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When reviewing binary options brokers, you will often see us and many others stress the importance of using a demo account. That is because a demo account is one of the most important tools that a broker can offer its prospective customers that indicate good credibility and trustworthiness. Let’s take a look at the main benefits that a binary option demo account can offer.

First, it is a great beginner teaching and learning tool. Like any other skillset, there is a learning curve associated with learning how to successfully trade binary options and beginners would benefit from not having to use real money for a significant portion of their learning curve.

What this means is that a binary options broker which does not provide a demo account is either not beginner friendly or is looking to take advantage of beginners. Remember that in binary options trading, the broker is often on the other side of the trade, so a beginner’s failure will be the broker’s success.

The second reason is that it allows traders the chance to familiarize themselves with the binary options broker’s platform. While many brokers use very popular trading platforms such as SpotOption, which many traders will already be familiar with, quite a number of brokers use their own proprietary platforms.

In those instances, having a demo account would be extremely helpful in familiarizing traders with the brokers’ platforms. And again, it doesn’t speak highly of brokers which do not offer said demo account.

We should caution however, that trading conditions on a demo account sometimes does not exactly replicate the trading conditions on a live account. Due to connection speed and latency issues, many traders have often complained about faster or slower trading speeds on the demo account compared to the live account.

And while most of this is unintentional, there are unscrupulous brokers who ‘rig’ the demo accounts to give deceptively positive trading results in order to lure in traders. This is highly unethical and not what most brokers do. Nevertheless, all traders should be aware that there will likely be some discrepancy between a demo account and a live account.

That brings us to the subject broker of this article: GrandOption. After touting all the benefits of a demo account, the question on everyone’s minds would be “Does GrandOption have a demo account?” And the answer to that question is ‘unfortunately not’.

Despite being a CySEC regulated broker that generally has a good reputation, GrandOption does NOT have a demo account, which means that it may not be the most suitable binary options broker for beginner traders.

GrandOption Accounts

GrandOption may not have a demo account, but it does have four other types of live trading accounts for you to choose from. Going from the lowest tier to the highest tier, the accounts are standard, gold, platinum, and diamond.

• The standard account only enjoys access to GrandOption’s standard high/low and 60 second options plus GrandOption’s video on demand database of educational training videos. Standard account holders are also eligible for one free withdrawal per month.
• The gold account allows account holders to trade the high/low and 60 seconds options with no restrictions whatsoever. In addition, they also get a personal market expert whose job it is to help manage the account holder’s portfolio and a one on one training session with GrandOption’s market analysis. They have more than one free withdrawal per month and enjoy an extra 2% return on every trade. This means that if a standard high/low binary options typically pays out 85% if it’s in the money for a standard account holder, the gold account holder will enjoy a 87% payout instead.
• The platinum account is considered the beginning of GrandOption’s VIP level accounts. As a VIP, platinum account holders are going to get a personalized trading experience, starting with 24/7 access to GrandOption’s designated market expert. They also get access to additional training sessions with GrandOption’s senior market analysis. Finally, platinum account holders enjoy unlimited free withdrawals; they also get an extra 4% return on each trade.
• The diamond account is basically the ‘advanced VIP’ or ‘VVIP’ status. Diamond account holders have no trading restrictions and also no commissions. 24/7 multilingual customer support is available to them plus a 24/7 dedicated personal coach!

Other than free withdrawals of course, diamond account holders also get a training session with one of GrandOption’s top market experts. As with the gold account, diamond account holders also enjoy an extra 4% return on each trade.

GrandOption Minimum Deposit

GrandOption’s minimum deposit amount is $250, which is the standard minimum deposit amount practiced in the binary options broking industry. This level of minimum deposit will of course only earn you access to one of GrandOption’s standard trading accounts.

To get access to the gold, platinum, and diamond trading accounts, much higher account balances would be required however GrandOption does not provide such information on their website, which is quite in contrast to their competitors.

