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Selecting a reliable and feature-rich trading platform is crucial in prop trading to make accurate decisions. Trading platforms provide charting tools, technical indicators, advanced order types, and other important trading capabilities. cTrader as well as MetaTrader 5 (MT5) is an advanced trading platform allowing traders to quickly open and close positions, analyze markets with various tools, and fully customize it to support their needs. Let’s compare these two platforms for prop trading and compare reliable firms offering these platforms.
Prop Trading Explained
Proprietary trading refers to a unique type of financial trading where traders gain access to large trading accounts offered by prop companies. These financial companies generate profits by trading in financial markets and need traders to make money for them. In return, they share profits, leaving a significant portion of profits for traders and offering them access to advanced technologies and almost risk-free trading. Prop traders, who have gained access to funded accounts, are not liable for losses, making prop trading incredibly attractive for traders. Prop firms require traders to pay small fees for funded challenges, where traders have to show their trading skills to get access to funded accounts with significant capital. This way, prop firms ensure to attract profitable traders. Prop firms also have rules to protect their capital, including daily risk limit, maximum drawdown, and limitations to trading strategies and styles. Traders have to hit a predetermined profit target without breaching these rules to get funded and trade for actual profits.
MT5 and cTrader for prop trading
Trading platforms are critical software for prop trading, as they allow traders to access financial markets and conduct trading activities such as buying and selling financial instruments. Trading platforms, especially advanced ones such as MT5 and cTrader, offer traders advanced charting tools to switch between different timeframes and chart types, apply advanced technical indicators to their preferred instruments, and conduct many other advanced functions. These functions are impossible on inferior platforms. Both MT5 and cTrader also support customer indicators and advanced automated trading systems, cBots for cTrader, and EAs (Expert Advisors) for MT5. These platforms are also very popular and have considerable-sized communities where traders are developing and sharing indicators and robots, making it easier to find your preferred indicator and enhance profitability. These platforms are available for both mobile and desktop and have web trader variants as well, making them super robust and reliable. Because of these features, both platforms are popular and powerful when it comes to prop trading. They provide traders with all the necessary tools to pass funded challenges and control risks.
Top MT5 prop firms
Here are the top prop firms at the moment that offer the MetaTrader 5 trading platform. These firms were reviewed, and their safety was checked.
| Firm | Min funding | Max funding | Min funding fee | Profit share | Daily loss limit | Max loss limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FundedBull | 5,000 USD | 250,000 USD | 40 USD | 90% | 4% | 8% |
| Blue Guardian | 10,000 USD | 200,000 USD | 47 USD | 85% | 4% | 6% |
| Instant Funding | 10,000 USD | 100,000 USD | 79 USD | 80% | 3% | 6% |
| FPF | 10,000 USD | 400,000 USD | 94 USD | 80% | 4% | 6% |
| FTUK | 14,000 USD | 90,000 USD | 99 USD | 80% | None | 8% |
| FundYourFX | 6,000 USD | 2,000,000 USD | 187 USD | 50-90% | None | 5% |
Top cTrader prop firms
cTrader is not offered by as many prop trading companies, but we still managed to select a few reliable options.
| Firm | Min funding | Max funding | Min funding fee | Profit share | Daily loss limit | Max loss limit | Profit target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FundedBull | 5,000 USD | 250,000 USD | 40 USD | 90% | 4% | 8% | 6% |
| Funded Trading Plus | 5,000 USD | 200,000 USD | 119 USD | 80% | 4% | 8% | 8% |
| FTUK | 10,000 USD | 100,000 USD | 99 USD | 80% | 5% | 10% | 10% |
As we can see, FundedBull and FTUK support both cTrader and MetaTrader 5 platforms.
cTrader prop firms vs MetaTrader 5 prop firms comparison
FTUK and FundedBull are the only two reliable prop firms that offer both MT5 and cTrader. Traders who for some reason need both platforms or want to decide about the platform later might find these firms interesting.
| Firm | Min funding | Max funding | Min funding fee | Profit share | Daily loss limit | Max loss limit | Profit target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FundedBull | 5,000 USD | 250,000 USD | 40 USD | 90% | 4% | 8% | 6% |
| FTUK | 10,000 USD | 100,000 USD | 99 USD | 80% | 5% | 10% | 10% |
MT5 vs cTrader comparison for funded accounts — Interface and features
When we speak about MT5 and cTrader funded accounts comparison, we need to take into account several characteristics of these platforms. cTrader was developed for CFD trading and despite being popular it has a smaller user base when compared to MT5, which was also developed for Forex and CFDs. Both platforms are robust. MetaTrader 5 is the next evolution of the popular advanced platform MetaTrader 4 and incorporates some social features. The platform is more modern with a modern design and user-friendly features. cTrader also offers a modern design but is slightly more difficult to use at its fullest potential.
User Experience
cTrader is known for its modern design and sleek looks, making it super practical and visually appealing. Despite requiring beginners to learn about the platform’s capabilities, it was designed mainly with users in mind and offers a clean layout. Beginner traders might find it difficult to navigate this layout but experienced traders benefit from the platform’s professional features.
