How to Try a Paid MT5 Indicator Before You Buy: Running the Free Demo in the Strategy Tester
Paid indicators on the MQL5 Market can be downloaded as a free demo before you buy. Few people use it. Over the last 30 days my free tools were downloaded about 2,000 times, and the demos of my paid tools 9 times. One reason, I think, is that a demo does not behave like a normal download: you cannot drop it on a live chart. This post walks through the three steps that do work, what a tester demo can and cannot show, and what I would check before paying for any indicator, mine included.
Why the demo will not run on your chart
The demo of a Market indicator cannot run on a live chart. It runs only in the Strategy Tester, in visual mode, where the terminal replays past prices and the indicator draws on that replay. So if you downloaded a demo and could not attach it to your chart, nothing is broken. A demo is a replay, not a trial period.
The three steps
One. In the terminal's Market, open the product's page and download the free demo. It then appears in the Navigator, in the Market section.
Two. Run it from the Navigator. The terminal selects the product in the Strategy Tester for you (View, Strategy Tester, if the tester is not on screen). Choose a symbol, a timeframe and a date range.
Three. Start the test. For an indicator the visual mode is switched on automatically, and a chart opens where the replay runs. Slow the replay down and pause at the places you care about.
What a tester demo cannot show
The Strategy Tester does not send alerts, push notifications or e-mails and does not play sounds. Any feature described as "alerts you when" can show up in a replay only as a mark on the chart or a line in a log, if the author built one. Features that depend on a live terminal, such as scanning the symbols of your Market Watch or opening another chart on a click, may also be switched off in a replay. A careful product description says which parts the demo shows and which it does not. If it does not say, ask the author in the comments before you buy; how quickly and how plainly you get an answer is useful information too.
What I would check in any demo
Run it on the symbol names your own broker uses, including suffixes such as GOLD# or EURUSD.m, and see whether it loads. Look at whether the panel covers the candles you need to see. Step slowly through a fast move and watch whether anything already drawn changes afterwards. Start the test close to the beginning of your history and see whether the tool tells you that data is short or simply draws nothing. And compare what you see with the screenshots on the product page.
A worked example, with its limits
Until this week the demo of my own Order Block Zones PRO was a poor guide. In the tester it drew little more than the free edition does, because the higher-timeframe layers, the scanner and the alerts were all switched off there. Version 1.53 changes what the replay shows. You now see the zones of the chart timeframe and the panel, the H4 and daily layers when the tested timeframe divides evenly into theirs (M15 and H1 do), and a small mark at each place where a touch notification would have fired. The zone scanner, the notifications themselves and the London and New York session outlines still need a live chart, where a demo cannot run.
A simple way to use it: pick M15 or H1 on a symbol you trade, set a range of two or three months, and watch what price does when it reaches the dashed H4 and daily boxes. That is the question the tool exists to help you look at, and the replay lets you look at it on your own symbols before paying anything. It is a display tool; it gives no trade signals and promises no result.
If the chart-timeframe zones are all you need, the free edition, Order Block Zones, finds them by the same rule and runs on a live chart.
If a demo does not convince you, do not buy. That is what it is for.
