MetaTrader 5

Checked October 2026

MetaTrader 5 is free with a broker account, and it is the platform most forex traders already have. The backtest can use real ticks and a changing spread. Options are not in it. Backtoast is first if you want a test that is separate from your broker, and a payout from real trading when the strategy passes.

1Backtoast

You pay $99 for two full tests of your own strategy, and a pass is an offer of 30% of the profit Backtoast makes trading it with its own money.

2MetaTrader 5

You can write a strategy in MQL5 or start from the MQL5 Wizard, which builds one without code. The broker decides which markets you can actually test, and a strategy that passes inside one broker's feed can fail on another's.

NinjaTrader is the futures counterpart, with a free backtest.

Testing

The Strategy Tester runs on every tick generated from minute bars, every tick based on real ticks, 1-minute OHLC, or open prices only. Real ticks are the ones your broker stored from its exchanges and liquidity providers, and where a minute has none the tester generates them, with one spread for that minute. Delay can be fixed, random, or your measured ping to the broker's server, requotes can be simulated, and commissions are set in the tester. The forward test holds back the last half, third or quarter of the history, or starts on a date you pick, so you see how the fitted settings do on data they never saw. One Expert Advisor, the MQL5 name for an automated strategy, can trade several symbols in the same test, and there's no built-in walk-forward or Monte Carlo.

Optimization

The genetic optimizer cuts the number of parameter combinations it has to try, and the MQL5 Cloud Network rents other people's computers to run it, at $0.08 an hour per agent with a speed rating of 100, plus a small charge for the data sent. The terminal runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Facts are from MetaTrader's own pages, checked 23 and 31 October 2026.