~1–5M / hr
Earning
Effort
Startup cost
Needs: leveled crafters, melds, capital
Updated November 1, 2026 · Patch 7.5x
Quick answer: The most reliable ways to make gil are crafting high-margin items, gathering in-demand materials, farming marketable monster drops, running retainer ventures, and flipping price gaps (NPC-to-market or cross-world). Which pays best depends on your server and the day, so rank them by live profit for your world and do whatever's on top.
Tap whichever sounds most like you. Each one jumps to its section below.
I want the biggest payout and I have leveled crafters.Crafting →
I'm starting with no gil to invest.Gathering →
I'd rather be fighting things.Farming & duties →
I have some gil but no crafting or gathering levels.Flipping →
I barely have time to play.Retainer ventures →
I want something social to do with friends.Treasure maps →
Nearly all serious gil goes through the market board. Players set those prices, so the same item can sell for very different amounts on different worlds, and the numbers change daily as people buy, sell and undercut.
So no single method is always the best one. Check what sells at a good margin and sells quickly on your world, then make or buy that. XIV Profitability runs that comparison for you against live listings. Each section below shows which tool to open and what to set. Do this once first:
Rough orders of magnitude for a reasonably geared player. These aren't promises. Real rates swing a lot with your server and where you are in the patch cycle.
~1–5M / hr
Needs: leveled crafters, melds, capital
~0.5–2M / hr
Needs: Miner and/or Botanist
~1–2M / chain
Needs: maps (gathered or bought), a party
~0.2–1M / hr
Needs: any combat job
Varies with capital
Needs: gil to invest, nothing else
~2–3M / week, passive
Needs: retainers (unlocks at Lv 17), GC seals
Want to measure your own rates? See FFXIV gil per hour.
This is how most of the big gil gets made. You buy or gather materials, craft something and sell it for more than the materials cost. Demand jumps around new content, housing updates and raid tiers. High-quality (HQ) items usually sell for more, and raid food and potions get bought again every week.
A recipe only makes money while its ingredients cost less than the finished item sells for, and both prices keep moving. Checking each ingredient on the board by hand gets old fast.
Can you craft HQ? Turn on Rank by HQ profit in Settings so the list ranks by HQ prices.
Buying for a big batch? Open the item you're making and tap Find the cheapest server for each ingredient. It checks every world on your data center (or your whole region) and tells you where each ingredient costs least, what it would cost on your own world, and the one world where you could buy everything in a single trip.
Already have a pile of materials? In the inventory crafter, tick your jobs and levels, add what's in your bags, and leave Sellable only on. Full walkthrough: FFXIV crafting for profit.
Miners and Botanists collect ore, logs, herbs and other materials straight from the world. Nothing costs you anything to gather, so every sale is pure profit. The only real question is which nodes are worth your time.
At high level that's usually timed (unspoiled) nodes. They only appear in short windows, which keeps supply low and prices high.
Gathering costs nothing, so speed matters more than price. A 1,500-gil item that sells 30 a day beats a 20,000-gil one that sells once a week.
More detail in the gathering gil guide.
Lots of sellable materials drop from monsters: hides, fangs, reagents and more. Materials from older expansions are worth a look. Hardly anyone farms them now, but crafters still need them for glamour, housing and older recipes.
The hard part is knowing which drops are worth anything and which monsters drop them.
Open any item to see which monsters drop it and where to find them.
Retainers go out on timed ventures and come back with items while you do something else. It's about as close to passive gil as the game gets. Two retainers on hourly ventures plus overnight explorations add up to steady weekly income. Payouts vary a lot by item, though, so a badly chosen venture wastes the timer.
See a floods Xd of demand badge? One venture brings back more than the market buys in that many days. Pick something else or sell slowly.
A sales floor makes sure the cheap gear is actually up for sale, so you can buy enough of it.
The full loop is in the retainer ventures guide.
Buy low, sell high. There are three kinds:
NPC → Market. Some vendor items resell on the board for far more than the vendor charges. The vendor flipping tool ranks them by live profit.
Market → NPC. Now and then a board listing drops below what a vendor pays for the item. That's a sure profit with no market risk.
Cross-server. You can visit other worlds on your data center and buy from their boards. See the cross-server arbitrage tool.
