Money making guide

This is a list of ways to make money in Old School RuneScape and the requirements to do them. Please remember that these are just a few suggestions. (Note: If you have a good idea to add to make gold, please add it to the list.)

 WARNING:  Due to the constant changing of prices, some of the estimated values may be off. Do some research about the items first before you attempt to make money from them.

Stronghold of Security
Players can visit the Stronghold of Security for some quick coins. Players only need to complete the first three levels to get 10,000 coins. This can be done even at Combat level 3. Just pick some cabbages on the way there from the field north of Lumbridge and eat between rooms. Also, if you level up your Cooking skill a little, you could get some trout or salmon from a popular world at Barbarian Village and cook them.

Skilling
Another way to start making some gold pieces is by leveling up a skill such as Woodcutting, Fishing, Mining, or Combat. The former three skills (Woodcutting, Fishing, and Mining) are known as the 'Big Three' because they have been the three primary money-making skills in RuneScape. Members, on the other hand, have access to an additional money-maker in the Hunter skill as well as an array of other content like high-level Runecrafting.

Jugs of water
Another way to make money without requirements, aside from a few coins, is to buy jugs at the General Store, fill them with water in the fountains on the east side of the Grand Exchange, and resell them. You can repeat the process once you are able to buy multiple jugs at the Grand Exchange. Selling 100 jugs of water will grant you approximately 0 coins.

Flesh crawlers
Note: Do not kill Flesh Crawlers on a free-to-play server because you can only get body runes and iron ore from them.

To kill them, go to the second level of the Stronghold of Security, and then head south into the large room containing them. Mages and rangers can easily safespot them. They drop herbs, fire runes, noted iron ore, nature runes and dust runes. If you have decent Defence and armour, then you can slay enough to get around 10,000 fire runes as well as iron ore and nature runes each trip, worth over coins. An Amulet of glory could be useful for banking in Edgeville.

Cowhides
Cowhides can be tanned at a tanner for a small fee and turned into leather for 1 coin or turned into hard leather for 3 coins each. Cowhide can be turned into either soft leather, which is approximately per hour, or hard leather, which is around  per hour. Just go to the Lumbridge cow field, loot 27 cowhides, run to the tanner, Ellis, pay him gold, bank, and then repeat.

Dark wizards
Dark wizards, located south of Varrock, are level 7 and 20 wizards that can easily be killed by low levels. They drop talismans and runes. Talismans can be sold to runecrafters for a decent sum of money. Fire talismans can be sold to runecrafters for up to gold each.

Tan Leather
You can also use the Lunar spell, Tan Leather, for maximum profit by using this method. You can gain around 600,000 coins or more. This method tans around 8,790 hides per hour, also giving the player approximately 143,000 Magic experience per hour. But, you need to finish the hard Fremennik Diary.

Treasure Trails/Clue Scrolls
Clue scrolls are a great money-maker but require a lot of luck and medium-level skills to start doing them. Patience is also needed as some clues will require days of skilling just to complete the clue.

If you are a lower Combat level player, level 1 clue scrolls (easy) will often be the best (due to various requirements not being present) you can possibly do. Mid-level players should aim for level 2 (medium) clues and so on. Clue scrolls on skillers is not recommended due to a lot of clues requiring random armours and weapons that you won't be able to wear.

Players may acquire low-value rewards from this method, but there's always the chance ranging from nothing, all the way up to tens of millions of gold, and for hard and elite clues, even more. If you have a string of poor rewards, remember you can still get a 10-million-gp item out of no where. Players constantly killing NPCs for clue scrolls may see profits of millions of gold per day, or just one-thousand air runes.

Grand Exchange Flipping
Note: This will NOT get you banned. However, joining a merching clan and buying out a item with them to raise the price IS bankable (i.e. price manipulation).

 Warning:  You may lose millions of gold if you flip the wrong items at the wrong time (e.g. buying 10,000 ores at 800 GP each then they crash to 500 GP).

