reference

Item Prices

The 2024 rules put a gold value on every rarity, so you have somewhere to start when a player asks what an item costs. The tables below are the official numbers. The rest of the page is about when to ignore them.

What an item is worth

Rarity sets both the price and the cost to make one. Crafting runs at half the sale price, and every day of work is eight hours. Consumables like potions are worth half and take half the gold and time to craft. Spell scrolls are the exception and have their own table below.

From the System Reference Document 5.2.1 by Wizards of the Coast LLC (CC-BY 4.0).
Rarity	Value	If consumable	Craft cost	Craft time
common	100 gp	50 gp	50 gp	5 days
uncommon	400 gp	200 gp	200 gp	10 days
rare	4,000 gp	2,000 gp	2,000 gp	50 days
very rare	40,000 gp	20,000 gp	20,000 gp	125 days
legendary	200,000 gp	100,000 gp	100,000 gp	250 days
artifact	Priceless	—	—	—

Spell scrolls

Scrolls are priced by spell level instead of rarity, at double what they cost to scribe. The save DC and attack bonus come from the scroll rather than from whoever reads it.

From the System Reference Document 5.2.1 by Wizards of the Coast LLC (CC-BY 4.0). A scroll is worth double what it costs to scribe, so the value column is the price to buy one rather than to make it.
Rarity	Spell level	Value	Scribe cost	Scribe time	Save DC	Attack bonus
common	Cantrip	30 gp	15 gp	1 day	13	+5
common	1	50 gp	25 gp	1 day	13	+5
uncommon	2	200 gp	100 gp	3 days	13	+5
uncommon	3	300 gp	150 gp	5 days	15	+7
rare	4	2,000 gp	1,000 gp	10 days	15	+7
rare	5	3,000 gp	1,500 gp	25 days	17	+9
very rare	6	20,000 gp	10,000 gp	40 days	17	+9
very rare	7	25,000 gp	12,500 gp	50 days	18	+10
very rare	8	30,000 gp	15,000 gp	60 days	18	+10
legendary	9	100,000 gp	50,000 gp	120 days	19	+11

Why rarity is only a starting point

One number for a whole rarity band is a blunt instrument. A Bag of Holding and a Cloak of Elvenkind are both uncommon, and no party values them the same. Rarity measures roughly how much power an item adds, not how much a particular table wants it.

The price also assumes a world where magic items are for sale, and 5e does not assume that. In most settings common items turn up in a town, uncommon and rare ones only in cities, and anything above that is a story rather than a purchase.

Treat the table as a floor you can argue up from. If an item solves a problem your campaign is built around, charge more. If it is flavour with a small bonus attached, charge less. The final number is the DM’s.

Other pricing systems

Several community projects price each item individually rather than by band, which fixes the Bag of Holding problem at the cost of being unofficial. Two worth a look:

Sane Magic Market prices 2024 items by asking players to compare them head to head, then ranking the results.
Lazy 5e Magic Item Prices by Mike Shea keeps the rarity bands but rolls dice inside them, so two shops quote different prices.

Back to the guide

This page includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 (“SRD 5.2.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Monsterbrew is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast. Legal.