High Alch Calculator
Check whether an item is worth alching in Old School RuneScape before you buy a stack of them. Pick High Level Alchemy or Low Level Alchemy, then enter the item price, its high alch value, the nature rune cost and a quantity: the calculator shows profit per cast, total profit, total cost and total return, profit and Magic XP per hour for the mode you picked, and the break-even buy price, with quick-set buttons for 1 cast, a 28-item inventory or a 1,200-cast hour.
Game tool only. Prices move with the Grand Exchange; recheck before buying in bulk. Not financial advice.
Quick Answer
A Rune platebody bought for 37,000 gp with a high alch value of 39,000 gp and a 225 gp nature rune earns 1,775 gp per High Alchemy cast. Over one 28-item inventory that is 49,700 gp of profit on a total cost of 1,042,300 gp, and over a full 1,200-cast hour it is 2,130,000 gp of profit and 78,000 Magic XP, with a break-even buy price of 38,775 gp. The same platebody in Low Alchemy mode pays only 26,000 gp per cast, so it loses 11,225 gp per cast: the two-thirds payout cannot cover a 37,000 gp item. The calculator above is pre-filled with the High run and covers both spells.
Key takeaways
- The alch value is fixed per item and the market prices are not. Profit lives in the gap between the two, minus one nature rune per cast.
- Any quantity works, not just the three horizons most tools lock you into. The presets fill in 1, 28 or 1,200; the box accepts everything else, and a decimal is rounded down.
- Total cost is shown on purpose: a “profitable” hour of this example ties up 44,670,000 gp of items and runes before it pays anything back.
- Low Alchemy is a real mode here, not a footnote: it pays two-thirds of the high alch value, rounded down, casts at 2,000 an hour and pays 31 XP per cast. It suits cheap items and the levels before 55 Magic.
- The fire staff control prices the fire runes for you. Set it to No and the tool adds fire runes at 4 gp each, 5 per High cast and 3 per Low cast.
- A blank nature rune field counts as 0 gp, which silently flatters the profit. Fill it in unless your runes really are free.
- Quick Answer
- How to use the high alch calculator
- The Alchemy formula
- Worked example: a Rune platebody, one inventory and one hour
- The mechanics: 55 Magic, runes and XP
- High Level Alchemy vs Low Level Alchemy
- Fire staff and the real rune cost
- Alching and the Grand Exchange tax
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently asked questions
How to use the high alch calculator
Six fields, one verdict. Results stay hidden until you click Calculate.
- Item price: what you pay per item on the Grand Exchange, or what you could sell a drop or a self-made item for instead of alching it.
- High alch value: the fixed coin payout per High cast, shown in game and listed per item on the Old School RuneScape Wiki’s High Level Alchemy page. It is 60% of the item’s specialty shop price, never its GE price. In Low mode the tool derives the payout from this same value: two-thirds of it, rounded down.
- Alchemy mode: High Level Alchemy (55 Magic, full payout, 65 XP per cast) or Low Level Alchemy (21 Magic, two-thirds payout, 31 XP per cast, faster casts). Every result, including the per-hour rates, follows the mode you pick.
- Nature rune cost: today’s price of one nature rune. With a fire staff equipped this is the only rune cost. Set the fire staff control to No if you cast without one, and the tool adds fire runes at 4 gp each: 5 per High cast, 3 per Low cast.
- Quantity: type any number, or use the quick-set buttons: 1 cast, 28 for a full inventory, 1,200 for an hour at maximum speed.
- Read the results: beside the per-cast and total figures, the panel shows profit per hour and Magic XP per hour at the selected mode’s casting speed, plus the break-even buy price. Green means the cast pays, red means it loses, and the amber break-even verdict means you earn no coins but still bank the XP: 65 per High cast, 31 per Low cast.
Players who make their own alch fodder run the mirror-image sum first: the fletching profit calculator prices logs in and finished bows out, and bows you make for less than their alch value are a classic self-supplied alch stack.
The Alchemy formula
Profit per cast is the alch payout minus the item price minus the total rune cost, and every total is that per-cast figure scaled by the quantity. High Alchemy pays the full alch value; Low Alchemy pays two-thirds of it, rounded down.