In terms of trading however, the minimum investment amount on a per trade basis is $25. This is actually on the high side when compared to the industry as we have seen minimum investment per trade amounts as low as $10 or even $5 in some cases. GrandOption also notes that the maximum investment on a per trade basis is $20,000 although larger trades may be arranged.

GrandOption Binary Options

Now that we’ve talked a lot about the types of accounts GrandOption offers (and the type it does not offer), let’s take a look at the types of binary options that GrandOption offers its traders. Currently GrandOption only offers two main types of options which are ‘High/Low options’ and ‘Above/Below options’:

1. High/Low options are the standard type of binary options in which a trader tries to predict whether a certain instrument’s price will trade above or below the market price when the option expires.
2. The Above/Below option works the same way as the High/Low option, except that at the point of expiry, we look at a predetermined price instead of the market price.

Speaking of expiry times, you are probably wondering how many different expiry periods GrandOption offers. Well, currently they offer the following expiry times: 60 seconds, 5-minutes, 30-minutes, 1 hour, end of day, end of week, end of month, and weekend.

As for payout ratios, GrandOption notes that for in the money options, payouts can range anywhere from 80% to 310%. Note that payouts at the top end of the range are for specific ‘High Yield’ options and for an option to have such a high payout, the probability of it expiring in the money has been deemed to be very low.

GrandOption does not charge any commissions or spreads so all of the instruments you see are at market price. However we must again stress that unlike forex brokerage, in binary options trading the broker is on the other side of the trade. Your gain is their loss and vice versa. That’s why they don’t charge any spreads; because they are standing on the other side of the trade.

GrandOption Website

When evaluating a binary options broker, it is very important to carefully peruse their website before signing up to find out all the relevant information. As such, we place a high weightage on binary options brokers’ websites in our reviews. To us, a detailed website with all the relevant information laid out in a easy to navigate manner shows respect to prospective clients.

Unfortunately, GrandOption’s website is not the most detailed. As we mentioned above, they do not give information such as the minimum account balances required for each account type. The website also looks rather dated although it is rather easy to navigate. We also note positively that traders can view GrandOption’s Scipio web based trading platform directly from their website without having to open an account.

GrandOption Withdrawals

Many of the complaints against unscrupulous binary options brokers arise at the point where disgruntled traders try to withdraw their account funds. Most common complaints we have seen would be arbitrary denying of withdrawals based on vague applications of the broker’s terms and conditions.

And because such brokers are often totally unregulated, there is little recourse to the trader. This is why we strongly recommend to only trade with regulated brokers, and fortunately in this case GrandOption is CySEC regulated.

Unfortunately, GrandOption does not tell us explicitly on their website how long it takes for them to process each withdrawal request; which is again a definite negative. However we did some digging and found out that GrandOption typically processes withdrawal requests within 1 to 3 business days, which is actually good and better than the industry average of 7 business days.

Of course, on top of the withdrawal processing time, there is also the time taken for the money to reach the trader’s account and this would vary depending on the withdrawal method used.

GrandOption also charges withdrawal fees based on the payment method used. For example withdrawals via credit card, Neteller, OKpay, and Qiwi are 3.5% while wire transfers cost about $30. The cheapest option is WebMoney at 0.9%.

GrandOption Bonus

While GrandOption does offer various types of bonuses to its clients, they currently do not have any active bonus promotions such as a welcome bonus (one of the most common types of bonuses in the binary options broking industry).

That said, any bonus they do offer comes with associated terms and conditions such as a minimum trading volume requirement, calculated based on bonus amount, prior to the trader being allowed to withdraw said bonus.

We should note that many unregulated brokers apply the minimum trading volume requirement on both the trader’s bonus amount and the original deposit amount. This is absolutely unethical and only serves to lock in a trader’s own funds. We cannot recommend trading with any such broker; fortunately all CySEC regulated brokers are not allowed to have such conditions.