In the 5G massive machine type communication (mMTC) scenario, user equipment with poor signal quality requires numerous repetitions to compensate for the additional signal attenuation. However, an excessive number of repetitions consumes additional wireless resources, decreasing the transmission rate, and increasing the energy consumption. An insufficient number of repetitions prevents the successful deciphering of the data by the receivers, leading to a high bit error rate. The present study developed adaptive repetition approaches with the k-nearest neighbor (KNN) and support vector machine (SVM) to substantially increase network transmission efficacy for the enhanced machine type communication (eMTC) system in the 5G mMTC scenario. The simulation results showed that the proposed repetition with the learning approach effectively improved the probability of successful transmission, the resource utilization, the average number of repetitions, and the average energy consumption. It is therefore more suitable for the eMTC system in the mMTC scenario than the common lookup table.