GE guide price vs real-time prices
Jagex’s official Grand Exchange site shows one number per item: the guide price. Real-time price sites, ours included, show what items last traded for. They are different numbers for a reason (facts checked 2026-10-29).
By the OSRS Grand Exchange team · Updated
Official GE and real-time sites
| Official GE (Jagex) | OSRS Grand Exchange (us) | OSRS Wiki prices | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How fresh prices are | Guide price updates every 3 hours | New prices every 5 minutes | The page refreshes every 60 seconds while it’s open |
| Instant-buy and instant-sell prices | No: one guide price | Yes, plus 1-hour and 24-hour averages | Yes, with how long ago each traded |
| Flip margin after the 2% tax | No | Yes, with ROI and profit per buy limit | Yes, with ROI and profit per buy limit |
| Price history | 1, 3 or 6 months, daily average and trend | Our own stored history: 7 days hourly, up to a year daily | Charts from 6 hours to 1 year |
| Movers and market signals | Change today and over 1, 3 and 6 months | Risers and fallers over 1, 7 and 30 days, items near 90-day lows, momentum, merch flags, game update impact | Highest daily volume and most expensive tables |
Rival facts from each site’s own pages, checked 2026-10-29 (sources below). “Not listed” means the pages we checked don’t mention it.
What the guide price is
When you set up an offer, the Grand Exchange fills in the guide price. The OSRS Wiki describes it as automatically updated from the item’s trade history, meant to be its approximate market value. Jagex has never published the formula. Since the 30 September 2026 update it changes every 3 hours (it was every 24) by up to 20% a time (it was 5%), and low-volume items update more often than before.
The guide price also sets what items are worth at Death’s Coffer and for Items Kept on Death, so it matters even if you never trade.
What real-time prices are
Instant buy is the price of the latest trade where someone bought straight away; instant sell the latest where someone sold straight away. The gap between them, minus the 2% tax, is a flipper’s margin. These are the prices you’ll actually pay or get, minutes ago rather than hours.
Which to use
- Buying or selling now: real-time prices. Set your offer from the instant price, not the guide.
- Death’s Coffer and Items Kept on Death: the guide price, because that’s what the game uses.
- Long trends: either; we keep our own daily history from real trades, the official site charts its guide price over up to 6 months.
Who should use the official GE site
Anyone who needs the guide price itself: for Death’s Coffer offerings, Items Kept on Death values, or to see where an offer will start. It’s Jagex’s own number, which no fan site can replace.
Every tradeable item, refreshed every 5 minutes.
Questions
- How often does the OSRS GE guide price update?
- Every 3 hours since the 30 September 2026 update (it used to be every 24 hours), by up to 20% per update, according to the OSRS Wiki’s Grand Exchange page.
- Why can’t I sell at the guide price?
- Because nobody has to buy at it. Offers fill against other players’ offers, so the real price is wherever buyers and sellers meet. Real-time instant-buy and instant-sell prices show where that is.
Related
Sources
- Official Grand Exchange database (Jagex) (checked 2026-10-29)
- Official Grand Exchange, Abyssal whip page (checked 2026-10-29)
- OSRS Wiki: Grand Exchange (guide prices, tax, buy limits, changes) (checked 2026-10-29)
- OSRS Wiki real-time prices, Abyssal whip page (checked 2026-10-29)
- Our own prices: the OSRS Wiki real-time prices API, stored every 5 minutes (about our data).