Using Custom Metadata Types and Custom Settings in Salesforce

Custom Metadata is one of the new features that released at Summer’15 of Salesforce, which is customizable, deployable, packageable, and upgradeable application metadata, and it supports the following custom field types.
  • Checkbox
  • Date
  • Date and Time
  • Email
  • Number
  • Percent
  • Phone
  • Picklist (Can’t use Global Picklist Value Set)
  • Text
  • Text Area
  • URL
  • Metadata Relationship

The setting page of Custom Metadata is similar to Custom Object’s as the following image:

It also supports Page Layouts Assignment, as the below:

And the data(records) of Custom Metadata Types can be edited directly as Metadata from Sublimie Text 3.

Differences between Custom Metadata and Custom Settings

So which one should we choose between Custom Metadata and Custom Settings?
Here is some comparisons between these two.

Functionality	Custom Settings	Custom Metadata
Unlimited calls/queries	◯	◯
CUD from Apex	◯	☓
Currency type field	◯	☓
Picklist type field	☓	◯
Metadata Relationship	☓	◯
Associate for an organization, profile, or specific user	◯(Hierarchy)	☓
Metadata deploy	Only definitions	Definitions and records
Apex tests	Needs to create test data	Directly access
Translation Workbench	Not supported	Still not supported (Maybe will be supported in the future…)

Enjoy It!