Practise without a deposit
Forex demo accounts, compared
A forex demo account is a live trading platform funded with virtual money: real prices, real spreads, no deposit and nothing at risk. Nine of the brokers we track offer one. Libertex opens with $50,000 in virtual funds, FxPro with up to 100k, ForTrade with $10,000, and LiteFinance runs a demo mode you can use without registering at all.
Conditions checked against each broker's own pages
Forex brokers with a demo account
Ordered by how much each broker publishes about its own demo account, because that is the part we can check today. It is not a quality score: no scoring method has been published on this site yet, and a broker that says less here is not necessarily worse.
| Broker | Virtual funds | Demo runs on | What it takes to open | Regulated by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libertex | $50,000 in virtual funds | not published | Free demo account, opened from the trading page without a deposit | CySEC |
| ForTrade | $10,000 of practice money, credited automatically | MetaTrader 4 and the Fortrader platform | Practice account with virtual funds, opened from the site | FCA, CySEC, ASIC, CIRO, FSC Mauritius, DFSA |
| FxPro | Up to 100k in virtual funds | MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader | Unlimited number of demo accounts, opened through FxPro Direct | FCA, FSA Seychelles, SCB Bahamas |
| LiteFinance | You set the virtual balance yourself when you open the demo | MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, LiteFinance platform, cTrader | Demo mode works without registration; register only if you want the trading history kept | SVG, CySEC, FSC Mauritius |
| Deriv | not published | Deriv MT5 | No deposit required — the demo account opens preloaded with a virtual balance | MFSA, Labuan FSA, BVI FSC, VFSC, FSC Mauritius, Cayman, SVG |
| RoboForex | not published | MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, R StocksTrader | No real money needed; the demo carries the same instruments, spreads, swaps and execution as a live account | FSC Belize |
| Bybit | not published | MetaTrader 5 | TradFi demo runs on a separate Bybit-Demo server with real-time market data; the crypto demo balance is a different product | FSC Mauritius, SVG |
| Alpari | not publishedAdd USD 1,000 at a time from the Funds area; maximum virtual balance $1,000,000 | MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 | Free practice account on real market prices, no deposit required | MISA (Comoros) |
| Tickmill | not published | MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 | Demo account offered alongside the Classic and Raw live accounts | FCA, CySEC, FSCA, DFSA |
Scroll the table sideways →
«Not published» means the broker does not state it on its own pages. We leave those cells empty rather than repeat a figure from someone else's review: an account condition is a statement about a named company, and the company is the only source that settles it. One entry in the regulator column is worth reading twice: on Bybit, the CFD account is not held by Bybit. Its MT5 user agreement names Infra Capital Limited in Mauritius and Infra Capital LLC in St Vincent as the providers, with Bybit acting as the infrastructure behind them.
What a forex demo account is — and what it is not
A demo account is the broker's own trading platform running on live market prices with virtual money in place of yours. Orders fill against real quotes, the spread you see is the spread the broker is quoting, and the balance is fiction. Nothing is deposited, and nothing can be lost or withdrawn.
Three things get confused with it, and all three send you somewhere else. Paper trading is the same idea under a stock-market name — Webull and thinkorswim call it that, and their platforms trade shares, not currency pairs. A demo contest is a competition run on demo accounts with real prize money, which is a different product with its own rules. Backtesting runs a strategy against historical data with no live prices involved at all.
The useful distinction when you are choosing: a demo account tells you what a broker's platform and quoted conditions feel like. It cannot tell you what happens to a real order in a fast market, because nothing on the other side of a demo fill is real.
What to check before you pick one
Whether the demo carries live conditions. RoboForex states that its demo accounts run the same instruments, spreads, swaps and execution as its live accounts. Where a broker does not say this, a demo can be quietly friendlier than the real thing — better fills, no requotes — and the number it teaches you is the wrong number.
Whether the virtual balance matches what you will actually deposit. A $50,000 demo balance trained on 1-lot positions teaches habits that a $500 live account cannot support. Alpari lets you set the balance by topping up in $1,000 steps to a $1,000,000 ceiling; FxPro funds up to 100k; LiteFinance lets you name the figure yourself.
Which platform the demo runs on. If you intend to trade on MetaTrader 5, practising on a broker's own web terminal teaches you a different set of keystrokes. ForTrade lists MetaTrader 4 and its own Fortrader platform, and no MetaTrader 5.
How long the account survives. Most brokers on this list do not publish an expiry rule on their public pages, which is worth knowing before you build a month of trade history inside one.
How to open a forex demo account
The route is nearly the same everywhere and takes minutes rather than days, because no money moves and no identity check is triggered.
- 01Pick the broker whose live account you would realistically open. The demo is only useful as a rehearsal of that specific account.
- 02Register on the broker's site, or skip registration where it is optional — LiteFinance runs demo mode without an account, at the cost of not keeping your trade history.
- 03Choose the demo account type and the platform you plan to trade on: MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader or the broker's own terminal.
- 04Set the virtual balance to what you would actually fund a live account with, not to the largest number offered.
- 05Trade for long enough to see a losing week, not just a winning day, before you decide anything.
What a demo account will not show you
Execution is the honest gap. On a demo, your order is matched by a simulator; on a live account it goes to a counterparty who may fill it at a worse price when the market is moving. Bybit says this in the open — its TradFi demo runs on a separate demo server with deliberate price variation to keep the two apart.
The other gap is you. Risking virtual money produces none of the decisions that lose real accounts: the position held too long, the stop moved, the loss doubled down on. Several of the brokers on this page publish the warning their regulator requires, with the share of their retail clients who lose money — 74% at Deriv, 75.85% at RoboForex, 83% at Libertex. Those figures come from live accounts, not demos.
Questions people ask
Is a forex demo account free?
Yes, at every broker on this page. A demo account is funded with virtual money, so there is nothing to deposit and nothing to pay. Alpari states plainly that there are no charges or fees for opening and using a practice account.
How much virtual money do you get on a forex demo account?
It depends on the broker, and several do not publish a figure. Libertex opens a demo with $50,000, ForTrade credits $10,000 automatically, FxPro funds up to 100k, and LiteFinance lets you enter the amount yourself. Alpari tops up in $1,000 steps to a maximum of $1,000,000.
Can you open a forex demo account without registering?
At LiteFinance, yes — its platform has a demo mode that works without registration, though your trading history is not saved once you close the page. Every other broker on this list asks you to create an account first, but none of them requires a deposit or identity verification to open a demo.
Does a demo account use real spreads?
It uses live market prices, and RoboForex states that its demo accounts carry the same spreads, swaps and execution as live accounts. Execution is the part that differs: a demo order is matched by a simulator, so it will not show you the slippage a real order can meet in a fast market.
Do forex demo accounts expire?
Most brokers on this page do not publish an expiry rule, so treat a demo account as something that can be closed for inactivity rather than as a permanent record. If the trade history matters to you, export it rather than relying on the account staying open.
Should you practise on a demo before trading real money?
A demo is the cheapest way to learn a platform and to find out whether a strategy survives a losing week. What it cannot rehearse is how you behave when the money is yours, which is where most retail accounts fail — the brokers themselves report that between 69% and 83% of their retail clients lose money.
Practising on a phone? The same brokers' trading apps, compared on store data — who publishes each one, and what the ratings actually say. Once the practice is over, the number that decides is spread plus commission. Free money to start with is rarer than it looks — one broker of nine offers a bonus without a deposit.
Demo contests, where the same virtual money is traded for prizes, are on forex demo contests.