What a bond actually gets you
A bond is bought from Jagex for real money and can be traded to another player for GP. That makes it the only route from cash to gold that Jagex not only permits but operates — and it means a bond transaction can never, by itself, get your account banned.
The GP you receive is whatever another player will pay for the bond that day, set on the Grand Exchange. It moves like any other item: when a lot of people want membership without paying cash, bonds are in demand and the GP price rises.
The live bond price is at the top of this page, and on our prices page beside the items people usually buy gold for. Check it before you decide anything here — the gap between the two routes is not fixed, and quoting a remembered figure at yourself is how people talk themselves into the wrong one.
Why bought gold is cheaper, and what that price is for
Gold bought from another player costs less per million, sometimes substantially. That difference is not a discount and it is not a market inefficiency. It is the price of the risk being transferred to you.
Jagex's terms prohibit real-world trading, and accounts found doing it can be actioned up to a permanent ban. The seller is taking a risk on their end, you are taking one on yours, and the lower price is what that risk sells for. Any explanation of the gap that does not include this is incomplete.
Escrow changes one part of that and not the other. It removes the risk that you pay and receive nothing, which is the risk most people actually worry about. It does nothing about the account risk, because no marketplace can — that sits between you and Jagex.
The comparison people get wrong
The common mistake is comparing the two on price per million alone and concluding the cheaper one wins. That is only true if you value your account at zero, which nobody does — otherwise you would not care about losing it.
The useful way to frame it: how much GP do you need, and what would it cost you to rebuild the account if this went badly? For a modest amount on an account with hundreds of hours in it, the bond route is often the rational choice even though it is more expensive per million. For a throwaway account, the calculation is entirely different.
There is no universally correct answer here, which is why we are not going to pretend to give you one. What we can do is not hide either side of it.
If you go the bought-gold route anyway
Do not buy more than you need in one go. Large single transfers are more conspicuous than the amount you actually intend to spend this week, and there is no advantage to holding bought GP in your bank.
Use an escrow so you are not sending first. The most common loss in this market is not a ban — it is paying a stranger who then vanishes, which is entirely avoidable and has nothing to do with Jagex.
Never share your login. A gold trade is a trade; it does not require your password, and any seller who says otherwise is describing a different transaction than the one you agreed to.
The short version
Bonds cost more per million and carry no account risk. Bought gold costs less and moves that risk to you. Which is cheaper depends entirely on what your account is worth to you — and if the answer is 'a lot', the expensive option is the cheap one.