Total profit = Profit per cast × Quantity
Total cost = (Item price + Nature rune cost) × Quantity
Total return = Alch payout × Quantity
Low alch payout = High alch value × 2/3, rounded down
Profit per hour = Profit per cast × casts per hour (1,200 High, 2,000 Low)
Break-even buy price = Alch payout − total rune cost
Two parts of that formula are worth slowing down for. First, the alch value does not come from the market: the Old School RuneScape Wiki’s Prices page explains that the High Alchemy price is what a specialty shop would pay for the item, normally 60% of its shop price, which is why an item’s alch value stays put while its GE price wanders around it. Second, the total rune cost is per cast, not per stack: it is the nature rune price plus, when the fire staff control is set to No, fire runes at 4 gp each. The rune cost is per cast either way. A guide formula that stops at “alch value minus item price” overstates your profit by the full nature rune price on every single cast; at 225 gp a rune and 1,200 casts an hour, that is a 270,000 gp an hour exaggeration. Per cast, the worked example also returns 4.77% on its cost (1,775 ÷ 37,225), a useful way to compare two candidate items; the profit ratio calculator works through that return-on-cost view in general terms.
The break-even buy price
One number the formula gives you for free is the break-even buy price: the highest Grand Exchange price you can pay per item and still break even, equal to the alch payout minus your total rune cost. The calculator prints it for the mode you selected. For the worked example on this page it is 39,000 − 225 = 38,775 gp in High mode, and 26,000 − 225 = 25,775 gp in Low mode, because the Low payout is the two-thirds figure. Pay more than the figure for your mode and every cast loses money. Treat it as your maximum bid, set a minimum margin below it that you will accept before buying, and remember that most items can only be bought in limited quantities every 4 hours, so even a wide margin on a low-limit item caps how many casts an hour you can actually sustain.
Worked example: a Rune platebody, one inventory and one hour
The pre-filled run is a Rune platebody: item price 37,000 gp, high alch value 39,000 gp, nature rune 225 gp, quantity 28 (one inventory). Profit per cast = 39,000 − 37,000 − 225 = 1,775 gp, and every other line follows from it.
| Run | Profit per cast | Total profit | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Worked example, 28 casts: 37,000 / 39,000 / 225 | 1,775 gp | 49,700 gp | Profitable |
| Same item, 1,200 casts (one hour) | 1,775 gp | 2,130,000 gp | Profitable |
| Break-even, 1 cast: 38,775 / 39,000 / 225 | 0 gp | 0 gp | Break-even |
| Same item in Low mode, 28 casts: payout 26,000 | -11,225 gp | -314,300 gp | Loss |
| Loss, 1 cast: 39,000 / 39,000 / 225 | -225 gp | -225 gp | Loss |
The margin is thinner than the headline profit suggests. On the 28-cast run you lay out 1,042,300 gp to get 1,092,000 gp back:
A price drift of just 1,775 gp per item, under 5% of the item price, erases the whole margin. That is the practical reason to re-run the numbers on the day you buy, not the day you first bookmarked the item.
Run the same platebody through Low mode and the shape of the answer changes completely. The payout drops to 26,000 gp, so each cast loses 11,225 gp, the 28-cast total is a 314,300 gp loss on the same 1,042,300 gp cost, and a full 2,000-cast Low hour would lose 22,450,000 gp while still paying 62,000 Magic XP. Low mode pays on cheap items instead: an item with a 1,200 gp high alch value, bought for 500 gp with a 180 gp nature rune, pays 800 gp per Low cast, for 120 gp of profit per cast, 240,000 gp per hour at the 2,000-cast ceiling, and a break-even buy price of 620 gp.
The mechanics: 55 Magic, runes and XP
High Level Alchemy needs 55 Magic, sits in the standard spellbook, and pays 65 Magic XP per cast. The Old School RuneScape Wiki’s Magic page gives the same example this page uses: wielding a staff of fire lets a player cast it with only the nature rune consumed.
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Magic level required | 55 Magic |
| Runes per cast | 5 fire runes + 1 nature rune (fire runes free with a fire staff) |
| XP per cast | 65 Magic XP |
| Cast time | 3 seconds (5 game ticks) |
| Maximum casts per hour | 1,200 |
| XP per hour at maximum speed | 78,000 XP |
Alching noted items is what makes long sessions practical: a stack of notes sits in one inventory slot and each cast converts a single item from the stack, so a 28-slot inventory is a convenience unit for this calculator, not a hard limit on a session. Real hours also run slower than the 1,200 ceiling once banking and buying are counted, which is worth remembering when a guide quotes the hour figure as a guarantee.
