brokers who abandoned MetaTrader entirely tend to lose experienced clients even when their own software is better.

The reason that does not hold up: the belief that MetaTrader implies better pricing or a fairer execution model. It implies neither. Two brokers in this list run a dealing desk or hybrid model on MetaTrader, taking the other side of client trades; others route straight through to liquidity providers on the identical terminal. The software gives you no way to tell which you are on. You have to read the broker’s own disclosure — which is what our reviews do.

MetaTrader brokers compared

Scores are our overall ratings out of 10. Spreads are what we measured on the named account during our testing window, not advertised minimums, except where marked. Minimum deposits show the entry point for the cheapest account and, where they differ materially, for the raw-spread account.

Broker	Score	MT4	MT5	Raw / ECN account on MetaTrader	EUR/USD spread measured	Raw-account commission	Minimum deposit
Tickmill	8.6	Yes	Yes	Raw	0.1 pips (Raw)	$3 per side, FX and metals only	$100
Pepperstone	8.5	Yes	Yes	Razor	0.09 pips (Razor)	$3.50 per side on MT4 and MT5	$0, $200 recommended
XM	8.3	Yes	Yes	Zero	0.7 pips all-in (Zero)	$3.50 per side	$5
Axi	8.1	Yes	Yes	Pro	0.1–0.3 pips (Pro)	$4.50 round turn	$5 Standard, $500 Pro
Eightcap	7.9	Yes	Yes	Raw	0.1 pips (Raw)	$3.50 per side, none on commodities	$100
HFM	7.9	Yes	Yes	Zero, Pro, Pro Plus	0.2 pips (Pro Plus)	$3 per side FX, $5 per side gold	About $5
FxPro	7.6	Yes	Yes	Raw+	1.4 pips (Standard)	$3.50 per side	$100
Admirals	7.5	Yes	Yes	Zero.MT4 and Zero.MT5	0.6 pips (Trade)	$3 per side	$100, $1 on Invest.MT5
ThinkMarkets	7.3	Yes	Yes	ThinkZero	0.1 pips (ThinkZero)	$3.50 per side	$0 Standard, $500 ThinkZero
FXTM	7.1	Yes	Yes	Advantage	0.0–0.2 pips (Advantage)	$4 round turn, volume-tiered	$200
RoboForex	6.5	Yes	Yes	ECN and Prime	0.1–0.3 pips (ECN)	$20 per $1m traded on ECN	$10
FBS	6.5	Yes	Yes	ECN	1.3 pips (Standard)	$6 per lot round turn on ECN	$1 Cent, $100 Standard

Two notes on what this table deliberately does not contain. It does not rank brokers by spread alone, because a raw spread without its commission is a meaningless number — Tickmill’s 0.1 pips and FBS’s advertised sub-zero ECN pricing describe entirely different total costs once the per-lot fee is added. And it does not carry a VPS or server-hosting column, because virtual private server provision was not part of our testing programme at any of these brokers. Several advertise VPS offers; we have not measured them, so we do not rate them, and neither should you until you have tested the latency yourself from your own location.

Leverage figures are omitted for the same reason they should be treated with suspicion when marketed: the cap you get depends entirely on which legal entity onboards you, not on which broker’s name is on the website. A trader onboarded under a UK or EU entity is capped at 1:30 on major pairs; the same broker’s offshore entity may advertise 1:500, 1:2000 or 1:3000. That is not a better product. Leverage magnifies losses at exactly the rate it magnifies gains.

Tickmill — the tightest all-in cost we measured on MetaTrader

Our score: 8.6. MT4 and MT5, plus the proprietary Tickmill Trader and a TradingView route.

Tickmill runs two live accounts and both are available on MetaTrader. Classic prices everything into a spread with no commission; Raw quotes from 0.0 pips and charges $3 per side per lot, $6 round turn, on FX and precious metals. That scope detail is easy to miss and worth catching — the $6 does not travel across the whole instrument list.

Our February 2026 sampling put Raw EUR/USD at 0.1 pips at peak hours, which with commission is roughly 0.7 pips all-in per standard lot. Classic measured about 1.7 pips with no commission. Execution matched the pricing: across 50 live orders the median fill came in around 150ms during European and US hours, drifting to roughly 250ms in thin liquidity, with 47 of 50 filling at exactly the requested price and no requotes at all. MT5 is the better terminal here specifically because the full 630-plus instrument list is reachable through it where MT4 does not surface everything.

