Plan a F2P High Alchemy session
A profitable item can still be too expensive to fill your training session. Work out an affordable batch, check the price you can actually buy at, and count the Magic XP before committing your cash.
Before buying your first batch
High Level Alchemy is available to free-to-play players at 55 Magic on the standard spellbook. Each normal cast uses one nature rune and five fire runes, and gives 65 Magic XP. This guide assumes you already own and equip a staff that supplies fire runes; equipment purchases are outside the example budget.
Start with the F2P results to exclude members-only items. Compare the latest buy price with Stable Pricing when an average is available, and inspect the item history. A reported trade is a starting point for a small test offer, not a promise that yours will fill.
Worked example: a 1 million gp cash stack
These buy offers and the 100 gp nature rune cost are hypothetical, not current market prices. Rune platebody has a 39,000 gp high-alch value. We assume a 70-item GE limit with no prior purchases against it; check the current limit and your own purchases before buying.
- Cash available upfront
- 1,000,000 gp
- High-alch return per item
- 39,000 gp
- Illustrative nature rune cost
- 100 gp per cast
At a 38,600 gp buy offer, one item plus its nature rune costs 38,700 gp. Divide your cash by that cost and round down: 1,000,000 ÷ 38,700 buys 25 items. The batch needs 967,500 gp upfront and leaves 32,500 gp unspent.
Profit per cast is 39,000 − 38,600 − 100 = 300 gp. Buying the same quantity at a higher offer changes the result:
On a small screen, scroll the comparison sideways.
| Buy offer (gp) | Cost per cast (gp) | Quantity | Upfront cost (gp) | Profit per cast (gp) | Batch profit (gp) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 38,600 | 38,700 | 25 | 967,500 | 300 | 7,500 |
| 38,850 | 38,950 | 25 | 973,750 | 50 | 1,250 |
| 38,900 | 39,000 | 25 | 975,000 | 0 | 0 |
A 250 gp increase in the item offer cuts this batch's profit from 7,500 gp to 1,250 gp. At 38,900 gp per item, the example breaks even; a higher offer loses money. Recheck the nature rune cost too, because the break-even price moves when your rune cost changes.
A batch is not an hour of profit
These 25 casts give 1,625 Magic XP. High Level Alchemy can be cast once every five game ticks, or three seconds. That makes this batch 75 seconds of uninterrupted casting, excluding buying, banking and breaks.
A 30-minute target allows up to 600 casts and 39,000 Magic XP at that continuous rate. This example funds only 25 casts upfront. More time selected in the planner does not create more cash or more GE capacity. Alching returns coins that you could reinvest, but the Alch Plan budgets one upfront purchase; it does not model buying and alching repeated batches.
Check other F2P items and their individual limits if you need a longer session. A displayed profit-per-hour rate extrapolates the margin; it does not establish that you can buy enough items to sustain it.
Build a plan using your actual offer
- Open F2P calculator results. The shared view selects free-to-play items, hides stale and volatile rows, and keeps the standard minimum profit and volume checks. These are starting filters.
- Open an item, such as Rune platebody, and check its history, latest trade age, five-minute comparison and GE limit. If the average is missing, the F2P filter can still show the item; its comparison is unknown, so inspect it before buying.
- In Check your buy price, enter the price you can buy at and your Quantity to buy. Confirm the nature rune cost against what you will pay. Use your own figures rather than copying this example's hypothetical offers.
- Select Use this offer in plan. Review the saved quantity and buy price, enter your cash stack, and check capital, expected profit, Magic XP and estimated cast time. Other saved items remain part of the plan; remove them explicitly if they are outside this session.
What to check before buying more
GE buy limits cover four-hour windows, and ScapeBench does not track purchases you have already made. Five-minute volume describes reported trades across the market, not stock reserved for your offer. Test a small buy, then revise the quantity or offer if the market will not fill it.
If Stable Pricing is unavailable, use the available recent prices with their trade-age warnings. If the price feed is unavailable, wait for its retry or refresh before treating a market estimate as current. A saved manual offer remains your entered price; it is not a live quote.
For the price signals and other filters, read the High Alchemy guide, or compare current F2P rankings.