Accounts can be bought outright or rented for a period. The difference is not only the price.
Buying
You pay once and control the account: warm it for your task, accumulate history, decide when to retire it. It becomes an asset that improves with age — a warmed account outperforms a fresh one.
The downside is that the risk is entirely yours. Banned in week two and the money is gone.
Renting
You pay per period and the attrition risk usually sits with the owner. Attractive at the start, especially when the niche is unproven.
Two serious drawbacks. First, you do not know the account's history — what it did before you and with what reputation it arrived. Second, what accumulates is not yours: warm-up, subscriptions and conversations stay with the owner when the term ends.
What to compare
Buying wins over horizons of a few months: the price divides across the life and a warmed account performs better. Renting wins on a short test, when the goal is to check a niche in two weeks without buying a fleet for it.
What not to do
Mix owned and rented accounts on one client. When the rentals go back, volume drops unexpectedly and cannot be replaced at once — new accounts need warming. Full cost of ownership is in the fleet cost piece.