The drawback. The commission went up. Raw was $2 per side before the 2026 restructure and is now $3, which narrows what was once a clear lead over IC Markets to a matter of cents per lot. The TradingView-linked route costs more again at $3.50 per side. And the inactivity position is genuinely unresolved: Tickmill’s own cost pages list no fee while third-party schedules describe $10 per quarter after twelve months, and the broker’s policy allows archiving of accounts holding under $50 for 60 days. We could not reconcile those sources, so it is not verified at the time of publication — confirm it with support before leaving an account idle. Full detail in our Tickmill review.

Pepperstone — the fastest MetaTrader execution in our testing

Our score: 8.5. MT4 and MT5, alongside cTrader and TradingView.

Pepperstone keeps to two live accounts plus a swap-free variant, and after reviewing brokers who maintain six near-identical tiers we count that restraint as a point in its favour. Standard and Razor both run on MT4 and MT5. Razor commission is $3.50 per side on MetaTrader, so $7 round turn — with one detail most comparisons miss, which is that the rate is platform-dependent rather than uniform. cTrader is $6 round turn and TradingView $7, making cTrader marginally cheaper for the identical trade.

Razor EUR/USD averaged 0.09 pips in our sampling, the tightest of the four brokers we benchmarked it against. Execution is where the measurement is most convincing: across 50 orders on a funded live account the median fill was around 30 milliseconds and 47 of 50 filled at the requested price, the three exceptions slipping less than 0.2 pips each and all during data releases. Pepperstone runs a no-dealing-desk ECN/STP model, and there is no inactivity fee at any duration — dormant accounts are archived rather than charged.

The drawback. Everything Pepperstone trades on is licensed from someone else. There is no proprietary desktop platform at all, so platform roadmaps and outages sit largely outside the broker’s control. On gold it is also not competitive: 1.30 pips against 0.30 at Exness is a meaningful handicap if metals are a large share of your volume. The swap-free account carries a $100 per standard lot administration fee after day five, which makes swing and carry-style strategies unattractive on it. See our Pepperstone review for the execution data in full.

XM — MetaTrader only, with the cheapest entry point here

Our score: 8.3. MT4, MT5 and a browser WebTrader. No proprietary platform at all.

XM is a pure MetaTrader broker, which cuts both ways: the terminal is familiar, stable and heavily supported by third-party tools, but the experience is identical to that of every other MetaTrader broker. All four account types run on MT4 and MT5, except the Shares account which is MT5 only. Ultra Low is the sensible default at 0.6 pips advertised, no commission and swap-free eligibility, on a $5 minimum. Zero quotes from 0.0 pips with $3.50 per side.

We measured Ultra Low EUR/USD at 0.8 pips and Zero at 0.7 pips all-in, competitive with the raw-spread specialists on majors. Across 50 live trades the overwhelming majority filled in under a second with no rejections in normal sessions. XM has since layered TradingView charting onto its MetaTrader stack, which removes the need for a separate charting subscription.

The drawback. XM runs a dealing desk and acts as counterparty to client trades rather than routing straight to liquidity providers. We saw no evidence of price manipulation across four weeks, and a market maker will fill orders in thin conditions where an ECN book may not — but it is a structural conflict of interest that the no-dealing-desk brokers above do not carry, and MetaTrader gives you no visibility into it. On gold XM is well off the pace at 2.7 pips against 1.5 at IC Markets. The inactivity fee bites early, from 90 days at $5 to $15 a month. XM also does not accept UK residents, redirecting them to a separate FCA-authorised brand. Our XM review covers the entity routing in detail.

Axi — MT4 built out properly, at a higher entry price than it used to be

Our score: 8.1. MT4, MT5 and the browser-based Axi Trading Platform.

MT4 is the centre of Axi’s offering and it is supported properly rather than grudgingly. The build ships with PsyQuation and Autochartist integrated directly rather than left as third-party bolt-ons, installation was uneventful, and the connection stayed stable across every session we tested. Standard, Pro and Elite all run on MT4 and MT5. Pro is where the pricing is competitive: raw spreads from 0.0 pips and a commission that has come down to $4.50 round turn, which is genuinely cheaper than the $7 that IC Markets and Pepperstone still charge.

Pro EUR/USD held between 0.1 and 0.3 pips through our sampling, putting the all-in figure near 0.65 pips at the current commission. Across 50 live orders most filled inside one second on an STP/ECN routing model, with six slipping — four against us, two in our favour. A 12% slippage rate with positive slippage present is what honest market execution looks like; a broker showing zero negative slippage across 50 orders would be the finding worth worrying about.

