Metatrader 4 (or MT4) is the most famous trading platform for forex retail traders. It has been developed for any type of trader but especially within the forex community it has a 90% of market share. It was developed from scratch in 2005 by MetaQuotes and ever since, it became the reference in Forex trading.

The main characteristic MT4 has versus other trading platforms is that it’s very versatile and easy to customize. And given the wide community of users it has, support is easily available.

When it comes to customizations, it’s ideal for automated trading, as it offers a huge variety of trading robots (also known as Expert Advisors) which traders can use. It allows users to write their own trading robots and scripts.

Despite MetaQuotes releasing a new version in 2013 (MT5), Metatrader 4 continues to be the preference today.

• Customisation: Indicators can be fully customised by any users on MT4(doesn’t need to understand a programming language). But cTrader doesn’t provide this feature making it more limited.
• Auto Trading features: with MT4 Expert advisors for auto trading are available, and given the size of its community, it is easy to find support online, compared to cTrader's Automate.

• cTrader’s user interface is very intuitive making it difficult for some users to switch to other platforms after they have tried cTrader. This will of course depend on the preferences of the trader and whether a smoother interface is preferred to the customisable features that MT4 provides
• Market depth: cTrader provides 3 different levels of market depth assessment, which provides a comprehensive picture of market depth, whereas MT4 only provides one.