The FFXIV Market Board lets you compare listings, check completed sales, buy items, and sell through a retainer. Before spending gil, read the unit price, quantity, and item quality instead of clicking the first listing. Before selling, check sale history and the proceeds shown by your retainer. Free Trial characters cannot use the Market Board or retainers.
Market Board Access
Market boards are available in city-states and residential districts, and the listings on your World are the same whichever board you open. You can browse and buy directly from a Market Board. To list an item for other players, you need a retainer.
If you are on the Free Trial, stop here: Free Trial accounts cannot use the Market Board, player trading, or retainers. The rest of this guide applies to paid accounts with Market Board access.
Read the Listings Before You Buy
A listing needs more than one number. Check the unit price, quantity, total cost, and whether the item is HQ or NQ when that distinction exists. A 99-stack can have the lowest unit price and still cost far more than the amount you actually need.
Check Sale History, Not Just the Cheapest Listing
The lowest listing is an asking price. Sale history shows completed transactions. Open the item, select History, and compare the recent prices, quantities, and dates. If one item is listed for 500,000 gil but recent completed sales are clustered around 180,000, the listing alone does not prove that buyers are paying 500,000.
Freshness matters too. Several sales today tell you something different from the same price appearing once three weeks ago. Universalis can help with a wider snapshot, but check the in-game history again before an expensive purchase or flip because listings can change between updates.
Small Stack or Full Stack?
Buyers purchase the stack as listed, so stack size changes the real choice. Someone who needs four crafting mats may pay a higher unit price for four rather than buying 99 and tying up extra gil. Another buyer preparing many crafts may prefer the cheaper full stack.
Do not turn that into an “always sell small stacks” rule. Check completed quantities in sale history and think about how the item is normally used. Food, potions, housing materials, intermediate crafts, and one-off gear purchases all create different stack demand.
Buy Without Overpaying
- Compare unit price. A lower total can hide a worse price per item, while a cheap unit price can require buying a huge stack.
- Check HQ/NQ. Make sure the quality matches the recipe, gear, or consumable you actually want.
- Open sale history. Compare the listing with prices that buyers recently paid.
- Check the NPC alternative. Some vendor items appear on the MB with a convenience markup. Other listings can even fall below an NPC alternative.
- Choose the quantity you need. Paying slightly more per unit can still cost less gil if it avoids an unwanted stack.
Put the full purchase cost into the budget before you sink a big chunk of gil into the MB.
Sell Through Your Retainer
Use a Summoning Bell and select the retainer that will handle the sale. Choose the option to sell an item from your inventory or the retainer’s inventory, set the quantity and price, review the current listings, and confirm the listing. When it sells, treat the gil actually credited to the retainer as the completed proceeds.
The retainer listing window is also where you should check the seller fee and expected proceeds. FFXIV can apply reduced seller tax rates to selected markets, so use the amount shown by the current UI instead of assuming that one city or one percentage will stay correct forever.
If you need items to list, use the farming guide to find routes that actually produce saleable loot.
Do Not Undercut Blindly
A 1-gil undercut changes where a same-item listing appears when price is the deciding sort, but it does not make the item sell on demand. Another seller can undercut again, and a buyer may choose a different stack size or HQ listing.
Price matching, a 1-gil undercut, or a larger cut can all make sense in different situations. Check the recent completed sales first. If the current listings are far above history, matching them may mean waiting. If sales are frequent and the market is stable, dropping the price sharply can give away margin without solving anything.
Work Out the Real Margin
Real profit = seller proceeds – item cost – related costs.
Use seller proceeds after the fee shown by your retainer. Related costs can include a cross-World travel cost you choose to count, purchased crafting mats, or another direct input. A listing that has not sold is stock, not earned gil.
Illustrative positive flip: you buy 10 items for 8,000 gil each, so the stock costs 80,000. Travel and other direct costs add 2,000. After the sale completes, your retainer shows 114,000 gil of seller proceeds. Profit = 114,000 – 80,000 – 2,000 = 32,000 gil.
Illustrative bad flip: you buy an item for 150,000 gil because the cheapest current listing on your Home World is 210,000. Recent sale history, however, is around 140,000. If you eventually sell near that level and your retainer credits 133,000 after the displayed fee, while travel cost 2,000, the result is 133,000 – 150,000 – 2,000 = -19,000 gil. The 210,000 listing never represented your real profit.
Cross-World Shopping
You can visit another World and buy from the Market Board there. Retainers remain tied to your Home World for normal in-game access, so cross-World shopping is mainly a buying step. Compare the saving with the time and travel involved, then return home to manage your own listings.
Do not assume a cheaper World price is automatically a flip. Check your Home World sale history first. A 40,000-gil price gap is meaningless if the item rarely sells or the recent completed price is already falling.
Test a Flip With a Small Stack
Before committing a large amount of gil, run a small test. Check recent sales, confirm that the history is fresh, calculate the margin from expected seller proceeds, and buy only enough stock to learn whether the item moves.
Set an exit condition before buying. For example, decide that you will stop adding stock if completed sales fall below your break-even price, if your first stack does not move within the period you expected, or if competing supply expands enough to erase the margin. This keeps one slow item from locking up the gil you need elsewhere.
Why Your Listing Is Not Moving
| Problem | What to check | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong HQ/NQ | Recent sales for the exact quality | Compare like with like before repricing |
| Bad stack size | Quantities in completed sales | Relist a quantity buyers actually use |
| Price above recent sales | History versus current listings | Choose whether to wait or move closer to completed prices |
| Low sales volume | Dates between completed sales | Reduce stock exposure or choose another item |
| Stale data | When listings and history last changed | Recheck in game before changing the price |
| NPC/vendor alternative | Whether the item has a fixed vendor source | Price with the alternative in mind |
Lowering the price is only one possible fix. If nobody wants that stack, if the item barely sells, or if an NPC offers an easier alternative, another undercut may simply reduce your proceeds.