The drawback. The Pro account now requires a $500 minimum deposit where it previously required nothing, so the cheaper commission is gated behind a much higher entry. Some of the MT4 add-ons had not been ported to MT5 when we tested, so if a specific tool is your reason for choosing Axi, confirm it exists on the terminal you intend to use. On the commission-free Standard account Axi sits mid-table at 1.3 pips on EUR/USD, consistently wider than IC Markets and Pepperstone. Our Axi review also documents a widely-quoted FCA reference number that belongs to a firm no longer authorised — worth reading before you verify the licence yourself.

Eightcap — MetaTrader with the best TradingView integration we tested

Our score: 7.9. MT4, MT5 and TradingView, plus the Capitalise.ai automation layer. No proprietary desktop platform.

Three live accounts, all on a $100 minimum, and Standard and Raw both reach MT4 and MT5. Raw quotes from 0.0 pips at $3.50 per side, and one genuine advantage sits inside that: Eightcap charges no commission on commodities even on Raw, so gold and oil traders get raw spreads without the per-lot fee. We measured Raw EUR/USD at 0.1 pips, about 0.8 pips all-in, against 1.1 pips on Standard.

Execution across 50 live orders on a funded Raw account averaged approximately 40 milliseconds, against a sector norm closer to 50 to 100. The slippage profile is the more encouraging number: twice as many fills improved on the requested price as worsened it, with no requotes. We deliberately split the test between MT5 and TradingView under comparable conditions to check whether the integration imposed a penalty, and it did not — speed and fill quality were indistinguishable.

The drawback. The swap-free account is a transparency failure rather than a product gap. Support confirmed to us in January 2026 that it exists and can be enabled after opening a live account, but the terms appear nowhere on the website — no published eligibility rules, no substitute administration charge, no holding-period grace. You cannot compare what you cannot read, and an undisclosed administrative charge can easily exceed the swap it replaced. The offshore entity stack has also grown to three, which matters for which protections you actually get. MT4 arrives in essentially stock configuration without the custom indicator packs some brokers bundle. Details in our Eightcap review.

HFM — six accounts on MetaTrader, and the default one is the wrong one

Our score: 7.9. MT4, MT5 and a proprietary browser platform.

HFM runs six account types and the gap between cheapest and most expensive is wide enough that picking wrong is a real cost. All of them reach MT4 and MT5. Zero charges $3 per lot per side on currencies and $5 per side on gold, undercutting both Pepperstone’s Razor and XM’s Zero at $3.50. Pro Plus is the standout and the one we would fund: testing it during the London session in February 2026 we measured an actual 0.2 pip EUR/USD spread with fills under 0.3 seconds and no commission at all.

MT5 is clearly the better terminal at this broker rather than merely the newer one. MT4 carries only 96 share CFDs against MT5’s 846, with 30 indicators against 38 and nine timeframes against 21. Across 50 orders we recorded zero requotes, consistent with the STP/NDD model, with slippage on 8 of 50 at 0.1 to 0.3 pips and three of those in our favour.

The drawback. Premium is the default account and the most popular one, and it is where HFM prices worst — 1.2 pips on EUR/USD widening to 2.5 in the early Asian session, behind Exness and Pepperstone on every pair except USD/JPY where it comes last of four. Pro Plus fixes that but costs $250 to enter, fifty times the Premium minimum. The inactivity fee escalates unpleasantly: $5 a month after six dormant months, $10 after a year, then a further $10 for each additional year. cTrader was absent when we tested and its current availability was not verified at the time of publication. See our HFM review.

FxPro — four platforms and the fastest fills we recorded, undermined by Standard pricing

Our score: 7.6. MT4, MT5, cTrader and the proprietary FxPro Trading Platform — all four available on every account type.

Platform breadth is FxPro’s clearest structural advantage, and unusually the account type does not restrict which terminal you can use. Raw+ is the account most people should be on: 0.0 pips plus $3.50 per side, on the same $100 minimum as Standard. Execution across more than 50 live trades averaged roughly 12 to 14 milliseconds, the fastest figure we have measured across any broker review, on a no-dealing-desk model with no requotes at all across the test.

One detail we only found by trading live, and it is specific to how the commission appears in MetaTrader: the full round-turn commission is deducted when the position opens rather than split between opening and closing. It does not change the total, but it changes how a trade looks in your equity the moment you enter it, and it has confused traders reading their own account history.

The drawback. Standard pricing is poor and it is the account most beginners open. We sampled it against three competitors and FxPro was widest on all seven instruments — 1.4 pips on EUR/USD against 0.77 to 0.82 at Pepperstone and IC Markets, and 26 on gold against 13. On ten standard lots a day that is roughly $58 to $62 of additional cost per day before commission and before swaps, regardless of whether the trades go your way. The Elite account has weakened too, now charging the same $3.50 per side as Raw+ for a $30,000 deposit. Inactivity costs $15 once then $5 a month after six months. Our FxPro review has the full cost comparison.

