MetaTrader alerts run on the desktop terminal, not on the broker's server. The platform watches the quote feed for a condition you define — a Bid above a level, an Ask below one, or a specific clock time — and when that condition is met it fires an action: a sound, an executable file, an email, or a push notification to your phone. MT4 and MT5 use almost the same dialogue for this, so most of what you learn on one transfers directly to the other. The differences are in scope rather than mechanics: MT5 covers exchange-traded instruments as well as forex and CFDs, and since build 858 (released 4 October 2013) it can also push notifications about order and deal events and let you manage alerts by dragging them on the chart.
What Are Alerts in MT4 and MT5?
An alert is a stored condition plus a stored action. The Alerts tab holds them as a table: the symbol whose quotes are checked, the condition, the trigger value, the action, and an expiration time after which the alert deletes itself. When the incoming tick satisfies the condition, the action runs.
Two things follow from this design. First, the terminal must be running and connected to the trade server — a closed platform checks nothing. Second, an alert is not an order. It tells you a level was touched; it does not open, close or modify anything. If you want the platform to act on the level rather than tell you about it, you need a pending order or an Expert Advisor.
Alerts also repeat unless you stop them. The dialogue exposes a Timeout — the interval between repeat triggerings — and Maximum iterations, the number of times the alert may fire before it stops. Leaving those at defaults on a level price is oscillating around is how traders end up muting the platform entirely.
How to Set Up a Price Alert in MT4
Alerts live in the Terminal window. Open it with Ctrl+T and select the Alerts tab.
How to Create a New Alert in MT4
- Right-click anywhere in the Alerts tab and choose Create, or press Insert.
- Set Symbol to the instrument whose quotes should be watched. This is independent of the chart you happen to be looking at.
- Choose the Condition. MT4 offers
Bid>,Bid<,Ask>,Ask<andTime=. Use Bid conditions for levels you would sell into and Ask conditions for levels you would buy into — on a wide spread the difference matters. - Enter the Value: the price, or the local time for a
Time=alert. - Choose the Action:
Sound(a .wav, .mp3 or .wma file),File(an .exe, .vbs or .bat),Mail(an email to the address set in the terminal), orNotification(a push message to your phone). - Set Expiration — the alert is deleted automatically at that local time — and adjust Timeout and Maximum iterations.
- Press Test to fire the action once without waiting for the market, then OK.
You can also create an alert straight from a chart: the chart context menu's Alert command pre-fills the condition and value from where you clicked relative to the current price, which is faster than typing a level you have just drawn.
How to Edit or Delete an MT4 Alert
Select the row and press Enter, or double-click it, to reopen the dialogue and change the level, action or expiry. Press Space to enable or disable an alert without losing it — useful when a level is still valid but you do not want to hear about it during a news release. Press Delete, or use the context menu, to remove it permanently. The Enable checkbox inside the dialogue does the same job as the Space key.
How to Set Up a Price Alert in MT5
In MT5 the same panel is called the Toolbox (Ctrl+T, or View > Toolbox), and alerts sit in its Alerts tab alongside Trade, History, News, Mailbox, Experts and Journal.
How to Create a New Alert in MT5
Right-click in the Alerts tab and choose Create. The fields are the ones you already know — Instrument, Condition, Value, Expiration, Timeout, Maximum iterations, Action — with MT5's wider instrument list in the symbol dropdown, so an alert can sit on an index future or a share as easily as on EURUSD. Because MT5's official documentation describes alerts as tracking "simple conditions for exceeding the set values by price, volume or time", exchange-traded symbols with real volume data give you conditions that MT4's quote-only feed cannot provide.
As in MT4, Test fires the action immediately. Run it once for every new action type you configure — a sound path that does not resolve, or SMTP credentials that were never saved, fails silently at the moment the level is actually hit.
How to Edit or Delete an MT5 Alert
Double-click the row to modify it, use the context menu to disable or delete it, and — the MT5-only convenience added in build 858 — drag the alert's level directly on the chart when chart trading levels are enabled, with disable and delete available from the chart's context menu. If an alert is firing repeatedly, lower Maximum iterations to 1 rather than deleting it; you keep the level on record and get told about it exactly once.
What Types of Alerts Can You Set in MetaTrader?
- Price alerts (
Bid>,Bid<,Ask>,Ask<) — the workhorse. Support, resistance, breakout levels, the edge of a range. - Time alerts (
Time=) — a session open, a scheduled data release, the moment you have decided to close a discretionary position. - Sound alerts — instant, local, no dependencies. Best when you are at the desk.
- File alerts — run an .exe, .vbs or .bat. This is the escape hatch for anything MetaTrader itself will not do, such as writing to a log or calling an external script.
- Email alerts — durable, searchable, and useful when the phone is silenced.
- Push notifications — the only action that reaches you away from the machine.
How to Get MT4 and MT5 Alerts on Your Phone
Push notifications are routed through MetaQuotes' servers to a device identified by a MetaQuotes ID, not through your broker and not through your mobile carrier.
- Install the MetaTrader mobile app (iOS or Android) and open Settings > Messages to read your MetaQuotes ID.
- On the desktop terminal, open Tools > Options > Notifications.
