Price of a bot army revealed across hundreds of online platforms worldwide – from TikTok to Amazon

• First global index tracking real-time prices for verifying fake accounts on 500+ online platforms in every country launched by Cambridge University.
   
• The US, UK and Russia rank among the cheapest countries for buying fake account verification, while Japan and Australia are among the most expensive.
   
• Meta, Shopify, X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Amazon all among platforms with the cheapest fake account verifications.
   
• Fake account verification prices on Telegram and WhatsApp surge ahead of national elections around the world, suggesting “influence operations”.

A new site that tracks the daily fluctuating costs behind building a bot army on over 500 social media and commercial platforms – from TikTok to Amazon and Spotify – in every nation on the planet is launched today by the University of Cambridge.

For the first time, the Cambridge Online Trust and Safety Index (COTSI) allows the global community to monitor real-time market data for the “online manipulation economy”: the SIM farms that mass-produce fake accounts for scammers and social bots.  

These markets openly sell SMS message verifications for fake profiles across hundreds of sites, providing a service for “inauthentic activity” ranging from vanity metrics boosts and rage-bait accounts to coordinated influence campaigns.

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”.

The COTSI team, based in Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab, includes experts in misinformation and cryptocurrency. They argue that SIM card regulation could help “disincentivise” online manipulation, and say their tool can be used to test policy interventions the world over.

The team suggest that platforms should add labels showing an account’s country of origin for transparency, as recently done on X, but also point out such measures can be circumvented – a service provided by many vendors in the study.

“We find a thriving underground market through which inauthentic content, artificial popularity, and political influence campaigns are readily and openly for sale,” said Dr Jon Roozenbeek, study co-lead and senior author from the University of Cambridge.

“Bots can be used to generate online attention for selling a product, a celebrity, a political candidate, or an idea. This can be done by simulating grassroots support online, or generating controversy to harvest clicks and game the algorithms.”

“All this activity requires fake accounts, and each one starts with a phone number and the SIM hardware to support it. That dependency creates a choke point we can target to gauge the hidden economics of online manipulation.”

Co-lead author Anton Dek, a researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, said: “Misinformation is subject to disagreement across the political spectrum. Whatever the nature of inauthentic online activity, much of it is funnelled through this manipulation market, so we can simply follow the money.”  

Murky global market

To register a new account, online platforms require SMS (Short Message Service) verification: a text message containing a code sent to a valid phone number. This is intended to confirm a human is setting it up.  

Over the last decade, a murky global marketplace has emerged with the infrastructure to bypass this security protocol, and automatically generate and sell fake accounts in bulk.

Companies claiming to offer privacy solutions operate “farms” of thousands of SIM cards and SIM banks – both real and virtual – to provide SMS verifications and re-route web traffic though mobile networks to disguise its origin.

Fake accounts bought from this “transnational grey market” of informal businesses, often based in jurisdictions with little legal oversight, are central to online scams.

This market is also behind many malicious bot campaigns now dominating propaganda and PR dark arts, according to Cambridge researchers. “A sophisticated bot can run an influence campaign through hundreds of fake accounts,” said Roozenbeek.

“Generative AI means that bots can now adapt messages to appear more human and even tailor them to relate to other accounts. Bot armies are getting more persuasive and harder to spot.” For example, a study last year uncovered a botnet of 1,140 accounts on X using generative AI to run automated conversations.

Fake account index

The team built COTSI with opensource data pulled from some of the world’s biggest fake account suppliers. Researchers identified seventeen vendors and sorted by traffic to focus on the top ten. Four of these are used at any one time to construct the global price index, with others kept in reserve.

Importantly, COTSI monitors not just prices but also the available “stock” of fake accounts listed by each vendor in every country for hundreds of platforms.

These include all social media channels, as well as cash, dating and gaming apps, cryptocurrency exchanges and sharing economy sites such as AirBnB, music and video streaming services, ride-hailing apps such as Uber, and accounts for major brands such as Nike and McDonald’s.

“One SIM card can be used for hundreds of different platforms,” said Dek. “Vendors recoup SIM costs by selling high-demand verifications for apps like Facebook and Telegram, then profit from the long tail of other platforms.”