Admirals — the most substantial MetaTrader add-on package available free

Our score: 7.5. MT4, MT5 and a browser-based proprietary platform.

Admirals is the only broker here whose accounts are named after the terminal they run on: Trade.MT4, Trade.MT5, Zero.MT4, Zero.MT5 and Invest.MT5. Trade accounts price into the spread with no commission on forex; Zero accounts quote from 0.0 pips at $3 per side, so $6 round turn. Invest.MT5 is the distinctive one — it buys real shares and ETFs rather than CFDs, from a $1 minimum, with no leverage at all.

What separates Admirals from every other MetaTrader broker is Supreme Edition, a free add-on layering more than 60 tools onto MT4 and MT5. The components that earned their place in testing were the Mini Terminal, which sizes positions automatically from a defined risk percentage; the Trade Terminal, consolidating open positions across accounts in one panel; the Tick Chart Trader, which plots tick-by-tick movement stock MetaTrader cannot; and Global Opinion, showing aggregate trader positioning. For a free add-on this is a substantial upgrade and the strongest single argument for choosing this broker. Trade-account spreads measured 0.6 pips on EUR/USD, and 42 of 50 live orders filled at exactly the requested price.

The drawback. The MT4 variants are narrower in every respect — fewer instruments, no share CFDs or crypto — so there is little reason to start there, and MT5 is plainly the strategic focus. Costs are mid-table rather than competitive: IC Markets was tighter on six of seven instruments we compared. StereoTrader, the advanced order-type tier, requires a €4,000 balance for free access. A 0.3% currency conversion fee applies whenever you trade an instrument denominated outside your account base currency, which is easy to overlook. The regulatory footprint has also contracted — the Estonian licence was withdrawn in April 2026 and the Australian licence is no longer an Admirals licence. Read the Admirals review before assuming the coverage you saw advertised still applies.

ThinkMarkets — MetaTrader available, but the best tools are not on it

Our score: 7.3. MT4, MT5 and the browser-based ThinkTrader.

Standard and ThinkZero both run on MT4 and MT5; the ThinkTrader account is restricted to the proprietary platform. ThinkZero is the one to fund if you trade with any regularity — from 0.0 pips with 0.1 measured, at $3.50 per side, working out roughly a third cheaper per lot than Standard. Infrastructure sits in Equinix data centres in London and Hong Kong, and LD5 is where a large share of the FX market’s liquidity providers co-locate, so the proximity is a real latency advantage rather than a marketing line.

We placed 50 live orders and most filled in under a second with no requotes on ThinkZero and three instances of minor slippage during volatile periods. We did not measure fill latency in milliseconds here, so we do not claim a median figure we did not record.

The drawback. MetaTrader is the poor relation at this broker. MT4 reaches roughly 350 instruments, a fraction of what ThinkMarkets offers; MT5 improves that to about 1,800. The genuinely distinctive tools — Traders’ Gym, which replays real historical data at accelerated speed so you can trade a past period as though it were live, and the TrendRisk Scanner and Signal Centre — are ThinkTrader-only. Come here for MetaTrader automation and you do not get them. E-wallet withdrawal charges are severe at 5.5% through Skrill and up to 7.5% through Neteller, though card and bank transfers are free. There is also a matter of record: in January 2024 the London Circuit Commercial Court granted an interim mandatory injunction requiring the UK and Australian entities to return $4,280,818.88 to the UK segregated client money account, in a dispute the broker attributed to abuse of a swap-free account. The ThinkMarkets review sets out both sides.

FXTM — competitive MetaTrader pricing, contracting regulatory cover

Our score: 7.1. MT4 and MT5 and nothing else.

FXTM has consolidated six account types into three, all of which run on MetaTrader. Advantage is the one that justifies the broker on cost: spreads genuinely at or near zero during London and New York liquidity, and at the $4 round-turn commission we paid, an all-in cost of roughly 0.4 pips per standard lot. That is among the cheapest figures in this article. Note that the published commission is volume-tiered, so $4 is what we paid at our tested volume rather than a universal rate.

Across more than 60 trades, over 90% filled in under one second on a no-dealing-desk model with no requotes recorded at all. Slippage appeared on roughly 15% of trades, almost all under one pip. MT5 is the stronger terminal here — better depth of market, 21 timeframes against MT4’s nine, an integrated economic calendar and a multi-currency strategy tester.

