UK Spread Betting Demo Accounts

I recommend Pepperstone as the best spread betting demo account, offering some of the best trading conditions I’ve experienced, which is why I rated them 98/100 overall in my review. The broker has some of the tightest spreads from 0.60 pips on EUR/USD while providing excellent execution speeds below 100ms, helping lower trading costs and protection from slippage. You get a top demo account with £50,000 in virtual funds and stay active for 60 days, which I think is an excellent combination.

75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

During my testing, one of the standout features of Pepperstone’s spread betting account is its tight spreads. In fact, when our analyst Ross Collins tested them, he found that Pepperstone had some of the lowest spreads in the industry, with the EUR/USD averaging 0.60 pips.

Low spreads aren’t the only thing that makes Pepperstone’s demo account stand out. My tests also found that they offer some of the fastest execution speeds around. With a limit order filling in just 77ms and a market order taking only 100ms, you can be sure your trades will be executed quickly.

These speeds give you excellent trading conditions, especially if you’re a scalper, as they can help protect you from slippage and ensure that you get the best possible price for your trades. I found that Pepperstone uses a no-dealing desk model with straight-through processing (STP) pricing, which contributes to its tight spreads and fast execution speeds.

When I opened my demo account to test the broker’s trading conditions, I was impressed it came with £50,000 in virtual funds. These funds were more than what most other brokers offer (which is around the £10,000 mark) and more than enough to get a feel for the platform. Plus, the demo account stays open for 60 days before expiring, giving you plenty of time to explore everything Pepperstone offers.

Pepperstone is also one of a few brokers that offer you multiple spread betting platforms, including top third-party platforms like MetaTrader 4, MT5, cTrader, and TradingView. This selection gives you plenty of options to trade how you want.

MetaTrader 4 and MT5 allow you to automate your spread bets through expert advisors, while cTrader offers a platform with features like one-click trading and integrated automated technical analysis tools. TradingView is an excellent option if you focus on technical analysis, as it has 110+ indicators and drawing tools.

I also found that Pepperstone offers decent trading tools to supplement their demo account. The Smart Trader Tools enhances the MT4 platform with 28 new tools, such as pivot points and expert advisors like the Trade Terminal, making it easier to manage multiple open trades.

As a bonus, Pepperstone also offers Autochartist, a pattern recognition tool that can help you identify potential trading opportunities across multiple timeframes and instruments.

I also found the broker offers an impressive range of spread bet markets. There are 62 forex pairs, over 1000 stocks, 25 indices, and 33 commodities, so you’ll never be short of trading opportunities.

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75.3% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

I chose CMC Markets as the top spread betting platform with its award-winning Next Generation (NGEN) platform, thanks to its impressive range of features. The platform has over 80 technical indicators and advanced drawing tools to visualise price action while providing advanced tools like automated pattern recognition to provide signals. The demo account is great for testing the NGEN platform with £10,000 virtual funds while experiencing the broker’s low spreads from 0.70 pips.

69% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

CMC Markets’ Next Generation (NGEN) spread betting platform is a great option that I believe makes it the best overall choice for traders. It’s packed with features that make it easy to analyse the markets and find potential trading opportunities.

One of the top features of the NGEN platform is the number of technical indicators and drawing tools available. You’ll find over 80 indicators, including popular ones like moving averages, MACD, and RSI, and more advanced options like the Ichimoku Cloud and Keltner Channels.

When it comes to drawing tools, you’ve got plenty of choices, such as Fibonacci retracements, Gann fans, and Elliot Waves, to help you visualise potential support and resistance levels.

As a day trader, I was impressed with the platform’s bespoke automated pattern recognition tool. This tool scans over 12,000 markets for you, identifying chart and candlestick patterns that could signal potential trading opportunities.

I’m a fan of the level of detail this tool provides, which provides clear entry, stop loss, and take profit levels, making it easy to follow the signals. Plus, you can customise the tool only to show you the patterns you’re interested in so you can focus on the setups that align with your favourite markets.

If you’re new to financial spread betting or want to test the platform, CMC Markets offers a demo account with a £10,000 starting balance. You can manually top up the virtual funds in the admin section, giving you essentially unlimited practice money. Unlike other brokers, the demo account doesn’t expire unless you’re inactive for 30 days, giving you plenty of time to explore the platform’s features.

As for the broker’s trading costs, I found CMC Markets to be competitive, with EUR/USD spreads as low as 0.70 pips, based on my tests. This spread is a good deal, as tighter spreads mean lower trading costs, which can make a big difference to your bottom line over time, especially if you’re an active trader.