High Level Alchemy vs Low Level Alchemy
The calculator above covers both spells: pick Low Level Alchemy in the mode selector and every figure is recomputed for it. Low Level Alchemy (21 Magic) pays two-thirds of the high alch value for the same item, rounded down, so you still enter the item’s high alch value and the tool derives the Low payout itself. The comparison below is the full picture for choosing which spell to train with.
| Detail | High Level Alchemy | Low Level Alchemy |
|---|---|---|
| Magic level required | 55 | 21 |
| Runes per cast | 1 nature + 5 fire | 1 nature + 3 fire |
| Payout | Full alch value (about 60% of shop value) | About two-thirds of the high alch value |
| Magic XP per cast | 65 | 31 |
| Cast speed | 5 game ticks (3 seconds) | 3 game ticks (1.8 seconds) |
| Maximum casts per hour | About 1,200 | About 2,000 |
| Maximum Magic XP per hour | About 78,000 | About 62,000 |
Low alchemy casts faster than high alchemy: it runs on a 3-tick cooldown against high alchemy’s 5 ticks, so its per-hour ceiling is about 2,000 casts instead of 1,200. Any rate quoted for low alchemy that reuses the 1,200-cast high alchemy figure understates its hourly throughput by about 40%, even though its lower payout and 31 XP per cast still leave its maximum XP per hour below high alchemy’s. The calculator uses exactly these Low rates: a payout of two-thirds of the high alch value rounded down, 2,000 casts an hour for the profit-per-hour figure, and 31 XP per cast for 62,000 XP per hour. The platebody example shows why the mode still matters despite the weaker payout: below 55 Magic it is the only alchemy spell available, and on cheap items the faster cycle can beat waiting.
Fire staff and the real rune cost
The rune field is the nature rune price, and that is the whole rune cost only when a fire staff (or a tome of fire, or a combination staff) supplies the fire runes. The Old School RuneScape Wiki’s nature rune page lists High Alchemy as the spell’s most common use for the same reason: one nature rune per cast is the cost that decides whether alching pays.
Without a staff, be honest about the fire runes: set the fire staff control to No and the tool adds them at 4 gp each, 20 gp per High cast or 12 gp per Low cast. At a 225 gp nature rune the High rune cost becomes 245 gp and the worked example’s profit drops from 1,775 gp to 1,755 gp per cast, 24,000 gp less over a 1,200-cast hour than the staff figure. If your fire runes cost more or less than 4 gp each, adjust the nature rune field by the difference per cast. Small rune moves flip marginal items exactly this way: an item showing 100 gp of profit per cast goes negative if nature runes rise by more than 100 gp before your order fills.
Three input behaviours of this tool are worth knowing before a bulk buy. A blank or non-numeric nature rune field is treated as 0 gp rather than an error, so a cleared field makes any item look 225 gp per cast better than it is. The quantity is read as a whole number, so 28.9 casts calculates as 28. And the item and alch fields accept decimals, even though coin prices in game are whole: a 100.5 gp item price produces fractional gp in the output, which is the tool doing arithmetic on what you typed, not a price you could actually pay.
Alching and the Grand Exchange tax
High Alchemy pays no Grand Exchange tax, because an alch is not a sale: the spell destroys the item and creates coins directly. The tax belongs to the alternative. Selling an item on the Grand Exchange charges the seller 2% of the sale price, capped at 5,000,000 gp per item; the buyer pays the listed price and no tax on top.
That distinction changes real decisions. An item that alchs for 39,000 gp pays you the full 39,000 gp minus your rune. Sold on the GE at 39,500 gp instead, it pays 39,500 gp minus 790 gp of tax, which is 38,710 gp: less than the alch, despite the higher headline price. The old version of this page said the tax “applies when you buy or sell items on the Grand Exchange”, which was wrong on the buying side, and the correction matters every time you compare alching with selling. Players weighing the two exits for the same stack are really running a spread trade, and the arbitrage profit calculator covers that buy-and-sell framing in general terms.
What competing calculators miss
The live-data rivals beat this page on price freshness, and for finding today’s best item there is no contest. What they miss is your item, at your price, with the capital on show:
- OSRS Wiki alchemy tables (Grand Exchange Market Watch and the Magic calculator): every tradeable item priced live, with ROI and a maximum profit capped by buy limits. Superb for discovery. Gap: the table only knows the current GE guide price, so it cannot price a drop you already own, an item you crafted, or an offer that filled below guide price.
- Alchmate and GE-Tracker: live profitable-item lists with buy limits, margins and profit per hour. Gap: list-first design. When your item is not on today’s list, the custom one-item check you came for is buried or absent.
- OldSchool.tools: clean toolset with RuneLite price integration for bulk alching. Gap: the live-price assumption again; no honest handling of a self-supplied item whose real cost is what you could sell it for.