Use Category to stick to one kind of item, like Housing or Minions. The NPC → Market: not on board mode lists vendor items nobody is selling right now, so you'd be the only listing.
Set a higher profit floor here so each trip to another world is worth it. Units/day is counted on your world, where you'll be selling.
Looking for one particular NPC's stock? The vendor database lists every vendor, what they sell and where they stand, and flags seasonal and reputation-locked ones. Strategy and pitfalls are in the flipping guide.
Treasure mapsGather one a day or buy them. A map party pays well, and the portal fights drop valuable materials. Map prices shows the cheapest world on your data center for every Timeworn map.
Duty dropsOld dungeons and raids drop tradeable minions, orchestrion rolls and glamour. Ranked here.
Grand Company sealsTurn them into ventures and sellable items. Get them cheaply with Expert Delivery, then spend them where they're worth the most gil in the seal exchange.
TomestonesCapped currency you'd waste anyway. Pick your tomestone in the exchange tool, which lists the best gil per tome first. Check units/day before buying a stack.
Bicolor GemstonesYou earn them from FATEs anyway. The gemstone exchange ranks what the Gemstone Traders sell by gil per gemstone.
CoffersSome sealed coffers sell for less than their pieces. The coffer calculator checks it piece by piece on your world.
DesynthesisBefore selling an item, see whether breaking it down pays more. The desynthesis calculator prices its possible yields.
Crafting levesLeveling crafters? The leve optimizer finds the cheapest turn-ins for the experience and gil they give back.
Deep DungeonsPalace of the Dead and others give rare drops and steady gil while you level.
Island SanctuaryPays Cowries, not gil. Spend them at the Horrendous Hoarder and resell. Guide.
Ishgardian RestorationSkybuilders' Scrips from turn-ins, spent at Enie's exchange. Guide.
Two numbers matter, not one: margin (what you keep per sale) and units/day (how many sell per day, shown on every row of the site). Put them on a grid and the answer gets obvious:
That score is what the Best sort ranks by, so the top of each list is usually the place to start. Units/day stops counting at 20, so one super-fast seller can't take over the list.
Sorting by Best gets you most of the way. Filters cut out the noise: items too slow to sell, or too cheap to bother with. Each colored zone below is one preset. The dotted lines show equal gil per day, so anything on the same line earns the same amount.
For most players on most days. It sells every day and pays enough to be worth a retainer slot.
Housing, glamour, minions. List one or two and wait. Needs patience, and some gil to tie up.
Raid food, potions, common materials. Small profit each, but you can craft or gather in stacks.
"Min profit" has a different name on each tool: Min profit per craft in crafting, Min profit (gil) in flips, Min gil/venture for retainers and Ignore value below for gathering and farming. The site's default Min units/day is 0.5. That's fine for browsing but too loose for deciding what to make.
Demand spikes with every major patch. New recipes, housing items and raid tiers all move gil, then prices settle as supply catches up.
For active play, crafting in-demand items usually earns the most, especially in the days after a patch. If you want low effort, retainer ventures and vendor flipping earn steadily. The best option on any given day depends on your server's prices, and the live tools compare them for you.
Sell your dungeon loot and gathered materials, run daily roulettes, and unlock retainers at level 17. You don't need max-level crafters. Low-level materials often sell well because endgame players don't bother gathering them. The first million gil guide goes step by step.
Yes. Gathering, mob farming, treasure maps, retainer ventures and flipping all work without any crafting jobs. For most players, gathering and flipping earn the most of those.
Raid food and potions sell the most units. Current-tier crafted gear brings in the most per sale. Furnishings, glamour, materia and old-world materials are close behind. The full breakdown, including which days of the week demand peaks, is in what sells best on the market board. If you've never sold anything, start with the market board guide.
It depends a lot on your server and the week. Roughly: focused crafting or timed-node gathering can reach hundreds of thousands an hour when demand is high. Map parties and mob farming usually pay less but more steadily. Ventures add income on top of whatever else you're doing. Going after whatever is underpriced on your world right now beats any fixed farming route.
Find the best gil on your world → Browse all tools →
More guides: your first million gil · crafting for profit · gathering · retainer ventures · flipping
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