To put it simply, Grand Exchange flipping (GE flipping, flipping) is buying items for a low price and selling them back at a high price. To explain it more, it is a method of buying items on the G.E. for the lowest price possible, and selling them for the highest price possible by exploiting the margins as set by the G.E. market. You are looking for items that are unstable, but are frequently traded, with a changing price due to supply and demand. You will need a minimum of a single coin to begin flipping, 1 million GP with a good profit, and over 10 million to start making it a main source of money. Unlike other money-makers that have a static profit, the more money (GP) you have means the more you could also make. As you become a better flipper, you can flip different items simultaneously, but always leave at least 10% of your cash in the bank.

Flipping procedure

 * 1) Choose an item that you want to flip, preferably one you can afford to buy in bulk.
 * 2) Go to the Grand Exchange, and buy one of that item for 25% (it's okay to buy it for more) above the market price, and then write that number down.
 * Now, sell the item, but set the price at 1 GP, and write down the price the item sold for.
 * Now, subtract the buying price from the selling price. This is your margin. Remember, the bigger the margin, the more profit.
 * 1) You should stay away from those items offering a very small margin and a small buying limit (buying limit is the amount you can buy of that item every 4 hours).
 * 2) Once you have found a suitable item to flip, you need buy that item in bulk. Set the buying price at the small number you used to find your margin.
 * 3) Once you have bought all your items, set the selling price for one coin LESS than the large number you used to find your margin (or find the new margin and use that number). This allows your items to be sold at a profit, while still maintaining "selling priority" in the G.E. because you have the lowest price.
 * 4) Once all the items have sold, collect your GP.
 * 5) To calculate profit, you multiply the quantity of the item you purchased by the margin (e.g. 3,000 items with a 3 GP margin is 9,000 GP). If you have an item in the G.E. for over an hour and it hasn't sold, it is recommended to recheck the margin price (Steps 2 & 3). If someone is selling the items lower then you, reprice your items so that they are at the same price.
 * 6) Repeat Steps 1 to 9. (Note that there are limits to the number of items you may buy on the GE. If you find that you can no longer buy an item no matter your price offer, you have reached your trade limit.)

Cyclopes
Cyclopes are found within the Warriors' Guild. The level 106 cyclopes, in particular, require at least a Rune defender and some Warrior guild tokens to fight them. They commonly drop rune med helms and rune full helms, along with adamant 2h swords and many other decent priced items. They are aggressive, so wearing armour with high Defence bonuses are recommended as well as a few Super potion sets and high healing food. These are a great source of money while gaining decent Combat experience. Note that within the Warriors' Guild, you can only attack the cyclopes with Melee.

Barrows
The Barrows mini game is a high-level and high-risk Combat money-making method. The game takes a few tries to learn, but the long-term rewards are sometimes worth the effort. The goal is to slay all six brothers, and then loot the Barrows chest. A single run could take anywhere from 11 minutes to 30 minutes depending on your level. Most beginners will be able to make one to two runs before banking, and after completing the In Aid of the Myreque quest, you will be able to bank your items in the nearby city. Most runs will reward players with roughly 30,000 to 70,000 coins' worth of runes and Bolt racks, but there is a 1/16 chance of receiving Barrows equipment, which can be sold at the Grand Exchange for high profit. One of the most rewarding drops includes Guthan's warspear, which has a roughly value. The strategy guide can be found here.

Crafting
Often, Jewellery can cost 1k or more per piece. Given that it can be made entirely in a bank, hundreds of pieces can be made very quickly. Check the page for information about which pieces are profitable - the value of gems and gold bars can change extremely quickly.

The problem is the relatively high starting capital required.

Sharks
Beginning at 94 cooking with Cooking gauntlets, the burn rate of sharks is reduced to 0%. With the price difference between raw shark and cooked shark being stable and a cook rate of 1,300/hr, the profit of cooking sharks is normally between 260k and 390k per hour. 3 tick cooking increases cooking speed by around 25% which increases the profit per hour to 325-487.5k/hr at the cost of increased mouse clicks.

