Can You Get Banned for Buying a LoL Account?

This guide covers what Riot's rules say, what its enforcement and the Vanguard anti-cheat actually target, and the steps that keep your risk low. For the broader picture, including seller scams, see is it safe to buy a LoL account. Riot's rules are in its terms of service.

What Riot's Rules Say

Riot's terms of service don't allow you to sell, buy, transfer or share your Riot account, so a bought account is outside the rules whoever you buy it from. In practice, though, Riot's enforcement is aimed at behaviour that harms games, not at who owns an account: buying a hand-levelled account and logging in from a new device isn't what gets accounts banned. What does get them banned is covered below.

What Riot's Enforcement Targets

Riot's automated systems are built around behaviour that harms games. The patterns most associated with bans:

• Bot-levelled accounts — accounts levelled by automated software, often in bulk. These can be banned long after they were sold, when a batch is detected.
• Boosting and account sharing — someone other than the owner playing ranked on the account, usually for payment. Riot penalises boosting, so a rank that someone else climbed is a liability rather than a selling point.
• Cheats and scripts — detected by the Vanguard anti-cheat, which Riot added to League in May 2024 and which can also lead to hardware bans.
• Toxicity and game-ruining behaviour — handled through reports and penalties, which escalate.

None of these is about who owns the account. A hand-levelled account played normally by its new owner doesn't fit any of them, but an account's past does travel with it, which is why its history is the first thing to check.

What Riot Vanguard Actually Detects

Riot Vanguard, the kernel-level anti-cheat, went live in League of Legends with patch 14.9 in May 2024. It looks for cheats, scripts and other third-party tools that interfere with the game, and Riot uses it to issue account bans and, against cheaters, hardware bans. It is not a tool for proving who owns an account: logging in from a new PC or a new location is something every player does sooner or later, whenever they upgrade their computer or move house.

For a buyer, that makes the Vanguard rules simple. Don't run cheats, scripts or macro tools, and don't buy an account that was used with them, because a cheating flag stays with the account after the sale.

What Makes a Purchased Account Riskier

1. Bot-levelled history. Long runs of identical bot games and a tiny champion pool are the fingerprints Riot's systems look for.
2. A flagged past. Prior cheating, boosting or penalties stay with the account after the sale.
3. What you do after the sale. Cheats, scripts, macro tools or a paid booster will get an account actioned however cleanly it was levelled, and that part is entirely up to you.
4. No original email. Not a ban risk directly, but it leaves the seller able to recover the account, which is the most common way buyers lose one.

How to Keep Your Ban Risk Low

1. Choose accounts levelled by hand and ask for a match-history screenshot; see hand-leveled vs botted LoL accounts.
2. Buy through escrow with published buyer protection, so a problem that surfaces early can be refunded.
3. Secure the account immediately: email first, then the Riot password, account email and two-factor authentication; our post-purchase checklist walks through it.
4. Never use cheats, scripts or macro tools, and never pay for boosting or share the account with a booster. These are what reliably get accounts banned, bought or not.
5. Avoid accounts with a boosted rank. A rank someone else climbed for the previous owner tends to drop once you play, and it's boosting history you'd rather not inherit.