Capital.com Demo account: testing Autoview before you trade live
A Capital.com Demo account is a free, separate account with its own virtual balance, and Autoview connects to it exactly the way it connects to live Capital.com. If you want to prove a new alert, a new command, or a whole CFD strategy works before it touches real money, this is the account to connect first.
Use the default account, not aid=, on Demo. A known Autoview-side bug can still cause a Capital.com Demo command that selects a sub-account with aid= to fail with an "Account Balance not available" error. The connection's ordinary default account (no aid=) is confirmed working. See the full write-up if you hit this.
What Capital.com Demo is
Capital.com's own demo environment runs at a separate API host, demo-api-capital.backend-capital.com, distinct from the live host, api-capital.backend-capital.com. Capital.com describes it as "virtual funds, live prices" with "no expiry" -- your Demo balance doesn't reset on a timer, and prices move with the real market, only the funds behind an order aren't real.
On Autoview, this shows up as its own exchange connection, Capital.com Demo, priced at $0. It isn't a stripped-down copy of the live integration -- the Demo connection literally wraps the same order-placement function live Capital.com calls, and only swaps the API endpoint and the aliases you reference it by. Every parameter documented on the Capital.com getting started guide works the same way on Demo.
Get a Demo account
If you don't already have a Capital.com account, register at capital.com and look for the Demo option during or after signup. Capital.com's own demo-account page doesn't spell out the exact click path from a fresh signup, so if you can't find it right away, check Capital.com's account settings or contact their support directly -- that mechanic lives entirely on Capital.com's side, not Autoview's.
Generate your Demo API credentials
API keys work the same way on Demo as on live: log in to Capital.com, go to Settings → API integrations, and click Generate API key. Capital.com will ask you to name the key and set a Custom Password for it at the same time -- this password is separate from your account login password, and Capital.com only shows it once, so copy it immediately. You'll end up with three values Autoview needs: your account Email Address, the API Key, and the Custom Password.
Double-check which environment the key was generated in before you save it in Autoview -- a key generated against your live account won't authenticate against the Demo connection, and the reverse fails the same way. Full API reference, if you want to see this from Capital.com's own documentation: open-api.capital.com.
Connect it to Autoview
In Autoview, add an account and choose Capital.com Demo from the exchange list rather than Capital.com. Paste the same three values a live connection uses -- Email Address, API Key, Custom Password -- into the Demo connection's own fields. Save, then run the connection test. It's read-only: it creates a session and reads your account list, and places no orders.
Sending commands: what changes, what doesn't
Command syntax is identical to live Capital.com, including symbol format: Capital.com resolves instruments by their own epic identifier (for example EURUSD, GOLD), the same on Demo as live. Every parameter on the Capital.com getting started guide -- direction, quantity, stop-loss, take-profit, guaranteed stops, trailing stops -- behaves the same way on Demo.
The one thing that changes is how the Chrome extension picks the exchange. On the webhook platform, a webhook is already tied to whichever account you connected it to, so you never set an exchange in the command itself. On the extension, swap e=capital for e=capitaldemo (or the equivalent e=CAPITAL-DEMO, e=CAPITALCOMDEMO, and several other recognized aliases):
| Live Capital.com (extension) | Capital.com Demo (extension) |
|---|---|
e=capital s=EURUSD b=buy p=-5% q=1 | e=capitaldemo s=EURUSD b=buy p=-5% q=1 |
Add d=1 to any command first, on Demo the same as live, and Autoview parses it and reports what it would have done without sending anything to Capital.com.
The one thing to avoid: aid= on Demo
Autoview's aid= parameter selects a specific sub-account within a credential set, rather than the connection's default account. On a Capital.com Demo connection specifically, using aid= to switch to a different sub-account can still trigger an Account Balance not available rejection -- a currency-matching mismatch in Autoview's own connector code that was fixed for the ordinary, default-account case but not yet for the sub-account path.
If you don't reference multiple sub-accounts under one Capital.com Demo credential set, this doesn't affect you -- the default path is the one confirmed working. If you do, drop aid= and let the command run against the connection's default account until this is resolved, or read the full breakdown of the error for the exact mechanism.
Once Demo looks right
Demo proves your command syntax and your alert wiring, not your live account's credentials or permissions -- those are separate on Capital.com, so a working Demo connection doesn't skip the setup steps on live Capital.com. When you're ready, follow the getting started with Capital.com guide to connect your live account, generate a live API key, and run the same dry-run-then-live check at a small size.