Updated October 11, 2026
Quick answer: Price from recent sales, not the lowest listing. The cheapest listing is often a troll or a panic dump. Undercut only by a meaningful step when you're truly competing, never by one gil, and don't list your whole stock, or you become the wall that holds your own price down. Consumables reward speed; glamour and furnishings reward patience.
Most guides stop at "buy low, sell high." Sourcing is the easy part, and a tool can tell you what to buy.
What separates people who make gil from people who own a lot of inventory is what happens at the listing window.
It's the first thing the board shows you and the least useful number on the screen, because it's the easiest one to distort.
Gil-capped trollsListings at absurd prices to make a market look valuable.
Panic dumpsListings at 1 gil because someone wanted retainer space back.
One listingA single listing of either kind moves the "market price" for everyone reading it.
Price from what has recently sold instead. Sales history is the only number that shows a deal two people actually agreed to.
We learned this the hard way building the duty rankings. Sorting by lowest listing put a dungeon at the top of the list, because someone had listed a glamour piece for nearly a billion gil.
Tap Load prices from other servers to compare your data center. Odd listings get an outlier or inflated flag so you don't price from them.
Undercutting works when you're really competing for the next buyer and the gap is small. It stops working the moment it becomes a reflex.
Before you undercut, run through this:
Every market-board sale is taxed on the seller side. It comes straight out of what you receive, so it's part of your real margin. The rate is 0–5% and depends on which city your retainer is stationed in.
Always 5%Gridania, Limsa Lominsa and Ul'dah.
One reduced cityUsually 3%, occasionally 0%. The game lowers it in whichever city-state has the fewest retainers, so it moves over time.
Check, don't assumeThe Retainer Vocate NPC in each city's market area shows the current rates.
Two percent sounds trivial, but across hundreds of sales it's real gil, and it stacks on top of every pricing decision below.
Still, the price you list at matters far more than the tax. Don't keep moving retainers to chase a rotating 2%. Park your selling retainers in the low-tax city when it's convenient, and otherwise plan on about 5%. The site's profit numbers already take it off.
Listing your whole stock. Here's what twenty of one item looks like both ways:
Get undercut once and you relist twenty times. Worse, you're the supply wall keeping the price down. You end up competing with yourself and calling it a bad market.
List a few and restock as they sell. Stock in your inventory is worth more than stock on the board holding down your own price.
How many is "a few"? About a day's worth. Check units/day: if it sells 5 a day, list around 5.
For materials, how you split a stack changes who buys it.
Small stacksCatch the player who needs a few right now and doesn't want to pay for volume.
Large stacksCatch the crafter on a production run who values one click over the last few hundred gil.
Listing some of each covers both. The per-unit price you can hold is often higher on the large stack, not lower.
The tax and your time make constant relisting a losing trade. Anything that hasn't moved in a week is taking a slot that could hold something that sells.
And if an item is no longer profitable to restock, the listing was never the problem. If it still is, restock it.
Trying to play one kind of market the way you'd play the other is the most common reason a profitable-looking item loses money. Each one has a matching filter preset on the site:
Consumables and materials. Thin margins, constant turnover. Undercutting is part of the job.
The middle: decent margin that still sells every day. Light undercutting, daily relists.
Glamour, furnishings, minions, collectibles. Wide margins, slow sales. Undercutting mostly gives your margin to the next buyer.
These are the same presets as the main gil guide. Why the middle band pays best: the market board sweet spot.
Put this into practice with live market-board prices for your world:
Vendor & item databaseMarket values for every merchant's stock.Open → Crafting profit calculatorMargin and units/day for every recipe on your world.Open → Cross-server arbitrageRestock cheaper on another world.Open →Check an item's price and velocity → Market board basics →
More guides: the market board sweet spot · flipping & arbitrage · what sells best · how to make gil (every method)
XIV Profitability is a free, fan-made tool. Not affiliated with Square Enix. Prices via Universalis. FINAL FANTASY XIV © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.