Karambwan
Karambwan is a food commonly used by player killers to combo eat. To cook a karambwan the completion of the Tai Bwo Wannai Trio quest and 30 cooking is required. Although the cooking requirement is low, it is strongly suggested to only cook these at higher levels as the burn rate is significantly reduced at above 90 cooking. The price difference between the raw karambwan and cooked karambwan is between 300-400 GP. Cooking karambwans the normal way yields a profit of 390-520k/hr. 3-tick cooking karambwans is slightly faster than any other fish, upping the profit by about 33% to 518.7-691.6k/hr at the cost of increased effort. All profits are assuming none burned and will likely be lower due to some burned.

Fishing
Initially, Fishing is quite a non-profitable skill to train. You cannot really start making money until you can catch trout using a fly fishing rod. From there, you can begin to train on the highest fish you can catch. The higher the level you have, the faster you will catch fish. For example, tuna at level 35 Fishing will go slightly slow at 35; however, at 99 Fishing, one may catch tuna at a very fast rate, along with catching some swordfish.

Levels 1-20
At this point, begin fishing shrimp. You can catch them south of Lumbridge. Shrimp really will sell for very little, so you should just drop them to speed training up.

Anchovies which you begin to catch at level 15 can be worth your while if you are a new player.

Levels 20-35/40
From here, begin to fly-fish trout. The best place to bait-fish and fly-fish is at Shilo Village or south of Edgeville. There are a few spots just east of Barbarian Village. This a popular spot to train for lower levels to train. You can catch the next highest fish if you want also. At level 25, you can catch pike. At level 30, you'll start to catch salmon with your trout.

At level 35, you can start catching tuna with harpoon fishing. This is very hard to do for non-members due to the fact that they only have one place to catch them on Musa Point. For members, however, Catherby is going to be a great spot to train for a while and it is very popular. There are plenty of spots to train east of the bank. If you stick with this method, around level 50, you will catch swordfish. At level 40, begin to catch lobsters.

Levels 40-55/62/76/99
Fishing lobsters at a fairly high level between level 40 and 62 will bring you a good chunk of money. However, it's not recommended to fish lobsters if you can fish monkfish because lobsters only bring you about 20k-70k GP per hour. After the Swan Song quest, you can fish monkfish. This is noticeably quicker than catching lobsters or swordfish, but usually only higher level players are here, due to the requirements of Swan Song.

At level 76, you can start catching sharks. The best place to catch sharks is on the Jatizso docks and at the Fishing Guild. There is a nearby bank to store your load of sharks after you catch them. Catching sharks will earn you decent profit; however, it is still recommended to fish monkfish if you have all of the requirements completed, earning you just about the same profit, but the XP you earn is far greater.

Cutting Longbows
A knife can be used on logs to cut them into longbows(u) which (sometimes)sell for a higher price on the Grand Exchange and to general stores than the logs themselves. A player can cut up to 1,500 logs every hour while paying little attention to the game.

For profit, maple logs are best to cut into longbows because the differences between all logs and their respective longbow (u) are all around 10 GP and cutting maples requires the smallest investment while still producing a product that will sell – this method is about 45k GP/hr.

Higher level fletchers can cut magic logs however this isn't a good to do a lot due to the fact that you will most likely lose GP now.

Stringing Longbows
Stringing bows is quicker xp and GP than cutting logs but requires more attention of the user. A player can string around 2,200 bows every hour. Players can string a longbow by using a longbow(u) with a bow string, which have a steady price of 100 GP each.

Only maple longbow (u) and above should be strung as stringing any lower level longbows is a loss and a waste of time. Like cutting logs, maple longbows are the best bow to string because they have the highest profit margin of nearly 90 GP followed by yew at 80 GP and magic at 50 GP. Because stringing yew longbows and maple longbows are so close in profit, however, it may be preferable to string yews for the higher xp rates at the sacrifice of small profit.

