I've installed several EAs that draw Renko charts on MT5.
I've noticed the charts they draw aren't exactly the same. Likely that's because some use tickdata and others use M1 (or M5).
But what's more troubling is the speed of drawing the bricks.

Sometimes I see bricks being drawn one at the time as it should be. Then when I expect a new brick nothing happens. Then suddenly 3 bricks are drawn. The lagging of "brick drawing" varies per EA I've tested (Santa Renko, Essential Renko and RenkoChart EA)
My PC is fast and MT5 has minimal effect on the CPU load. Plenty of memory. So that's not the issue.
It's especially noticeable on gold and silver with smaller brick sizes

Just badly coded? Or a technical limitation of MT5?
From the messages from the EA's they work on the regular candlestick chart open a new chart and send data to that chart.
Is the transmitting of data constant or does MT5 by design only transmits only once a few seconds?

There are also Renko charts that are plotted as a regular indicator on the candlestick chart. While those might not have the delay, they are useless for my purpose because they don't support adding indicators. (Many indicators don't have the "use first indicator data" option)


That's a lengthy explanation, but my question is; "Can Renko charts be lag-free on MT5?"

CleanCharts wrote: Thu Oct 30, 2025 10:30 pm I've installed several EAs that draw Renko charts on MT5.

I don't know about MT5 specifically but there are inherent problems with price charts in general and MT4 offline charts.

Brokers always add the disclaimer 'prices are indicative' meaning that they are the individual broker's prices taken from the prices that are available to them at any given time and which may be the prices taken from an exchange or from a liquidity provider (usually a big bank or institution such as a pension fund).

So a broker's prices will never be the same as another broker one second to the next though they should be similar.
And offline charts modify the data a second time (see below) so different Renko EAs might not match exactly either.

Also, prices do not always move in a smooth sequential path, a large order might take out several price levels at once and so there can be large or small price gaps where a large candle is printed instantly or several Renko bars are printed instantly.

MT4 Offline charts use modified data from the base time chart, which, as above, also uses modified data.

Mladen has discussed issues of bugs within the MT4 platform's offline charts that were never addressed by Metaquotes, I don't know if these were carried over from MT4 to MT5.

I haven't found where those original Mladen posts are but I did respond to some similar queries and I'll copy here.

Not sure if this, even in part, is helpful, apologies if not.


'as mladen explains it there is a problem with all mt4 offline charts caused by the core code that metaquotes are aware of but never fixed.

So with a renko chart on start up or reset the bricks 'tidy themselves up', it's not a major repaint and does not happen on a live run but if you take a pic of a period of tight ranging price action and then go to the renko ea on the one minute chart and highlight a input value and press 'ok' back on the renko chart there will be a slight rearrangement of the bricks that makes it look cleaner than it was.'

So, there are discrepancies between broker's prices, discrepancies between MT4 time charts and offline charts, and discrepancies between different Renko EA coding.

I use Renko charts myself and I just roll with it. It is what it is.

Your choice of Broker and their data feed showing their price availability is probably the most important issue.

Ogee wrote: Sat Nov 01, 2025 8:38 pm I don't know about MT5 specifically but there are inherent problems with price charts in general and MT4 offline charts.

Hi and thanks for your detailed answer.
The difference between charts also shows when looking at real time bricks. All from the same broker (Oanda) at the same time. But that could be how the EA works. Do they really use tickdata. Or do they add the tickdata to a 1 minute candle and then calculated bricks from that.

I agree that there are price jumps that can explain several bricks being painted at the same time.
This is what I did. I display 3 charts using different Renko EAs side by side. The fourth window is a normal candle chart. All using the same symbol.
Then I simply watched the bricks being formed.

If a price jump is the reason for multiple bricks being formed I would expect that to happen on all three charts.
It's almost random. Sometimes bricks are formed one by one. Lets say 1 brick every 5 seconds. Then a pause of 15 seconds and suddenly 3 bricks. But that also varies per EA.

Maybe none of this is due to MT5 or price jumps, but simply badly coded EAs?
May I ask which EA you use to draw the Renko charts?

CleanCharts wrote: Sun Nov 02, 2025 7:21 pm Hi and thanks for your detailed answer.

Hi, when using the same broker data input any differences are probably due to different coding of the EA, for MT4 there must be hundreds of EAs and some are really badly coded but nothing to stop anyone having a go which is fine so testing is important.

My broker doesn't do MT5 so have never tried any MT5 Renko charts, see zip file below with a selection of MT4 Renko chart builders which I know to be pretty reasonable.

I use the Evolution builder EA with the median setting (50%), it's very stable even during explosive price action.

Tick data is also problematic on MT4 (not sure about MT5). For forex there is no central exchange so a large broker's data is used instead. A tick is supposed to be one lot swapped through an exchange but while each trade is registered by MT4 the size (number of lots) is not, so there is nothing to distinguish between large orders and small ones.

Research has shown though that there is correlation between size of trades and numbers of trades. And yes all the data is coming from the brokers 1 minute chart (always best to use the lowest time frame).

Would be interesting to see if there are any major differences between MT4 and MT5.

Best of Luck.