Old School RuneScape Money Guide for Every Account

How to Pick a Money Maker That Fits Your Account

The best money maker in Old School RuneScape is not the one with the biggest number. It is the one your account can actually do right now. Before you copy a method from a list, answer four questions. Are you a member? What is your combat level? What skills do you have? How much risk can you stomach? Most guides skip this step, so players waste hours training toward a method they could have replaced with something better today.

Members vs free-to-play

Most methods in the game are members only. That includes almost every boss, most Runecrafting, and all of Thieving's best targets. Free-to-play still has real options, like tanning cowhides, killing hobgoblins, and cutting yew logs. If you are on F2P, do not compare your hourly rate to members methods. Compare it to other F2P methods and pick the best one you qualify for.

Skilling vs combat vs merchanting

Skilling money is steady and predictable. The big three earners are Woodcutting, Fishing, and Mining, and members add Hunter, Thieving, and high level Runecrafting. Thieving levels fast and needs almost no startup cash, which is why it works so well for fresh accounts. Combat money is spikier. You might get nothing for an hour, then hit a big drop. Merchanting on the Grand Exchange needs no levels at all, but it needs cash to start and knowledge of prices.

Risk methods vs safe methods

Wilderness methods like lava dragons pay well partly because other players can kill you and take your items. Safe methods pay less, but you keep every coin. If losing a full inventory would ruin your night, stay out of the Wilderness until you can afford the loss.

Best Free-to-Play Money Making Methods

Free players have fewer choices, but the gap between a good and bad F2P method is still huge. Here are the strongest options, sorted roughly by how easy they are to start.

Grinding chocolate bars with a pestle and mortar also needs no levels at all, so it works as a click-heavy fallback when nothing else fits.

Fast Starting Cash for New Accounts

A brand new account should build cash in this order:

1. Claim the Stronghold of Security reward.
2. Kill chickens and cows near Lumbridge.
3. Add imps, ashes, or dark wizards for variety.
4. Move to Flesh Crawlers once you can safespot.

Stronghold of Security 10k reward

Complete the first three levels of the Stronghold of Security and you get 10,000 coins. You can do this at combat level 3 if you bring food and dodge the monsters. Cheap food like cabbages works, or cook trout and salmon at a fire near Barbarian Village if you have 15 and 25 Cooking. This is the single fastest starting cash in the game.

Cowhides and tanning

Kill cows at the Lumbridge field, collect the hides, and tan them in Al Kharid. Ellis the tanner charges 1 coin for soft leather and 3 coins for hard leather. You can collect and tan about 374 hides per hour. Finish Prince Ali Rescue for free passage through the Al Kharid gate. One catch: new players cannot trade tanned leather until they have 7 Quest Points or 24 hours of playtime.

Chickens, imps, and ashes

Chickens drop feathers, bones, and raw chicken, and cooked chicken sometimes sells for more than raw. Imps spawn at the south gate of Falador and near the Karamja volcano, and their beads each sell for over 1,000 coins. Ashes pile up near the Grand Exchange. Burn willow logs in two parallel lines near a bank, pick up the ashes, and light new fires over the old lines. Ashes vanish about three minutes after a fire goes out, so keep moving.

Flesh crawlers and dark wizards

Flesh Crawlers on the second level of the Stronghold drop herbs, fire runes, nature runes, dust runes, and noted iron ore. Mages and rangers can safespot them, and on members worlds a long trip can bring back around 10,000 fire runes, iron ore, and nature runes. Dark wizards south of Varrock drop runes and talismans, and fire talismans sell to runecrafters. Use Magic or Ranged, since Magic cuts through their melee armour easily.

Skilling Methods: Gather and Process for Steady GP

Skilling income scales with your levels. Early methods pay little, but the same skill trained higher opens much better rates.

The big three: Woodcutting, Fishing, Mining

These three skills are the classic gathering earners. They are low risk, work almost anywhere, and pay better as your levels rise. Lobsters and yews even work on free worlds.

Flax and bowstrings

Flax is free to pick and turns into bowstring at 10 Crafting. If you finish the easy Kandarin tasks, the flax keeper will swap flax for bowstrings once per day, which skips the spinning wheel entirely.

Rune running and Runecrafting

Runecrafting is the biggest late skilling earner. Cosmic runes need the Lost City quest, and with fairy rings and Slayer rings you can fit about 40 altar trips into an hour. Nature runes through the Abyss need only 21 Agility, though 70+ helps a lot. Guardians of the Rift opens at 27 Runecrafting and gets much better at 77+.

Blast Furnace smithing

The Blast Furnace turns ore into bars fast, from iron at low levels up to runite at 85 Smithing. It is high intensity and high Agility helps, but it is one of the strongest Smithing money makers in the game.

Combat and Boss Money Makers by Combat Level

Combat money grows with your stats. Fight the best target you can kill safely and quickly, not the biggest one you can barely survive.

