OSRS Flipping Guides
Plain-English, honest guides to making gold on the Grand Exchange — the tax, buy limits, F2P flipping, and how not to lose money on crowded flips. Grounded in how the GE actually works and in what the geflips tool computes.
Start flipping free — live board ↗ How the numbers work
Start here
If you are new, read them in this order. How to flip covers the mechanics of an offer from placement to sale. GE tax explained is the one that saves you money immediately, because the 2% sale tax is what turns most apparently profitable flips into losses. Buy limits explains the 4-hour ceiling on how much of any item you can buy, which is the constraint that ultimately caps your income. After those three, what to flip with your gold matches a strategy to your bankroll.
The three facts that decide most flips
- Your sell must clear your buy by at least 2.04%. That is the breakeven once the 2% tax is applied to the sale. Anything tighter is a loss wearing a margin's clothing.
- Profit per cycle is margin × the smaller of the buy limit and what you can realistically fill. You cannot buy an item's entire traded volume — you are competing with every other flipper.
- Volume beats margin. Deep markets fill fast, resist manipulation, and keep working after other people find them. Thin markets with juicy spreads are where most losses happen.
All guides
- OSRS Grand Exchange Tax, Explained (2% cap & exemptions)
How the OSRS Grand Exchange tax really works: the 2% seller tax, the 5M-per-item cap, which items are exempt, and what it does to your flip margins.
- How to Flip in OSRS — A Beginner's Guide
Step-by-step: how Grand Exchange flipping works in Old School RuneScape, from your first buy offer to your first real profit, with the tax and buy limits done right.
- F2P Flipping in OSRS — Making Money Without Membership
How to flip on free-to-play OSRS: the realities of the F2P Grand Exchange, what to look for, and how to grind toward a bond without spending real money.
- Is Flipping Worth It in OSRS? Honest Expectations
An honest look at OSRS flipping: how much you can realistically make by capital tier, the variance and bad trades, and how it compares to other money-makers.
- OSRS GE Buy Limits Explained — and How to Flip Around Them
How the 4-hour Grand Exchange buy limit works, why it caps your flipping profit per cycle, and how to plan flips and spread capital around it.
- High-Volume vs High-Margin Flipping (and Why Public Flips Crash)
The core trade-off in OSRS flipping: fast, safe high-volume flips vs slow, swingy high-margin flips — and why any flip that goes viral stops working.
- OSRS High Alch Profit Guide — which items actually profit
How High Alchemy profit works in OSRS: the highalch − item − nature rune math (no GE tax), the magic level you need, the ~1,200/hr cap, and how to find items that profit right now.
- Merching vs Flipping vs Other OSRS Money-Making
What 'merching' actually means in OSRS, how it differs from flipping, and how both compare to PvM/skilling money-makers — with an honest take on opportunity cost.
- What Can I Flip With X GP? OSRS Flipping by Capital Tier
How much gold you need to flip in OSRS and what to flip at each bankroll tier — small (under 1M), mid (1–50M), and large (50M+) — honestly, since profit scales with capital.
- Avoiding Price Sniping & Manipulation as an OSRS Flipper
How price sniping and manipulation work on the OSRS Grand Exchange, why thin-volume items are vulnerable, and how to flip defensively so you don't get burned.
- Decanting Potions for Profit in OSRS — how it works
How to decant potions for profit in OSRS: where to decant (Zahur and Bob Barter), why it's lossless, and how the price-per-dose gap between dose sizes becomes a flip.
Mistakes these guides will save you from
- Trusting a pre-2025 margin calculator. The GE tax doubled from 1% to 2% on 29 May 2025, so older tools understate your cost by half.
- Chasing the biggest margin on the board. Large spreads on barely-traded items usually mean stale prices or a single artificial offer, not a missed opportunity.
- Buying into a falling price. A margin quoted mid-crash is the margin that existed before the crash started.
- Concentrating the whole bank in one item. Buy limits cap what any single item can return per cycle, so the surplus capital simply sits idle.
- Raising your bid because an offer did not fill. A failed fill is information. Overpaying to avoid missing out is how a small loss becomes a stuck position.
How these guides are written
Every number here is either read off this site's own compute path or cited to the OSRS Wiki. Live prices come from the Wiki's real-time prices API, rescanned roughly every five minutes. There are no invented GP/hour figures, no promises about what you will earn, and no automation advice — scripting the Grand Exchange breaks Jagex's rules and gets accounts banned.
Where something is uncertain or shifts with game updates, the guides say so rather than rounding it into a confident claim. Tax rates, buy limits and decanting services have all changed before and can change again; check anything load-bearing against the current in-game state.
FAQ — frequently asked questions
What is flipping in OSRS?
Buying an item on the Grand Exchange below its going rate and selling it above, keeping the difference minus the 2% sale tax. It needs no combat or skilling — only capital, patience and a sense of which items actually trade.
Is flipping allowed in Old School RuneScape?
Yes. Manually placing buy and sell offers is ordinary gameplay. What is bannable is automating it with a bot or script, which breaks the rules of RuneScape.
How much GP do I need to start flipping?
You can start with a few hundred thousand, though profit is proportional to the capital you have working, so early returns are small in absolute terms. The by-capital guide covers what is realistic at each bankroll tier.
What is the GE tax and how much is it?
A 2% tax charged to the seller on completed Grand Exchange sales, capped at 5,000,000 gp per item, with sales below 50 gp and a list of exempt items untaxed. It rose from 1% to 2% on 29 May 2025.
Why do flipping guides recommend items that no longer work?
Because published flips crowd. Once many players act on the same item, buyers bid the buy side up and sellers push the sell side down until the spread closes. Deep, high-volume markets degrade far more slowly than thin ones.
Where does geflips get its prices?
From the OSRS Wiki real-time prices API, rescanned roughly every five minutes. Every margin, ROI and profit figure on the site is computed net of the correct GE tax.
Put it to use
Reading about flipping only goes so far. The live flip board ranks every worthwhile Grand Exchange flip right now by profit after the real tax, with the capital each ties up and how long it would take to exit. There are also focused boards for free-to-play, high alchemy, decanting, processing recipes, price movers and gear upgrades, plus a position tracker and free Discord price alerts.