Order Block Zones comes in two editions on the MT5 Market. The free edition is Order Block Zones and the paid one is Order Block Zones Pro. The short answer: start with the free edition. Pro is for three things only, zones from higher timeframes on the chart you are watching, notifications when price nears a zone, and a scanner across your Market Watch. This post sets them side by side without a sales pitch: what both do, what only Pro does, who gets something out of Pro and who is perfectly well served by the free edition.
What both editions do
Both use the same rule to find a zone: the last candle of the opposite colour before a move that breaks that candle's high or low within three bars, with a displacement of at least one ATR. A zone is drawn on the chart timeframe, fades once a closed bar touches it, and is removed once a closed bar has closed through it. Both draw dotted London and New York session outlines, both show the panel with the zone counts and the distance to the nearest zones, both keep the History sheet with the last twenty zone events and the reason each one left, and both draw the Fair Value Gaps of the chart timeframe until they are filled, the newest six by default (Pro lets you raise that number; the free edition does not). Both are information tools. Neither gives a trade signal, and neither claims that a zone will hold.
Because the rule is the same, a zone the free edition finds on your chart is found by Pro in the same place. Pro does not find better zones. It adds context around them, higher-timeframe zones, notifications and a scanner, and it keeps a few more of them on the chart timeframe by default, eight instead of five.
What only Pro adds
First, zones from higher timeframes drawn on the chart you are watching. By default these are two layers, H4 with up to three zones and the daily with up to two, each tagged with its timeframe, and the Fair Value Gaps of those timeframes drawn as dashed outlines. A layer is drawn only when its timeframe is longer than the chart's. On an H1 chart you get both, on an H4 chart only the daily one, and on a daily chart neither unless you choose longer timeframes in the inputs.
Second, notifications. When the bid comes within a set distance of a fresh zone, or inside it, on the chart timeframe or on either higher timeframe, Pro tells you once for that zone. The popup is on by default. A push message to the MetaTrader app on your phone is available but off by default, and so are e-mail and a sound. The default distance is 60 points, which is 6 pips on a five-digit currency pair and 0.60 on a symbol quoted with two decimals, so it needs setting per symbol. The panel keeps an Alert log of the last twenty. Alerts for Fair Value Gaps exist as an option and are off by default. All of this works only while the terminal is running and connected.
Third, a zone scanner. It lists, from your Market Watch, the nearest fresh zones per symbol and timeframe (H1 and H4 by default), within one ATR by default, and a click on a row opens that chart. The scanner has its own alerts for price coming close to a zone, and they stay off until you choose which symbols may ring, with a limit of twenty a day by default.
Who gets something out of Pro
Pro is worth a look if you work on a lower timeframe but want the H4 and daily zones in front of you without switching charts, if you are often away from the screen and want a message when price approaches a zone you care about, or if you follow many symbols and would rather read one list than open one chart each. A notification only says that price is near a zone. It says nothing about what price will do there.
Who does not need it
The free edition is enough if you work one chart at a time and do not mind changing the timeframe to look at the H4 zone, which the free edition finds by the same rule on that chart. It is enough if you are learning how order blocks form and want them mapped on your screen, if you are in front of the chart anyway, or if what you mainly want is the record of what happened to each zone. If you notice that you keep switching timeframes to check a higher zone, or that you miss the moments price reaches one, that is the day to look at Pro. Until then there is no reason to.
A note about the Pro demo
The Market demo of a paid product runs only in the Strategy Tester, and the tester changes what Pro shows. In version 1.52, the current one as I write this, the tester does not draw the higher-timeframe layers, the scanner is off, the session outlines are not drawn, and no notification is delivered. What remains is the zones of the chart timeframe and the panel, close to what the free edition shows. So today's demo cannot show you the main things Pro adds. The next version is meant to show them in the tester, starting with the higher-timeframe layers. Until it is out, the free edition on a live chart is the better preview.
My suggestion is simple: put the free edition on the chart you use most, use it for a while, and decide from what you actually miss. If it turns out that nothing is missing, the free edition is all you need.