Stringing maple longbows can be around 200k GP/hr, yew longbows can be around 175k GP/hr, and magic longbows can be around 110k GP/hr.

High Level Alchemy
High Level Alchemy can be a great way of making money if you know how to find items to alch for cheap prices. The most commonly alched items are yew and magic longbows, but maple ones are also used too. They don't have to be bought, however, you can fletch and string them yourself from scratch and earn over 100GP more per bow by alching them.

Enchanting Bolts
The Enchant Crossbow Bolt spell can yield very high profits beginning at 49 magic with enchanting ruby bolts as well as some of the fastest magic experience in the game at over 180k xp/hr with proper mousekeys settings. Profits of over 400k/hr are easily attainable and much higher are possible. Unfortunately, buying unenchanted bolts can be difficult which means you may have to cut the gems into bolt tips and add them to the bolts yourself, but this also means even higher return on investment at the expense of some time.

Bake Pie
Bake Pie is a Lunar spell, requiring 65 magic to cast that automatically cooks one by one, without fail, all raw pies in a player's inventory for which he or she has the required cooking level. Each cast costs around 120 GP with a steam battlestaff. raw summer pies can be created for less than 1,000 GP and the final product sells for around 1,350 GP yielding over 200 GP profit for each pie cooked with this spell. The downside of using this method is that raw summer pies must be prepared by hand as they are not sold very often on the Grand Exchange at a reasonable price and thus the profit per hour is reduced.

Mining
Ores can be mined and sold to gain money, or you can smelt the ores into bars and sell them to players. Generally, coal and iron ore are in high demand by players training Smithing. For low level mining, its best to start in the swamp mine (facing the castle in Lumbridge, take a left through the cemetery, follow the dirt road) smelt it into bars, bank it, sell them on the G.E. afterwards (bronze bars sell on the G.E. for around 365 coins each) and repeat. Once you get to 15 Mining, head to Varrock and mine some iron (ore: 62 coins bar: 222 coins).

At level 30 Mining, coal (150 GP ea) can be mined. One location to mine coal is at the Kandarin Coal Trucks, west of Seers' Village and north of the Fishing Guild. Mined coal can be placed into the nearby mine carts and then collected just north of Seers' Village. Only 120 coal can be stored in the carts at one time.

Another popular place to mine is in the Motherlode Mine located in the Falador Dwarven Mines. You can obtain coal (150 GP), gold (229 GP), mithril (382 GP), adamantite (1,127 GP), and runite (11,060 GP) considered you have the respective Mining levels. By mining pay-dirt and cleaning it in the machine located in the center of the mine, you collect random ores from the sack. This is a very popular update to the Mining skill as it is easy to do AFK and can yield good profit and experience per hour. On random, you can also receive golden nuggets. These can be traded in for a mining outfit which grants an XP boost to Mining.

Upon completing the Hard and Elite Falador Achievement Diary, players will have an increased chance of receiving higher ores when cleaning pay-dirt. If possible at your level, it's recommended to obtain these achievements so that Motherlode Mine will yield an even more profitable reward.

Rune running
One easy method to make large amounts of money is rune running. There are rich players willing to pay people to "run" rune essence for them, either to the bank or to a nearby general store for unnoting.

There are many players and clans involved in rune running services; many of them post advertisements on the RuneScape Forums. Generally, the "Runes and Ammo" section is where most players post for this method. Titles, such as "25:25, 18:25, 23:25" and so on, are what you should be looking for. These numbers are ratios of runes to rune essence (or pure essence).

Law rune running
World 341 and 366 are commonly used for running law runes. Depending on the crafter, they may require you to hold up to 26 pure essence in your inventory. Head to Draynor Village for a nearby bank, and be sure you have no weapons, armour, or god clothing (this includes God books) on. If you want to be safe, just don't wear anything.

