Updated October 11, 2026
Quick answer: Passive gil comes from things that earn while you do anything else: retainer ventures (send them every few hours), the Grand Company seal-to-item loop, and converting Allagan tomestones into sellable items. A roughly 10-minute daily routine of these keeps gil trickling in without active farming. It's the closest FFXIV has to income while you're logged off.
Not every gil strategy needs a farming session. A handful of systems earn on real-world timers. Set them up in minutes a day and they pay out while you raid, glam, queue or sleep.
Stacked together, they make a respectable weekly income for players who'd rather play the game than the market.
Retainers are the game's official passive income. Send them on ventures and they return with sellable items on a timer, online or not.
The routine: resend ventures whenever you pass an aetheryte. Use hourly ventures on days you play, and 18-hour explorations overnight.
The difference between a token income and a real one is which ventures you run. Payouts depend on your retainer's stats and your world's prices.
Skip rows with a floods Xd of demand badge unless you're happy selling slowly.
Full setup (classes, stats, cadence) in the retainer ventures guide.
Ventures cost Grand Company seals, which makes seals a currency worth farming cheaply. The loop:
You can also spend seals on glamour prisms and materials that resell. Each pass costs pocket change and compounds: cheap gear → seals → ventures → loot → gil.
It's the closest FFXIV gets to a money machine you crank a few times a week.
Actively traded only counts items that are really selling, so you can buy a batch, not one lucky piece. Spending seals on something other than ventures? The GC Seal Exchange ranks the quartermaster's tradeable stock by gil per seal.
The formula and the traps are in the GC seals to gil guide.
Weekly tomestones cap, and uncapped legacy tomestones overflow and vanish into nothing. Several tomestone-exchange items are marketable.
You earned the currency by playing. Converting it turns it into gil instead of vapor.
There's no filter box here, so apply it by eye. A good starting point is to skip rows under about 2 units/day.
More in tomestones to gil.
The market board works around the clock. The passive move is to keep all your retainer sell slots full of items with steady velocity: things that sell daily, not lottery tickets.
Undercut modestly, restock when you pass through, and let volume do the work. Every tool on XIV Profitability shows units/day for exactly this reason.
Sells every day, so a full slot turns over while you're away. Works on any tool with a Best sort.
Buy from an NPC, relist in seconds. On NPC ↔ market flips, set the mode to NPC → Market.
A passive seller wants a higher units/day floor than the usual sweet-spot preset, since you're not around to relist. Don't post more than about a day's worth of anything.
That's the whole system. It won't out-earn a dedicated crafting session, but it never asks for one, and it stacks under every other way you play.
Yes. Venture timers are real-world time and keep running when you log off, and market board listings sell around the clock. A few minutes of setup per day keeps both running.
It depends on the venture and your server's prices. The value comes from selling what retainers bring back. Choosing ventures by the live market value of their loot with the venture calculator, rather than a fixed list, is what makes the income meaningful.
Buy cheap gear off the market board, turn it in via Expert Delivery for Grand Company seals, spend the seals on ventures, send your retainers and sell the loot. Each step is cheap and the cycle compounds.
Every player gets two free retainer slots with a subscription, and both should always have a venture running. Additional retainers are a paid account add-on, worthwhile mainly if your sell slots are constantly full.
Whatever your ventures bring back, plus vendor flips. The flipping tool finds items you can buy from an NPC and relist in seconds. Check the no-crafting guide for more low-effort options.
Put this into practice with live market-board prices for your world:
Retainer venturesWhich venture pays most for each retainer.Open → GC seal deliveriesCheapest gear to turn in for seals.Open → Tomestone exchangeGil per tomestone for every marketable exchange.Open →Rank ventures for your world → Every gil method, ranked →
More: how to make gil (all methods) · gil without crafting · retainer ventures
XIV Profitability is a free, fan-made tool. Not affiliated with Square Enix. Prices via Universalis. FINAL FANTASY XIV © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.