Comparing MQL5 and QLUA Trade and Order-Book Speed

Summary

The article compares MetaTrader 5 and QUIK using three measures: elapsed time for sequential confirmed market orders, time to send a sequence of unconfirmed orders, and the frequency of market-depth updates. The tests were run on the same hosted computer, account, instrument, and market session, with reported network latency of 2 milliseconds. For synchronous operations, the next order waited for confirmation of the prior one; asynchronous tests measured sending speed only.

The reported results favor MetaTrader 5 across all three measures: average synchronous operation time was 9.59 ms versus 277.80 ms, asynchronous time was 0.09 ms versus 0.30 ms, and depth updates were 42.7 versus 8.4 per second. The article describes timer-resolution adjustments and different timing methods used for the two platforms. These findings are specific to the tested broker, instrument, environment, and session; asynchronous sending does not establish execution success, and the author suggests QUIK may limit visible order-book update frequency.

Key ideas

• The comparison separates confirmed order round trips from unconfirmed order submission speed.
• The reported MT5 averages are lower than QUIK's for both synchronous and asynchronous order tests.
• Market-depth update frequency is measured by counting updates per second on the same instrument and session.
• The results are environment-specific, and asynchronous speed does not measure completed trade execution.

Tags

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.