Two warnings on the high bracket. Cerberus can only be killed on a Slayer task, and players can go 10 to 20 hours without a valuable crystal, so the average number hides long dry streaks. Zulrah demands constant gear switching, so expect to make mistakes and lose supplies while learning.

Ice troll runts deserve a special mention for mid level accounts. They are level 74 trolls in Neitiznot that drop rune kiteshields, rune warhammers, granite shields, nature runes, law runes, raw sharks, herbs, and seeds. They cannot hit you through Prayer, and the nearby Honour Guards fight them too, so landing a single hit still awards you the drop.

Zero-Combat Cash: Thieving, Merchanting, and Clues

You do not need combat stats to get rich. These methods run on Thieving, Magic, and market sense.

• Pickpocketing Master Farmers. Starts at 38 Thieving. Ranarr seeds drop at 1 in 302 pickpockets and snapdragon seeds at 1 in 2,083. Full Rogue equipment gives guaranteed double loot, and the Hard Ardougne Diary adds a 10 percent success boost. At 94+ Thieving with the diary you never fail and can hit 3,000 pickpockets per hour. Trap the farmer inside a fence so he cannot wander.
• Pickpocketing Ardougne Knights. Starts at 55 Thieving, best at 95+. A simple, steady coin stream once your level is high.
• Merchanting on the Grand Exchange. Buy items below their usual price and resell higher. It needs starting cash and patience, and profit depends on how well you learn prices. Start small so a bad flip costs little.
• Treasure Trails and clue scrolls. Opening eclectic impling jars needs 50 Thieving and gives clue scrolls. Rewards swing hard, from junk to big hits, so treat clues as a bonus on top of other income.
• Jewellery and enchanting. Enchanting jewellery with Magic at various levels turns cheap items into useful ones. Charging orbs at 56 to 66 Magic works the same way.
• Odd Thieving pickups. The Ardougne nature rune chest opens at 28 Thieving. At 61 Thieving with Plague City done, you can collect black scimitars from Ardougne Castle by picking a lock, grabbing the scimitar, and switching worlds until your inventory is full.

Startup Costs: What Each Method Needs Before You Profit

Hourly rates hide the real question: what do you spend before the first coin comes back? Here is the buy-in for popular methods.

The bracelet method shows why buy-in matters. Charged bracelets alch for 45,000 coins each, but you must first buy the bracelets and ether, and each charged bracelet is untradeable, so your cash is locked in until the alchs finish. Each inventory takes about three and a half minutes, around 17 inventories per hour.

Best Money Makers for Ironman Accounts

Ironmen cannot buy supplies or flip on the Grand Exchange, so a method only counts if you can gather every part yourself or use the output directly.

• Self-sufficient gathering. The big three work unchanged, since Woodcutting, Fishing, and Mining need nothing bought. Flax picking and spinning at 10 Crafting gives free bowstrings. Mort Myre fungi collecting with the Bloom cast supplies Herblore, and the Hard Morytania Diary doubles the fungi per cast.
• Thieving for a low-cost start. Thieving levels fast and has almost no startup costs, which is exactly why the wiki flags it for Ironman accounts. Master Farmers hand you ranarr and snapdragon seeds, which feed your own herb runs instead of the Grand Exchange.
• Boss drops you keep instead of sell. Cerberus drops the Primordial, Pegasian, and Eternal crystals that become the best boots in the game, gear an Ironman cannot buy. Ice troll runts drop raw sharks, herbs, seeds, coal, and law runes, which is a full supply run in one camp.
• Process what you gather. Cannonball smithing turns your own mined ore into ammo, and collecting your own ashes and bones feeds Prayer and Herblore for free.

Staying Safe: Wilderness Risk and Scam Avoidance

Making gold is only half the job. Keeping it is the other half. Follow these rules and you will lose far less than the average player.

• Bring 3 to 4 items into the Wilderness, no more. Lava dragons live in level 37 to 42 Wilderness, and the guide for them says outright to carry only 3 or 4 items because of PK risk. If a player killer catches you, you lose pocket change instead of a bank.
• Use Protect Item. At 25 Prayer you can protect one extra item on death. Many methods, like green dragons and chaos druids, list this prayer as recommended for exactly this reason.
• Telegrab loot from safe spots. At lava dragons you can grab loot with Telekinetic Grab from outside the dragon area, which cuts both monster and player risk. Wine of Zamorak works the same way at 33 Magic.
• Know your escape routes. At 74 Agility with the Hard Wilderness Diary, a shortcut near the Corporeal Beast's lair speeds up lava dragon trips. Faster trips mean less time exposed.
• Watch for single-way combat. The dark wizard area is single-way combat, which changes who can attack you and when. Learn the rules of a zone before you camp it.
• Avoid trade scams. Never share your login details with anyone, and be suspicious of any offer that sounds too good, like a stranger promising to double your coins. Check every trade window twice before you accept, because a swapped item or a missing zero is the oldest trick in the game.

Pick the method that matches your account today, bank often, and upgrade methods as your levels grow. That loop, not any single trick, is how accounts get rich in Old School RuneScape.