Once you've boarded the ship, head east until you see a cooking range. Travel north, following the path, and pass the church and the bridge. Runecrafters will be outside of the altar, usually typing such things like "23:25" or "25:25" (ratio of Law rune to Pure essence). Trade the player, and offer them your essence. You should receive a significant amount of law runes in return. Head back to Draynor Village to deposit your runes, and withdraw another inventory of essence, repeating the above steps.

Nature rune running
World 336 is commonly used for running nature runes, the other most profitable runes to run. This method can be quite dangerous, so stay alert and consider bringing a one-click teleport item, or teleport jewellery. There are poisonous monsters on Karamja, but you can buy an Antipoison potion from the general store for about 500 coins.

It is highly recommended that you join a clan chat as there are usually crafters online. Running with charged amulets of glory to the Abyss at level 1 Runecrafting with no pouches, you can average around 500k an hour; however, with level 50 and three pouches, you can reach between 750k-1000k an hour depending on Runecrafting host lines.

The Nature altar is located north of Shilo Village. Make your way to Southern Karamja, or enter the nature altar through the Abyss for quick travel.

Once you've traded your essence for runes, run to the nearby general store, sell some of your noted essence and buy it back, and then repeat the process!

Watch out for other players buying your essence as soon as you sell it. The only way to avoid them is to find a nature running group on a different world.

A way to avoid players buying your essence from the general store is to speak with Aisles, who will un-note anything for 5 coins a piece.

Iron knives
Buy (or mine) iron ore in bulk. Players who power-level Mining typically are willing to sell for 60-70GP each. Then, buy (or craft) a ring of forging, and smelt the ore at the Al Kharid furnace (note that the ring of forging will only work for 140 iron ore!). Smith these iron bars at the Varrock anvil and make iron knives. Players typically pay around 60-65GP per knife in a high-volume trading area, such as Varrock West Bank on World 2. This is a decent source of Smithing XP and decent profit. (Assuming you buy 140 iron ore at 65GP per ore, and 1 ring of forging for 1,200GP, your total cost is just under 12k GP, and you will have 42k GP if you sell all 700 iron knives for 70 GP each, making for a profit of 30k GP, or about 47 GP profit per knife).

Steel Bars
Buy (or mine) iron ore and coal in bulk. Steel bars take 2 coals and 1 iron ore. Coal costs 135GP each and iron 35-40GP each. Players will pay you up to 500GP each steel bar you make. So for example, if you buy 2000 coals and 1000 iron ores (costs 280-300k) and you are able to make 1000 steel bars (up to 500k), so the profit will be 200-220k.

Cannonballs
Smithing cannonballs from steel bars after completion of the Dwarf Cannon quest can yield profits of roughly 225k GP per hour at Port Phasmatys, along with about 16.5k xp per hour.

Blast Furnace
The Blast Furnace is a minigame in which bars are smelted using half of the normal amount of coal required and at a faster rate than using normal furnaces. Profits at Blast Furnace depend heavily on the activity of participants, but profits of 1.5-2m/hr can be achieved with smelting runite bars. Smelting bars of a lower tier usually results in a profit of around 1m/hr. To achieve these profits, it is recommended to join a smithing clan chat dedicated to the Blast Furnace.

Thieving
Thieving is a very fast skill that unlocks many very effective money making methods that require little to no startup or supplies making it an ideal stat for players without a large bank or iron man accounts.

Chests
At 28 thieving you are able to loot the Nature Rune Chest in East Ardougne, which gives 3 coins and a nature rune. With a respawn time of 8 seconds and a loot time of about one second, you can steal from the chest 400 times max in one hour without world hopping which is around 100k/hr.

The Rogue chest is lootable at 84 thieving and can yield profits of over 800k/hr but is located in deep wilderness in the Rogues' Castle and is a very popular hotspot for player killers which makes it undesirable to many.

