Saw some new players asking on how to spend money in WoT so decided to make a short guide.

(Will edit if there are better inputs in the comments)

Which to choose?

Gold, Premium Account or Premium Tank?

Gold

Advantages:

Flexible currency (can be used for Premium account or Premium tank and more)
Ability to convert to Free XP
Able to buy garage slots, barrack slots and retrain 100% crew

Disadvantages:

No immediate advantage ingame
Expensive to convert gold to credits
Ability to buy tanks in gold are uncommon (Referring to those non-techtree premium tanks)

Premium Account

Advantages:

5 daily x3 exp victory bonuses that can be applied to specific battles
Increased credit & exp earning per game (u may lose little to none on T8 battles)
Reserve Stock up to 750k weekly
Daily missions (50k credits, x3 exp, 25 bonds)
1 additional excluded map
Very good for grinding tech tree tanks
Credit Crew Trainer (From extra credit earning, to buy the 2mil credit training booklet)

Disadvantages:

Inflexible time-based subscription
Expensive for shorter durations
World of tanks subscription does not apply to other games ie WoWS etc
no premium tank

Premium Tank

Advantages:

Immediate "advantage" ingame (premium tanks are usually better than tech-tree similars)
Increased credit and exp earning for that particular tank.
Ability to put any crew without retraining (as long as Same Country Same Class of tanks)
Crew Trainer (not so much relevant as you can now spend 2mil credits to buy the booklets)
There Forever (One time payment and you own it forever)

Disadvantages:

Restricted to only the tank that you bought. If u want more tanks, u buy more.
Credit earning power not as good as premium account
Crew Training overshadowed by Training Booklets
Once u get a premium tank, u would be sorely tempted to get more.

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I tried out Premium Account but found that i couldnt really play very often due to work and i would miss out on daily missions, xp bonus etc. While it was really gd in rushing through tech tree lines, any time that i could not play was money wasted.

I got a premium tank instead so that i can play anytime i want and still earn credits, albeit lesser.

If you want to get gold instead, a gd suggestion would be to wait until the end of the year for the Christmas Loot Boxes. Those offer a mix of gold, premium account time and sometimes good tanks.

Note: when i tried buying lootboxes for the first time, i got the same cost equivalent of gold+prem time as if i bought them by themselves. However, i got some premium tanks (no is-3a sadly) and a Santa commander etc. So imo its a pretty gd bargain.

Lastly, if you want to look at Premium Account, i have included the breakdown of avg cost per day of the Prem time packages in gold

1 day = 250gold

3 days = 650 (216.66 per day)

7 days = 1250 (178.57 per day)

14 days = 1800 (128.57 per day)

30 days = 2500 (83.33 per day)

90 days = 7500 (83.33 per day)

180 days = 13500 (75 per day)

360 days = 2400 (66.66 per day)

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Hope this helps you in your decision making.

As always, spend within your limits and set a budget.