Additional analyses show global stocks of fake accounts are highest for platforms such as X, Uber, Discord, Amazon, Tinder and gaming platform Steam, while vendors keep millions of verifications available for the UK and US, along with Brazil and Canada.**

Meta, Grindr, and Shopify rank among platforms with the cheapest fake accounts for sale, at a global average of $0.08 per verification. This is followed by X and Instagram at an average of $0.10 per account, TikTok and LinkedIn at $0.11, and Amazon at $0.12.

The researchers tested the market themselves, with mixed results. Attempting to verify fake US Facebook accounts only worked 21% of the time with one big provider, but over 90% with another. Much of this difference comes down to virtual versus physical SIMs.***

“Fingerprinting by some platforms can mean IP addresses get banned if registration fails,” said Dek. “High-quality verifications involve a physical SIM, requiring huge banks of phones. Nations in which SIM cards are more expensive have higher prices for fake accounts. This is likely to suppress rates of malicious online activity.”

Pre-election prices

To investigate if political influence operations can be seen in these markets, the team analysed price and availability of SMS verifications for eight major social media platforms in the 30 days leading up to 61 national elections held around the world between summer 2024 and the following summer.****

They found that fake account prices shot up for direct messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp during election run-ups the world over, likely driven by demand. An account on Telegram increased in price by an average of 12%, and by 15% on WhatsApp.

Accounts on these apps are tied to visible phone numbers, making it easy to see the country of origin. As such, those behind influence operations must register fake accounts locally, say researchers, increasing demand for SMS verifications in targeted nations.

However, on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, where no link between price and elections was found, fake accounts can be registered in one country and used in another. They also have greater reach which keeps demand high.

“A fake Facebook account registered in Russia can post about the US elections and most users will be none the wiser. This isn’t true of apps like Telegram and WhatsApp,” said Roozenbeek.

“Telegram is widely used for influence operations, particularly by state actors such as Russia, who invested heavily in information warfare on the channel.” WhatsApp and Telegram are among platforms with consistently expensive fake accounts, averaging $1.02 and $0.89 respectively.

‘Shadow economy’

The manipulation market’s big players have major customer bases in China and the Russian Federation, say the research team, who point out that Russian and Chinese payment systems are often used, and the grammar on many sites suggests Russian authorship. These vendors sell accounts registered in countries around the world.*****

“It is hard to see state-level political actors at work, as they often rely on closed-loop infrastructure. However, we suspect some of this is still outsourced to smaller players in the manipulation market,” said Dek.

Small vendors resell and broker existing accounts, or manually create and “farm” accounts. The larger players will provide a one-stop shop and offer bulk order services for follower numbers or fake accounts, and even have customer support.

A 2022 study co-authored by Dek showed that around ten Euros on average (just over ten US dollars) can buy some 90,000 fake views or 200 fake comments for a typical social media post.

“The COTSI index shines a light on the shadow economy of online manipulation by turning a hidden market into measurable data,” added co-author of the new Science paper Prof Sander van der Linden. “Understanding the cost of online manipulation is the first step to dismantling the business model behind misinformation.”

 

Notes:

*The data used in the study published in Science, as well as the additional analyses, was collected between 25 July 2024 and 27 July 2025.

** In April 2025, the UK became the first country in Europe to pass legislation making SIM farms illegal. Researchers say that COTSI can be used to track the effects of this law once it is implemented.

*** Lead author Anton Dek explains: “By virtual SIM, we mean virtual phone numbers typically provided by Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) or Internet-of-Things connectivity providers.”

“These services make it easy to purchase thousands of numbers for business purposes. Such numbers are usually inexpensive per unit, but they often carry metadata indicating that they belong to a CPaaS provider, and many platforms have learned to block verifications coming from them. On the other hand, when a physical SIM card (or eSIM) from a conventional carrier is used, it is much harder to distinguish from a normal consumer’s number.”

**** The platforms used were Google/YouTube/Gmail; Facebook; Instagram; Twitter/X; WhatsApp; TikTok; LinkedIn; Telegram.

***** A recent law passed by the Russian Federation banned third-party account registrations, which saw vendors suspend SMS verification registered in Russia alone as of September 2025. However, this has not stopped vendors operating from Russia offering services linked to other nations.

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