OSRS Grand Exchange tax explained
The current 2% Grand Exchange tax rate, the 5m cap per sale, which items are exempt, and why it matters for your break-even price.
The current rate
Selling most items on the Grand Exchange costs a tax (officially the "convenience fee" and item sink) of 2% of the sale price, rounded down to the nearest gp, capped at 5,000,000 gp on any single sale. Confirmed against the OSRS Wiki's Grand Exchange page: the rate doubled from 1% to 2% on 29 May 2025, so anything describing a 1% tax is describing the old rate.
The cap means very high-value sales (around 250,000,000 gp and up) pay a flat 5,000,000 gp rather than scaling tax forever, which changes the after-tax math on the most expensive items in the game.
What is exempt
A specific, published list of items is exempt from this tax entirely. It is not just the Old school bond, a common misconception: it also covers several low-level foods (shrimps, herring, bass, salmon, pike, mackerel, tuna, bread, cake, cooked meat, cooked chicken, meat pie), a handful of low-level combat ammunition (bronze and iron arrows and darts, steel arrows and darts, mind rune), basic tools (chisel, hammer, saw, needle, spade, rake, shears, secateurs, seed dibber, watering can, pestle and mortar, gardening trowel, glassblowing pipe), teleport tablets for Varrock, Falador, Lumbridge, Ardougne, Camelot and Kourend Castle, the Civitas illa fortis teleport, energy potions at any dose, and the Games necklace and Ring of dueling specifically at their (8) charge count.
Exempt items still show a live spread on Varrock like anything else, they simply never have tax subtracted from their margin, so their full instant-buy/instant-sell gap is real profit.
Why this matters for your break-even price
If you already hold an item and want to know the lowest sale price that gets your money back, you need the price where the after-tax proceeds equal what you paid, not just your original purchase price. Varrock's item pages calculate this break-even price directly from the current tax rate and that item's exemption status, so you don't have to work the 2% back out by hand.