- Tick Enable Push Notifications and paste the ID. You can register up to four IDs, separated by commas, and every message goes to all of them.
- Press Test. If the phone does not buzz, the ID is wrong or the app has notifications disabled at the OS level.
- Create your alert with the action set to Notification.
Two limits are worth knowing before you build anything noisy on top of this: messages are capped at 255 characters, and delivery is rate-limited to one message per 0.5 seconds and ten per minute. The same Notifications tab can also push trade-operation messages — executed trades, balance changes, Margin Call — independently of any alert you create.
How to Set Up Email Alerts in MT4 and MT5
Open Tools > Options > Email. The terminal sends mail through your own SMTP account, so you supply:
- SMTP server with port, in the form
smtp.gmail.com:465 - SMTP login — usually the full email address
- SMTP password — stored encrypted
- From and To addresses, with optional display names
Only one sender and one recipient address are supported, so route to an address you can forward from if several people need the alert. Press Test and confirm the message arrives before relying on it. Most failures here are provider-side: accounts with two-factor authentication generally need an app-specific password rather than the account password.
How to Customize MT4 and MT5 Alert Notifications
Match the channel to where you will be. At the desk, sound is enough and costs nothing. Away from the desk, push. For anything you will want to review later — a level that triggered overnight, or a record of when a session boundary passed — email leaves a timestamped trail. Sound files are not limited to the platform's bundled set; any .wav, .mp3 or .wma on disk can be selected, so different levels can be given different tones and recognised without looking.
How to Set Alerts for Indicators in MT4 and MT5
The built-in Alerts tab watches price, time and (on MT5 exchange instruments) volume. It does not read indicator buffers. "Alert me when the 50 EMA crosses the 200 EMA" is not expressible in that dialogue.
There are two routes around it. The first is a custom indicator or Expert Advisor that calls the Alert() function in MQL4/MQL5, which raises the same alert window and log entry from code and can be paired with SendNotification() or SendMail(). The second is a manual approximation: read the indicator level off the chart and set an ordinary price alert at it, re-setting it as the indicator moves. The first is exact and needs code; the second is approximate and needs attention. Traders already running automated strategies usually fold alerting into the EA itself rather than maintaining a parallel set of manual alerts.
MT4 vs MT5 Alerts: What's the Difference?
| MT4 | MT5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Panel | Terminal (Ctrl+T) | Toolbox (Ctrl+T) |
| Conditions | Bid, Ask, Time | Bid, Ask, Time; volume on exchange symbols |
| Actions | Sound, File, Mail, Notification | Sound, File, Mail, Notification |
| Chart management | Create from chart context menu | Create from chart, plus drag levels and manage from context menu |
| Trade-event push | Yes | Yes, extended from build 858 (Oct 2013) |
| Instrument coverage | Forex and CFDs | Forex, CFDs, futures, equities |
For pure forex price alerts the platforms are effectively equivalent, and the choice usually comes down to what your broker offers rather than to the alert engine. Compare what each supports on our broker profiles before switching platforms for this reason alone.
Why Are My MT4 or MT5 Alerts Not Working?
- The terminal is closed or disconnected. Alerts are evaluated locally. Check the connection status in the bottom-right corner.
- The alert is disabled. Look at the Enable state in the row; a Space keypress toggles it.
- The condition can never be met. A
Bid>set below the current price fires instantly; aBid<set below where price will ever trade never fires at all. - Maximum iterations is exhausted. The counter has reached its limit and the alert is dormant, not broken.
- The alert expired. Expiration deletes the alert at local computer time, so a machine with the wrong clock deletes alerts early.
- Push is misconfigured. Wrong MetaQuotes ID, push disabled in Options, or notifications switched off for the app in the phone's OS settings.
- Email is misconfigured. Wrong SMTP port, or a provider rejecting the login because it requires an app password.
- The sound or file path is broken. A renamed or moved file gives you a silent trigger.
In every case, the Test button in the alert dialogue isolates the problem: if Test works and the live alert does not, the fault is in the condition, not the channel.
How to Use MetaTrader Alerts for Trading
Put alerts a little before the level, not on it. An alert at exactly the breakout price arrives at the moment you needed to already be deciding; an alert 10–15 pips ahead of it gives you time to open the chart. For range trading, set a pair — one Ask alert below support, one Bid alert above resistance — and let the platform tell you which edge the market reached. For trend reversals, alert on the break of the last swing point rather than on an indicator reading you will have to re-evaluate anyway. For session structure, Time= alerts at the London and New York opens replace the habit of watching the clock. The point of all of it is the same: you stop paying attention to charts that are doing nothing.
Best Practices for Using MT4 and MT5 Alerts
Keep the count low. Ten alerts you react to are worth more than forty you have learned to ignore, and alert fatigue is the failure mode that ends with the sound muted. Set Maximum iterations to 1 for levels you only need told about once. Give the alert an Expiration matching the horizon of the idea, so stale levels clear themselves out instead of firing weeks later on a setup you have forgotten. Test each channel when you first configure it and after any change to your email provider or phone. And tie each alert to something you have already decided to do at that price — an alert with no plan behind it is just an interruption.