The drawback. This is the broker in the list whose protections have moved most, and it is why our score came down. In April 2026 FXTM announced it was giving up its UK FCA authorisation, and its own licensing page no longer lists the UK entity or the FCA. The Cyprus exit is already complete — CIF authorisation 185/12 was formally withdrawn in May 2024, and FXTM has not been licensed to serve EU retail clients since. Anyone counting on FCA cover should check the register before depositing. On product, Advantage Plus is expensive at 1.9 pips measured against 1.5 advertised, and the entry point across all accounts is now $200 with the old $10 Cent account gone. With no proprietary web platform, browser traders fall back to MetaTrader WebTrader. Our FXTM review tracks the licensing changes.

RoboForex — wide MetaTrader instrument access on an offshore-only licence

Our score: 6.5. MT4, MT5 and the proprietary R StocksTrader.

Four of RoboForex’s five accounts run on MetaTrader, and the differences between them are real rather than cosmetic tiering by deposit size. Pro is commission-free from 1.3 pips. ECN quotes from 0.0 pips at $20 per $1m traded. Prime also starts at 0.0 pips at roughly half the ECN commission, and running both side by side for a week, Prime’s spread came in about 0.1 pips tighter with noticeably quicker execution. ProCent deserves a specific mention for MetaTrader users: it runs identical pricing on cent lots, which makes it the best-designed way in this list to test an expert advisor on live pricing and live execution with trivial amounts at risk.

Across more than 60 trades on Pro and Prime, the median fill on Prime through MT5 was around 90ms during active hours, rising to roughly 200ms in quiet periods. That is comfortably adequate for discretionary trading and medium-frequency automation, and not competitive for high-frequency work. Hedging is permitted on every account type and scalping carries no published restrictions.

The drawback. RoboForex Ltd is licensed by the Financial Services Commission of Belize and nothing more. The licence is real and current — we confirmed it on the FSC register — but it is not equivalent to a tier-one authorisation. There is no statutory investor compensation scheme, retail leverage caps do not apply, which is why 1:2000 is on offer, and supervision of client-money segregation is lighter. The swap-free product compounds the transparency problem: we could not find a published schedule of the substitute fees anywhere, there is no stated grace period, and the broker reserves the right to withdraw swap-free status without notice. Withdrawals carry charges outside the free allowance — 1% via Skrill, 1.9% via Neteller, 1.5% on SEPA. R StocksTrader, which reaches all 12,000-plus instruments, does not support expert advisors, so algorithmic traders are pushed back to MetaTrader and a much narrower list. Our RoboForex review explains what the Belize licence does and does not cover.

FBS — MetaTrader-only, and the weakest pricing in this list

Our score: 6.5. MT4, MT5 and browser versions of both. No proprietary desktop platform.

FBS runs entirely on MetaTrader, across five live account types from a $1 Cent account to a $1,000 ECN account. The Cent account is the genuinely useful one for a MetaTrader beginner: trading it with a $10 deposit felt identical to the standard account in execution speed and tooling, with only the position sizing differing, which makes it a workable way to learn risk management with real money at stake but trivial amounts on the line. We ran a simple expert advisor for three days on FBS servers without a technical problem. MT5 adds 21 timeframes, an integrated economic calendar, market depth and Stop Limit orders, and carries the stock and index CFDs MT4 does not; execution on MT5 was marginally faster in our testing.

Across 50 measured orders there were zero requotes, consistent with the NDD/STP routing FBS describes. Non-trading fees are where the broker does well: no deposit fees, no withdrawal fees except $15 on bank transfers under $200, and no inactivity fee at all, so a dormant balance stays intact.

The drawback. FBS came last on almost every instrument we sampled against three competitors — 1.3 pips on EUR/USD against 0.8 at XM Ultra Low and 0.5 at FXTM Advantage. Half a pip sounds like noise, but it is a per-trade cost that scales directly with how often you trade. The Zero Spread account is worse value still: $20 per lot in commission means a EUR/USD round turn costs more than trading the same pair on Standard, and we ran that comparison during testing. Execution degrades under stress, with delays reaching a full second around US employment data and two orders slipping 1.5 pips during a release, matching a recurring theme in public complaints. The 1:3000 leverage available under the Belize entity is a hazard rather than a feature. See our FBS review.

Brokers that do not offer MetaTrader, and why that is not automatically a mark against them

Several of the highest-scoring brokers we have reviewed do not run MetaTrader at all, or run it only in specific jurisdictions. It would be easy to pad this article by listing them anyway. They are excluded on purpose, and the honest framing is that a MetaTrader requirement narrows your field in a way that is not always in your favour.