After putting some time and effort into mastering it, cTrader can become one of the most powerful platforms in the trader’s arsenal. cTrader is a professional platform but has very little to no advantages over MT5, other than maybe slightly more customization. cTrader is powerful in customization, where traders can adjust and change the workspace to fully adapt to their needs, including multi time-frame analysis feature. With just one click, traders can see the same instrument in several different timeframes, giving them superior flexibility to see the bigger picture and detect trends early.
MetaTrader 5 also has detachable price charts and supports customization. Its interface while being user-friendly is more cluttered than cTrader but provides additional functionality which are useful for experienced traders. MT5 has market depth and economic calendar built-in directly, enabling it to act as a base for fundamental analysis as well. Traders can navigate through different functions including Navigator, Market Watch, and much more. MT5 users can click the chart to make it full-screen and hide all the features to properly analyze the price in full-screen, which is very useful. cTrader also has similar functionality, as both platforms are very advanced.
Accessibility
When it comes to MT5 vs cTrader funded account accessibility, both cTrader and MT5 are available on desktop and mobile devices. No matter the OS, traders can freely download and install both platforms onto their PC or mobile. MT5 and cTrader also come as web traders, and traders can use their browsers to access markets without the need to install anything. This feature is broker-dependent and depending on which broker is backing your prop firm, you might have access to web trader versions of these platforms or not. Web traders are also slower and offer limited capabilities when compared to their desktop counterparts. Mobile apps also lack custom indicators and automated trading capabilities.
cTrader has a very intuitive and modern-looking mobile app that is closer to its desktop experience. The app offers a very user-friendly, intuitive interface and is ideal for trading on the go.
MetaTrader 5 mobile app got serious upgrades recently and looks modern and appealing. Mobile MT5 offers more other types than the cTrader app. Recent upgrades made the MT5 mobile app one of the best mobile trading platforms. It is inferior to the TradingView mobile app in market analysis but superior in trading functionality.
Multi-language support
MT5 is available in a multitude of different languages, as well as cTrader. Both platforms are accessible to international traders because of their diverse language selection. MT5 got a slight edge in this category as it supports more than 30 languages, while cTrader only offers below 25.
Technical tools and indicators
Tools are the primary reason why both MT5 and cTrader are so popular among prop traders. Both platforms allow traders to customize charts and apply plenty of tools, both built-in and custom.
Charting and Analysis Tools
cTrader has more than 70 built-in technical indicators, coupled with plenty of charting tools. The platform allows traders and programmers to develop custom indicators and trading robots using C#, which is a popular programming language.
MT5, on the other hand, has around 100 built-in indicators, over 21 timeframes, and offers a plethora of tools to fully analyze prices. MT5 has an advantage in this category over cTrader, but since both platforms allow the development of custom indicators, this can be rarely noticed by the average trader. MetaTrader 5 also offers a programming language and built-in IDE using MQL5 programming language, which is similar to C and C++. Because of its large community, there are hundreds of custom indicators and free EAs available online for MT5.
Algorithmic Trading
Both cTrader and MT5 support algorithmic trading and are quite popular for this reason. MT5 offers Expert Advisors (EAs) through MQL5, which enables traders and developers to develop fast and powerful automated trading robots. MT5 EAs can trade fully automatically without the need for trader intervention. A similar is true for cTrader which offers automated or algorithmic trading through cBots. Recently, MT5 got official tutorials for developing and using neural networks in MT5 (AI) which can be very powerful. This was possible through the large community of MT5 users who are developing and offering their robots free and paid on the MetaQuotes online store.
Costs and execution speeds
cTrader as well as MT5 is completely free to use and anyone can download them on their computers or smartphones. This unique proposal gives both platforms an advantage over paid or subscription-based platforms. When it comes to trading commissions and spreads, cTrader is known for its transparency in pricing. MT5 is also similar, and it all depends on the broker who is providing the platform, rather than the platform itself.
Market Access
MetaTrader 5 was designed to trade numerous markets including Forex, stocks, and CFDs. cTrader focuses on multi-asset trading capabilities, mainly CFDs. It also allows Forex and stock trading with a high execution speed similar to MT5.
Customer Support and Community
Community is one place where MT5’s advantage is significant over cTrader. It has to be noted that both platforms have much smaller communities when compared to MetaTrader 4 (MT4) which still is enormously popular among trading communities. MT5 has a larger community than cTrader, which enables traders to have a wider choice of custom indicators and trading systems. There are hundreds of free custom indicators and Expert Advisors available for MT5 users, which can be super flexible to quickly adopt new indicators and enhance profitability. cTrader has a smaller user base than MT5, but it also offers diverse indicators and trading robots, both free and paid. MT5 has an online store where traders can purchase paid indicators and EAs or install them for free or paid. MT5 support is 24/7 just like cTrader, and both platforms are constantly updated for security vulnerabilities and new features. Overall, when it comes to community, MT5 has a distinctive advantage over cTrader, while support is 24/7 for both of the platforms.
FAQs on the cTrader vs MT5 for prop trading
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