Demo account

An account that opens the same platform and the same quote stream as a funded one, in which the fill is simulated. An order never leaves the provider's system: a rule decides what price it would have received, and the result is written to a balance held in one database. A demo record is a record of the simulator's behaviour, and carries no information about a funded account.

Everything downstream of the fill is ordinary arithmetic and is therefore identical. Contract sizes, the way a result is calculated from a price difference, the margin held against an open position and the way a statement is laid out all behave exactly as they do on a funded account, which is what makes a demo a genuine instrument for learning the mechanics of a platform.

What does not carry across is everything that depends on a counterparty existing. A simulated order consumes no liquidity, so it has nothing to slip against and cannot be partially filled by exhausting the size available at a price. Nothing is rejected because a quote moved while a message was in flight. The absence of consequence is the larger gap: the arithmetic that moves a demo balance is the same arithmetic, and the object being moved is not the same kind of thing.

How long an account stays on a demo is disputed, and the disagreement is real rather than a matter of taste. One position holds that mechanics are all a simulator can teach, so a short period is enough and the rest is learned elsewhere. Another holds that a written record over many months is the only way a method accumulates evidence about itself. Both are arguing about what a simulator is evidence of, which is the honest question underneath.