Common Demo Account Problems
Balance and reset issues
Refill problems are the most reported and the least serious. They are nearly always a stale session rather than a platform fault.
Before any of that, give it a moment. Balance updates are not always instant across every view, and a great many reports of a failed restock turn out to be a screen that had not caught up yet.
Refill not applying
You press the restock control, the confirmation appears and the balance on the chart screen does not change. The usual cause is a stale view: the account updated and the page you are looking at did not.
Work through it in order rather than repeating the restock, which risks confusion about what actually happened:
- Refresh the page, or close and reopen the app.
- Check the mode and confirm you are looking at the practice balance rather than the funded one.
- Sign out and sign back in, which rebuilds the session cleanly.
- Clear the browser cache for the site, or update the app if you are on mobile.
- Try the other official address, which rules out a problem specific to one route.
A related confusion comes from having traded on a different device earlier. The practice balance is a property of the account rather than the device, so a figure that looks wrong on your phone is frequently the correct result of a session you ran in a browser and forgot about.
Checking the trade history before reporting a discrepancy resolves most of these in a few seconds. The history is authoritative in a way that memory is not.
Wrong starting amount
Sometimes the restored balance is not the figure you expected. Before assuming a fault, check what the account actually started with rather than what you read somewhere: the practice starting balance is not published by the operator, and third-party figures are often stale.
Practice balances also change from time to time and can differ by region. If your figure is consistent across sessions and devices, it is your figure.
Time-related oddities have a similar explanation. Positions settle at expiry according to the platform clock rather than your device clock, and a device clock that has drifted makes settlement look early or late. That is worth checking before assuming anything about the platform.
Clearing the glitch
The single most effective step for balance display problems is a clean sign-out and sign-in. It resolves the overwhelming majority of them, and it is faster than anything else on the list.
If a genuine discrepancy survives all of that, it is worth contacting the operator\'s support rather than guessing. Our page on refilling the demo balance covers the normal behaviour so you can tell whether what you are seeing is unusual.
Refresh, check the mode, sign out and back in — three steps that clear nearly every balance display problem.
Mode-switch confusion
This is the only problem here that can cost you money, and it is the one most easily prevented.
This is the only item on the page worth building a habit around rather than a checklist, because a checklist is consulted when something has already gone wrong and a habit runs before it does.
Take the symptoms one at a time rather than changing several things at once.
Demo versus real toggle
The account holds both a practice and a funded balance behind one login, and a selector decides which one you are trading. The selector remembers its last state, which is convenient and is exactly why accidents happen.
Find the control deliberately on your first session and learn how the interface signals each mode. On a desktop this is usually obvious; on a phone it is smaller and easier to miss, which is where most of the accidents occur.
Interfaces vary in how loudly they signal the active mode. Some use colour, some a label, some both, and any of them is easy to overlook on a small screen in a hurry. Learning exactly which signal your version uses is a one-minute task that pays for itself the first time it matters.
If you share a device with anyone, the same applies with more force. A session left signed in on the funded side is the most avoidable way for something expensive to happen.
Accidental live trades
The sequence is always the same. A session ends on the funded side, the app is reopened later, and the first position of the new session goes onto an account the user assumed was practice.
One habit prevents all of it: glance at the mode indicator before every position, not once per session. It takes a second and it is the cheapest insurance available anywhere in this account.
If it happens, treat it as an ordinary trade rather than an emergency. Let it settle, note what happened, and turn the glance into a rule. Panic-closing a position you did not mean to open frequently costs more than leaving it alone.
Deposit prompts appearing where you did not expect them are another mode signal. Practice mode never asks for funding, so a request to deposit in the middle of what you thought was a practice session means either the mode is not what you assumed or the page is not the platform.
Confirming the mode
Two further precautions are worth adopting while you are still practising. Keep the funded balance at zero until you have deliberately decided to trade it, since an unfunded real account cannot be traded by accident. And set your practice stake to the size you would actually fund, so a mis-moded position is small in either direction.
