It would cost you between $75,000 and $78,000 (before Gold Pass discounts) to take a brand-new, post-tutorial account from Town Hall 2 to a fully upgraded TH18 by buying all of your core resources and skipping upgrade timers.
This figure is from our planning model and should be considered an estimate. Equipment, helpers, and temporary progression need to be assessed separately. The idealized boosted cost is about $62,100.
That’s quite different from the $449.90 to $999.90 asking prices on igitems for three TH18 accounts described as maxed, though with varying gear and cosmetics. Required real-money spending through gameplay remains $0. You pay Supercell for time and resources when you buy gems, but you pay for an existing account when you buy one. However, neither price tells you enough until you define “max.”
What Counts as a Max Clash of Clans Account?
Being “maxed” at TH15, for example, means reaching that Town Hall level’s upgrade caps, not the entire game. As of October 2026, the current TH cap in Clash of Clans is TH18. Also, just because your account was maxed early this year doesn’t mean it still is, as Supercell regularly adds updates.
Max checklists should include everything in the game’s core progression, such as buildings, defenses, traps, walls, heroes, laboratory research, and pets. A fully maxed TH18 account also needs Guardians, hero equipment, helper levels, and current temporary upgrades. Equipment and helpers need their own budget. Common equipment reaches level 18; Epic equipment reaches level 27.
Supercharges don’t count as permanent progress, nor does the current phase of the Crafted Defense (because you can’t “keep” temporary progression). A temporary troop or potion boost also does not complete research.
Builder Base is separate, so “Max Builder Base” must specify the Builder Hall and its own upgrades. Clan Capital doesn’t factor into your Home Village because its progress is tied to your clan. Neither is bundled into our Home Village calculation.
The Instant Cost to Max a Clash of Clans Village
● Our base case is TH2 after tutorial completion, with two builders, no credited gem or resource balance, no farming income or gameplay rewards, and no Magic Items. Our assumption is that we purchase the rest of the core resources and finish all upgrades by spending gems. We reviewed our data in October 2026, after the August update.
● Our boosted costs follow Clash Ninja’s theoretical ideal 20% boost case. Supercell began testing a release of the Gold Pass from TH3 in September, and Clash Ninja’s early-level pages are still showing old eligibility text. Boosts need a pass purchase and eligibility, so we treat them as add-ons.
However, you can’t reproduce these costs as-is in-game from day one. Our no-discount number is a separate planning extrapolation. To get an exact bill, you’d need to calculate how much each refill and upgrade would cost when you’re not getting any boosts.
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Resource Costs for Buildings, Heroes, and the Laboratory
According to Clash Ninja’s TH2-to-TH18 resources summary, upgrading buildings will need roughly 6.11 billion gold, 1.88 billion elixir, and 2.37 million dark elixir (excluding discounts). Researching troop, spell, and siege machine upgrades at the lab will cost about 2.61 billion elixir and 18.61 million dark elixir.
Upgrading all hero levels will cost about 990.7 million elixir and 57.48 million dark elixir, and upgrading all pet levels will cost about 24.17 million dark elixir.
Walls are an exception, with about 11.2 billion in wall upgrades that can be paid with gold or elixir, plus 9.7 million gold for gold-only upgrades. Counting the mixed wall allowance under both gold and elixir doubles it.
Summing up the resource-gem subtotals on the individual TH2-to-TH18 pages gives a total of 7,450,844 gems. For TH5-8, any mixed walls aren’t included in the resource subtotal on their respective pages. This adds 1,093, 1,467, 3,187, and 5,453 gems for those Town Halls, for a grand total of 7,462,044 gems.
This assumes spending gems to fill storages in an idealized way. Actual gem cost will vary according to actual refill sizes, how much gold/elixir/dark elixir the player has remaining, and upgrade order.
Supercell confirms that missing ores can be purchased with gems with no weekly limit, unlike ores bought in Trader offers. Equipment availability can still prevent literal instant completion.
