OSRS Money Making: Methods That Still Pay in 2026

The most reliable OSRS money making plan in November 2026 is a mix of three things: one active method that suits your stats, a couple of recurring runs such as herbs and birdhouses that pay while you do something else, and a basic understanding of the Grand Exchange tax so your profit is real. Exact gold per hour figures shift with every price swing, so this page focuses on how to pick methods, what each one requires, and the costs that quietly eat into returns. If you are brand new, start with the free coins and low-level options below, then work up to the skilling and recurring methods as your levels grow.

We checked this against the OSRS Wiki money making guide and its method pages, the wiki's Grand Exchange and Agility training pages, and Jagex's own rules page in November 2026.

How the Wiki's Money Making Guide Really Works

Almost every serious player plans gold around the Money making guide on the OSRS Wiki. It is a sortable table of methods with requirements, intensity, category and an hourly profit figure. The important thing to understand is that the profit column is calculated live from current Grand Exchange market prices, and the wiki itself labels those prices and hourly rates as estimates. When an input item spikes or an output item crashes, a method can drop several places overnight. Treat the number as a ranking tool, not a promise.

The guide also carries two warnings that new players often skip. First, any method that relies on buying an item from the Grand Exchange does not account for the time needed to buy it or for the item's buy limit, so you should not assume you can purchase supplies as fast as you can process them. Second, the wiki recommends testing processing methods with a small sample before investing heavily, because a stale price can turn a listed profit into a loss.

A practical way to read the table is to filter by what you can already do. Sort by your best skills, ignore anything that needs a quest you have not finished, and then compare the top three or four candidates by intensity. A method that is slightly lower on paper but relaxed enough to do for three hours often beats a high-focus method you can only stand for forty minutes.

Your First Coins on a Fresh Account

A brand new character has almost nothing, so the first goal is a small cash buffer for runes, food and teleports. The money making guide points to the Stronghold of Security as an easy start: completing the first three levels pays 10,000 coins, and it can be done even at combat level 3. It takes a little while to walk through, but it is a one-time payout with no supplies needed.

From there, low-level players usually lean on simple gathering. Cutting, mining or fishing common resources and selling them is slow, but it builds levels you will use later anyway. The real jump comes once you have members' access and some mid-level stats, because most of the strongest methods on the table are members only.

One early option that pays in a predictable way is the Agility Pyramid in the desert. The Agility training page notes that each completion awards a pyramid top worth 10,000 coins when handed to Simon Templeton, with roughly 13 completions an hour at levels 30 to 50 and upward of 26 an hour at levels 70 to 99. Because it trains Agility at the same time, it pairs well with the routes in our Agility training guide. Bring food at lower levels, since failed obstacles slow you down and cost hitpoints.

Recurring Methods: Herb Runs and Birdhouses

Recurring methods are the quiet backbone of most money plans. You spend a few minutes setting them up, go do something else, and return when the timer finishes. The money making guide keeps a separate section for these and measures them by effective hourly profit, which is what you would earn per hour of actual attention.

Herb runs are the classic example. The wiki's ranarr weed guide lists level 32 Farming as the base requirement, or 65 Farming for the Farming Guild herb patch. It recommends level 61 Magic for Trollheim Teleport and lists quests that open useful patches, including Ghosts Ahoy, My Arm's Big Adventure and Fairytale I. The guide assumes an average of 8.8 herbs per patch across ten patches, and it suggests magic secateurs because they raise crop yield by 10 percent. Achievement Diary rewards make the run faster too: the medium Lumbridge and Draynor diary gives the Explorer's ring 2 teleport near the Falador patch, and the medium Ardougne diary gives the Ardougne cloak 2 teleport to the Ardougne patch.

