Guide · Updated 19 Sep 2026
How to build a RedM server economy players keep coming back to
A RedM economy fails in one of two ways. Either money is worthless, because every pelt sells to an NPC at a fixed price and nothing ever takes cash back out, or money is pointless, because there is nothing worth buying. The fix for both is the same model: a few controlled ways money enters, more ways it leaves, and players trading with each other in between. This guide gives you that model, starting numbers, and the scripts we use for each piece on our own server.
The model in one paragraph
Money enters through jobs, NPC buyers and a small stipend. It moves between players through shops, auctions and trades. It leaves through taxes, deposits, rent, upkeep and things that wear out. If the amount entering per hour of play is larger than the amount leaving, prices rise until the numbers mean nothing. Your job as the server owner is to keep the two roughly level, and to make most of the interesting spending happen between players rather than at an NPC counter.
Sources: where money comes in
Jobs
Job pay is the lever you control most directly. Pay per task rather than per hour where you can, so that being logged in and idle earns nothing. Several jobs per character is healthier than one on a small server: Poggy Multijob (Free) lets a character hold several, switch with one command, and gives you an admin panel to see and edit everyone's jobs, online or offline. It does not cap the number itself, so decide on two or three per character, assign them through that panel, and keep law and criminal roles from combining.
NPC buyers
The framework's own shops will buy anything at a fixed price forever. That is the source that breaks economies. If you keep NPC buyers, keep their prices low and let them buy only raw goods, so the profit is in selling to players. With Poggy Markets ($99), the optional supply-and-demand module makes prices fall when a market is flooded and recover when it is left alone, for whichever markets you declare: pelts, fish, ore, crops.
A stipend
New and unemployed characters need a floor so they can eat. Poggy Util (Free) has a government stipend that pays unemployed characters a small amount on a timer, only after a minimum tenure on the server, rising slowly with tenure. It starts switched off; turn it on and set the amount below the poorest job's pay, so working is always better. The stipend is VORP Core only today; the rest of Poggy Util runs on RSG Core and QBCore RedM too.
Loot
Random loot is fun and inflationary. Keep it to items rather than cash where possible. Poggy Trash Bins ($8.99) is a good example of the right size: 33 bins with a single loot table you control, cooldowns per bin, a cap on items per search, and a shared stash in every bin for dead drops.
Movement: players trading with players
Player-owned shops
The single biggest change you can make. Poggy Markets ($99) gives a player a storefront they buy or found with a deed, per-item buy and sell prices, hidden back-stock, staff with permissions and a dashboard of what actually sells. The server owns every price, capacity is checked before money moves, and ledgers are debited before payouts, which matters once real money is at stake in your economy. It runs on VORP Core, RSG Core and QBCore RedM through poggy_core, with oxmysql as its only other requirement.
Auctions and buy orders
Auction House ($29.99) adds the other half: listings with bids and buyouts at four auction houses, a mailbox for winnings and refunds, a catalogue of 74 raw goods whose prices drift, and a want-request board where a player posts a buy order with the money held in escrow until someone fills it. Orders can be delivered straight into a Poggy Markets shop.
Activities that produce goods
Trade needs things to trade. Poggy Fishing ($69.99) produces 28 fish across 34 waters with weights and rarity, which is exactly the kind of variable-value good a player market prices well. Hunting, mining and farming resources from the community do the same job for their goods.
Crafting gives those raw goods a second use. Poggy Crafting (Free) shows players the whole chain from ingredient to finished item, and job-locked recipes give a tradesman something only they can make. A recipe can also charge money, so crafting can be a sink as well as a source of goods.
Sinks: where money goes out
- Sales tax on every auction and shop sale. The Auction House has it built in; set it between 5 and 10 percent.
- Deposits that are not refunded: auction listing deposits by duration, shop deeds, rentals.
- Upkeep: rent on shops, stables and housing, charged whether or not the player logs in.
- Consumables: bait, ammunition, medicine, repair kits. Poggy Util's armor breaks after a set number of hits and needs a repair kit, which is a sink players are happy to pay.
- Fines from your law players, paid to the server rather than the deputy's pocket.
A useful test: add up what an active player pays in sinks in a week. If it is less than one evening's earnings, you do not have enough of them.
Starting numbers
| Setting | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Starting cash | $20 to $50 | A horse, a gun, food. Not a business. |
| Job pay per task | $1 to $4 | An evening's work should buy a good rifle, not a shop. |
| Stipend | Half the lowest job's hourly equivalent | A floor, never a career. |
| Sales tax | 5 to 10 percent | Enough to notice, not enough to avoid the market. |
| Shop deed | Two to four weeks of an average player's earnings | Owning a shop should be a goal, not a starting choice. |
| Jobs per character | 2 or 3 | Enough to fill roles; not enough to be everything. |
These are the numbers we started with on our own server and adjusted from. Watch the dashboard in Poggy Markets for what sells and the auction history for what prices settle at, and move one number at a time.
Free alternatives
VORP ships NPC shops and a basic job system, and RSG has rsg-shops; both are fixed-price NPC counters. For player-to-player trade with no budget, search the Cfx.re forum for "player shop RedM" and expect to do the balancing and the anti-exploit work yourself. Poggy Multijob and Poggy Util are free, so the jobs and stipend parts of this model cost nothing.
