Price of a 'bot army' revealed across hundreds of online platforms worldwide
www.cam.ac.uk
The first global index tracking real-time prices for buying fake account verifications on 500+ online platforms in every country has been launched by a team at the University of Cambridge.

A new analysis using twelve months of COTSI data, published in the journal Science, shows that verifying fake accounts for use in the US and UK is almost as cheap as in Russia, while Japan and Australia have high prices due to SIM costs and photo ID rules.

The average price of SMS verification for an online platform during the year-long study period running to July 2025 was $4.93 in Japan and $3.24 in Australia, yet just a fraction of that in the US ($0.26), UK ($0.10) and Russia ($0.08).

The research also reveals that prices for fake accounts on Telegram and WhatsApp appear to spike in countries about to have national elections, suggesting a surge in demand due to “influence operations”.