Flipping is making gil from price differences alone — no crafting, no gathering, just buying something cheap and selling it for more. In Final Fantasy XIV there are three distinct flavors, and the hard part of each is the same: spotting the spread before it closes.
Some items are sold by in-game vendors for a fixed gil price, yet resell on the market board for far more. Buy from the NPC, list on the board, keep the difference. Because vendor prices never change, the only variable is the current board price — when it's high enough, it's basically free gil.
The catch is finding which of thousands of vendor items are currently worth flipping. The NPC to Market Flips tool checks vendor prices against live board prices (and accounts for the 5% market tax) and ranks the flips by profit.
The mirror image: occasionally an item's market price drops below what an NPC will pay to buy it from you. Snap up the cheap listings, sell them straight to the vendor, and pocket a guaranteed spread with zero market risk. These windows are short-lived, which is why you want them surfaced automatically — see Market to NPC Flips.
Within a data center you can travel to other worlds and buy directly from their market boards. Prices vary between worlds, so an item that's expensive on your home world may be cheap one world over — buy it there, bring it back, and sell into the higher price. The Cross-Server Arbitrage tool compares prices across your data center to find those gaps.
Two numbers, same as every other method:
Find flips on your world → All gil-making methods →
XIV Profitability is a free, fan-made tool. Not affiliated with Square Enix. Prices via Universalis. FINAL FANTASY XIV © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.