OSRS Flipping — Live Grand Exchange Margins

Flipping on the Grand Exchange works by exploiting the spread between buy and sell prices. Every item on the GE has two prices: the instant buy price (what impatient buyers pay to get an item immediately) and the instant sell price (what impatient sellers accept to dump items fast). The gap between these two prices is the margin, and that margin is your profit.

To find the current margin on any item, place a buy offer for 1 at a very high price — it will instantly fill at the true buy price. Then sell that same item for 1 GP — it will sell at the true sell price. The difference is your margin. On GE Margin, we calculate this for every tradeable item automatically so you never have to waste time margin checking.

Since May 2025, the Grand Exchange charges a 2% tax on every sale, capped at 5M GP per transaction. This tax is deducted from the seller's proceeds and acts as a gold sink. Your real profit per flip is the margin minus the tax. Use the GE Tax Calculator to see exactly how much tax you'll pay on any item.

Every OSRS account has a buy limit per item — a cap on how many units you can buy within a 4-hour window. High-volume commodities like runes and arrows have limits of 13,000+, while rare gear might have a limit of just 8. Buy limits reset every 4 hours, so plan your flips around these windows. The Flip Finder factors buy limits into its GP/hr estimates automatically.

Serious flippers use all 8 GE slots simultaneously. Each slot can hold one buy or sell offer at a time, so you should always have offers running across multiple items. Diversifying across 8 items protects you from margin crashes on any single item and keeps your gold working at all times. For a complete walkthrough, read our Flipping Guide for Beginners.

The best flip items balance three factors: volume, margin, and buy limit. High volume means your offers fill quickly so your gold isn't sitting idle. A healthy margin (after the 2% tax) means each completed flip actually puts GP in your pocket. And a generous buy limit means you can move enough quantity per 4-hour window to generate meaningful income.

Consistently profitable categories include potions (ranging potions, prayer potions, super restores), runes (nature runes, blood runes, death runes), food (sharks, anglerfish, manta rays), ammunition (dragon arrows, amethyst broad bolts), and mid-tier gear that players buy and sell frequently. Browse our full item database to explore every tradeable item with live margin data, or check the Low Capital Flips guide for picks specifically suited to smaller banks.

Avoid items with suspiciously high margins and near-zero volume — these are often manipulation traps where someone artificially inflates the price. Our flip rating system (1–10) accounts for volume, margin stability, and buy limits to surface genuine opportunities and flag risky ones.