best free mt5 plugins for serious traders, what do you actually use

[realtommy]

mt5 ecosystem has thousands of indicators and EAs available in the codebase, mostly junk. but theres a small set of genuinely useful free plugins that consistently come up in serious trading conversations.

curious what people actually have installed and use daily. specifically interested in:

• chart annotation tools
• statistical analysis indicators
• economic calendar integration
• trade journaling extensions

share your top 3 must-haves.

[dreamchaser]

my top 3: 'TradeWise' for chart annotations that persist across sessions (saves my level marks reliably), 'ATR Pips Visual' for showing ATR in pips on chart corner (saves me opening calculator constantly), 'FF News' for forex factory calendar overlay so i know when news is coming without alt-tabbing.

[wildnorth]

+1 on FF News. the in-chart economic calendar overlay is one of the biggest quality of life improvements ive made to my mt5 setup. used to miss news because i wasnt checking. now its always visible.

[vincentgray]

where do you get these plugins? mql5 marketplace has so many its overwhelming

[cameronv]

sources i use: 1) mql5 marketplace community section (free indicators, sort by downloads + rating, check comments), 2) trading subreddits where users share specific plugin recommendations with use cases, 3) specific developer pages of known-good authors (some have stable libraries of decent free tools). aviod: anything promising 'profitable signals' or 'edge indicators' - those are marketing not tools.

[endlessroad]

my must-have is a custom indicator i wrote that calculates and displays my actual risk:reward per trade as i drag the stop/target lines. takes the math out of position sizing in real time. if mt5 had built-in i wouldnt need it but oh well.

[justmatt]

the more plugins you install the more you tinker instead of trade. minimum viable indicators wins. i use price action and that's it.

[wildnorth]

oversimplified. yes too many indicators is bad. but having ZERO useful additions to default mt5 means you're missing high-value tools like the news overlay or persistent annotations. selective additions are different from indicator clutter.

[Elliot]

news overlay. atr display. done.