Market Orders vs Pending Orders in MetaTrader

Every entry in a MetaTrader trade history began as one of two instructions. A market order asks to be filled now, at whatever the market is quoting; a pending order asks to be filled later, and only if price reaches a level chosen in advance.

The two sides of the quote do the routing: market buys pay the ask and market sells receive the bid, as unpacked in the bid and ask guide. Pending orders obey the same rule at the moment they execute, which is why each pending type watches one specific side of the quote while it waits.

MT4 and MT5 share four pending types, and each name encodes two things: the direction (buy or sell) and the class (limit or stop). The placement follows automatically. A limit rests on the side where the price would be more favourable than it is now; a stop rests on the side where it would be worse.

The symmetry is exact: buy limit and sell stop sit below the current price, sell limit and buy stop above it. MetaTrader enforces the geometry — a buy limit placed above the current ask is rejected as an invalid price, because that instruction already describes a market order.

Buy orders trigger off the ask, sell orders off the bid. What happens once the trigger price trades depends entirely on the class:

The classes split on one point. A limit-class order is a price guarantee without a fill guarantee: it executes at its price or better, or not at all. A stop-class order is the reverse — once triggered it will execute, but as a market order, at whatever price is available at that moment. In a fast market that fill can land away from the trigger level; how far, and why, is the subject of the slippage guide.

MT5 extends the menu with buy stop limit and sell stop limit, two-stage orders that chain the classes together. The stop price still acts as a trigger — but instead of sending a market order, the server places a limit order at a second price set in advance.

MT4 has no stop-limit types, so an MT4 account history can only ever contain market entries and the four classic pendings — one of the small structural differences between the two platforms’ order models.

A stop loss and a take profit do not appear in the pending order menu, because they are not standalone orders. Each attaches to a specific position — or to a pending order, taking effect only if it executes — and lives exactly as long as the position does. Close the position, and both levels are cancelled automatically.

Mechanically, they reuse the two classes. A stop loss is stop-class: when its level trades, the position is closed at market. A take profit is limit-class: it closes the position at its price or better. And because closing a position means dealing on the opposite side of the quote, both levels on a buy position watch the bid, while both levels on a sell watch the ask.

Where to place the two levels — distances, ratios and what they imply for risk per trade — is a separate topic, covered in the stop loss and take profit guide.

Two per-symbol distances, set by the broker in points, restrict where orders can go. The stops level is the minimum gap between the current price and any new pending order, stop loss or take profit. The freeze levelis a band around an order’s trigger price inside which it can no longer be modified or deleted — the order is about to execute, so the server locks it.

Both values appear in the symbol’s contract specification (right-click the symbol in Market Watch) and differ between brokers and account types. A rejected order or a refused modification close to the market is usually this rule at work, not a platform fault.

A market order is consumed the moment it executes; a pending order needs a lifespan. Every pending carries an expiration setting, and when it lapses the trade server deletes the order on its own — no terminal required.

MT4 offers good-till-cancelled or a specific expiry time; MT5 supports all four modes. One consequence for reading your own account history: an expired pending leaves no trade behind, only an order record marked as expired — one reason the order list and the deal list in an MT5 report rarely have the same number of rows.