Stalls
The Ardougne Baker's Stall can be stolen from at 5 thieving and is great money for low levels. Possible loot includes cakes which sell for the Grand Exchange for around 110 each. The stall has a respawn time of 2 seconds and assuming a 33% chance of receiving cake and a 30 second bank time, it is possible to steal approximately 500 cakes, or 55k GP, every hour, assuming you aren't caught by guards or the baker.

At 20 thieving players can steal from the silk stall which can then be sold back to the Silk merchant for 60 GP after a period of 10 minutes has passed since the player last stole from the stall. With the stall's respawn time at 5 seconds and assuming 30 second bank time it is possible to steal about 600 silk every hour which can then be sold back to the trader for 36k.

Pickpocketing
Male H.A.M. Members are thievable at 20 thieving and female members at 15, both of which have a good chance of giving easy clue scrolls as loot which can then be completed for rewards such as a piece of iron trimmed armour and god pages. Profit per hour varies widely, but in the long run is decent profit.

At 38 thieving players can steal from Master Farmers and have the possibility of receiving valuable herb seeds from him such as ranarr, snapdragon and torstol seeds. Profit here can be upwards of 150k/hr, but a lot of low level food is required as every failed pickpocket costs 3 hitpoints.

Woodcutting
Woodcutting is a skill with moderate profits that requires little attention, has minimal startup costs, and is low-level-friendly, making it a great money maker for newer players.

Levels 1-45/60
Logs can be cut from regular trees at level 1 woodcutting and sell in the Grand Exchange for around 45 GP each, which is a higher price than Oak, Willow, and Maple logs.

Levels 45-60
Maple logs can be sold cheaply to a general store and sell on the Grand Exchange for around 18 GP per log.

Selling to the general store yields 32GP at first and min 7GP which results in a profit of about 6,300GP an hour. Cutting normal logs is much more profit but is significantly slower experience.

Levels 60-99
Yew logs can be sold for 350GP to 450GP on the Grand Exchange, and the higher level you are the faster you can get them. They are always going to be in high demand for them, due to their usage like Fletching and Firemaking. Ideally, one should have 70 woodcutting before beginning to cut yews as at this level the rate of success in cutting logs is a little higher than at 60.

Herblore
Using the Herblore Skill, players can make Unfinished Potions and sell them for quick cash.

An example of a good and profitable way to do this would be looking at the prices and testing to see if you make profit or not upon making an Unfinished Potion. For example: The price for Avantoe is 2,060 coins, and an Avantoe potion (unf) sells for 2,411 coins. The materials needed to make an Unfinished Avantoe Potion are a Clean Avantoe and Vial of water. The Vial of water is 4 coins each. Therefore, you make a profit of 347 coins each time you make an Unfinished Avantoe Potion and sell it. Every inventory, 14 Unfinished Potions can be made using a vial of water and the clean herb. So for every inventory, you make a 4,858 coin profit.

Tips and hints

 * With the same effort, you could easily kill cows for their cowhide or raw beef, mine rune/pure essence, or collect Mort myre fungi or Blue dragon scales, which would make money a lot more easily.
 * Make sure to pick up as much money left on the ground as you can when training or traveling. Although it seems pointless to do so, even small amounts of money can add up to thousands, so picking up that extra small drop from a guard or rock crab counts toward your earnings.
 * Many people leave random event rewards, such as coins and gems, on the ground when spinning flax in Lumbridge Castle. Use this to your advantage by going in to a busy world and picking up free items while spinning flax. It might be a good idea to take only 27 flax with you to the spinning wheel so you can pick up any valuables as soon as they appear on the ground.
 * While selling to a general store may be less time consuming, selling to an actual player is well worth the time in most cases (i.e. regular logs sell for 1GP at a general store and over 75 to an actual player). In the same way, you can stock up on cheap items that players sell to the general store and later sell them to players or the grand exchange for a profit.

Other links

 * Skill training guides
 * Skills
 * Category:Guides