Birdhouses are the other staple. They are set on four spots on Fossil Island, and each one fills with birds over roughly 50 minutes, catching on average one bird every five minutes up to a maximum of ten. Each house needs ten low-level or five high-level seeds, and the wiki notes that every seed type gives the same rewards, so use whatever is cheapest. The loot includes bird nests along with Hunter experience. Fossil Island itself is unlocked by the Bone Voyage quest.

Doing a herb run and a birdhouse run together between other activities adds a steady stream of income with very little effort. The key is consistency: a run you actually do five times a day beats a better run you forget about.

Skilling Money Makers With Clear Requirements

Once your skills reach the 70s and 80s, processing and minigame methods start to pull ahead. Herblore is a good example from the money making guide's untradeable supplies table. Making divine potions uses crystal shards gathered through other play, with level requirements ranging from 70 Herblore for divine super attack, strength and defence potions, to 74 for divine ranging, 78 for divine magic, 86 for divine bastion and battlemage, and 97 for divine super combat potions. Because the shards are treated as free, the profit is simply the gap between the divine and regular potion prices.

The Hallowed Sepulchre is another method that grows with your stats. According to the Agility training page, it requires the Sins of the Father quest and becomes properly profitable once you can loot the Grand Hallowed Coffin on Floor 5, which needs either 87 Agility with 84 Thieving or 92 Agility with 66 Thieving. It is demanding to learn, but it trains Agility at some of the best rates in the game at the same time.

The Wilderness Agility Course is a different trade-off. The wiki lists it as a potentially lucrative money maker because it drops alchables, noted blighted items and medium clue scrolls, but it sits in the deep Wilderness, so player killers are a real risk. Only bring what you are willing to lose, and expect lower returns on busy days.

Merchanting, Taxes and the Costs People Forget

Grand Exchange flipping, which the wiki calls merchanting, means buying items low and selling them high. The wiki describes it plainly as a high-risk, high-reward activity that works best on items that trade often and move in price. It can be profitable, but it is also the fastest way to lose a bank if you buy into a falling market.

Every flip and every processing method is also affected by the Grand Exchange tax. Most transactions carry a 2 percent convenience fee, capped at 5 million coins per item, and the tax rounds down so very cheap items are effectively untaxed. On a thin margin, 2 percent can be the whole profit. Buy limits matter as well: the Grand Exchange restricts how many of an item you can buy every four hours, which caps how fast any buy-and-process method can run.

Other hidden costs to budget for include teleport runes, stamina potions, food lost on failed attempts and the time spent banking. If you train a costly skill such as Construction, remember that it is a gold sink rather than an earner; our Construction training guide shows how to plan that spending so it does not wipe out what you earn here.

Gold, Membership and the Rules You Should Know

For many players the first real money goal is paying for membership with in-game gold. That is done with bonds, which are the only item in the game that can be bought from Jagex with real money and then traded for coins. Our guide to the current bond price explains how many days each bond gives and how to work out what membership costs you per day in gold.

What you should never do is buy gold or items from outside sellers. Jagex's Rules of RuneScape define real-world trading as buying or selling, for real money or anything of value, things that relate to Jagex accounts, and the official rules page also says paying someone to play your account counts. Breaking those rules can get the account banned, and the wiki's summary of the rules notes that if any of your accounts obtained wealth through rule-breaking, all of your accounts may be banned.

If you play an Ironman, almost none of the trading advice above applies, because you cannot use the Grand Exchange for anything except buying bonds. Ironmen earn money for things like shop purchases and high alchemy rather than trading, and our Ironman guide covers how that changes your early priorities.

If You Would Rather Start Further Ahead

Building a bank from zero takes real time, and some players would rather begin with an account that already has the levels a method needs. Our Old School RuneScape page shows account listings, and what is available changes daily.

Before you consider that route, know where Jagex stands. Under its Rules of RuneScape an account may not be passed on, lent out or shared with another person, and Jagex says it has given nobody permission to sell one. Weigh that against the methods above, which cost nothing but play time and leave you with a bank you built.

Frequently Asked Questions