How to See Gold Difference in LoL, in Your Own Games

How to Read the Gold on the Scoreboard

Everything appears only while you hold Tab, on League's own scoreboard. Point at a label to see where it sits.

1. 1Team totals and the team gap. Both teams' item gold sits above the scoreboard in each team's color, with the gap between them in the middle.
2. 2A big lane lead. Three chevrons mean a gap of 1,500 gold or more, roughly one finished item, and they glow in the leading team's color.
3. 3A clear lead. Two chevrons mean 500 to 1,500 gold, about a component or two.
4. 4A small edge. One chevron means under 500 gold, a recall's worth of components.
5. 5An even lane. An equals sign means the two laners are within 100 gold of each other.

Blue means your team leads that lane, red means the enemy does, the same colors League uses on the scoreboard. If you turned off relative team colors in League's settings, Hexgate follows that setting.

What League Shows You Instead

In your own games, League tells you a lot about every player, but not their gold. Here is what you can see, and where the gold lead does show up.

• Your own goldShown next to your shop, live.
• The Tab scoreboardEvery player's items, level, CS and KDA, plus a gold bounty next to players worth extra gold when they die. A bounty hints at a lead but does not measure it.
• Spectator mode and replaysBoth teams' gold at the top of the screen, the view casters use.
• After the gameThe end-of-game stats in the League client list how much gold each player earned.

So during the game, the only way to compare gold is to add up item prices from the scoreboard yourself. That is slow, and most players don't know every component price by heart. Hexgate does that sum for you, every half second, and draws it where you are already looking.

Item Gold vs Total Gold: What the Number Means

The number on the scoreboard is item gold: the full shop price of every item in a player's inventory, the same prices you see in the shop.

• Counted: completed items, components, boots, starting items and support items, each at its full shop price. A Pickaxe counts 875 gold, a finished item its whole cost.
• Left out: potions, Control Wards, elixirs and other consumables, because they are used up and give no lasting power.
• Not visible to anyone: unspent gold in a player's pocket. Nobody can see it in a live game, and it turns into items at the next recall anyway.

That makes item gold a better measure of who wins the next fight than total gold earned: a player sitting on 1,300 unspent gold is not stronger until they spend it. Right after someone recalls, their number jumps; that is the moment their lead becomes real.

Which Games Show the Lane Gold Difference

Lane gaps only make sense when every row of the scoreboard is a lane matchup, so Hexgate shows the gold where League sorts both teams by role.

• Normal DraftLanes and team totals
• Ranked Solo/DuoLanes and team totals
• Ranked FlexLanes and team totals
• SwiftplayLanes and team totals
• ARAM, Arena, Practice ToolNot shown

On the free plan it works in every game where Hexgate runs for you, within your 3 free games a day; Pro and Pro+ have no limit. It follows the scoreboard if you drag it somewhere else, and it hides while the shop or a menu covers the scoreboard.

How to Use the Gold Difference to Win More

A gold lead is only useful if you act on it. A few habits that turn the number into decisions:

1. Ahead in lane: press it

   Two or three chevrons on your side mean your items are better than your opponent's right now. Trade, take plates and push for your jungler before they catch up at their next recall.

2. Behind in lane: play for time

   If the arrows point at your opponent, avoid even trades, farm under tower and ask for help. Gold gaps of one item or more rarely close by fighting harder.

3. Find the fed enemy

   The red lane with three chevrons is the player to track, ward against and focus in fights, and the one to build against first.

4. Check the team gap before objectives

   Before dragon or Baron, a glance at the team totals tells you whether your team can take the fight or should trade the objective for something else.

5. Look again after recalls

   Gaps jump when someone shops. If the enemy laner just recalled with a lot of gold, the gap you saw a minute ago is gone.

Porofessor and Other Gold Difference Overlays

Hexgate is not the first app to show a gold difference. Porofessor is known for drawing gold differences on the scoreboard, and several other League apps show gold leads in their own panels. What differs is where the number appears and what comes with it.

• On the scoreboard itself: Hexgate finds League's scoreboard wherever you put it and draws on its center line, so you read the gold where the players already are.
• Free, no Overwolf, no ads: Hexgate is a standalone app, and the gold difference is in the free plan.
• The same Tab press shows your next item, ranked against the five enemies, with the reason on every change.

Comparing the apps in detail? See our Porofessor alternatives and the best LoL overlays in 2026.

Is a Gold Difference Overlay Allowed?

Hexgate's gold difference adds up what the scoreboard already shows you: the items every player holds. It reads them from Riot's Live Client Data API, the official local API the game provides for apps, and only finds where the scoreboard is on your screen to place the numbers. It does not read the game's memory, change game files or inject anything into League. For the full picture of what Riot allows, see can you get banned for LoL apps.

Don't want it? Open Hexgate's Settings, the gear at the top of the dashboard, and switch off Scoreboard gold. It is on by default.