• Plus500 runs exclusively on its own browser-based WebTrader. There is no MT4, MT5, cTrader or third-party option, and that was still true when we re-checked in July 2026. Its platform carries 119 technical indicators — more than MetaTrader’s default set — but no custom indicators, no scripting, no backtesting, no expert advisors and no retail API. Our Plus500 review covers what its guaranteed stop-loss order does that MetaTrader cannot.
• Capital.com is proprietary-first. MT4 is available but exposes only forex, commodities and major indices. MT5 was absent when we tested and has since launched in selected jurisdictions with full Expert Advisor support, though still not for UK clients. Its own platform has no automated trading and no custom indicators. The Capital.com review explains why we rate the behavioural analysis layer highly despite that.
• eToro runs its own browser platform with no MetaTrader route. Charting supports more than 60 indicators but lacks volume profile and advanced Fibonacci tooling, and retail API access is limited. Adequate for discretionary traders, not for systematic ones — our eToro review is blunt about the gap.
• CMC Markets is a partial case. MT4 is available to UK and Australian clients only, with spreads from 0.5 pips on six major pairs and execution on a London server. MT5 launched at CMC Markets Canada in June 2026 and remains unavailable to UK, EU and Australian clients. Its Next Generation platform carries 115-plus indicators, an automatic pattern scanner and built-in strategy backtesting — things MetaTrader users normally bolt on through third-party tools. Read the CMC Markets review for what is available in your jurisdiction.

The point is not that these brokers are better or worse. It is that if you filter on MetaTrader first, you never see them — and for a discretionary trader who does not run automated strategies, a well-built proprietary platform with integrated backtesting and pattern scanning may be a straightforwardly better tool than a stock MT4 install.

MT4 or MT5 — which should you pick

Neither is simply better, and the marketing framing of MT5 as “the upgrade” is misleading. They are different products with different strengths, and MetaQuotes did not build MT5 as a backwards-compatible successor. The choice comes down to what you actually run.

Feature	MetaTrader 4	MetaTrader 5
Timeframes	9	21
Built-in indicators	Around 30 to 50, varies by broker build	Around 38 to 80, varies by broker build
Pending order types	4	6, adding Buy Stop Limit and Sell Stop Limit
Depth of market	No	Yes
Economic calendar	No	Built in
Strategy tester	Single-currency	Multi-currency
Programming language	MQL4	MQL5, not backwards compatible
Third-party EA and indicator ecosystem	Larger	Smaller but growing
Instrument coverage at these brokers	Often a subset	Usually the full range

Choose MT4 if

You already own expert advisors or custom indicators written in MQL4. They will not run on MT5 without being rewritten, and that is the single most common reason experienced traders stay. The MT4 ecosystem of third-party bots and indicators remains larger than MT5’s, and that gap is the reason MT4 has outlived its scheduled retirement several times over. If your whole workflow is major currency pairs and automation, MT4 gives up very little.

Choose MT5 if

You are starting fresh, or you trade more than currencies. The instrument gap is the practical argument rather than the feature list. At HFM, MT4 carries 96 share CFDs against MT5’s 846. At ThinkMarkets it is roughly 350 instruments against about 1,800. At Tickmill, the full 630-plus list is only reachable through MT5. At Admirals, the MT4 account variants exclude share CFDs and crypto entirely. If you intend to trade equities or indices alongside forex, MT4 will quietly limit you at most of these brokers.

Depth of market and the native economic calendar are the other genuine MT5 gains. Depth of market shows resting orders at price levels above and below the current quote, which matters for anyone sizing into thin instruments; MT4 gives you no view of it at all. The multi-currency strategy tester is the one feature a systematic developer will miss most on MT4, since testing a portfolio strategy across pairs is awkward to impossible there.

One practical note: several brokers here let you hold multiple account types under one profile, so running an MT4 account and an MT5 account side by side to compare is usually free. That is a more reliable way to decide than reading feature tables, this one included.

The broker decides your costs, not the platform

This is the finding that most MetaTrader comparisons bury, so it is worth stating flatly: MT4 from a poorly-priced broker is a worse deal than a good proprietary platform from a well-priced one. The terminal draws charts and sends orders. Everything that determines what the trade costs sits behind it, in software you never see.

Our own measurements make the point. Every broker in the comparison table runs the same MetaTrader software. On our testing, median or typical fill times ranged from roughly 12 to 14 milliseconds at FxPro to around 30ms at Pepperstone, around 40ms at Eightcap, around 90ms at RoboForex and around 150ms at Tickmill, with several brokers reporting only that most orders filled inside one second. EUR/USD through the same terminal ranged from 0.09 pips on Pepperstone’s Razor account to 1.4 pips on FxPro’s Standard account, and 1.3 pips on FBS Standard. None of that variance is MetaTrader. All of it is the bridge, the server location, the liquidity arrangement and the markup.

