GE buy limits: how the 4-hour limit works
What a Grand Exchange buy limit is, when it resets, what counts against it, and how it caps the profit a flip can make in one 4-hour window.
Offerbook · · 4 min read
Every tradeable item on the Grand Exchange has a buy limit: the most of it one account can buy in 4 hours. Limits stop any one player from buying up the whole supply of an item, and for flippers they are the main thing that caps how much a good margin can earn.
How the 4-hour timer works
The timer starts with your first purchase of that item. Four hours after that first purchase, your full limit comes back, however much of it you used. Each item has its own timer, so hitting the limit on one item does not stop you buying anything else.
Say an item has a limit of 100. You buy 60 at 12:00 and 40 more at 14:00. You can buy no more until 16:00, four hours after the first 60, when you can buy 100 again.
What counts against the limit
- Only buying counts. Selling does not use or give back any of your limit.
- Partly filled offers count what filled. If you offer to buy 500 and 200 fill, you have used 200.
- Cancelling does not refund it. Items that filled before you cancelled still count.
- Offers above the limit just stop. If you offer to buy more than you have left, the offer fills up to your limit and then waits until the timer resets.
- The limit is per account. It applies to the whole account, not to one offer slot.
Why limits matter for flipping
Your profit from one item in one 4-hour window can never be more than the margin after tax times the buy limit. A 5 gp margin on an item with a limit of 25,000 can make more than a 50,000 gp margin on an item with a limit of 2. That is why Offerbook ranks flips by what a 4-hour window can make, not by margin alone. Our flipping guide works through an example.
The limit is a ceiling, not a promise. If an item only trades a few hundred times an hour, you may never fill your whole limit before the price moves, so volume matters as much as the limit does.
| Item | Margin | Buy limit | Per 4h |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crushed infernal shale | 237 gp | 25,000 | 1m gp |
| Sapphire dragon bolts | 381 gp | 11,000 | 527k gp |
| Burning amulet(5) | 233 gp | 10,000 | 413k gp |
| Diabolic worms | 72 gp | 8,000 | 402k gp |
| Phoenix necklace | 87 gp | 10,000 | 383k gp |
Qty per 4h is the lowest of the buy limit, a share of what trades in 4 hours, and a 10m bankroll.
Where the numbers come from
Offerbook reads buy limits from the OSRS Wiki, where players record them. Every item page shows the limit next to the price. A few items have no recorded limit yet; for those, Offerbook sizes flips by trade volume alone and says so on the page.
With the Offerbook RuneLite plugin connected, item pages and the Terminal also show how much of each limit you have used and when it resets. The plugin only reads your offers and shows them to you; it never trades for you. See Connect to set it up.
Offerbook is gp only and has nothing to do with real-world trading. Prices move, so nothing here is a promise of profit. Every trade is one you make yourself in game.