A demo account allows you to check out the binary option platform and make trades using play-money. You can learn how the platform works without losing any real money and you can see if it runs smoothly, is easy to navigate, is riddled with bugs, and so on.

Ideally, a binary option broker should offer demo accounts both for the standard browser platform and for any mobile apps.

Requirements

Most brokers will require you to go through a registration process before you get access to the demo account. There are also those who force you to make a first deposit if you want to get access to the demo account. Since the smallest possible deposit can be quite hefty, this creates a substantial threshold for potential traders. There are a few binary options brokers, such as Ayrex, that have gone in the other direction. Not only do they abstain from asking for a first deposit – they don’t even require you to sign up to get access to a demo account. You can start exploring at your leisure, without having to hand over your email address or any other private information.

When it comes to the client’s use of the demo account, similar differences in generosity can be observed among the various brokers. Some brokers limit the time you can spend using your demo account or limit how much play-money you get to trade with. Others are more generous and allow you to roam the demo account freely for as long as you want, checking out new features and really learning how everything works without feeling any stress or having to budget your play-money trading. Of course, from a trader’s perspective, the second type of broker is to be preferred.

Try out new trading strategies

Even if you’re already a real-money trader, having a demo account can be useful if you have new trading strategies that you want to try out without losing real money. Many trading strategies sounds great in theory – it is only when we actually try them out that we notice their weak sides.

Sometimes, spending some time tinkering with a strategy in a demo account is all it takes to turn a so-so strategy into a highly profitable one with the help of a few tweaks and corrections here and there. It is of course better to do this with play-money in a demo account than with your own hard-earned cash in a real-money account.

Find new features

Having fun with a demo account allows us to try out all the features of the trading platform without risking any real money. We can change the settings, employ various tools, by exotic options, etc because we aren’t risking our own money. This is a great way to discover new features that we can later incorporate in our real-money trading.

If you are interested in learning technical analysis and incorporating it in your binary option trading, a demo account is a great place to start, since you can employ the theories as you learn about them. Mixing theory with practical training is a quick way to learn new things.