Most people who reach this page want to know whether a proxy works with Riot games: League of Legends, VALORANT, Teamfight Tactics and the rest. Some hope for lower ping or another region, and some build tools on the Riot API. This page checks each hope against what Riot publishes. The short answer: Riot asks players to keep proxies and VPNs off, ties your region to where you live, and limits its API per key, not per address.
A note on words: some searches for a League of Legends proxy are about proxy farming, a way to play the game, or about printed card decks. This page is about network proxies.
What a proxy changes, and what it does not
| question | what decides it | does a proxy change it? |
|---|---|---|
| your shards and payment options | your Region of Residence | no |
| moving a League account | a paid transfer | no |
| ping | the route to the server | no gain measured |
| bans | the account and the machine | no |
| the Riot API | your key and its limits | no |
What Riot says about proxies and VPNs
Riot says it twice, once for League of Legends and once for all its PC games. The League guide has a section headed "Do not use proxies or VPN connections". It asks players to make sure they are not using a VPN or a proxy to reach a League server, because "they can cause a number of connection issues which will be impossible to resolve".
The guide for all Riot games on PC gives the same advice under "Disable any VPNs or Proxy". Both guides add one exception: "A VPN should only be used to test your connection routing path in very specific cases when advised by our Technical Specialists."
The Riot terms, last modified on 1 December 2024, do not name proxies. They do bar "otherwise circumventing any technological measure implemented by Riot or any third party to protect or control access to the Riot Services". They also bar unauthorized programs that "intercept, emulate, or redirect any communication relating to the Riot Services".
Your region, and moving a League account
Riot ties your account to a Region of Residence. In its words, it is "the geographical area you live in, and it decides which shards you play on, which payment options you have available to you, and who you can play with". If yours is wrong, Riot corrects it through a tool on its support site, after you log in.
Prices follow the region too. The terms say Riot "may restrict how much Game Currency you can purchase and/or use based on your location". Riot also sets RP prices per country, in local money, as its 2024 price changes for Latin America and Brazil show.
League of Legends adds server transfers. The transfer FAQ, dated 30 May 2026, sets the price: "2600 RP for a one way transfer". Transfers have a 90-day cooldown, and Riot cannot reverse a transfer made by accident. Some routes are closed. Accounts on Brazil and Russia cannot transfer to any other region. No other listed region can transfer to Brazil, Russia or Korea.
Ping
A proxy adds one more stop between you and the server. Riot has its own network team, Riot Direct, whose mission, as one of its engineers put it, is "to provide the fastest possible connection for players to our game". The transfer FAQ adds that League regions "are divided based on server and network infrastructure proximity and are not defined geopolitically".
So distance and routing decide ping, and Riot works on the routing itself. Its connection guides start with a wired connection and no VPN or proxy. We found no page that measures a proxy lowering ping in a Riot game.
The Riot Client, Vanguard and bans
Since 2026, every Riot game on PC starts through the Riot Client. Most of them also run Vanguard, the security software Riot built for its games. Riot describes it as a client "that runs while our games are active along with a kernel mode driver". It requires Vanguard to stay active while you play most of its games. Vanguard may also ask for Windows security features before a game starts, such as TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot.
Riot penalties reach both the account and the machine: a hardware ID ban covers the physical parts of the computer. Our page on proxies for Valorant explains how those bans work. A proxy changes neither the account nor the machine.
For developers: the Riot API
Every developer gets a key on signing in to the Riot developer portal. The portal lists three kinds:
| key | what it is for | limit per region |
|---|---|---|
| development | trying the API; it deactivates every 24 hours | not listed |
| personal | you or a small private group | 20 a second, 100 every 2 minutes |
| production | a public product | 500 every 10 seconds, 30,000 every 10 minutes |
The portal adds that "rate limits are enforced per region". With a personal key, you can make 20 requests a second to North America and to Europe West at the same time. The application limit is "enforced on a per API key basis", and each production key serves one product only. So the limit follows the key, and more addresses do not add calls.
We sent two requests to the League API from our own server on 27 September 2026. Without a key, it answered HTTP 401, "Cannot process request apikey or authorization header is empty". With a made-up key, it answered 401, "Unknown apikey".
Static game data needs no key. Data Dragon is the way Riot publishes League data and assets, such as champions, items and icons, and Riot says they "can be used by third-party developers". Its versions file answered our server with HTTP 200.
If you use proxies for other work
Nothing on this page routes a Riot game through a proxy, because Riot asks players to turn them off. For other work, where a proxy is allowed, start with what a residential proxy is and whether free proxies are safe. Our free proxy list and proxy checker cost nothing. Our guide to proxies with Python requests shows the setting in code.
We sell residential, ISP and mobile proxies. Residential traffic starts at $0.44/GB, and a static ISP address costs $2.70/IP. Every plan is on our pricing page.
The limits of this page
We did not log in to a Riot account, send game traffic through a proxy, or measure ping through one. Riot does not publish how it detects proxy or VPN traffic, so this page does not guess. Most of the support articles we read are dated May and June 2026; the price changes are from September 2024. This page is due for a check by 27 December 2026.
Sources
We read every source below on 27 September 2026.
- Riot Games Support, Basic Connections Troubleshooting Guide and Troubleshoot PC Connection.
- Riot Games Support, Account Transfer FAQ, LoL Price Changes 2024 (LATAM and BR) and Changing Your Region of Residence.
- Riot Games Support, Riot Client FAQ, What is Vanguard?, Vanguard Security Requirements and Understanding Hardware ID (HWID) Bans.
- Riot Games, Terms of Service, last modified 1 December 2024.
- Riot Games Technology, Fixing the Internet for Real Time Applications, Part I, 6 November 2015.
- Riot Developer Portal, the portal documentation and the League of Legends documentation.
- Our requests to the League of Legends API and to Data Dragon from our own server, 27 September 2026.
More pages in this series: proxies for Valorant, proxies for League of Legends and proxies for Steam.