I was impressed with City Index’s range of products, which includes 8,500 markets, including 84 currency pairs, 4,700 shares, 40+ indices, and 30+ commodities. This collection is one of the largest for a spread betting broker, which is why I rated the broker 90/100 for its range of markets. The demo account has £10,000 in virtual funds, and a 12-week expiration provides abundant time to test strategies. While limited to their Web Trader platform for spread betting, the integrated TradingView charting package with 80+ indicators is excellent.

71% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

When I tested the broker’s demo account, I discovered it offers 8,500 financial instruments, including 84 currency pairs, one of the largest selections I’ve seen. Most brokers I’ve tested limit forex pairs to the majors and a few minor pairs, so having such a wide selection makes City Index a solid choice if you focus on forex trading.

In addition to its wide range of currency pairs, the broker offers 4,700 shares, 40+ stock indices, and 30+ commodities. I think this impressive choice of markets positions City Index as a well-rounded broker for day traders looking to access multiple markets with a single account.

You can test the broker’s spreads and trading conditions with its free demo account. The demo account I used received a virtual balance of £10,000, but you can request more funds from customer support, which is useful if you are testing trading strategies.

The demo account has a 12-week expiration, which is generous compared to some other brokers. However, I prefer demo accounts with no time limit. These allow you to practise at your own pace while keeping all of your trading history, which is helpful for personal development.

City Index offers a few trading platforms like MT4 and TradingView; however, I found that they only offer spread betting on their Web Trader platform. Initially, I wasn’t a fan of using the broker’s platform, but after testing it, I found they integrated with TradingView’s charting package, which is excellent. You get access to 80+ advanced technical indicators and drawing tools so you won’t have an issue developing your trading strategy with the platform.

The mobile app mirrors the web platform’s functionality, allowing you to spread bet on the go with features of the same TradingView charts and one-click trading. I liked that the City Index platform was consistent across devices and useful for executing your trading strategy regardless of where you’re trading from.

My top pick for the best spread betting platform for beginners is OANDA Trade, offering many features like default order tickets, which help prevent costly mistakes. The platform uses TradingView’s charts, giving you access to over 80 technical indicators, while Autochartist gives you real-time trading signals from which you can learn. I also found the broker to offer one of the largest demo accounts with virtual funds of £100,000, giving you plenty of money to practise and test the broker’s services.

76.6% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

When I tested the OANDA Trade Web Platform, I was impressed by how user-friendly it was, with easy access to charts and watchlists. I liked the ability to set default order tickets with pre-set bet sizes, stop losses, and take profit levels, which would automatically be applied to your orders. This feature provides an extra layer of protection if you are a beginner, helping prevent costly mistakes like accidentally entering larger bet sizes or forgetting to add a stop loss.

I also appreciated that OANDA Trade uses TradingView’s charts, giving you access to over 80 technical indicators and easily setting up watchlists to focus on the markets you care about most. These watchlists made monitoring the few markets I trade simple without having to cycle through the broker’s 70+ currency pairs and perform market analysis without feeling overwhelmed.

Another tool that I thought would be helpful for beginners was Autochartist, which is available on the web platform. As a new trader, I think this feature is fantastic because it helps you learn about candlestick and chart patterns in real-time, all while using a risk-free demo account.

I could access the OANDA Trade platform and test out all of these features without any real funds on the line. The demo account comes with a generous £100,000 starting balance, which I discovered I could top up within my OANDA account. However, it’s important to note that the demo account does have a 30-day expiration period.

During my demo account testing, I found that OANDA offers a generous £100,000 starting balance to practice with. While the 30-day expiration period might seem short, I believe it provides plenty of time to test OANDA’s spread betting services or practise a new trading strategy before deploying it live.

IG Group is my top choice for automated spread betting platforms, offering two of the best automation platforms: ProRealTime and MetaTrader 4. I found ProRealTime to be the better option if you are a new trader, as it lets you create automation without coding. MT4 offers more customisation through its expert advisors if you can program them. I like that IG provides a £10,000 demo account to test and refine your algorithms across its expansive 17,000+ financial products before going live.

70% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

IG Group is one of the few brokers allowing automated spread betting strategies through ProRealTime and MetaTrader 4 (MT4) platforms. After extensively testing both platforms, I found that each caters to different levels of trading experience and automation needs.

If you are an experienced trader who is comfortable with programming, the MT4 platform provides the best customisation with expert advisors (EAs) to automate your spread betting strategies. However, it’s important to note that using the MT4 doesn’t include IG Group’s full range of markets, focusing mainly on indices, forex, and commodities.

On the other hand, I believe ProRealTime is the better choice if you are new to automated spread betting. ProRealTime provides a tool that allows you to create automation rules without any coding knowledge, making it much easier to start with algorithmic strategies. If you don’t want to automate your strategies fully, I like that ProRealTime provides automated support and resistance levels (ProRealTrends) you can use to find potential breakouts.