Before paying for unlocks, check the Hero Journey introduced in June 2026: it lets you get Epic equipment for free, along with some ores and Magic Items, just by leveling heroes. This isn’t included in these calculations, as they assume you purchase everything.
The above doesn’t include the cost of the Builder’s Apprentice, Lab Assistant, and Alchemist, as they have separate progressions. Having a Helper Hut doesn’t necessarily mean its occupants are maxed.
Builder Time, Lab Time, and Pet Upgrade Timers
Buying resources lets you start an upgrade, but finishing it immediately is a second charge.
The correct calculation is timer gems = sum of the gem price of each individual upgrade timer. Clash Ninja has done this using its gem-cost assumptions, getting a total of 1,226,762 timer gems to go from TH2 to TH18 assuming all possible boosts. TH18 costs are broken out: 162,645 gems for all of TH18’s structure upgrades, 81,126 for the laboratory, 41,670 hero gems, and 12,815 pet gems, totaling 298,256 gems.
Don’t add the builder time together and price it as a single upgrade. The rate of conversion from gems to time changes with timer length, so if you do that you get a less accurate result.
We allow roughly 1.23 to 1.54 million gems for timers (up to about 25% on top of the boosted cost of each upgrade). The timers for builders do overlap, and labs and pets have separate queues, so overlapping timers reduce real-life waiting. But each upgrade still needs to be skipped, so this doesn’t remove any associated costs.
Including a cost of 3,500 gems to unlock builders three through five and about 9.33 million for resources (before the 20% discount), the overall total is about 10.56 to 10.87 million gems before discounts. This is not the same thing as repeating the exercise above but ignoring boosts. It’s more of a sensitivity estimate.
Convert the Gem Total Into a USD Budget
The US gem pack we used is 14,000 gems for $99.99, which comes out to about $0.007142 per gem. The total boosted benchmark is 8,692,306 gems with 7,462,044 gems for resources, 1,226,762 gems for timer skips, and 3,500 gems for builders.
At that rate, 8,692,306 gems are worth $62,081.69. Getting this number of gems with only 14,000-gem chests would take 621 purchases for a total of $62,093.79, with 1,694 gems to spare. A player can expect to spend about $75,000 to $78,000 to make all these advancements, assuming no discounts.
Prices can vary by location and platform (e.g., Android), and with time-limited discounts and personalized offers. Prices are also affected by taxes and by buying through the Supercell Store. These figures exclude the Gold Pass price. For any Clash of Clans gem top-up, always look at the number of gems you will receive and how much you’ll pay at checkout.
How Your Starting Town Hall Changes the Cost
TH15 is where three separate questions often get mashed together. Use this order to come up with a rough estimate for yourself:
● TH2 to TH15 cost: Maxing TH15 from a fresh TH2 includes every earlier Town Hall. Including more builders, boosts, and wall fixes, this is approximately 3.37 million gems.
● TH15-only calculation: Clash Ninja calculated only the costs for TH15. The assumption here is that your TH14 is fully upgraded. TH15 alone would cost 883,326 gems for resources and 146,917 gems for timers, for a grand total of 1,030,243 gems. That number includes upgrading the Town Hall, plus any hero, pet, and lab research upgrades associated with TH15.
● Cost to get from TH15 to TH18: You’d have to use an upgrade tracker for your incomplete upgrades at TH15, then add the TH16-to-TH18 reference subtotals: 5,318,252 gems under the same boost assumptions. Make sure not to double-count any of the things that are already done (walls, hero levels, lab research, etc.).
These aren’t three sets of prices for the same account. They come from different models. You’ll have to input your own stats (including key gear levels) to find out how much gem budget is needed to hit a maxed TH18.
The Clash of Clans Wiki cumulative-cost page is outdated, since its Home Village stats are as of October 2022 and go up to TH15 only.
