Gil funds everything in Final Fantasy XIV — housing, glamour, materia, mounts. The good news is you don't need a secret trick; you need to know which of the game's money-making methods pays best for your playstyle and your server right now. This guide walks through every reliable method, what it earns, and how to stop guessing.
Almost all serious gil in FFXIV flows through the market board, and prices there are set by players — so they differ wildly between worlds and shift every day as people buy, sell, and undercut. That means the "best" method isn't fixed. The winning approach is simple: look at what sells for a good margin and sells quickly on your world, then make or acquire that. The rest of this guide is the menu of ways to do it.
XIV Profitability exists to do that comparison for you — it prices every method below against live listings on your world and ranks them, so you can skip the spreadsheet.
The classic gil engine. You buy or gather materials, craft an item, and sell it for more than the materials cost. The eight Disciples of the Hand each make different things, and demand spikes around new content, housing updates, and raid tiers. High-quality (HQ) items usually sell for a premium.
The catch is that a recipe is only profitable if its ingredients cost less than the finished item sells for — and that changes constantly. Rather than opening the board on every ingredient by hand, the Crafting tool adds up live material costs and ranks recipes by margin.
Miners and Botanists pull materials straight from the world — ore, logs, herbs, and timed/legendary nodes for high-value mats. Because you have no material cost, almost everything you gather is pure profit; the only question is which nodes are worth your limited time.
The Gathering tool estimates gil-per-day for gatherable items using current prices, so you farm what's actually selling instead of hauling back something that's crashed in value.
Plenty of marketable materials drop from monsters — hides, fangs, reagents, and more. If you enjoy combat, a farming session can double as gil. The hard part is knowing which drops are worth money and which mobs drop them; the Farming tool lists marketable drops with their mobs and zones so you know exactly where to go.
Retainers can be sent on ventures that return items on a timer while you do anything else — the closest thing to passive gil in the game. But payouts vary enormously by item, so a poorly chosen venture wastes the timer. The Retainers tool ranks ventures by the current market value of what they bring back.
Buy low, sell high — three distinct flavors:
Two numbers matter, not one:
The best opportunities have both a healthy margin and steady sales. That's exactly the combined score XIV Profitability sorts by, so the top of each list is usually where to start.
Find the best gil on your world → Crafting for profit →
XIV Profitability is a free, fan-made tool. Not affiliated with Square Enix. Prices via Universalis. FINAL FANTASY XIV © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.