How to Flip in OSRS — A Beginner's Guide
Flipping is buying an item below its going rate and selling it above — pocketing the difference. No combat, no skilling, just the Grand Exchange. Here's how to actually do it.
The loop
- Pick an item with a gap between its instant-buy and instant-sell price (the "margin"), and enough trade volume that your offers actually fill.
- Place a buy offer at the low end (around the instant-sell price) and wait for someone selling in a hurry to fill it.
- Place a sell offer at the high end (around the instant-buy price) and wait for a buyer.
- Pocket the difference, minus the 2% Grand Exchange tax on the sale. Repeat.
The two numbers that decide everything
- Margin after tax. Your profit per item is
sell − buy − 2% tax. A raw margin that looks fine can vanish once tax is applied — see the GE tax guide. - Volume. A huge margin is useless if only three of the item trade per hour. High-volume items fill fast and let you flip in bulk; that's usually where steady money is.
Buy limits
Every item has a 4-hour buy limit — you can only buy so many of it per 4 hours. This caps how much you can make per flip cycle, so plan around it. More in the buy-limits guide.
Common beginner mistakes
- Trusting raw margins that ignore the tax (the flip is actually a loss).
- Flipping thin-volume items your offers never fill.
- Chasing a falling price — if an item is crashing, the margin you see won't hold.
- Over-investing in one item past its buy limit and getting stuck holding it.
One rule: never automate Grand Exchange buying/selling. Botting the GE is against Jagex's rules and gets accounts banned. Flipping is a manual decision — tools like this help you decide, they don't trade for you.
Reading a flip board without fooling yourself
Every column on the geflips board exists to answer one question you would otherwise have to guess at. Here is what each is actually telling you:
| Column | What it means | What it protects you from |
|---|---|---|
| BUY @ | Where to place your buy offer — the cheap, instant-sell side | Overpaying into the spread |
| SELL @ | Where to list — the instant-buy side | Undercutting for no reason |
| MARGIN | The gap after the 2% tax | Flips that are secretly losses |
| CAPITAL | Gold you must tie up at realistic size | Over-committing your bank |
| EXIT | Hours to sell out at average volume | Getting stuck holding |
| RISK | Exit time blended with volatility | Jumpy, thin markets |
| TREND | Recent price direction (↑ / → / ↓) | Buying into a crash |
| RECUR | How evenly the chance recurs across the day | One-off flukes |
Where those buy and sell prices come from
They are not the raw instant-buy and instant-sell numbers, because those are the prices of whoever was
most impatient in the last few minutes. geflips takes the recent 5-minute price series from the
OSRS Wiki real-time prices API and computes
recency-weighted percentiles: the target buy is the 12th percentile of recent lows, the target sell
is the 93rd percentile of recent highs, and each observation is weighted by exp(−age / 8h) so
prices from this hour count far more than prices from yesterday.
The practical effect: you are aiming at a price the item genuinely trades at several times an hour, not at the single best tick in the window. That is deliberately more conservative than quoting the extreme — the extreme is exactly the fill you will sit waiting for and never get.
Your first flip, start to finish
- Filter to your bankroll. Use the budget chips (<2M, <10M, <50M) so the board only shows flips you can actually fill. A flip you can afford one of is not a flip.
- Tick "hide falling". A falling item's displayed margin is the margin it had. Until you know the market, skip anything trending down.
- Prefer low RISK and a short EXIT. Under two hours to exit means you can change your mind.
- Place the buy at BUY @ — not above it. The number already assumes you are competing for fills.
- Wait. This is the part people get wrong. If it has not filled in an hour, the market has moved; cancel and re-check the board rather than nudging your price up.
- List at SELL @ once filled, and let it sit. Undercutting by 1 gp starts a race you do not win.
- Log it. The position tracker keeps your hold-or-sell P/L net of tax in your own browser.
When an offer will not fill
Three causes, in order of likelihood. The market moved and your target is now stale — recheck the board, which rescans roughly every five minutes. Or you are competing with other flippers at the same price, which is normal: be patient rather than escalating. Or the item is thinner than it looked, in which case the honest move is to cancel and take the liquid flip instead of the theoretical one.
FAQ — frequently asked questions
How much gold do I need to start flipping?
You can start with a few hundred thousand, but profit scales with capital, so expect small absolute numbers early. Use the under-2M budget chip on the board to see flips that fit a starter bank, and read the by-capital guide for what is realistic at each tier.
How long should I wait before cancelling an offer?
About an hour is a reasonable rule for a liquid item. Prices are rescanned roughly every five minutes, so if your target has not filled in an hour, the market has usually moved past it.
Is flipping in OSRS against the rules?
No — manually buying and selling on the Grand Exchange is ordinary gameplay. What is bannable is automating it. Never use a bot or script to place GE offers; see the Wiki's page on macroing for where the line sits.
Should I flip one item or many?
Many. Each item has its own 4-hour buy limit, so a single item caps your profit per cycle no matter how much gold you have. Spreading across a basket keeps your capital working.
Why is the margin on the board smaller than the one in the game?
Because the board's margin is already net of the 2% GE tax and is based on prices the item reliably trades at, not the widest tick in the window. It is the number you can actually realise.
Start flipping free — live board ↗ How the numbers work
Related guides
- OSRS Grand Exchange Tax, Explained (2% cap & exemptions)
- F2P Flipping in OSRS — Making Money Without Membership
- What Can I Flip With X GP? OSRS Flipping by Capital Tier