How Builders, Gold Pass, and Clan Rewards Reduce the Cost
This model costs a lot of money because it charges you to acquire resources that can be farmed, and to bypass waiting times you can let pass. Use farming sessions to collect what your next upgrades require. Your builders and lab should be in use at all times, as should your pet queue once you’ve unlocked it.
The third, fourth, and fifth builders cost 500, 1,000, and 2,000 gems. Between achievements and obstacle rewards, all of these should be within reach for players who don’t buy gem packs. Unlocking a sixth builder for your Home Village depends on Builder Base progress we’re not taking into consideration here.
As of writing, the Gold Pass in the US App Store costs $6.99/season, or $83.88 for 12 seasons. Buying all of these still won’t guarantee a maxed-out account within a year. Check the price offered to your account before you decide to budget for it monthly. In March 2026, the Gold Pass was revamped. It’s still $6.99 but offers new rewards, including the Prospector, which converts ores on a cooldown and currently has no upgrade levels that can be purchased. Here’s what the main Magic Items do.
● Book: skips a timer after paying to upgrade
● Hammer: skips a timer and costs no resources to upgrade
● Rune: fully fills your storage
● Research Potion: gets you 24 hours of lab progress in 1 hour, saving a full 23 hours if you leave your research on
The effects of these Magic Items and how many you can buy matter more than how many gems an offer says they are worth. You can get rewards or medals from Clan Games, Clan War Leagues, and Raid Weekends to spend on Magic Items. The Trader only has a certain amount in his shop, though, so you can’t endlessly buy Books and ores at a discount.
All told, TH18 is approximately a seven-year wait from TH2 with five builders and queues always going, assuming you’re farming enough and you don’t use any Magic Items, helpers, or boosts. According to the tracker as of October 2026, just the lab will take about six years and nine months of real time to upgrade from TH2 to TH18. Unlock delays can extend this, but earned acceleration can significantly reduce it.
What Does It Cost to Buy a Max Clash of Clans Account?
On September 11, 2026, we checked three TH18 offers in igitems’ maxed Clash of Clans account listings:
● “Clash of Clans TH18 XP241 Max Troops Max Defenses Account” at $449.90, with all heroes listed: King and Queen at 110, Prince at 95, Warden at 85, Champion at 55, Duke at 25, and 15 maxed-out Epic equipment
● “Clash of Clans Account For Sale TH18 XP347 42/42 maxed out equipment 98 Skins +14 Sceneries + INSTANT ACCESS” at $699.90, with King, Queen, Prince, and Warden at the same levels as in the previous account
● “Clash of Clans TH18 | 30 Sceneries | All Equips maxed | 167 hero skins | Instant Delivery” at $999.90, with King 110, Queen 110, Prince 95, and Warden 85
These are only examples of accounts for sale right now, with their asking prices, which are not transaction prices or any sort of average. The price of Clash of Clans accounts on the secondary market doesn’t necessarily reflect every gem the original player could theoretically have purchased, but rather how high demand is for accounts with similar or better features at any given time.
Unfortunately, titles of public offers don’t give you the full picture of what else a Clash of Clans TH18 account offers. Look closer and compare Clash of Clans maxed accounts; for example, having 15 Epic equipment pieces at max level doesn’t mean all Epic equipment is. So, always pay attention to the state of all heroes and equipment, pet levels including new levels of Diggy, troop and spell research, siege machines, wall levels, Guardians, helpers, Supercharges, Crafted Defenses, etc.
“Instant Delivery” labels refer just to the account transfer and not the state of game progress. Newly upgraded TH18s and near-max villages should not be compared against maxed-out ones. A fully upgraded lower-TH Clash of Clans base should be in another pricing tier. Rare skins or decorations might be worth more to a collector, but won’t help you in your next attack.
Supercell’s terms of service, checked in October 2026, prohibit purchasing, selling, renting, or giving away accounts.
If an existing village fits what you intend to do, evaluate a TH18 account based on its level of completion. Determine the army and upgrade level you want to play, then calculate how much remains to be done.
