How to flip in OSRS

The complete Grand Exchange flipping guide - from your first 100k spread to running alerts while you sleep.

1. What flipping is

Every GE item has two live prices: the instant-sell price (what impatient sellers accept) and the instant-buy price (what impatient buyers pay). Flipping is placing a buy offer at the lower number, waiting for it to fill, then re-listing at the higher number. The gap - the spread - is your profit. It works on a fresh level-3 account and scales with your bankroll.

2. Margins and the 2% GE tax

The GE takes 2% of every sale (capped at 5m per item; items under 50 gp are exempt), so the real margin is sell price minus tax minus buy price. A 1,000 gp spread on a 60k item is actually a 200 gp loss once tax bites. Every margin on GrandExchange.com is already after tax. Full detail: the GE tax explained.

3. Buy limits decide your ceiling

Every item caps how many you can buy per rolling 4 hours - 8 for an Armadyl crossbow, 13,000 for cannonballs. Buy limit times margin is the most a full cycle can pay, which is why our tools rank by estimated profit per hour, not raw margin. Full detail: buy limits explained.

4. Finding flips

The Flip Finder recomputes the whole OSRS market from the live feed and ranks it by after-tax profit/hr with a 0-100 confidence score built from liquidity, margin health and price freshness. Filter by budget, minimum ROI, and members/F2P.

5. Reading the charts

Before committing GP, sanity-check the chart: buy and sell lines plus volume bars. Healthy flips show the lines tracking each other on steady volume; widening spreads on collapsing volume mean the item is dying. Toggle SMA/EMA and RSI from the toolbar. Full detail: how to read GE price charts.

6. Market awareness

Single items lie; categories do not. The market indices track whole sectors weighted by what actually trades. Pair them with top movers and the market reports that follow every game update.

7. Automate with alerts

Set price alerts - target price or percent move - delivered by email, desktop push, Discord DM or Telegram. The Discord bot also runs /flip with your budget, dump-radar channel alerts and a daily market digest.

8. The five classic mistakes

  1. Ignoring the tax - margin math must start after the 2%.
  2. Chasing margin instead of profit/hr - a monster margin on an illiquid item is money parked, not made.
  3. Flipping into a dump - glance at the 7-day chart and the sector index before buying a dip.
  4. All-in on one item - spread across 4-8 GE slots.
  5. No exit discipline - decide the sell price when you buy; alerts make it automatic.

Deeper dive on protecting your bankroll: risk management for flippers.

Flipping FAQ

What is flipping in OSRS? Buying an item at its instant-sell price and re-listing at its instant-buy price, keeping the spread as profit. No combat stats needed - only GP and the 4-hour buy limits cap how much you can cycle.

How much GP do I need? You can start with 100k on high-volume, low-price items like runes, food and ammunition. Bigger stacks unlock slower, higher-margin flips.

How does the 2% tax affect flipping? A flip is only profitable when the spread beats the tax, so always work from after-tax margins - every margin on this site already is.

What are GE buy limits? Per-item caps on purchases per rolling 4 hours - 70 for many weapons, thousands for consumables. They decide how much profit an item can make per cycle.

What is the best item to flip right now? It changes hour to hour - the Flip Finder recomputes the market live, so the honest answer is whatever tops the list when you look.