League of Legends APM Test

APM by Rank in League of Legends

This table gives an indicative estimate of the action rate you can expect at each step of the competitive ladder and the context that explains it. It does not measure talent, it measures the density of decisions a player at that level makes per minute of play.

These are indicative estimates: League of Legends does not display APM and Riot publishes no official data. They vary widely with champion, role and playstyle: a control mage can perform perfectly well on far less APM than a constantly kiting marksman.

What Your Result Means

These bands help you place your measured APM. Remember that the goal is not to reach the top band but to make sure the actions you do take make sense within the game.

Why APM in LoL Is Read Differently

APM in League of Legends is not constant across a game: it rises and falls with the rhythm of play. During laning, last hitting forces you to alternate between attacking, moving and controlling the wave several times a second, and the number spikes. The same happens in a team fight, where abilities, active items, flashes and repositioning are compressed into a handful of seconds. Meanwhile, during a rotation through the river or while waiting for a neutral objective to spawn, APM collapses without that meaning you are playing worse.

Then there is inflated APM. Clicking fifteen times on the same patch of ground to move your champion raises the counter exactly as much as a well placed ability does, while contributing nothing. Plenty of players develop this habit as a way of keeping their hands warm, and it is not necessarily harmful, but it is worth separating raw APM, which is what any counter measures, from useful actions, which are the ones that change the state of the game: a skillshot that lands, a ward placed on time, an item activated at exactly the right moment.

Finally, an important warning about correlations. It is true that, on average, higher ranked players have higher APM than lower ranked ones. But APM does not cause rank: it is a symptom of playing more actively and with more intent. Clicking twice as much will not move you up a division. What does work is improving your decisions and your execution, and letting APM rise on its own as a consequence.

How to Raise Your Useful APM

The goal is not to inflate the number but to widen the pool of meaningful actions you can execute per minute. These guidelines target exactly that: turning dead time into actions that contribute.

• Set up and use attack move on a comfortable key. It is the foundation of kiting and turns every basic attack into a single action with movement built in, instead of two clumsy commands.
• Move as much as you can onto keyboard shortcuts: active items, summoner spells, quick purchase in the shop and the danger ping. Every action you stop hunting for with the mouse is time you get back.
• Enable quick cast with indicator for your aimed abilities. It cuts the number of clicks per ability without losing visual precision.
• Use the dead time: while walking to a lane, check the map, look at your opponent's inventory and drop wards along the route. That is where genuinely useful APM is earned.
• Practise your champion's specific combos in the practice tool until they come out without thinking. Speed comes from automation, not conscious effort.
• Review your replays looking for stretches where you did nothing for several seconds. There is almost always an action available: a ward, a positional adjustment, a damage trade.