You just made a new Old School RuneScape account, the bank is empty, and every guide you find assumes you already have 70+ stats and a few million gp to "invest." This breaks down what a genuinely fresh account can earn at each stage, with honest gp/hour numbers and the requirements to hit them. Prices move week to week, so treat these as ballpark figures from the current GE, not gospel.

Level 1-30: The grind floor (under 100k/hour)

A brand-new account has almost no efficient options, and that is normal. Your real job here is to build a small buffer and a few base levels.

  • Tutorial Island to first 50k: Kill chickens for feathers (feathers stack and sell for ~3-5 gp each in bulk), or pick up the cowhide from cows at Lumbridge. Cowhides sell for around 100-150 gp each and a member can tan them later. Expect 20-40k/hour. It is slow, but it costs nothing.
  • Tin and copper ore (Mining): At the Lumbridge Swamp or Varrock east mine you can bank bronze-tier ore. This is closer to "leveling with a small income" than real money-making.
  • Wines of Zamorak (F2P, ~level 30 Magic + agility skip): Telegrabbing wine of Zamorak at the Chaos Temple is one of the few F2P methods that breaks 200k/hour, but it is high-risk in the Wilderness and not beginner-friendly. Skip it until you understand the run.

Be realistic: the first few hours of any fresh account are the worst gp/hour you will ever see. Push through to a members subscription as fast as you can, because P2P multiplies your options.

Level 30-50: First reliable income (100k-300k/hour)

Once you are a member with low-50s gathering stats, the game opens up.

  • Fishing (level 40-50, Fly fishing trout/salmon at Barbarian Village): Drop-fishing for XP, or bank for ~50-80k/hour at this level. Not the money winner, but a calm, low-attention option.
  • Hunter — Chinchompas / Birdhouse runs: Birdhouse runs need only ~level 9 Hunter (red birdhouses at higher levels), take 3-5 minutes every 50 minutes, and pay roughly 150-250k/hour of active time while you do other things between runs. This is one of the best fresh-account methods because the gp-per-attention is enormous.
  • Cooking + Wintertodt prep: Wintertodt is accessible at level 50 Firemaking and drops supplies (herbs, ore, gems, planks) plus rooty crates. A fresh account can earn 200-400k/hour in loot value here while training Firemaking from 50 toward 99. It is the single best "do one thing, get XP and money" activity for new members.

Level 50-70: Where it gets real (300k-600k/hour)

This is the band where a fresh account stops being broke.

  • Zalcano (requires partial Song of the Elves, ~level 70 Mining/Smithing recommended): Group PvM-lite that pays 600k-1m/hour with decent gear, but the quest gate is steep for a new account.
  • Blast Mining / Volcanic Mine (50+ Mining): Volcanic Mine needs 50 Mining and pays strong Mining XP plus ore; not top-tier gp but excellent XP-plus-income.
  • Farming runs (Herb runs): Once you have Ranarr or Snapdragon seeds and the patches unlocked, herb runs take ~20 minutes every ~80 minutes and net 200-500k per run depending on prices. The catch is upfront seed cost, so this is a "reinvest your first million" method, not a from-zero one.
  • Crafting Green/Blue dragonhide bodies (57-66 Crafting): Steady ~250-400k/hour of click-intensive but low-risk profit, and it doubles as Crafting XP toward the 70s.

Level 70+: Self-sustaining (600k-1.5m+/hour)

With 70s across the board and a mid-tier combat setup, you reach the methods most guides actually talk about.

  • Vorkath (requires Dragon Slayer II): ~2.5-4m/hour with good gear and a decent kill speed. DS2 is a long, hard quest, so this is a milestone, not a starting point.
  • Slayer (85+ Slayer for the best tasks): Rune/Adamant dragons, Gargoyles, and Nechryael tasks pay well and unlock long-term goals. Slayer is the backbone of mid-game income.
  • Raids (Chambers of Xeric, Theatre of Blood): The real money is here, but it demands gear, learning, and a team.

When buying gold or a carry actually makes sense

For most fresh accounts, the honest answer is to play it out — the early grind teaches you the game and the gp comes naturally. But there are two spots where a time-for-money trade is genuinely sensible. The first is the quest wall: long unlock quests like Dragon Slayer II, Monkey Madness II, or Song of the Elves gate entire income tiers, and if your time is worth more than the hours they cost, a quest carry skips you straight to the methods that pay. The second is bootstrap capital — herb runs, Farming, and high-level crafting all need seed money to spin up, and buying a starting stack of gp can collapse weeks of low-gp/hour grinding into a single afternoon. If you go that route, use a reputable seller, trade in-game face-to-face, and never share your login. A clean gold buy or a one-off carry is a shortcut past the boring part; it is not a substitute for knowing how to play your account.

The pattern across every tier is the same: gp/hour is gated by levels and quests, not by clever tricks. Pick one method slightly above your current level, grind it until you can afford the next unlock, and let the numbers compound.