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, and the prices and hourly rates are mere estimates. (Note: If you have a good idea to add to make gold, please add it to the list.)

If you notice a discrepancy between profits listed here and profits listed on guide pages, it is likely a caching issue. You can force this page to update by clicking [ here].

 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  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 raw trout or raw salmon from a popular world at Barbarian Village and cook them on the everlasting fire next to the fishing spot. Cooking trout and salmon requires level 15 and 25 Cooking respectively.

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', and they have been the three primary money-making skills commonly used by players to make money 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 and Thieving. The latter is a very fast skill that unlocks many very effective money-making methods that require little-to-no startup costs or supplies, thus making it an ideal stat for Ironman accounts or players without a large bank.

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 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.

Flax
(Note, this money making option is only available to members) Flax can be picked in the flax field south of Seers' Village by members. Players can obtain around 1,000 flax per hour resulting in. Moreover, if players have 10 Crafting or higher, it can be spun into bow string, and approximately 1,000 bow string (worth ) can be made an hour using the spinning wheel in Lumbridge Castle. It is best to buy flax and spin it rather than picking it.

Also, if players have at least completed all the easy Kandarin tasks, they can collect flax from the flax keeper. This can be done once per day based on UTC time, however.

Cowhides
Cowhides can be tanned at a tanner for a small fee and turned into soft leather for one coin or turned into hard leather for three coins each. Cowhide can be turned into either soft leather, which is approximately per hour, or hard leather, which is around  per hour, assuming a player can collect and tan approximately 374 hides in an hour. Just go to the Lumbridge cow field, loot 27 cowhides, run to the Al Kharid tanner, Ellis, pay him gold, bank, and then repeat. It is strongly recommended that players complete the Prince Ali Rescue quest beforehand to allow them free passage through the gates.

Dark wizards
Dark wizards, located south of Varrock, are level 7 and 20 wizards that can easily be killed by low levels, especially those using Ranged. They drop talismans and runes. Talismans can be sold to runecrafters for a decent sum of gold pieces. More specifically, fire talismans can be sold over the Grand Exchange for up to each.

Recurring methods
Effective hourly profit is the amount of money you would make in an hour if you could continuously use this method. It is best not to use activities that have an effective profit less than what you can normally make otherwise.

Note that you can only do one type of herb farming at once, one type of brewing at once, and one of either picking papayas or coconuts.

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, easy clue scrolls will often be the best (due to various requirements not being present) you can possibly do. Mid-level players should aim for 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/merchanting
Note: This will NOT get you banned. However, joining a merching clan and buying out a item with them to raise the price IS bannable (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.

Jewellery
Often times, jewellery can cost 1,000 gold or more per piece. Given that it can be made entirely in a bank, hundreds of pieces can be made very quickly. Check this 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. Also, of course, players will need sufficient Crafting levels in order to make jewellery. For example, making an onyx amulet requires 90 Crafting.

Motherlode Mine
At level 30 Mining, coal ( GP) can be mined, and a popular members' place to mine it is in the Motherlode Mine located in the Falador Dwarven Mines. Also, players can obtain gold ( GP), mithril ( GP), adamantite ( GP), and runite ( GP) considering they have the respective Mining levels. By mining pay-dirt and cleaning it in the machine located in the center of the mine, players collect random ores from the sack. This is a very popular update to the Mining skill as it is easy to AFK and can yield good profit and 22,000-35,000 experience per hour. Randomly, players can also receive golden nuggets that can be traded in for a miner's outfit, which grants a 2.5% XP boost to Mining if the full set is worn.

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, it is 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 or pure 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. Follow these steps below.


 * 1) 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.
 * 2) Head to Port Sarim, and board the Entrana monks' ship.
 * 3) Once you've boarded the ship, head east until you see a cooking range.
 * 4) 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 runes to pure essence).
 * 5) Trade the player, and offer them your essence. You should receive a significant amount of law runes in return.
 * 6) 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 an hour; however, with level 50 and three pouches, you can reach between  and  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 five coins a piece.

Tips and hints

 * With basically the same effort, players could easily kill cows for their cowhide, 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 while 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.
 * 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 1 gp at a general store and gp 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.

Trivia

 * Prior to the Optional Randoms update on 11 September 2014, many people left random event rewards, such as coins and gems, on the ground when spinning flax in Lumbridge Castle. Some players used this to their advantage by going into a busy world and picking up free items while spinning flax or alching.

Other links

 * Category:Guides
 * Skill training guides
 * Skills
 * Gold sink