MetaTrader 5 (MT5) · Philippines

MetaTrader 5 (MT5) at IC Markets

• Credentials are issued per platform - an MT5 account number, password and named MT5 server will not sign in to MT4 or cTrader
• Demo and live sit on separate servers with separate credential sets, so a demo login never becomes a live one
• Higher Margin Requirement windows temporarily cut the available leverage around session edges and major news releases, on top of the size-tiered ladder
• Balance, equity and margin are shown in one of ten base currencies - USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD, CAD - and PHP is not among them

Why this is two terminals and not one setting

IC Markets does not present MetaTrader 5 as an upgrade path from MetaTrader 4. The two are listed side by side, priced identically on Raw Spread and Standard, and quoted from the same New York venue - so the platform page a reader lands on decides very little about cost and almost everything about what has to be opened, funded and remembered separately. An MT5 account number, its password and its named MT5 server are one set; the MT4 equivalents are a second; cTrader has a third. Nothing converts between them and there is no merged view.

From the Philippines that has a mundane consequence better known before the sign-up form than after it. Every additional platform is another account to fund, another balance sitting in a currency that is not the peso, and another withdrawal that has to travel back to whichever method paid it in. One platform chosen deliberately costs less to run than three opened to look around.

Where an MT5 build legitimately comes from

Three addresses belong to the broker: ic.com, which is the canonical one, secure.ic.com for the client area, and icmarkets.com, which redirects to ic.com. Anything else offering an IC Markets build of MetaTrader 5 is a third party - and so is this page, which describes the offering and neither hosts nor mirrors the installer.

What MT5 adds over MT4, in the broker's own framing, is a wider set of built-in analytical and order-management tools. IC Markets publishes no count of indicators or timeframes that can be checked from outside, so the description here stops at wider rather than putting a figure on it. That restraint is the point of an independent page: a number of that kind is easy to invent, impossible to verify, and a reader in Manila has no local desk to ring and confirm it with.

The windows where MT5 lends less than the headline

Leverage on a MetaTrader account at IC Markets is tiered by position size, and it is also scheduled. On top of the size ladder the broker applies Higher Margin Requirement windows, during which the available ratio is cut temporarily for every client on the platform rather than for a particular account.

Three of them are published. A daily window runs from 30 minutes before a market closes until 15 minutes after it opens again. A weekend window runs from one hour before Friday's close until 30 minutes after Monday's open. A news window runs from 15 minutes before a high-impact release until one minute after it. None of the three is flagged inside the terminal as an event; what a trader sees is a margin figure that has changed on a position sized under the previous rule.

That lands differently from Manila than from a European desk. The Friday and Monday edges of the week fall in Philippine waking hours, so the weekend window is the one a local trader can actually watch open and close; the daily one is not. A position left running across a weekend was margined under one rule when it was opened and under another while nobody was at the screen, with the 50% stop out unchanged throughout. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money.

What an MT5 balance is denominated in

Everything MT5 puts on the screen for a Philippine client - balance, equity, used margin, the USD 3.50 per lot per side charged on Raw Spread - is expressed in the account's base currency, and an account can be opened in exactly ten of them: USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD and CAD. The peso is not on that list, and it is not on the funding side either: the methods IC Markets publishes are international ones - cards, PayPal, Neteller, Skrill, UnionPay and bank wire - and the only country-specific banking rails it lists anywhere are Thai and Vietnamese. There is no Philippine rail on the page at all, which is a plain absence rather than a restriction.

So the terminal is precise about the trading cost and silent about the currency cost. A peso deposit is converted before it ever becomes an MT5 balance and converted back on the way out, at a rate set by the client's own bank or card issuer. IC Markets states that it charges no deposit or withdrawal fee of its own - but it does not perform the conversion either, and third-party or intermediary charges sit outside its responsibility. Nothing in the MT5 window shows that leg, which is why a Philippine account can look cheaper on screen than it is in pesos.

The MT5 specification, and where it stops

2,250 instruments, quoted from Equinix NY4 in New York, reached from the desktop terminal, from MetaTrader WebTrader in a browser or from the IC mobile app, on Raw Spread or Standard, with Swap Free available on both across more than ninety symbols. That is the specification in full, and MT4 carries the same one. Everything a Philippine trader still has to settle beyond it - which base currency the balance sits in, which method funds it, which company the contract names - is settled outside the terminal and cannot be changed from inside it afterwards.

Issued with an MT5 account, and not issued with it

Only the last row is indifferent to the platform. Whether the terminal is MT4, MT5 or cTrader, the broker's own registration feed, checked on 2 September 2026, routes the Philippines by default to that Seychelles entity, and no Philippine layer of oversight sits above it. Choosing MT5 changes the software; it does not change the counterparty.

Tiered leverage example (USDCHF, MetaTrader)

The one IC Markets venue whose working day meets a Philippine evening

cTrader is the exception in the line-up, and that is why it belongs on a platform page rather than a timezone one. It is served from London instead of New York, carries 121 instruments instead of 2,250, and is priced at USD 3.00 per USD 100,000 instead of USD 3.50 per lot per side. Measured from Manila, London is seven or eight hours away rather than twelve or thirteen, which makes it the only venue in the range whose working day overlaps a Philippine evening rather than a Philippine night.

The trade is explicit rather than hidden. A shorter instrument list, a leverage ceiling of 1:1000 instead of 1:5000, and a third set of credentials to open and keep: a trader already on MT5 does not reach cTrader by ticking a box. Whether the shorter list is worth the friendlier hours is a question a free demo settles more cheaply than a funded account does.

Related IC Markets pages