That second habit has a double benefit, since it also makes your practice results far more representative. Our page on demo versus real accounts covers why.
Check the mode indicator before every position, and keep the funded side empty until you mean to use it.
App and login snags
An outdated build is the first thing to check on mobile, and a cached session is the first thing to check in a browser.
Establish which build you are running before doing anything else on mobile. It is usually shown in the app settings, and knowing it turns a vague problem into a specific one.
Outdated app
Old builds produce a recognisable set of symptoms: sign-in failures, charts that do not load, indicators that vanish and layouts that reset. If you installed the app from an APK rather than a store, it does not update itself, and months can pass without you noticing.
Update from the same official source you installed from, and prefer a store listing where one exists in your region so updates arrive automatically. Our page on the demo on Android and iOS covers the install routes and their trade-offs.
Browser extensions are worth ruling out early on a desktop. Ad blockers, script blockers and privacy tools regularly interfere with charting platforms, producing symptoms that look like platform faults. Testing in a private window with extensions disabled separates the two immediately.
Network conditions produce a third family of symptoms: charts that lag, prices that update in bursts, and positions that appear to open late. Those are worth noticing rather than fixing, because they are information about the environment you would be trading in with real money.
None of these steps risks anything on the account itself.
Cache problems
In a browser, an old cached session is the equivalent problem. Symptoms include a page that partially loads, a balance that does not update and an interface that looks subtly wrong compared with another device.
Clearing the site data and signing in again resolves most of it. Trying a private window first is a quick diagnostic: if the platform behaves correctly there, the problem is cached data rather than the platform.
Keep a note of your chart settings before any reinstall. It is the one thing that does not survive, and rebuilding a layout from memory produces slightly different settings, which quietly breaks the comparability of any test that spans the reinstall.
Reinstalling cleanly
If updating does not help, remove the app and install it again from the official source. Nothing is lost by doing so — the account, the practice balance and the history all live on the platform rather than on the device.
Check what you are installing while you are there. A package obtained from an aggregator site, or one offering features the platform does not advertise, is a modified build, and a modified trading app is a credential harvester with charts attached.
Update or reinstall from the official source on mobile, clear the cache in a browser, and nothing on the account is ever at risk from either.
Chart and tool glitches
Missing indicators and vanishing layouts are almost always a session or build problem rather than a change to the platform.
Check the instrument as well as the tool. Some indicators behave differently or refuse to draw on instruments with limited history or unusual trading hours, which looks like a fault and is a data limitation.
If a tool is present in the browser but missing in the app on the same account, that comparison has already told you where the problem is, and no further diagnosis is needed before updating.
Compare against another device before assuming a fault.
Missing indicators
If a tool you used yesterday is not there today, check the build before concluding anything. Old versions lose access to newer features, and a sideloaded app several months behind will differ visibly from the browser version.
Compare against the browser on the same account. If the tool is present there and absent in the app, the app is the problem, which narrows the fix to an update or a reinstall.
Indicator parameters deserve the same treatment as layouts. A tool that reappears with default settings after an update looks present and is not the tool you were using, and results collected on either side of that change are not comparable.
Writing the parameters down takes one line and removes an entire class of silent inconsistency from your records.
Layout resets
Saved layouts disappearing is usually cache-related in a browser, or the result of a reinstall on mobile. It is irritating rather than serious, and it is another reason to write your settings down: a layout you can rebuild in two minutes is a layout you have not really lost.
Keeping the settings on paper has a second benefit. Sessions stay comparable across a rebuild, which matters if you are running a test that spans several weeks.
Weekend behaviour catches people out regularly. Many instruments do not trade at weekends, and a platform showing a flat line or refusing an order on a Sunday is working correctly. Check what is actually open before treating it as a fault.
Note what you tried, so a repeat is faster to diagnose.
Refreshing the session
For anything visual — charts not drawing, prices frozen, the interface unresponsive — the order is the same as everywhere else on this page. Refresh, sign out and in, clear the cache, update, try the other official address.
