DexScreener boosts and paid profiles are not a red flag on their own, and they are not a green flag either. They show that somebody paid DexScreener to make a coin more visible. Projects that plan to stick around buy them, and so do teams that plan to sell into the attention. The payment tells you nothing about which one you are looking at, so judge the coin on its on-chain evidence instead.
What you can pay DexScreener for
DexScreener is a free chart and data site that covers most decentralised exchanges. It makes money partly by selling visibility to token teams. The two products you will see most on Solana memecoins are Enhanced Token Info and Boosts.
Enhanced Token Info (the paid profile)
This adds a logo, banner, description and social links to a coin's DexScreener page, so it looks complete rather than blank. At the time of writing (October 2026), DexScreener's marketplace lists it at $299, shown as a reduction from $499, payable by card or crypto. It can also let the team set wallets holding locked supply, which changes how market cap is calculated.
Anyone can buy it for any token. DexScreener reviews the order, but it does not vouch for the project, the team or where the links lead. A full profile means someone paid $299. It does not mean the coin is legitimate.
Boosts
Boosts temporarily raise a coin's Trending Score, the number DexScreener uses to rank coins on its trending lists. According to DexScreener's documentation:
- Boosts last between 12 and 24 hours, depending on the pack bought.
- The number of active boosts is shown next to the token.
- A coin with 500 or more active boosts gets a gold ticker, which stays while the count is 500 or more.
- Boosts amplify a coin's existing score rather than guaranteeing a top spot.
- Coins flagged for security risks by third-party auditors cannot be boosted, and boosts can be removed if a coin is flagged as malicious.
- Boost purchases are final and non-refundable.
DexScreener's boosting terms also say directly that buying boosts, or a token being visible on DexScreener, does not imply any form of endorsement. Pack prices are set by DexScreener and can change without notice, so we have not listed them here.
Key point: A gold ticker is not a quality badge. It means 500 boosts are active, which means someone paid for 500 boosts.
Why rug teams buy promotion
Paid promotion is cheap compared to what a successful dump can take. For a team planning to sell a large stash of tokens, the business case is simple: buy visibility, attract buyers, sell into them. A trending spot puts the coin in front of thousands of traders at exactly the moment the team wants buyers.
Promotion is often timed. Common patterns include:
- A profile and boosts bought minutes after launch, before the coin has any real community.
- Boosts topped up just as the price starts to stall.
- A burst of paid posts on social media at the same time as a boost.
None of these prove anything on their own. Genuine teams also buy promotion early, because a coin nobody sees is a coin nobody buys.
Why genuine projects buy it too
Getting noticed among thousands of new coins a day is hard. A team that is building something, or a community that has taken over a coin and wants it to look cared for, will often pay for a profile at the very least. A coin with no profile at all can look abandoned, even when it is not.
So the presence of a paid profile or boosts does not separate good coins from bad ones. What it does tell you is that someone has spent money on this coin and expects to get more back.
What to look at instead
Use promotion as a prompt to check the evidence harder, not as the evidence itself.
| Question | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Who holds the supply? | Holder list on RugCheck or DexScreener. See insider wallets |
| Was the launch bundled? | Matching bag sizes among top holders. See bundled launches |
| Can the creator print or freeze tokens? | Mint and freeze authority. See the explainer |
| Is the liquidity locked, and how much is there? | RugCheck markets section and DexScreener liquidity |
| Is this the original coin? | Pair creation date and contract address. See copycat tokens |
| Is buying real? | Number of distinct buyers, not just volume. See how to read a DexScreener chart |
How Before It Rugs treats paid promotion
Boosts and paid profiles do not add or remove points in our grade. A coin can be boosted and graded A, or unboosted and graded F.
We do note when a coin buys promotion on DexScreener, such as a boost or a paid profile, and record the price at that moment. That lets you see what happened to the price after the promotion. Over time it builds a public record of how promoted coins actually perform.
DexScreener's public feeds of new profiles and boosts are also one of the ways we find new coins to check, along with GeckoTerminal's new and trending pools. So a coin that pays for promotion is likely to show up on our board quickly.
Other paid promotion to be aware of
DexScreener is not the only place visibility is sold. Trending lists on other sites, posts by influencers, "calls" in Telegram groups and promoted posts on X can all be bought. Paid posts are not always labelled as paid. When a coin suddenly appears everywhere at once, assume at least some of that attention was bought, and check the on-chain evidence before you act on it.
Related
- How to read a DexScreener chart
- Can a coin that passes every check still rug?
- What is a rug pull? The main types on Solana
- What our A to F grades mean