- SageCalculator’s high alch page: a manual calculator like this one, with the same Rune platebody example (37,000 / 39,000 / 225). Gap: its results are locked to per cast, per inventory and per hour, with no custom quantity, and it does not show the total cost your stack ties up.
- Money-making guides (OSRSMoneyMaking and similar): strong on strategy and item lists, but at least one widely read guide prints the profit formula as alch value minus buy price, leaving the nature rune out of the formula box entirely. On a thin margin that omission is the difference between profit and loss.
- The gap this page fills: any quantity next to the three standard presets, total cost and total return beside the profit, a three-way verdict that treats break-even as an XP decision rather than a failure, dual-mode High and Low coverage with per-hour profit and XP and a numeric break-even price, a fire staff toggle that prices the fire runes instead of leaving them to mental arithmetic, the blank-rune and decimal-quantity behaviours disclosed, and the GE tax stated correctly: seller-side only, and never on the alch itself.
Frequently asked questions
Profit per cast is the high alch value minus the item price minus the nature rune cost. Multiply by the quantity for the total: 28 casts of the worked example turn 1,775 gp per cast into 49,700 gp.
55 Magic. High Level Alchemy sits in the standard spellbook, and at 65 Magic XP per cast it becomes one of the steadiest training spells in the game from that level on.
Up to 1,200 for High Alchemy: one cast takes 3 seconds, or 5 game ticks, so a perfect hour holds 1,200 casts. Low Alchemy runs on 3 ticks and fits up to 2,000 casts in an hour. Banking, buying and misclicks pull real sessions below either ceiling, which is why the hour figures are ceilings, not promises.
65 Magic XP per cast, so 78,000 XP for a full 1,200-cast hour and 1,820 XP for one 28-item inventory. Low Alchemy pays 31 XP per cast, or 62,000 XP for a full 2,000-cast hour. A break-even item still pays the full XP for its mode, which is why players happily alch at zero profit.
Each High cast consumes 5 fire runes and 1 nature rune, and each Low cast consumes 3 fire runes and 1 nature rune, unless a fire staff or similar item supplies the fire runes. With a staff equipped, the nature rune is the only per-cast cost. Set the fire staff control to No and the calculator adds fire runes at 4 gp each instead.
None on the alch itself: High Alchemy creates coins directly and is not a Grand Exchange sale. The 2% tax, capped at 5,000,000 gp per item, is charged to the seller when an item sells on the Grand Exchange, so it matters when you sell an item instead of alching it, not when you alch.
Yes. Whenever the item price plus the nature rune cost is higher than the alch value, every cast loses money and the calculator shows the red Loss verdict. An item bought at its full 39,000 gp alch value with a 225 gp rune loses 225 gp per cast.
Items with a wide gap between their Grand Exchange price and their fixed alch value, a high buy limit so you can actually buy in bulk, and enough trade volume that the price you see is real. Profitability moves with prices, so recheck the margin here before a bulk buy rather than trusting a static list.
It is low-attention rather than fully AFK. Every cast is a manual click about 3 seconds apart, but the rhythm is steady enough that players alch alongside Agility courses, other skilling or a second screen. The game still expects regular interaction.
No. This is a fan-made calculator and Jagex does not endorse it. Prices come from the Grand Exchange and change constantly, so confirm the item price, the alch value and the nature rune price in game before you commit a large stack.
The highest Grand Exchange price you can pay per item and still break even: the alch payout minus your total rune cost. The calculator prints it for the mode you selected. For the worked example on this page it is 39,000 − 225 = 38,775 gp in High mode and 25,775 gp in Low mode, because the Low payout is 26,000 gp. Pay more than the figure for your mode and every cast loses money.
Yes. Pick Low Level Alchemy in the mode selector. Enter the item’s high alch value as usual: the tool pays out two-thirds of it, rounded down, uses 3 fire runes per cast when no staff is equipped, and rates the hour at 2,000 casts and 31 Magic XP per cast, for 62,000 XP per hour. Low mode on the Rune platebody example loses 11,225 gp per cast, which is why the mode suits cheap items and the Magic levels before 55.
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References
- Old School RuneScape Wiki. High Level Alchemy. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Old School RuneScape Wiki. Prices. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Old School RuneScape Wiki. Magic. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- RuneScape Wiki. Grand Exchange Market Watch: Alchemy. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Old School RuneScape Wiki. Nature rune. Accessed October 22, 2026.
- Wikibooks. Old School RuneScape: Skills: Magic. Accessed October 22, 2026.