Frozen prices deserve one extra check: confirm the instrument is actually trading. Stocks and indices follow their exchange hours rather than running continuously, and a market that is closed looks exactly like a chart that has stopped working.
| Symptom | Most likely cause | First thing to try |
|---|---|---|
| Balance not updating | Stale session | Sign out and sign back in |
| Traded the wrong account | Mode selector remembered its last state | Check the indicator before every position |
| Cannot sign in on mobile | Outdated build | Update from the official source |
| Indicators or layouts missing | Old app version or cleared cache | Compare against the browser, then update |
| Prices frozen | Market closed, or a connection drop | Check the instrument\'s trading hours |
Compare the app against the browser on the same account, and the cause of a display problem usually identifies itself.
Problem-solving takeaways
A short checklist covers nearly everything, and only one item on it can ever cost you money.
Work through them in order rather than all at once. Doing three things simultaneously fixes the problem without telling you which one mattered, and you will meet the same symptom again.
Almost none of it is specific to this platform. Stale sessions, cached data and outdated builds produce the same symptoms on any charting application, which is why the same five steps resolve so much of it and why none of them requires any knowledge of the platform itself.
Keep the order consistent so that a repeat of the same symptom is diagnosed faster the second time. A checklist you always run in the same sequence becomes a tool; one you improvise each time is a guess.
Most fixes are simple
Refresh, sign out and back in, clear the cache, update the app, try the other official address. Those five steps resolve the overwhelming majority of practice-account problems, and none of them risks anything, since the account lives on the platform rather than on your device.
If something survives all five, contact the operator\'s support rather than a forum. Practice-account issues are low-stakes by definition, which makes them a reasonable first test of how the support relationship works.
Before contacting support, write down what you did, what you expected and what happened instead, with times. That takes two minutes and turns a vague report into an actionable one, which usually shortens the exchange considerably.
Confirm the mode
The one item worth building into a habit rather than a checklist. A glance at the mode indicator before every position removes the only fault on this page with a financial consequence.
The same applies to the browser on a desktop, since a very old browser produces charting problems that look exactly like platform faults.
Practice mode is also the right place to discover any of this, since a fault that costs you nothing is a fault you can investigate calmly. Meeting the same problem for the first time on a funded account, mid-position, is considerably less pleasant.
Keep the app updated
Most reported problems trace back to an old build. A store install handles this for you; a sideloaded APK does not, and a reminder every few weeks is the price of that route.
You can open the free demo and check any of this on your own account in a few minutes. Platform facts on this page were checked against Pocket Option\'s own pages on August 2, 2026; the operator does not publish a troubleshooting guide for practice accounts, so the steps here are ordinary software diagnostics rather than documented procedures.
Five generic steps clear nearly everything, and the only habit worth adding is checking the mode before every trade.
What readers ask about the demo
My Pocket Option demo balance will not refill. What should I do?
Refresh the page or restart the app first, then confirm you are looking at the practice balance rather than the funded one. If it persists, sign out and back in, which rebuilds the session and resolves the overwhelming majority of balance display problems.
I accidentally traded on my real account instead of the demo.
Let the position settle rather than panic-closing it, which frequently costs more. Then build the habit that prevents a repeat: glance at the mode indicator before every position, and keep the funded balance at zero until you deliberately intend to trade it.
Why does my demo look different on my phone and my computer?
Almost always because the app is an older build than the browser version. A sideloaded APK does not update itself, so compare the two on the same account and update from the official source if the app is the one missing features.
My chart prices are frozen. Is the platform down?
Check the instrument first. Stocks and indices follow their exchange hours rather than trading continuously, and a closed market looks identical to a broken chart. If the instrument should be trading, refresh, then try the operator's other official address.
Will reinstalling the app lose my demo progress?
No. The account, the practice balance and the trade history all live on the platform rather than on the device, so a reinstall costs you nothing except the time to sign in again and rebuild any saved chart layout.
Who do I contact if nothing works?
The operator's own support, rather than a forum or a messaging group. A practice-account problem is low-stakes by definition, which makes it a reasonable first test of how the support relationship actually functions before any money is involved.