IG Group offers a decent demo account with £10,000 in virtual funds. You can use it to test both platforms and experiment with automated trading strategies. The demo account stays active as long as you place a trade once every 30 days, helping you keep your trading data, which is important if you are developing strategies.

I recommend Fx Pro as a solid choice for traders wanting access to the latest trading tools. The broker’s selection includes automated analysis tools like TradingView, which I think can help you find more trades with less effort. The broker offers a choice of 200+ markets, spreads from 1.47 pips on EUR/USD, and decent customer service that is 24/5. You can use their demo with £100,000 virtual funds and 180 days to test the broker’s trading conditions and tools.

75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

When I used Fx Pro, I was impressed by the broker’s extensive range of powerful trading tools. One standout tool is Trading Central, an automated technical analysis service that uses pivot points, support and resistance levels and detects Japanese candlestick patterns to help you identify new opportunities without manually monitoring every market.

I found this helpful for inspiration while day trading, giving me a stream of setups across multiple assets to review that I would normally never find myself. Each signal also had a confidence rating, which I could filter. Thus, you can only view the service’s higher-probability ideas, which generate fewer signals, but you know the quality is much higher.

Like other brokers, Fx Pro only allows spread betting on its proprietary platform, Fx Pro Edge Web Trader. This web platform makes accessing Trading Central easy, as both are browser-based tools.

The platform has over 50 technical indicators and charting tools, which gives you plenty of options for analysing the markets. If you are a scalper, you’ll like the built-in one-click trading feature, which allows you to place your spread bets faster than filling an order ticket.

With a generous virtual balance of up to £100,000, it’s one of the most well-funded practice accounts I’ve used. Even better, the demo account remains active for 180 days, giving you ample time to put the broker’s tools and platforms through their paces without risking any real money.

I picked Spread Co for its competitive fixed spreads, starting at 0.60 pips on EUR/USD. I appreciate how this keeps trading costs stable, even during volatile market conditions. Their unique Mini spread bets, allowing bets from just 10p per point, are great for easing into real-money trading. While the demo account’s 14-day limit is short, I believe the £25,000 virtual funds provide ample opportunity to test their platform.

68.4% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

Out of the brokers tested, Spread Co was one of the only ones that offered fixed spreads that were competitive with the industry, starting from 0.60 pips on EUR/USD.

Fixed spreads can help keep your trading costs consistent throughout the day, even when market volatility spikes from major news announcements. I think Spread Co’s fixed spreads make them an ideal choice if you like to trade high-impact news events without worrying about sudden spikes in trading costs. At 0.60 pips, you’re not paying much of a premium for fixed spreads compared to its competitors that offer variable spreads ranging from 0.60 to 1 pip.

The demo account comes loaded with £25,000, a generous offering that allows you plenty of room to test the broker’s trading conditions or practise trading. While the 14-day expiration is a bit short, in my opinion, to get to know a broker, you can always open up a new demo account to continue practising.

When using my account, I found that Spread Co offers mini spread bets, which let you speculate on markets from as little as 10p per point compared to the standard bet size of £1 per point. In my view, Mini spread bets are a solid feature for transitioning from demo to real-money trading, which I’ve only experienced with Spread Co.

I think Capital.com is a top choice for spread betting, especially if you want access to a huge range of markets. With over 2,900 assets available, including 120+ forex pairs and 2,500 global stocks, Capital.com offers one of the widest selections we’ve seen. You can save on currency conversion fees by trading some of the US’ most popular companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Tesla, which is appealing to you spread bet stocks. The £1000 demo account balance is on the lower end, but I believe it’s a realistic amount for new traders to practice with.

71% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider.

Capital.com offers one of the best spread betting markets I’ve encountered. While many brokers limit their offerings to a few hundred assets, Capital.com lets you trade over 2,900 markets, including 120+ currency pairs and a whopping 2,500 stocks.

For example, I like spread betting on US stocks with Capital.com, as not only are your profits tax-free, but you’re also trading in GBP. By spread betting in GBP, you don’t have to worry about currency conversion costs or the risk of the dollar strengthening while holding a position, which can eat into your profits if you’re not careful. With such a wide range of global shares, you can easily take advantage of price movements in big names like Tesla, Amazon, or Apple.

Capital.com’s demo account is easy to open and requires your details, such as name and email address. However, the £1000 balance is the lowest of the brokers tested. While this might be on the lower end compared to other brokers I’ve tested, I think it’s a more realistic approach.

Most new traders start trading with less than £5,000, so practising with a smaller balance can give you a better feel for trading with real money.

With spreads as low as 0.60 pips on currency pairs like EUR/USD and AUD/USD, some of the best I’ve tested in spread betting. However, spreads were a bit wider on GBP/USD and USD/JPY, around 1.3 and 1.2 pips, respectively, slightly higher than my ideal range.