I believe, it varies from trader to trader. If you are a newbie, you must start with a demo account. But if you already have some knowledge of the market, you can start with micro account.
I would recommend beginners use a demo account because it means they can take risks without worrying about losing their own money, but if you have proper knowledge of what you are doing, you can use a micro account.
I find micro accounts more useful than demo trading which is emotionless. It won’t matter to you if you didn’t use stop loss in your demo account or if one losing trade ate up all your previous profit, whereas if the same happens in live trading it can break you as a trader. Many people argue that since the amount invested in a micro account is very little it too can not stir emotions in a trader. If you’ve invested a small amount that means you can’t afford to lose much and even small losses on a micro account will hurt you.
Micro is only useful if you're ok with small dollar amounts. Grinding small real dollars isn't motivating.
Mmmm, you're thinking like a scalper. Micros should not be used for scalping unless you have a bit of meat in them (i.e. more than 1 contract, but less than 6.) After 6 it is more efficient to do it on a single mini.
I will be one of the few and do demo with Ninja trader, years ago was best around as each demo trade gave an order number. Take 1k and triple it three separate times in micro, then you have better shot going live. Trade station is the worst as price hits lit once and you are filled, THAT is not real life. No point in losing $50 plus a week cause lacking so much knowledge.
Micro account is a type account for the beginner trader, this is used mini contract size, and the trader can deposit with only $10, start with 0.01 lot size to learn trading real and live emotion, I use the micro account when start forex in my broker.
That is not my experience on NT7, which is "years ago". The green arrows are the order ID numbers. The yellow box with the real account trades are known by the real account number starting with "9" in the "A" column. The blue box with the sim trades are known by the sim account with "S" in the "A" column. Note the difference? The live accounts have what you would call an order number. The demo trades have only randomly-generated hexadecimal garbage as order numbers. Ninjatrader's demo engine is not good because it gives BS order IDs. It is good because with live data, it's engine is good at fairly approximating fills in a given market. As for it's handling of journaling for swing trades with an external broker? It's a POS. It gets many things wrong, like position size and entry/exit price. It simply was not designed with the swing trader in mind, especially outside of NinjaBroker.
Suppose you have gained enough demo experience and have the confidence to live trade. In that case, I suggest using the Micro account because demo alone cannot help in understanding the forex market. The loss of capital and risk involved in the Micro account is lower, so it would be advantageous to use it for live trading experience.