Three things to check before you open a MetaTrader account

• Whether there is a genuine raw account on MetaTrader, not just on the broker’s other platforms. This sounds obvious and is not. Pepperstone’s Razor commission is $3.50 per side on MT4 and MT5 but $6 round turn on cTrader, so the identical trade costs more on MetaTrader than on the platform next to it. Tickmill’s TradingView route charges $3.50 per side against $3 on MetaTrader, the other way round. Read the commission schedule per platform, not per broker.
• Which execution model sits behind the terminal. MetaTrader looks identical whether the broker is routing to liquidity providers or acting as your counterparty. XM runs a dealing desk; Pepperstone, Axi, Eightcap, ThinkMarkets, FBS, FxPro, HFM and FXTM describe no-dealing-desk or STP routing, and Tickmill runs market execution with no requotes recorded across our test; Admirals runs STP on Zero accounts and a hybrid model on Trade accounts; RoboForex is hybrid and varies by account type and trade size. A dealing desk is not automatically worse — a market maker fills orders in thin conditions where an ECN book may not — but it is a structural conflict you should know you are accepting.
• Which legal entity is on your client agreement. The same brand can onboard you to a tier-one regulated entity or to an offshore one, with different leverage caps, different compensation cover and different protections if the firm fails. Our regulation section explains what each authority actually requires, and every one of our broker reviews states which entity you are likely to get from where.

What MetaTrader does not protect you from

MetaTrader is analytical and execution software. It has no view on whether your broker is solvent, whether your funds are segregated, or whether the leverage you have been offered is survivable. Traders routinely treat a familiar terminal as a proxy for safety. It is not one.

It does not stop you losing money. Most retail investor accounts lose money trading CFDs and leveraged forex. That is the base rate across the industry, and no indicator package, expert advisor or platform choice changes it. Lower spreads reduce what you pay; they do not produce returns.

Stop-loss orders are not guaranteed. A stop set in MetaTrader is an instruction to trade at the next available price once your level is touched, not a promise of that price. In a gap — a Monday open after weekend news, a sudden geopolitical event — the fill can land well away from where you set it. We watched EUR/USD spreads go from about 0.2 pips to more than 5 pips within seconds during the February 2026 US non-farm payrolls release at one broker, and from 0.6 to 2.1 pips at another. Every broker does this and none can avoid it. Only a small number of brokers offer genuinely guaranteed stops, usually on proprietary platforms and usually for a wider spread.

It tells you nothing about where your money is. Client-money segregation, compensation scheme cover and the entity holding your balance are all invisible from inside the terminal. The difference is not cosmetic: a UK-regulated entity brings FSCS cover up to £85,000 and a Cyprus one brings Investor Compensation Fund cover to €20,000, while the offshore entities several of these brokers route international clients to carry no compensation scheme at all. Our guide to fund safety sets out what to verify, and negative balance protection explains the one protection that stops a gap turning into a debt to your broker — a legal requirement under some regimes and a discretionary courtesy under others.

It does not verify the licence. Any broker can put a regulator’s name in a footer. Checking it takes about a minute on the regulator’s own register, and it is worth doing even when a review — including ours — says the licence is active. Our explainers on the FCA, ASIC and CySEC cover how to search each register and what the entry actually tells you. Two of the brokers above illustrate why: a widely-quoted FCA number for Axi belongs to a firm the register shows as no longer authorised, and several third-party listings quote a firm reference for ThinkMarkets that belongs to an entirely different broker.

Expert Advisors are not a risk control. An automated strategy executes rules faster and more consistently than a person; it does not know when its assumptions have stopped holding. Backtesting on the MT5 strategy tester describes how a rule would have performed on past data, which is a different question from how it will perform next month. If you are testing automation on live pricing, a cent account of the kind RoboForex and FBS offer is a more honest environment than a demo, because it exposes the strategy to real fills and real slippage at a scale where being wrong costs very little.

How we compiled this list

Every broker here has a full published review on this site, built from a funded live account rather than a demo. The pattern across those reviews is consistent: we open and verify an account, fund it, place around 50 measured orders across liquid and thin sessions, sample spreads at multiple points in the trading day, run at least one withdrawal end to end, contact support, and check each licence on the regulator’s own register.

