GE tax calculator
What the Grand Exchange takes when you sell, including the cap and the exemptions.
Your sale
Price per item. Accepts 10k, 2.5m, 1b.
A short list of tools and the bond are exempt.
What the Grand Exchange takes
Standard 2% rate, rounded down per item. To profit on this sale you would need to have bought below 980,000 gp.
Tax exempt items
14 itemsExemptions are set by Jagex and can change with a game update. If you are relying on one for a large trade, confirm it in game first.
How the Grand Exchange tax works
Since December 2021, completing a sale on the Grand Exchange costs the seller 2% of the sale price. The buyer is unaffected — they pay exactly what their offer says. The tax is deducted from the seller’s proceeds and the coins are destroyed rather than given to anyone.
The purpose is economic. Gold enters Old School RuneScape constantly through monster drops, alchemy and shop sales, and without something removing it the currency slowly loses value. The Grand Exchange tax is the main mechanism doing that removal.
The three rules that matter
- 2% of the sale price, calculated per item and rounded down. Selling 1,000 items at 1,000 GP each is taxed 20 GP per item, not 2% of the 1,000,000 GP total — the difference is small but it always rounds in the game’s favour.
- Nothing below 50 GP. Items sold under that price are not taxed at all, which keeps low-value bulk trading viable.
- Capped at 5,000,000 GP per item. The cap is reached at a sale price of 250,000,000 GP. Above that, the effective tax rate falls below 2% — a 500M sale is taxed 1%, not 10M.
What it means for flipping
The tax sets a floor on how thin a margin can be before a trade stops being worth making. To break even you need to sell for roughly 2.04% more than you paid, because recovering a 2% deduction requires slightly more than a 2% increase.
On high-volume items with spreads of a few percent, this is the difference between a working strategy and a slow loss. Our margin guide and every margin figure on this site is calculated after tax for that reason.
Common questions
- How much is the Grand Exchange tax in OSRS?
- The Grand Exchange charges the seller 2% of the sale price, rounded down per item. Items sold for under 50 coins are not taxed, and the tax is capped at 5,000,000 coins per item.
- Who pays the GE tax, the buyer or the seller?
- The seller pays. The buyer pays exactly the price shown on their offer; the tax is deducted from what the seller receives when the offer completes.
- Which items are exempt from GE tax?
- The Old school bond and a short list of tools are exempt: chisel, gardening trowel, glassblowing pipe, hammer, needle, pestle and mortar, rake, saw, secateurs, seed dibber, shears, spade and watering can.
- Why does the GE tax exist?
- It removes coins from the game economy. Every trade destroys a small amount of gold, which counteracts the gold constantly entering the game from monster drops and other sources.
Worth knowing
Tax rates and exemptions are set by Jagex and can change in a game update. Confirm in game before relying on these figures for a large trade.
The tax applies to Grand Exchange sales only. Direct player-to-player trades are not taxed.