I just thought about if phantom trades on a real account could be an alternative to real trades on a demo account in general because demo accounts often have (slightly) different conditions and behave (slightly) different than real accounts.
The first thing is surely that phantom trades are treated seperately in trading statistics and in the performance report, they are accounted to some points and not to some other ones (details in the manual). Then I wonder if transaction costs are accounted to phantom trades but the manual says "In test mode the simulated costs are displayed, in trade mode the real costs" so if phantom trades on a real account do not cause real costs I guess they won't be accounted and this is (for me) a KO criteria. But I'm sure I missed some other important differences!