Inclusion here required one thing only: that our review confirmed MetaTrader access. Brokers we rate more highly overall have been left out because they do not offer it. Scores are weighted across regulation, trading costs, withdrawals, platforms and execution, support, and research and transparency — the method is set out in how we rate brokers, and how we make money explains the commercial arrangements behind the site and why they do not move a score. The full set is at broker reviews, and the brokers hub is the place to start if MetaTrader is not actually your binding constraint.

The figures in this article were measured in the periods each review names, mostly across January to March 2026 with re-verification of fee schedules and licences in July 2026. Spreads move, commissions get repriced, and licences lapse or get given up — FXTM’s UK withdrawal and the change in Admirals’ regulatory footprint both happened between our original testing and publication. Check the current schedule on the broker’s own site before you fund anything.

Frequently asked questions

Is MT4 or MT5 better for beginners?

MT5 is the more sensible starting point for someone with no existing setup, mainly because it reaches more instruments at most brokers and includes an economic calendar and depth of market that MT4 lacks. The interfaces are close enough that neither is meaningfully harder to learn. The only strong reason to start on MT4 is if you have been given or have bought expert advisors written in MQL4, which will not run on MT5 without being rewritten.

Can I run the same expert advisor on MT4 and MT5?

No. MQL4 and MQL5 are different languages and MT5 is not backwards compatible. An MQL4 expert advisor needs porting, which for anything beyond a simple strategy means real development work. This is the single largest reason MT4 remains widely used despite MT5 being the newer product, and it is why the MT4 third-party ecosystem is still the larger of the two.

Do I get tighter spreads on MetaTrader than on a broker’s own platform?

Not inherently, and sometimes the reverse. Spreads come from the broker’s liquidity arrangement, not the terminal. Commissions, however, genuinely do vary by platform at some brokers: Pepperstone charges $7 round turn on MT4 and MT5 against $6 on cTrader, while Tickmill charges $6 round turn on MetaTrader against $7 on its TradingView route. Check the commission schedule for the specific platform you intend to trade on rather than assuming it is uniform.

Which MetaTrader broker had the lowest costs in our testing?

On all-in cost for a standard EUR/USD lot, FXTM Advantage came out lowest at roughly 0.4 pips at the volume we traded, followed by Axi Pro at around 0.65 pips and Tickmill Raw at around 0.7 pips. Pepperstone Razor had the tightest raw spread at 0.09 pips but a higher commission. Those were figures from our testing windows in early 2026 on the accounts named, and commissions at FXTM are volume-tiered so your rate may differ. Cost is also only one of six categories we score — FXTM rates lowest of those four overall because of what has happened to its regulatory cover.

Is MetaTrader free to use?

The terminal itself is provided by the broker at no charge at every broker in this article, on desktop, mobile and browser. What is not free is what you trade through it: spreads, commissions on raw accounts, overnight financing on positions held past rollover, and in several cases inactivity fees if the account goes dormant. Those inactivity charges vary enormously — Pepperstone, FBS and RoboForex charge nothing, XM starts after 90 days, and HFM escalates from $5 a month to $10 after a year and a further $10 for each year after.

What is a raw or ECN account on MetaTrader?

It is an account where the broker passes on close to the underlying market spread and charges a separate per-lot commission, instead of widening the spread and calling it commission-free. Every broker in the comparison table offers one on MetaTrader. Whether it saves you money depends on how often you trade: at Eightcap the Raw account cost about 0.8 pips all-in against 1.1 on Standard, a real but modest saving per trade that only becomes meaningful at volume. At FBS the Zero Spread account is the counter-example — $20 per lot in commission made it more expensive than the commission-free Standard account when we ran the comparison.

Does using MetaTrader make my account safer?

No. The platform has no bearing on whether client funds are segregated, whether a compensation scheme covers you, or whether the entity holding your money is supervised by a tier-one regulator. Those depend entirely on which legal entity onboards you, which is stated on your client agreement and verifiable on the regulator’s register. Several brokers in this list operate both tier-one and offshore entities, and the offshore ones carry no compensation scheme.

Do all of these brokers offer both MT4 and MT5?

All twelve offered both at the time of our reviews. What differs is the instrument coverage on each — MT4 is frequently a subset. At HFM, MT4 carried 96 share CFDs against MT5’s 846. At ThinkMarkets it was roughly 350 instruments against about 1,800. At Admirals, the MT4 account variants exclude share CFDs and cryptocurrency entirely. If a specific instrument is why you are opening the account, confirm it is available on the terminal you intend to use rather than assuming parity between the two.

Trading CFDs and leveraged forex carries a high risk of rapid loss. Most retail investor accounts lose money trading these products. Nothing in this article is investment advice or a recommendation to trade, and past measurements of spreads, execution or fees do not predict future conditions.