Start with Pepperstone. It is the highest-scoring account of the 14 we rank that publishes both halves of what you need to know before signing up: how long the demo lasts, and whether opening one costs anything.
Compiled by Justin Grossbard. Updated . How pages are made
Every provider we rank is in this table, in our own score order, with the demo terms it publishes on its own UK site.
A demo account lets you place practice bets without real money, and our guide sets out what a spread bet is before you try one.
Our spread bet content is supported by broker partners, who pay us on a retainer basis rather than per referral. This page is information rather than financial advice.
| Account | How long it lasts | Virtual balance | Deposit to open | Our score | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pepperstone | No fixed term; Pepperstone, MT4 and MT5 demo accounts expire after 60 days of inactivity, Trader and TradingView demo accounts after 90 | Unlimited virtual balance | None | 98/100 | Pepperstone98/100
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| Spreadex | 95/100 | Spreadex95/100 This comparison holds no confirmed demo duration, balance or deposit requirement for this provider. | |||||||
| Capital.com | No expiry | None | 85/100 | Capital.com85/100
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| IG | £10,000 in virtual funds | 83/100 | IG83/100
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| ThinkMarkets | 14 days from registration. A demo that does not expire is available only to live account holders | None | 82/100 | ThinkMarkets82/100
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| OANDA | 80/100 | OANDA80/100 This comparison holds no confirmed demo duration, balance or deposit requirement for this provider. | |||||||
| StoneX Trading | 12 weeks | £10,000 in virtual funds | 80/100 | StoneX Trading80/100
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| Trade Nation | £10,000 in virtual funds | 77/100 | Trade Nation77/100
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| FXCM | £50,000 of virtual money | None | 67/100 | FXCM67/100
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| CMC Markets | £10,000 of virtual funds | None | 65/100 | CMC Markets65/100
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| ActivTrades | £10,000 virtual funds | None | 60/100 | ActivTrades60/100
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| Spread Co | 6 months | 43/100 | Spread Co43/100
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| Vantage | $100,000 in virtual funds | None | 40/100 | Vantage40/100
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| FxPro | 30/100 | FxPro30/100 This comparison holds no confirmed demo duration, balance or deposit requirement for this provider. | |||||||
We read the confirmed demo account terms shown in this comparison between 22 Sep 2026 and 3 Oct 2026. A blank cell means this comparison holds no confirmed value; it is not a statement that the provider offers no demo account.
Providers are ranked by our general broker scores, set by the published criteria behind how we score spread betting accounts. What a broker pays us never influences a score. You can also find your platform in the platforms comparison.
One rule, applied to that table. Of the accounts that publish both a demo term and whether opening one needs money, take the highest-scoring. Three of the 14 clear it and Pepperstone is first among them, which you can redo from the table above.
73.6% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with this provider. Your capital is at risk. This page is not financial or tax advice.
The full assessment of the live account behind that demo is in our Pepperstone Spread Betting Review.
There are two different kinds of limit and they are not interchangeable.
A fixed term starts when you register and ends on a date, whether you use the account or not. ThinkMarkets states the shortest of these and Spread Co the longest.
An inactivity window is different: the account stays open as long as you keep using it, and expires only after a set period with no logins or trades.
The virtual balance is worth a second look. Eight providers publish one, and they do not agree. The sterling balances run from £10,000 to £50,000, and the commonest is a starting balance of £10,000. Our spread betting calculator shows what a given stake is worth per point, which is the sum worth doing at the size you will really trade.
Spreadex, OANDA and FxPro have no confirmed demo account terms in our stored comparison. We draw no conclusion from this gap about what those providers offer.
Every provider in the table above has a full assessment in our spread betting broker reviews directory, which records what each one publishes and where we read it, and the same accounts are ranked on cost and markets in our spread betting platforms UK comparison.
Use the demo of the account you intend to fund on indices, commodities or currency pairs. Move to a live trading account at the smallest stake, where margin is real from the first bet.
Our guide to getting started covers what a first position actually involves, and our beginner comparison covers which accounts publish a minimum stake at all.
Keep the demo open afterwards where the provider allows it. Testing a change to how you trade costs nothing there and costs real money live, and that is worth more once you have a live account than it was before.
A demo teaches you the platform, and the platform is the easy half. It cannot tell you what your stake is worth per point on the market you are about to trade, and that arithmetic is what the size of a first live bet turns on.
Execution in a fast market. There is no real order going to a real venue, so slippage and the way a fill behaves when a price moves quickly are simulated rather than experienced.
Your own behaviour. Between 60.7% and 76.6% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading spread bets and CFDs with the providers we compare, and that band is the whole range across the fourteen rather than a selection from it.
Spread betting uses leverage, so your losses can exceed the amount you set out to risk on a bet. This page is not financial or tax advice; tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and can change, and our page on spread betting and tax explains how it applies to most UK retail traders.
It depends entirely on the provider. ThinkMarkets states 14 days from registration. A demo that does not expire is available only to live account holders. Nine providers lack a confirmed duration record in this comparison, which does not establish that they publish no demo terms of their own.
Yes. What a demo does not reproduce reliably is slippage and how an order fills when a market moves fast, because there is no real order going to a real venue.
No. The balance is virtual and cannot be withdrawn. Providers set that starting balance themselves and the figures differ a lot between them, which matters more than it sounds: practising with a virtual balance many times larger than the account you will actually fund teaches you position sizes you cannot afford.
You open a demo account with the provider from its site, with email and contact details. Seven of 14 providers state no deposit is needed, and none we rank says its demo costs anything; one that states nothing has not said it is free. At least one provider restricts its non-expiring demo to people who already hold a live account.
A demo removes the one variable that decides most outcomes, which is how you behave when the money is yours. Use one to learn the platform and the mechanics, then go live at the smallest stake the account will take rather than the size you practised with.
Three things you can check before you sign up. It runs long enough to be useful, it tells you the terms up front rather than after registration, and it uses the same platform as the live account so nothing you learn is wasted. The table shows confirmed duration and deposit terms, and marks fields not confirmed in this comparison.
Justin Grossbard co-founded Spread-Bet.co.uk with Noam Korbl in 2024, and co-founded the broker comparison network CompareForexBrokers with him in 2014. He has written for Kiplinger, Entrepreneur, Finance Magnates and MoneyShow since 2022, with articles on forex and trading at MoneyShow, Finance Magnates and Kiplinger.
Updated . Updated on 14 Oct 2026: In the demo account comparison, Pepperstone's retail-loss figure moved to 73.6% from 72.9% after the 14 Oct 2026 read of its UK site. The loss-figure range now starts at 60.7% at Spread Co, from 61% at Spreadex, with the high end unchanged at 76.6% at OANDA.