Dota 2 behavior score: what it is, how it moves, and why account buyers check it before the MMR

Dota 2 keeps two hidden numbers about every account. One, the MMR, decides how good the players in your games are. The other, the behavior score, decides how they behave — because Valve fills lobbies from pools of similar conduct, and your score picks the pool. Of the two, the behavior score is the one you cannot see on a profile, cannot fix quickly, and inherit in full when you buy an account. That is why it belongs at the top of a buyer's checklist, above the rating.

What the score is

A number from 0 to 12 000 (the cap was raised from 10 000 in 2023), visible only in your own profile's conduct summary. Valve does not publish the formula, but the inputs are well established: reports and commends from teammates, abandons, and — since the 2023 conduct overhaul — the game's own detection of feeding, griefing and chat abuse, which no longer needs a report to count.

A separate communication score governs chat and voice: a low one mutes you in games regardless of your behavior score. Listings usually show the behavior score only; the communication score is worth asking about if voice matters to you.

How it moves, and why that is the whole problem

Slowly. A clean game adds a few points; a report can remove far more than one game earns back; abandons cost a lot at once. In practice an account that has sunk into the low thousands needs hundreds of clean games to climb out, and the climb happens inside the low-score lobbies — the ones filled with the players who put it there.

That asymmetry is what makes the score different from every other stat on an account. A low MMR is a starting point; you win, it rises. A low behavior score is a sentence you serve, in the company the score selects, and no amount of playing well shortens it much. Conversely, a score near the cap is the product of a long, clean history, and there is no shortcut to one.

What a low score costs you as a buyer

Concretely: the games. Valve matches accounts of similar behavior score together, so an account at 3 000 is matched with other 3 000s — the players who were reported enough to get there. The MMR of that lobby can be identical to a 10 000-score lobby at the same rating; the experience is not.

There are hard thresholds too. Very low scores lose access to ranked queues and to chat, and the game can require a run of clean matches before ranked reopens. Low-priority queue — the punishment mode for abandons and reports — follows the account as well, and a card that shows it is telling you the previous owner left you a debt.

None of this is visible from a screenshot of the medal, which is why "a Legend account" is an incomplete description of anything.

What our shelf says about the price

We sell Dota 2 accounts with the behavior score read from the account data, so we can measure what the market pays for it. On 6 September 2026, across 227 listings with a score:

Two things stand out. Most accounts on a marketplace shelf sit in the 6 000 – 8 000 band — decent, not clean — and the band below it is actually priced higher, because on our shelf it happens to contain the accounts with the inventory. The score by itself does not drive the price: across the shelf it has essentially zero correlation with it, the weakest of any number we track (the full measurement is in how much is my Dota 2 account worth).

But above 8 000 the median jumps three to four times. Twenty-two listings is a small sample and the jump belongs partly to their history and items — an account that kept a high score for years is usually an account that was played for years. Read it as: the market does not pay for the score, it pays for the kind of account that has one.

How to read it on a listing

• The number, not the adjective. «Good behavior score» means nothing; 8 500 means something. Every card on our Dota 2 shelf shows the figure read from the account, and the 8 000+ shelf filters for it.
• Check for low priority and matchmaking bans separately. They are different flags, and both follow the account. The card shows them.
• A single-point score means a ban, not a score. Valve's data reports banned accounts with a behavior score of 1; a listing that shows it is a listing for a banned account. We hide that value rather than print it, and the ban itself is shown as a ban.
• Do not confuse it with the communication score. If voice and chat matter to you, ask.

Can you raise it after buying?

Yes, the same way anyone does: clean games, no abandons, commends help. What you cannot do is raise it fast. If the account you want has a score in the low thousands and everything else you like, price the climb in — a few hundred games in unpleasant lobbies — and compare that with the accounts one shelf over that start at 8 000. On our shelf that comparison usually favours the higher score, because the price gap is smaller than the games gap.

The short version

The behavior score decides who you play with, moves by a few points a game, takes hundreds of games to repair, and comes with the account. It is the one number on a Dota 2 listing that playing well does not fix, so look at it before the medal. Then look at the medal — the ranks and MMR brackets guide covers that side.