MetaTrader is a free Forex trading software developed by MetaQuotes and released in 2005. It’s considered to be one of the best trading platforms for Forex, with even the more modern offerings failing to dethrone it.
MT4 trading platform allows you to make money on Forex with a consistent and useful interface. Monitor, maintain and manage Forex trading accounts. It supports indicators, expert advisers and other tools for the real-time market analysis. You can create your own instruments and share them with other traders.
Overall, MetaTrader 4 PC is a universal tool that suits everyone who is interested in Forex. It may require some additional tweaks, however, it is highly customizable and accessible.
MQL is the most advanced scripting language for the Forex trading platform. It allows creating the advanced expert advisers that can execute complex strategies without human interventions.
There is a whole community of the MT4 scriptwriters, which will be useful to any Forex newbie. Aside from talking about their favourite strategies and coding itself, the forum is often a source of an interesting discussion. Just take everything with a grain of salt – this community tends to have a little too bitter view of the Forex.
You can switch templates with a drop-down or a context menu.
At the end of the day, MetaTrader 4 may look intimidating – especially with if it’s the first time you see a Forex terminal. However, it’s very intuitive and easy-to-use once you actually start using it.
If you don’t like MetaTrader, there are two apps you might turn to – Ninja Trader and cTrader. Unfortunately, neither of them offers a competitive experience.
Ninja Trader has been around even longer than MetaTrader, yet has been playing catch-up for the entirety of the time. It’s more dated, more ugly and it doesn’t have as big of a community. While Ninja Trader does offer a feature parity, the execution is not nearly as good.
However, it does have a single advantage – the Depth of Market interface. While MetaTrader 4 does have this feature, the Ninja Trader’s solution is far more sophisticated and useful. But that doesn’t outweigh the overall clumsiness of the terminal and downright bad compatibility – there is no Wine support for Ninja Trader and no Linux version in sight.
Overall, Ninja Trader is a good trading terminal. But not quite as good as MetaTrader 4.
cTrader is everything a Meta Trader 4 successor should be – except MT4 does not need a successor. Despite a modernised interface and a lot of streamlining, cTrader has failed to gather a community similar to the one at MQL5. And it definitely shows.
Despite being a better foundation, cTrader does not have as many options and features. There are fewer indicators, fewer advisors and much less community support. And just like with Ninja Trader, there is no Linux version and no Wine support.
cTrader is heavily inspired by MetaTrader and attempts to improve on its weak points. It has a lot of prospects, but right now MetaTrader is still better. So we advise you to download MT4.
MetaQuotes maintains only a Windows version, but you can install MetaTrader 4 on Linux tand MacOS using Wine1. You can also trade from your Android or iOS mobile device, as long as you are online.
1 There is no MT4 Market on Wine – you can’t download new indicators and advisors. If you are serious about trading, you should look into getting a Windows PC or a virtual machine.