Making Credits
“How do I make money?” is one of the most common questions from new commanders. The good news is that almost everything in Elite Dangerous pays, so the best way to earn is the one you enjoy enough to keep doing. This page lists the main options roughly in the order most new pilots try them, with a link to our full guide for each.
Payouts change with game updates, market prices and faction states, so treat any numbers you see online, including here, as rough guides rather than promises.
Before you start: keep your rebuy
Your rebuy is what you pay to get your ship back if it is destroyed. It’s shown on the right-hand panel and goes up as your ship gets more expensive. Always keep at least that much in the bank. If you can’t pay it, you lose the ship and everything fitted to it. Upgrading a ship you can’t afford to rebuy is the fastest way to go broke.
1. Missions
Good for: your first few million credits, learning the game.
Start with Delivery and Data Courier missions in your starter ship, then move on to other types as your ship improves. Missions pay more as your reputation with the local factions grows. Taking several missions for the same destination or target at once (called stacking) multiplies what each trip earns. You can take up to 20 missions at a time.
More in Missions and Getting Started.
2. Community goals
Good for: a bonus on top of whatever you’re already doing.
Community goals are week-long events. Sign up on the Community Goals tab of any mission board first, then trade, fight or haul in the goal’s system. On top of the normal pay, you get a reward that depends on how much you contributed and how far the whole community got.
More in Community Goals.
3. Trading
Good for: steady income that grows with your cargo space.
Buy goods where they’re cheap and sell them where they’re in demand. Inara and Spansh find round-trip routes for your ship’s cargo and jump range. Bigger ships with more cargo racks earn more per trip, so trading is a good reason to save for a dedicated hauler. Fleet carriers run by other players often pay well for hauling, too.
More in Trading and Fleet Carriers.
4. Mining
Good for: high earnings once you have a mining ship.
Laser mining for minerals like Platinum and Painite needs only a modest ship: a refinery, mining lasers, limpets and cargo racks. Core mining pays more per tonne but takes more practice. Prices swing a lot between markets and over time, so check Inara before you sell, and sell where demand is high.
More in Mining and the mining builds.
5. Exploration and exobiology
Good for: relaxed play, and the biggest payouts that don’t need an expensive ship.
Scanning and mapping systems pays at Universal Cartographics, and Earth-like worlds, water worlds and ammonia worlds pay the most, especially if you’re the first to discover them. With Odyssey you can also land and sample alien life (exobiology), and the rarest species pay millions of credits per sample at Vista Genomics. Explorers earn nothing until they sell their data, and the data is lost if the ship is destroyed, so sell regularly.
More in Exploration and Odyssey Exploration.
6. Bounty hunting and combat
Good for: pilots who want action, once your ship has decent shields and weapons.
Fly to a Resource Extraction Site or a Compromised Nav Beacon and help system security kill wanted pirates, then cash in the bounty vouchers. Pirate massacre missions stack well on top of that. Start in a low or medium RES while you learn.
More in PvE Combat and Missions.
Powerplay
Once you know which activity you like, pledging to a Power with a matching perk adds bonus credits in its systems, plus a weekly salary and credits every time you rank up. See Powerplay Modules.
Ask the squadron
Not sure what fits your ship? Ask in the NEWP Discord. Someone is usually doing the same thing and can tell you what’s paying well right now.