← All guides

Undercutting and pricing: the part where gil is actually lost

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 (you become the wall that suppresses your own price). Consumables reward speed; glamour and furnishings reward patience.

Most guides stop at "buy low, sell high" and leave the second half unexplained. But sourcing is the easy part — 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.

The lowest listing is the worst number to price from

It's the first thing the board shows you and the least informative thing on the screen, because it's the number most easily distorted:

Gil-capped troll listings sit at absurd prices to make a market look valuable.
Panic dumps sit at 1 gil because someone wanted retainer space back.
A 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 represents a transaction two people 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.

Two numbers, always, before you list. The average recent sale price, and how many sell per day. Price tells you the ceiling; velocity tells you whether the ceiling is real.

When undercutting is worth it — and when it's a trap

Undercutting works when you're genuinely competing for the next buyer and the gap is small. It stops working the moment it becomes a reflex.

every relist costs you: the price gap + the 5% tax on a lower sale + your time

Undercut by a meaningful step, not by one gil. A 1-gil undercut invites the same in return within minutes; a firmer cut sometimes ends the exchange.
Don't undercut a wall. If there are thirty listings below yours, the market is saturated — the answer is to stop selling that item, not to join the queue.
Don't chase a bot. If you're re-undercut within seconds, consistently, you're playing against a script. Walk away; there are thousands of other items.
Illiquid items don't need undercutting at all. If something sells twice a week, the buyer isn't comparing — they're buying when they need it. Price it properly and wait.

The tax that comes out of every sale

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:

Gridania, Limsa Lominsa, and Ul'dah are always 5%.
One other city has a reduced rate — usually 3%, occasionally 0%. It's not a fixed city: the game lowers the tax in whichever city-state currently has the fewest retainers, to spread them out, and it shifts over time.
The current rate for each city is shown by the Retainer Vocate NPC in every city's market area — check there rather than assuming.

list at 10,000 → 5% tax = 500 → you net 9,500 same item, retainer in the 3% city → net 9,700 (+200 per sale)

Two percent sounds trivial, but across hundreds of sales it's real gil — and it stacks on top of every pricing decision below. That said, the price you list at matters far more than the tax: don't relocate retainers constantly chasing a rotating 2%. Park your selling retainers in the low-tax city when it's convenient, and otherwise just factor ~5% into your margin (which the site's profit numbers already do).

The mistake nearly everyone makes

Listing your whole stock. Twenty of an item across twenty slots means that when you get undercut you have to relist twenty times, and worse, you are the supply wall that keeps the price down. You end up competing with yourself and calling it a bad market.

List a few, restock as they sell. Your remaining stock is worth more sitting in your inventory than it is sitting on the board suppressing your own price.

Stack size and the shape of your listing

For materials, how you split a stack changes who buys it. Small stacks catch the player who needs a few right now and doesn't want to overpay for volume; large stacks catch the crafter doing a production run who values one click over the last few hundred gil. Listing some of each covers both, and the per-unit price you can hold is often higher on the large stack, not lower.

A relist routine that isn't a second job

Check once or twice a day, not every ten minutes. The tax and your time make constant relisting a losing trade.
Relist what's close to the top; leave anything buried.
Anything that hasn't moved in a week gets dropped, not re-priced — it's occupying a slot that could hold something that sells.
Re-source before you re-price. If the item is still profitable, restock; if it isn't, the listing was never the problem.

Know which market you're in

Consumables and materials reward speed and volume — thin margins, constant turnover, undercutting is part of the job. Glamour, furnishings, minions and collectibles reward patience — wide margins, slow sales, and undercutting mostly just donates your margin to the next buyer. Trying to play one the way you'd play the other is the most common reason a profitable-looking item loses money.

Related tools

Put this into practice with live market-board prices for your world:

Check an item's price and velocity → Market board basics →

XIV Profitability is a free, fan-made tool. Not affiliated with Square Enix. Prices via Universalis. FINAL FANTASY XIV © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.