IC Markets Demo From Pakistan: the Only Step With No Payment Leg
A simulated balance answers the platform question completely and the two payment questions not at all - which is exactly why it is worth doing first from here.
Open IC Markets Account →A demo is the only part of this broker a Pakistani reader can use end to end without a payment leg existing at all. It runs the real MetaTrader or cTrader terminal against a simulated balance, opened from the Secure Client Portal at secure.ic.com, and no rupee leaves the country to create one.
What that buys you here specifically
Two of the three hard questions about this broker from Pakistan are payment questions - which currency the balance is denominated in, and whether the transfer itself is permitted - and a demo answers neither. It answers the third: whether the platform, the symbol list and the cost structure suit you at all. Resolving the cheap question first is simply good sequencing.
What the page will not tell you
The virtual balance, how long a demo stays open and how many you may hold at once are not published anywhere we could check, so no number for them appears here. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money.
Why a demo is the easiest first step from Pakistan
Three questions decide whether this broker suits a Pakistani trader: does the platform fit, which currency does the balance live in, and is the transfer permitted. A demo settles the first outright and touches neither of the others, so it costs nothing to answer the one question that is free to answer.
- Run MT4, MT5 or cTrader against simulated money with no rupee crossing a border and no payment channel involved.
- Watch how the 50% stop out and the banded leverage eat free margin before real equity is exposed to either.
- Learn the terminal on the platform you actually intend to use, since the platform is fixed when a live account is registered and cannot be swapped later.
- Get used to a screen that reports everything in USD while your own budget is in rupees - the mismatch is permanent, because PKR is not one of the ten base currencies.
What a demo will not price for you
Two costs stay invisible on a simulated balance and both are larger than they look. The first is carry: a Swap Free position pays a flat per-lot overnight charge instead of swap, and on gold that is USD 62 per lot per night against USD 11 on EURUSD - a single gold lot held ten nights costs USD 620, whatever the trade did. The second is conversion: a rupee budget crosses at least one rate before it becomes account equity, and the broker publishes neither the rate nor a rupee rail. Run the platform test on a demo, then price those two separately before deciding anything.
From demo to a funded account: what actually changes
The screen carries over unchanged; everything behind it does not. A live account is opened with Raw Trading Ltd of Seychelles under FSA Securities Dealer licence SD018. Funding it means moving rupees into one of ten base currencies, none of which is PKR, across a published funding list of fifteen rails, none of which is Pakistani - and SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022 already treats that remittance as a breach of section 4(1) of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, instructing banks to identify and block it. The demo is the part of the process where none of that is yet true.
Open a Demo or Live Account →What a simulated balance actually removes from the problem
A demo hands out platform credentials attached to a simulated balance, so orders are placed, filled and closed inside a genuine terminal while nothing moves through a bank. For a reader in Pakistan that removes the entire funding question from the experiment: SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022 concerns remittance to an offshore CFD platform, and a demo remits nothing.
It is a bad instrument for the questions that follow. It will not show you how an order fills when real liquidity thins out, and a profitable demo month says nothing about a live account whose costs include a commission line, an overnight holding fee and at least one currency conversion before the first trade.
The three places simulation and reality come apart
Three things a simulation reproduces badly, and all three are worse from Pakistan than elsewhere. The first is timing: fills, slippage and requotes behave differently around the London open near 12:00 to 13:00 PKT and the New York open near 17:00 to 18:00 PKT, which is exactly when a Pakistani trader is most likely to be at the screen. The second is carry: a live Raw Spread lot costs USD 3.50 a side, and a Swap Free position adds a flat overnight charge on top - USD 62 per lot per night on gold, USD 11 on EURUSD - which a demo does not necessarily apply the same way. The third is currency: demo and live alike report in USD or another of the ten base currencies, so a rupee-denominated plan needs converting before any of the numbers on screen mean what you think they mean.
Everything that changes the moment money is involved
Going live changes nothing about the screen and everything behind it. The counterparty becomes Raw Trading Ltd, the Seychelles entity holding FSA Securities Dealer licence SD018, with no Pakistani regulator behind the relationship. The published funding list carries cards, PayPal, Neteller, Skrill, wires and several region-specific rails, none of them Pakistani, and every one of them settles in a currency that is not the rupee. On top of that sits SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022, which treats the remittance as a breach of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act and directs banks to block it. Read the circular and the client agreement before any of that becomes your problem rather than a paragraph on a page.
What a demo copies and what it quietly leaves out
| Detail | IC Markets |
|---|---|
| Minimum deposit | USD 0 to open any of the three main accounts, though the balance is denominated in one of ten currencies and PKR is not among them |
| Maximum leverage | 1:5000 on the first band only, stepping down with size on MetaTrader; a flat 1:1000 on cTrader |
| Tradable instruments | 2,250+ on MetaTrader against 121 on cTrader, with 90+ named on the Swap Free table |
| Account types | Raw Spread, cTrader Raw Spread and Standard, all three offered with Swap Free |
| Platforms | MetaTrader 4 and 5 from New York, cTrader and TradingView from London |
| Execution | No dealing desk in the path; institutional pricing passed through as quoted |
| Support | All day, every day, in English; no Pakistan office and no Urdu line are advertised |
| Pakistan-specific licence | None, since Pakistan runs no retail forex or CFD regime; SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022 directs banks to block payments to offshore CFD platforms |
A demo copies the platform and the prices. It copies neither the funding leg, nor the verification state, nor a live account margin. Figures read from the brand pages on 2 September 2026; leverage means a high risk of losing money.
Rows to hold your live statement against
| Account | Spread from | Commission | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raw Spread | 0.0 pips | USD 3.50 per side | Raw MetaTrader pricing, USD 7.00 the round turn, Swap Free offered, no opening minimum |
| cTrader Raw Spread | 0.0 pips | USD 3.00 per USD 100,000 | The London side and its 121 symbols, Swap Free offered, no opening minimum |
| Standard | ~0.8 pips | USD 0 | No commission line, the cost carried inside the spread, Swap Free offered |
Find your own row before deciding a charge looks wrong. Leverage carries a high risk of losing money.