OSRS Grand Exchange Tax, Explained (2% cap & exemptions)
The Grand Exchange tax is the single most misunderstood thing in flipping — and getting it wrong is why other tools quote margins you can't actually hit. Here's exactly how it works.
The rule, in one line
When you sell an item on the Grand Exchange, the game takes a 2% tax on the sale price (rounded down), paid by the seller. The buyer pays nothing extra. That's it — but the details below are where the money is.
The three things people miss
- It's capped at 5,000,000 gp per item. 2% of a 1B item would be 20M, but the tax never exceeds 5M on a single item. So on ultra-expensive items the effective tax rate is well under 2%.
- Cheap items are exempt. Items that sell for 49 gp or less are not taxed at all. (This is why "sell it for 50 gp to dodge tax" is a meme, not a strategy — you'd be giving away far more than the tax to save it.)
- Some items are exempt entirely, regardless of price — most notably the Old School Bond, plus a set of basic tools (chisel, hammer, knife, needle, pestle and mortar, saw, spade, rake, secateurs, seed dibber, shears, watering can, glassblowing pipe, gardening trowel). Flipping bonds is genuinely tax-free.
What it does to a flip
Your real margin is sell − buy − tax, where tax is 2% of the sell price (capped/exempt as
above). A flip that looks like a 60 gp margin on a 3,000 gp item really nets about 0 after the ~60 gp tax —
that's a wash. The tax doesn't just shave profit; it can turn a "profitable" flip negative, which is
the #1 reason beginners lose money trusting raw margins.
Quick reference
| Situation | Tax |
|---|---|
| Item sells for ≤ 49 gp | None |
| Bond / exempt tool | None |
| Normal item, sells for P gp | floor(P × 0.02) |
| Item sells for ≥ 250M gp | Flat 5,000,000 (the cap) |
Tax rates and rules can change with game updates — always sanity-check against the current in-game Grand Exchange. This is a guide to game mechanics, not financial advice, and it has nothing to do with real-world money.
Worked examples: what the tax actually takes
The whole rule is floor(sell_price × 0.02), capped at 5,000,000 gp, and skipped entirely
below 50 gp. Those three clauses mean the effective rate is not a flat 2%:
| You sell at | Tax | Effective rate | You receive |
|---|---|---|---|
| 49 gp | 0 gp | 0% | 49 gp |
| 50 gp | 1 gp | 2% | 49 gp |
| 3,000 gp | 60 gp | 2% | 2,940 gp |
| 1,000,000 gp | 20,000 gp | 2% | 980,000 gp |
| 250,000,000 gp | 5,000,000 gp | 2% | 245,000,000 gp |
| 1,000,000,000 gp | 5,000,000 gp | 0.5% | 995,000,000 gp |
Look at the first two rows. Because the tax rounds down, listing at 50 gp nets you exactly the same 49 gp as listing at 49 gp — the extra coin goes straight to the tax. The OSRS Wiki spells out this same case. And the cap only starts binding at a 250,000,000 gp sale price (because 250M × 2% = 5M); above that, every extra gp of sale price is completely untaxed.
The breakeven rule worth memorising
A flip profits when sell − buy − 0.02 × sell > 0. Rearranged, that is
sell > buy ÷ 0.98 — so your sell price must clear your buy price by at least
2.04% before you have made a single coin. Anything tighter is a loss dressed up as a margin.
In practice: a 1,000 gp buy needs to sell above ~1,021 gp; a 100k buy needs ~102,041 gp; a 10M buy needs ~10,204,082 gp. This is why "a 60 gp margin on a 3,000 gp item" is a wash — the tax on that sale is 60 gp. It is also why tiny-margin, cheap-item flipping is so much harder than it looks: the tax is a percentage, but the margin you can actually capture on a 200 gp item is a handful of coins.
What is actually exempt
The exempt set is broader than most guides admit. Per the Wiki's exempt-from-tax list, it covers Old school bonds, energy potions, a set of low-level combat consumables (bronze/iron/ steel arrows and darts, mind runes), a set of low-level foods (bread, cake, lobster, salmon, tuna, shrimps and friends), common teleport items (Varrock/Falador/Lumbridge/Camelot/Ardougne teleports, games necklace(8), ring of dueling(8)), and thirteen tools: chisel, gardening trowel, glassblowing pipe, hammer, needle, pestle and mortar, rake, saw, secateurs, seed dibber, shears, spade and watering can.
Bonds are the one that matters for flippers with capital: they are high-value, genuinely tax-free, and therefore the only large item where your full spread is your profit. They are also slow-moving, so treat them as a bankroll play rather than a volume one.
Why older guides get this wrong
The Grand Exchange tax launched at 1%. On 29 May 2025 Jagex doubled it to 2%. Any video, spreadsheet or calculator written before that date understates your tax by half — which is more than enough to turn its "profitable" flips into losers. If a tool cannot tell you which rate it uses, assume it is stale.
flip.py: a 2% rate, the 5,000,000 gp
per-item cap, the sub-50 gp exemption and the exempt-name set, applied through a single
net_sell() call that every margin, ROI, GP/HR and capital figure on the site flows through.
Flips that are negative after tax are filtered out of the board entirely, so nothing you see needs
a mental correction. Check it on the live flip board.FAQ — frequently asked questions
Does the buyer pay the GE tax too?
No. The tax is charged to the seller only, taken out of the sale proceeds. The buyer pays exactly the price shown on the offer.
Is there GE tax in free-to-play?
Yes — the 2% tax applies on free-to-play worlds exactly as it does on members' worlds. Because F2P margins are thinner to begin with, the tax bites proportionally harder there.
How do I avoid the Grand Exchange tax?
Legitimately, only by trading exempt items — bonds, energy potions, the low-level consumables and foods, common teleports, and the thirteen exempt tools. Deliberately listing items at 49 gp to dodge the tax saves you at most one coin per item and costs you far more in forgone margin.
Is the tax charged when I buy?
No. Buying is untaxed. The 2% comes off only when your sell offer completes, which is why your real margin is sell minus buy minus 2% of the sell price.
Did the OSRS GE tax change?
Yes. It began at 1% and was increased to 2% on 29 May 2025. Guides written before that date understate the tax by half.
Start flipping free — live board ↗ How the numbers work
Related guides
- How to Flip in OSRS — A Beginner's Guide
- OSRS GE Buy Limits Explained — and How to Flip Around Them
- High-Volume vs High-Margin Flipping (and Why Public Flips Crash)