OSRS Money Making Guide

Money making advice in OSRS is almost always given without context — 'do Zulrah' is useless advice if you can't survive Zulrah yet. What's worth doing depends entirely on where your account actually is.

Roughly, by account stage

• Low requirements / early game — Cosmic Runecrafting, herb farming runs, and birdhouse runs need almost no combat and pay steadily.
• 70+ combat — Barrows becomes a reliable, low-mechanical-intensity method once Priest in Peril is done.
• 80+ combat — Zulrah and Kraken open up, with Zulrah being a large step up in both mechanics and GP/hr.
• 90+ combat — Vorkath and the Alchemical Hydra are usually the biggest jump most accounts make, assuming Dragon Slayer II is done.
• Endgame — Raids (CoX, ToB) and Nex pay the most but demand team coordination and a real gear investment first.

The two things that actually matter

First, whether you meet the quest and skill requirements at all — plenty of guides list a method you're nowhere near able to start. Second, gear cost versus what you're likely to actually earn per hour while still learning it, since your first dozen kills at any new method are always slower and riskier than the guide's quoted rate.